Sam Lane's Sorrow (5k Bonus Chapter)

Sam Lane's Sorrow (5k Bonus Chapter)

[Thank you all for your monthly votes. I counted, and there were 124 in total.]

[Thank you so much, everyone. I'm adding 5k words right here for you brothers.]

[What? Too many words? You usually only read 2k-word chapters?]

[We're brothers. Just take it and read.]

"Finally here?"

Locke took a deep breath.

The peaceful past two months had made him let down his guard. He had nearly forgotten about this.

The sound of tires crushing gravel suddenly sharpened as the car slammed to a stop twenty meters from the barn.

Amid the swirling dust, the driver's door was shoved open with someone's shoulder.

That was right—the distinct way federal agents opened car doors, as though the door weighed a thousand pounds.

First came a pair of gleaming Oxford shoes, reflecting the evening sunlight, followed by suit trousers with creases sharp enough to cut.

Then came a familiar voice.

"God, this damn road is even worse than last time! My brand-new Ferragamos!"

"Vank."

The graying old man climbed out of the passenger seat with an imposing air, cutting him off.

Smith raised a hand to straighten his tie, his voice low and authoritative.

"Watch your conduct. We are now 'Special Agents' and a 'Chief Special Agent.' Senior officials. Keep your spirits up and don't embarrass us."

"Heh."

Rolling his eyes, Vank muttered under his breath, "Senior officials? And senior officials get to drive this Chevrolet that's about to fall apart? I must've had eight lifetimes of bad luck. The organization gets restructured, and I still end up on the same team as you."

"Is that so?"

Smith sighed and patted his shoulder. "Then when I transferred you to work with Black last time, didn't you run back in three days? You said he couldn't even make coffee properly."

Vank choked, then flew into a rage out of embarrassment. "That's because he put sugar in an Americano! Sugar! Is that something a human being does?!"

Smith shook his head, too lazy to argue with him, and headed toward the barn.

Still cursing, Vank followed behind. As he walked, he lowered his head to check whether his pant legs had gotten splattered with mud, all while muttering, "I should've applied for a transfer to the European branch. At least the roads there are flat!"

Without looking back, Smith tossed out, "If you really got transferred there, you'd complain that 'Europeans don't even know how to make hamburgers.'"

Vank opened his mouth, but in the end, he did not retort. He merely kicked a small stone away viciously.

Smack!

The stone struck the car door, leaving a barely noticeable dent.

Smith glanced back, the corner of his mouth twitching. "The repair bill is coming out of your salary."

Vank: "..."

In the distance, Locke stood at the barn entrance, silently listening with Star Platinum. The corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly at that.

It was still these two.

That put him at ease.

Though, come to think of it...

The organization had been restructured?

What was going on with that organization now?

"Mr. Locke! Looks like we really are fated. We ran into you as soon as we arrived." Before Locke could think further, Smith greeted him as he approached. "Has there been anything unusual at the farm lately?"

Locke nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing twice before he suddenly lowered his voice.

"You two, I've finally been waiting for you!"

Smith and Vank both froze, their gazes meeting swiftly behind their sunglasses.

Vank's fingers quietly moved toward his waist, only to be stopped by a look from Smith.

"Mr. Locke." Smith put on a standard civil servant's smile and deliberately lifted his briefcase. "We're only here to inspect the situation of Kansas farmers and conduct a routine survey."

"I don't know what it is you mean."

"Whew—!"

Locke let out an exaggerated long breath. After looking around, he suddenly grabbed both men by the arms and dragged them into the barn. "Come inside and talk!"

The barn doors let out an aged groan as sunlight filtered through the gaps in the planks, sliced into fine golden threads.

Only after making sure the doors were securely latched did Locke turn around. "I'm going to tell you something, but don't be afraid!"

By reflex, Smith patted Locke on the shoulder. "We're professionals. We can't possibly be afraid."

"That's good!"

Locke braced both hands against an old wooden crate piled with hay and said in a deep voice, "Mutants really exist in this world!"

"..."

