The Fleeing Riptide

Sing Sing walked several dozen meters away and lit a cigarette.

He took out his phone and opened an Excel spreadsheet titled "Second Batch of Prospective Recruits."

He had spent the past three days putting it together.

The data came from a wide range of sources.

Some came from top-secret files Da Vinci had dug up, and some from intelligence he had bought on dark web forums.

There were eleven names in all, and each one could bring in a hefty profit.

Sing Sing squatted beside the mountain road, smoking as he scrolled down with a finger.

First was Cain Marko, codename Juggernaut.

His officially classified ability was unstoppable destructive power. He was enormous, and once he got running, he could flatten a mountain in his path.

The note described him as an excellent alternative to a tunnel-boring machine.

Sing Sing quickly did the math. Renting a tunnel-boring machine currently cost eighty to a hundred and twenty thousand a day, before anything else.

Add in diesel and maintenance,

and a tunnel contract lasting three to six months would swallow tens of millions.

If he could talk Juggernaut into coming over, he could buy him ten buckets of KFC a day and pay him a daily wage to ram his way into mountains.

Even if he replaced only thirty percent of the work, how much would that save in a year?

There were risks, though.

The man wasn't too bright. Word was he was stubborn and quick-tempered.

They'd have to recruit a good-tempered political commissar who knew how to coax children to keep an eye on him, or he might bring a mountain down.

Sing Sing scrolled on.

Second was Bobby Drake, codename Iceman.

His officially classified ability was transforming his entire body into organic ice crystals and creating a zone of extreme cold out of thin air, covering a radius of two hundred meters.

The note described him as the chief expert on cooling mass concrete pours.

Anyone who had worked on a construction site knew that the biggest problem when pouring concrete during a southern summer was the heat of hydration.

If the temperature wasn't controlled properly, the concrete would crack inside and ruin the project.

Embedding cooling pipes and buying thousands of tons of ice to cool it down cost a fortune.

Bring Iceman over and have him stand on-site, and everything within two hundred meters would cool down and frost over automatically. They'd even save on air-conditioning.

The potential risk was that the kid had supposedly been a core member of the X-Men and had taken a beating under Western capitalism.

Before bringing him back, they'd have to make him recite the core values a few times to prevent ideological conflict.

The more Sing Sing read, the more excited he got. He didn't notice until the cigarette butt burned his hand.

There was no way he could bring all eleven back in one trip.

Besides, the act had forced these people to scatter all over the place.

Just as he was working out what to say to sweet-talk them, the phone in his pocket vibrated.

He opened it and found a message from Director Wang.

"Uncle Sam's gone crazy.

"Enforcement of the Superhuman Registration Act escalated overnight. Special forces in New York and Los Angeles started crackdowns at the same time.

"Large numbers of Mutants are fleeing toward the Canadian and Mexican borders.

"If you want to recruit people, your window is down to two or three weeks."

Sing Sing's eyelid twitched, and he straightened his back.

A second message popped up right after it. "Your US visa's been approved. Buy your own plane ticket.

"And I'm warning you, same rules as always: you can only claim reimbursement for economy. Don't hand me another receipt for a business-class upgrade."

Three seconds later, a third text arrived, its tone suggesting a compromise. "Your meal allowance has been approved too.

"Don't let that toad of yours starve to death on a construction site and disgrace the country."

"That tightwad Lao Wang. Sooner or later, I'm stealing all his goji berries."

He muttered the curse and stuffed his phone back into his pocket.

He couldn't wait any longer. If he arrived too late, the Americans would have captured them all for experiments.

He rushed toward the battered van, yanked the door open, and floored the accelerator.

With Juggernaut's size, how much would he have to offer him per day before he'd willingly dig tunnels?

If Iceman kept using his ability for eight hours straight, would his blood sugar drop and make him faint? Would they need to keep glucose water on hand?

