After Dilos tackled Qin Jiayin to the ground, a gust of wind swept past his face the very next instant. At the same time, he instinctively expanded his senses, and the scene before his eyes began to slow as his senses sharpened.
That was how he saw, with perfect clarity, a black sedan tumbling through the air just after they hit the ground. It roared over them, passing within barely a few inches.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Then, heavy objects began crashing into one another all around them, accompanied by a cacophony of car horns.
Ignoring the unlucky waiter behind them, who had been reduced to a bloody mess, Dilos helped the dazed Qin Jiayin to her feet. He looked toward the spot where the car had just crashed through and froze.
Every car at the intersection outside was piled together like ants. Several vehicles had collided, their bodies crushed in on one side and dented on the other. Fortunately, those collisions had been relatively minor, so the people inside hadn't been badly hurt.
But the cars crushed or struck by buses, trucks, and cement mixers hadn't been so lucky. Dilos glanced at a dump truck nearby, then at the mangled sedan behind him. No one could have survived an impact like that without serious injuries, even inside a car. Even if the people inside weren't dead, their condition couldn't be good.
Dilos stepped forward and scanned the area. Before long, he spotted the main cause of the massive accident.
The traffic lights at the intersection in the distance were all green...
"How could this happen?"
At last, Qin Jiayin came to her senses. She looked around in terror, clearly unable to accept the disaster unfolding before her.
The street had been filled with laughter and cheerful voices just a moment ago. Now it had become a disaster zone.
Dilos said nothing, only patting her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.
But he hadn't expected this to be only the beginning.
Televisions in shops and restaurants, along with the internet, were all spreading the same news.
Traffic across the entire United States had ground to a halt!
It started in New York, then spread to the other cities around it. Like a virus, the paralysis began in New York and devoured the surrounding cities. In less than three hours, traffic across the whole country had come to a standstill.
The dire situation made Dilos worry about Chloe and Gabe, far away in Smallville. Concerned, he immediately called them both. But...
Beep, beep, beep...
No matter how many times he tried, all he heard was the disconnected tone. He tried calling other people, too, but got the same result. And it wasn't just him. Qin Jiayin and the people nearby were all panicking when they realized their phones weren't working either.
They couldn't even get online!
"Damn it!" Dilos swore irritably. This sudden turn of events had caught him completely off guard, leaving him anxious and unsettled. But his years of experience soon helped him force down his panic and calmly assess the situation.
The entire United States was surely in chaos by now. Traffic and communications were down, and perhaps some other major disasters had occurred as well—though Dilos knew nothing about them yet. He didn't know what else was happening, but he was certain that whoever was behind this was up to something more.
"Who could have done this?"
Bringing traffic and communications across the entire country to a halt was no small feat. Whoever was responsible would need exceptional hacking skills, as well as enormous financial resources to develop a virus program or recruit a large number of top hackers.
"Could it be Hydra?" Dilos immediately suspected the villainous organization, which in his previous life seemed to have the luck of a cockroach. But he soon dismissed the possibility.
Hydra did want to rule the world, but an act like this would do them far more harm than good.
Dilos began running through all the major figures he could think of, one by one, trying to work out who was capable of something like this. But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn't determine who was responsible. In the United States, even if the most prominent billionaires had the means, such an act would be deeply unpopular and do them no favors. Just like Hydra, it would bring more harm than good!
"Still, I can't rule out some deranged person doing it..." Dilos thought. He mulled it over for a long time, until a name suddenly came to mind.
Wilson Fisk.
Also known as Kingpin.
Dilos thought it over carefully. As America's most powerful crime boss, this man could practically be called the king of the underworld. When it came to money, he was undoubtedly the richest of all the gang leaders in the country. When it came to ambition, he was just as surely the most ambitious.
Dilos knew that Kingpin had strangled his beloved wife with his own hands because he believed that he couldn't have any weaknesses. Considering how ruthless this underworld king was, it wasn't hard to imagine him doing something this insane if he had the means. What's more, Dilos remembered that Kingpin's business was based in New York. And according to the reports, New York was where it had all started. Taken together, these circumstances made Kingpin the prime suspect.
"Yaaaaaaah!!!"
Just as Dilos was wondering whether Kingpin had planned this act of terror, a string of screams caught his attention. He turned toward the source. About a hundred yards ahead, hundreds of men and women were running toward them from the street, their faces filled with terror. They climbed over the vehicles blocking the road and knocked down car owners and pedestrians who hadn't yet figured out what was happening, racing toward them as if their lives depended on it.
It looked like they were fleeing some great disaster.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud...
There were so many people that their pounding footsteps made an enormous racket as they charged forward. Dilos could even feel the ground trembling. The noise sent the people nearby, who still hadn't understood what was going on, into a panic. Some ran after the crowd, while others hid behind anything that might shield them from harm.
With Dilos's physical strength, he naturally had nothing to fear from being hit by a crowd like this. But he had no intention of standing there and letting people run into him. Besides, Qin Jiayin was right beside him. Without hesitation, he grabbed her and pulled her into the nearby supermarket.
The chaos lasted a full two minutes. Then Dilos understood why hundreds of people had been running for their lives.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Looking through the supermarket window, Dilos's pupils shrank to pinpoints. On the street up ahead, two half-human, half-lizard monsters stood about five meters tall, their bodies covered in silvery-white scales. They planted their heavy, enormous feet on a car that couldn't move and crushed it into scrap metal!
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