The barn suddenly became so quiet that they could hear bits of hay falling to the floor.

"Uh..."

"Mr. Locke, don't joke around." Vank sounded awkward.

"I saw it with my own eyes!"

Locke suddenly raised his voice, gesturing wildly. "On that rainy night, there was a man who could extend steel claws from his hands!"

"He was fighting some kind of thing, and the impacts were booming nonstop!"

"The next morning..." His voice suddenly trembled. "My wheat field looked like it had been plowed by a tornado, and the fences had all turned into scrap metal..."

Vank did not take it seriously, but Smith's breathing had clearly quickened.

"Mr. Locke."

"Are you sure it was a man who could extend steel claws from his hands?!"

The old agent's voice suddenly rose.

Startled by his abrupt reaction, Locke nodded instinctively.

"Absolutely!"

"I recorded it!"

He hurriedly turned around and retrieved the Casio QV-10 he had bought two years earlier.

It was said to be the world's first digital camera with a built-in LCD screen.

The three crowded together, and in the blurry footage filmed inside the barn, a cold glint from metal claws flashed past.

Along with—

"F*ck, f*uck..."

Those intermittent curses.

That familiar voice...

It was him!

It was definitely him!

Smith would never forget that wolf man strapped to an operating table, who had spent all day telling him to go f*ck his mother!

"Damn it!"

He slammed a fist against his thigh, turned around, grabbed the still-dazed Vank by the tie, and snatched Locke's camera in the same motion.

"Move! Now!"

"Um... you two, my camera..."

"Sorry, Mr. Locke!" Smith shouted without looking back, his voice breaking up as he ran. "We have urgent official business!"

"We need a camera!"

"Consider it requisitioned by the department. We'll compensate you three times its value. Check with the town bank in a couple of days."

"My Armani! Smith, you tore my clothes!"

"Shut up!"

After throwing Vank into his seat, Smith got behind the wheel and stomped on the gas. The Chevrolet let out a roar like a dying struggle, spewing out a huge cloud of black smoke from its exhaust pipe.

The tires spun frantically in the mud, flinging splatters that added several new artistic creations to the outer wall of the barn.

Standing amid the rising dust, Locke watched the two men disappear into the distance.

He chuckled. He had not expected them to react so strongly.

He had thought he would have to argue with them a little longer.

"Dad." In the shadows beneath the eaves behind him, Dio, who had returned home at some point, leaned against the doorframe. "That performance of yours was so over-the-top it made me want to throw up."

"Same to you."

Locke yanked Dio over and pinched his cheek. "When you pretended to be sick to skip school last time, you coughed like you were about to cough up your lungs."

The Chevrolet bounced wildly down the country dirt road.

Vank clung tightly to the roof handle, his suit wrinkled into a ridiculous mess by the seat belt.

"Smith! Have you lost your fucking mind?!"

Vank roared, "You're driving eighty on this shitty road?! The tires are about to fly off!"

Smith ignored him. His grip on the steering wheel was so tight he seemed about to crush it, his knuckles white. "Shut up, Vank."

"What about that mutant?! We still haven't figured out what happened with Reaper!" Vank's eyes widened. "That guy Locke was obviously lying!"

"This has nothing to do with Reaper anymore!" Smith roared.

"What matters is that mutant! The mutant!"

He slammed the steering wheel, making the Chevrolet emit a piercing squeal along the country road.

Vank was stunned by the shouting, then scoffed. "Isn't he just a mutant? He helped us take care of the experimental unit. Isn't that a good thing? Otherwise, we wouldn't have put off coming here until now."

He spread his hands.

"To be honest, when I first saw that energy fluctuation appear and then vanish instantly, I thought there was just something wrong with the satellite. Besides, your cousin who was watching the farm didn't send any news afterward."

"And then there was the organizational reform. I was so busy I nearly forgot all about this! If you hadn't suddenly felt like paying them a return visit today, I wouldn't even have mentioned it!"

Vank rolled his eyes. "But look at you—hearing about a mutant scared you so badly you practically pissed yourself."

