A Choice: To Save or Not to Save?

A Choice: To Save or Not to Save?

Whoosh!

Controlling two daggers, George slit the throats of two guards in a surprise attack and arrived at a fork in the corridor.

Based on what he had learned and overheard during this time, the path to the right led to the cafeteria. Beyond the cafeteria was the room where the mutant children were held. The path to the left led out of the laboratory.

If he went left now, with his current strength, he would most likely be able to slip out safely, steal a car, and escape.

Once he reached the crowded city, he would be free as a bird.

With those mutant children drawing the enemy's fire, there probably would not be many people left to hunt him down afterward.

"Aah!!!"

Just as he was about to step onto the left path, a miserable scream rang out from deep within the right corridor. It was a young voice—a child's voice.

The scream made George lower his raised foot.

"Ha... it seems I still can't be that rational, that ruthless."

After hesitating for a moment, he turned and headed right.

There were fifty mutant children in the entire Experimental Base. According to what he had seen in the movie, fewer than twenty escaped in the end, including X-23, Little Wolf Girl.

In other words, more than thirty mutant children died during this escape.

George did not consider himself a good person, but neither was he a bad one. He was simply a normal person whose moral standards were around the human average.

Reason told him that, in this situation, the safest choice was to let those children draw the enemy's fire while he quietly escaped.

But people were not machines. How could they be so rational?

If the ones screaming had been adults, he could have hardened his heart and ignored them. They were strangers, after all.

But they were pitiful children. He saw them every day, and though they had never spoken, they still knew one another.

Still, he had thought it through. If he could save them, he would. If he truly could not, he would run. His own life still came first.

"Ladi, Weil, Ellie."

In the cafeteria, Gabriella looked at the three children who had been shot dead while holding back the pursuers, and tears once again filled her eyes.

After learning that the Genetic Modification Research Institute was not developing a miracle cure for cancer, but cultivating mutant assassins, she and several equally kind colleagues had decided to secretly take these pitiful children and escape.

But before their plan could be put into action, the higher-ups at the institute had already decided to execute all the children.

They had no choice but to flee ahead of schedule. Yet even though the children possessed all kinds of extraordinary abilities, they were no match for experienced guards armed with cold, deadly firearms.

They had only made it as far as the cafeteria, yet several of her colleagues had already died covering them, and more than a dozen of the fifty children had been killed. If they truly wanted to escape, even more would likely die.

"Laura!"

At that moment, Gabriella saw X-23, the strongest among the children, get her limbs seized and fixed in midair after killing six people in a row, unable to break free. Gabriella snatched the submachine gun from a dead guard beside her and said to the children behind her:

"Go to the entrance. Aunt Isabelle will take you to the destination."

Isabelle was the last colleague still alive. She usually drove a large truck to deliver daily supplies purchased from the city to the base.

After receiving their notice, she had already driven the truck to the entrance to meet them.

"What about you and Laura?"

The slightly older mutant boy at the front showed a worried expression.

Though they had lived in the laboratory their entire lives and lacked common sense, they were not stupid.

"Riktor, you're the oldest among them. I'm entrusting them all to you. Take them to the destination and wait for me there. I'll definitely bring Laura to find you."

Gabriella gently gave the boy her instructions, then raised the submachine gun and fired wildly at the enemy, intending to create an opportunity for the children to escape.

Her aim was poor, but the barrage still threw the guards controlling Little Wolf Girl into disarray. One of Little Wolf Girl's feet broke free, and she viciously drove the Adamantium claw on that foot into a guard's eye, temporarily escaping her restraints.

However, it was obvious that more guards were already rushing in from the corridor.

Riktor gritted his teeth and led these younger brothers and sisters, unrelated to him by blood, toward the corridor behind them.

But they had barely fled the cafeteria when four gun-wielding guards blocked their path in the corridor.

"Everyone, attack together!"

Though terrified inside, they still gathered their courage, preparing to fight these four guards to the death and escape.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Before they could activate their abilities, two of the guards suddenly collapsed with blood spraying from their necks. The remaining two hurriedly turned around, only to be met by two bullets.

"Are you all right?"

After dealing with the four guards, George looked at the stunned children ahead and let out a slight sigh of relief.

Thirty-four children were still alive. He had arrived in time.

"Number 757!"

Riktor was stunned when he realized that their rescuer was Number 757, the mutant who never spoke. But he immediately said anxiously:

"Aunt Gabriella and Laura are still in the cafeteria—"

"I cleared out the guards behind you. Keep escaping. I'll go save them."

George did not hesitate. After giving them those instructions, he tossed aside the empty submachine gun in his hand, picked up the two belonging to the guards on the ground, and charged toward the cafeteria.

"So savage?"

The moment he rushed into the cafeteria, he saw Little Wolf Girl straddling a guard's neck and relentlessly attacking his head, smashing his brains out.

The sight made even the surrounding guards recoil in shock.

But she was ultimately too small. Once the guards recovered, they suppressed her with gunfire. Though her regeneration prevented her from being killed, she was still shot down from the air and forced back again and again.

Gabriella had run out of bullets and was pinned behind cover, completely unable to help.

"Fark!"

At this point, merely controlling daggers to kill enemies was clearly no longer enough. He did not have regeneration that would let him ignore so many guns.

If he could not kill them all as quickly as possible, merciless firepower would rain down on him.

So George raised both submachine guns, applying all his magnetic control to the bullets in their magazines, and began firing furiously.

After being fired, those bullets did not follow their original trajectories. Influenced by magnetism, they curved through the air, shooting toward the guards' vital points as much as possible.

The firing speed of a submachine gun, paired with the accuracy of a sniper rifle—this was the real trump card that gave him the confidence to come help.