What was the maximum distance Blue Devil could teleport in one jump? Could he carry cement straight across national borders?

There was another pressing matter.

"Damn it, how much are economy tickets from Los Angeles to New York discounted right now?"

"To save on food, should I stuff two cases of braised beef instant noodles into my suitcase and take them to America?"

Queens, New York.

A Mexican café called the Golden Donkey Hoof.

When Sing Sing pushed the door open, the smell by the entrance nearly knocked him over.

His contact had already arrived.

A small, skinny man was huddled in a booth in the corner, a latte in front of him.

His codename was Slug, an informant the 749 Bureau had planted in New York's Chinatown.

He was called Slug because his rhinitis never cleared up, and his nose ran 365 days a year.

Sing Sing sat down and pulled his cap lower.

"You bring it?"

Slug pulled a USB drive out of his crotch.

Sing Sing stared at the drive, then looked at the right hand Slug had just pulled out.

"Couldn't you hide it somewhere else?"

"It's safe."

Slug sniffled, entirely self-assured.

"I got searched three times on the street last week. They went through my bag, my pockets, even the soles of my shoes. That's the one place nobody touched."

Sing Sing pinched the edge of the USB drive between two fingertips and put it in his pocket.

"The latest list is on it?"

"Yeah. I bought it from a logistics soldier in the Sentinel unit for two hundred bucks."

"The kid's a gambler. When he's desperate after losing, there's nothing he won't sell."

"There are thirty-seven Mutants whose whereabouts were recorded over the past three weeks. Maybe a dozen or so are still alive."

Slug sniffled again.

"More than ten of them are heading for Mexico. A few others are hiding in the underground utility tunnels in Brooklyn."

"What about Juggernaut? Is Cain Marko on the list?"

"He is, but you can't get to him."

"How come?"

"He's locked in a mobile prison vehicle, escorted by six Sentinels around the clock."

"They're transferring him from the East Coast to a secret base in Nevada."

"I took one look at the level of security and pissed myself. Literally. I still haven't been to the bathroom."

Sing Sing swore.

"What about Blue Devil, the one who can teleport?"

"He got away. I heard he went to Germany and found a church to hide in."

"Pyro?"

"Caught in Los Angeles, two days ago."

"The charge was illegally putting on a fireworks show at the beach and setting every trash can within three kilometers on fire."

I offered my heart to the bright moon, but the moon shines on the gutter.

Damn it.

"Who else can I get in touch with right now?"

Slug counted on his fingers for a while, his snot nearly dripping into his coffee.

"Hard to say. Everyone's on edge right now. You'll have to go through the list yourself."

"Oh, right. A few people who used to follow Magneto have been active around Queens lately."

After they had talked a little longer, Slug wrote down information on a napkin about Mutants who might show up nearby.

Sing Sing had just reached out to take it when a burst of gunfire suddenly rang out from the street outside the glass window.

Bang, bang, bang.

The café's only three customers dropped under their tables with practiced ease.

The owner rolled into the kitchen clutching the cash register, muttering about the Virgin Maria.

Sing Sing turned to look out the window.

A hundred meters away, a man in a trench coat was running for his life through an intersection.

Two SUVs were chasing him, gun barrels sticking out of their windows and flashing as they fired.

The man flung out his right hand, and a cyclone formed out of thin air, sweeping a trash can into the air.

The trash can slammed into the windshield of the pursuing SUV.

The SUV swerved sharply and flipped onto its side at the edge of the road. The second vehicle charged on without slowing down.

"Who's that?"

Slug poked his head out and took a couple of looks.

"Riptide. He used to follow Magneto. His ability is spinning his body at high speed."

"You should run too. The ones after him are those Reaver mercenaries. They care about money, not people."

As he spoke, Slug started to crawl under the table.

Sing Sing stood up.

"Be more specific."

"He can spin his body at high speed to fly, and his skin can secrete substances that turn into sharp weapons."