"Just a mutant?"

Smith suddenly sneered, his voice terrifyingly low. "Just a mutant? Vank, he isn't an ordinary mutant!"

"He's a mutant who can extend steel claws from his body!"

Vank paused. "So? Mutant powers come in all kinds. There are plenty with claws!"

"Didn't you fucking read the files?!"

Smith slammed on the brakes, and the tires carved two vicious tracks through the mud.

He tore off his sunglasses, his eyes bloodshot. "Wolverine! The most important test subject since our project was established!"

"Even studying half the metal on his body brought us tremendous benefits. Otherwise, why do you think the military values us so highly?!"

Smith gritted his teeth, pulled out his phone, and dialed a number, his fingers nearly punching through the keys.

The moment the call connected, he started swearing.

"F*CK! How the hell were you watching the farm I told you to watch, you bastard?!"

"Uncle..." A lazy voice came from the other end. "It was just some shitty little farm. I watched it for a few days, nothing happened, so I left."

"You left?!"

Smith's voice nearly blew the roof off the car. "I told you to watch it twenty-four hours a day! Twenty-four hours!"

"Come on, that place didn't even have internet. Three days there nearly drove me insane."

"F*CK! You're fired!"

Smith roared as he hung up, his chest heaving violently.

With a dry chuckle, Vank had wanted to mock him—

I told you your relatives were unreliable.

But he swallowed the words.

Smith's expression had already become terrifyingly dark, like a lion on the verge of raging.

The air inside the car froze.

After several seconds, Vank finally asked cautiously, "So what do we do now?"

Smith took a deep breath and dialed another number.

"Smith?"

A questioning voice came through the phone.

"General Lane."

Smith's voice was unusually tense. His knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. "Logan may have been spotted in Kansas."

"You..."

Suppressed, heavy breathing came from the other end of the call.

Beside him, Vank swallowed.

He had never seen Smith contact this iron-blooded general directly.

Sam Lane.

General Lane.

The man who had been parachuted in only a few months ago, yet had single-handedly reshaped the entire organization.

His ruthless approach to mutant crime was even more terrifying than that of the previous director. It had made Vank consider running home more than once.

He was always afraid that after enough killing, the man would eventually kill everyone who had anything to do with mutants!

Not even a single member of the Mutant Criminal Countermeasures Unit would escape.

Most of the organization's field agents, even if they had his number, did not dare call him directly. Most called his secretary or assistant instead.

They were terrified he might remember their names.

"Yes, General, that's exactly what happened."

Smith explained the chain of events in fits and starts to the person on the other end, feeling the silence emanating from there.

After taking several heavy breaths, Smith felt an enormous pressure weighing on him!

"Are you sure? It was really him?"

The general remained silent for a long time. Only when Vank's back had begun to feel cold did he finally speak again. "Tell me the exact location one more time."

"Kansas!"

Smith spoke rapidly. "Thanks to advances in technology, we not only have video footage, but eyewitness accounts as well."

"Then organize an operation immediately!"

The man on the other end suddenly roared, making the car speaker buzz.

"Turn the entire central United States upside down if you have to, but find that damned mutant for me!"

The last few words were practically forced out through gritted teeth, carrying bone-deep hatred.

Vank clamped a hand over his mouth, too terrified to even breathe loudly.

"Understood."

Smith's Adam's apple bobbed. "But does the farmer who witnessed it need to be handled according to standard procedure?"

"Smith!"

The furious roar came with the sound of metal deforming. Maybe he had crushed a coffee cup?

"I think you've gotten so stupid living by those old rules! I'm in charge of you now!"

The droplets on the car window began to tremble, as though even nature's creations feared that voice.

"Murdering someone to silence them is the cowardly way incompetents cover their tracks!"

"I overlooked your earlier loss of the 'weapon' only because you voluntarily compensated the farmer ten thousand dollars, and because the 'weapon' dissolved on its own." Every word shot out like a bullet. "But now you're telling me that the 'weapon' has revived, and that a damned mutant was protecting our people?!"

"I think the one who really needs to be dealt with is that negligent Vank beside you! And that useless nephew of yours!"

Vank felt like he was finished.

The busy tone after the call ended echoed through the car like a death knell.

But Smith suddenly yanked the steering wheel, and the tires let out a piercing screech against the edge of the road.

"Hey!" Vank slammed into the window. "Smith—"

"Shut up."

"Starting now, you're demoted to field assistant. Your pay is docked by seventy percent."

"What?!"

Vank's eyes widened. "That old lunatic says one thing and you—"

"This is for your own good, Vank." Smith abruptly cut him off. "It's been more than thirty years since those beings calling themselves mutants appeared."

"You don't know how brutal the organization was back then."

"Once we discovered these creatures' inhuman traits, people funded us and commissioned us to hunt them down."

"Though those things claimed to come from another world, what we cared about more than that was their genes."

"Genes that could grant humans superpowers!"

"The only regret was—"

"We couldn't figure them out."

"The organization stalled for a time, and the backers all pulled out. Just when we thought the organization was doomed—"

"The Wolf appeared."

"We found him, and we also found something on him that set him apart from the other mutants."

"A metal that was incredibly sturdy. We had no idea how it had been synthesized."

"You mean?" Vank said in shock. "The same thing on the weapons?"

"That's right."

Smith said gravely, "The metal in his body was so powerful that we couldn't test its limits. Some researchers even believed it was a gift from God. It was—"

"Infinite!"

"A metal that defied the laws of physics, one capable of endlessly regenerating!"

"And during those four years, it was through studying that metal that we developed all kinds of extraordinary metals."

"That was how the military took notice of us, recruited us, and turned us into an official organization."

"The first-generation director went home to retire in satisfaction. We stopped capturing mutants and focused wholeheartedly on researching metals."

"Then why?" Vank asked, confused. "Why now?"

"Heh." Smith gave a cold laugh. "If things had continued developing like that, then naturally everyone would have remained at peace."

"But the bad news is—"

The gray-haired old man looked toward the distant town.

Its outline flickered in his eyes, as if—

It were ablaze.

"Not long after the military director took over, something went wrong. That guy found an opening and escaped with the other mutants."

"Do you know why Sam Lane hates mutants?"

"Because—"

"He had been in charge of logistics and security at the time, and his wife was burned to charcoal in that sudden mutant uprising."

"What do you think he worked so hard and climbed to this position for? Do you know why nearly every field agent can contact him directly now?"

"He wants to be the first to learn the Wolf's location!"

"Nearly every mutant criminal born in this country over the past thirty years has already been wiped out by us and the military at the first opportunity."

"Now only the Wolf remains—the one who started the mutant uprising and caused hundreds of casualties in that town!"

"The Wolf he could never catch, no matter what!"

"So the moment he finished dealing with matters at the front, he applied for a transfer back—"

"He wants to kill that Wolf with his own hands!"

Smith's voice was deafening.

Vank opened his mouth, but in the end, he merely slumped back into his seat.

"Don't lose heart, Vank."

Smith sighed and consoled him. "Cooperate with me from now on. As long as we find that Wolf, we won't come out empty-handed."

"Why do you think I'm in such a rush?"

"Because I know this isn't just serious. It's also my last chance to get promoted and make a fortune, Vank."

"I'm sixty. Before I retire, I want to make one last push. My grandson is still worried about finding a job."

"I don't want him going back to the countryside to farm, Vank!"

"Like... like—"

"Like the farmer at that farm just now." Smith gritted his teeth and spoke what was truly in his heart. "Like my parents and grandparents, never coming into contact with the real world! Living their whole lives muddleheaded in the fields!"

Meanwhile.

Elsewhere.

Naturally, Locke knew nothing about Sam Lane's affairs. Of course—

Even if he had known, he probably would have only lamented the troubled fate of his and Jonathan's future in-law, Clark's future father-in-law, before continuing to watch the doorway warily.

Because—

For some reason, the door to his home had opened again!