Having realized this, Zhang Ye did not dare hesitate. He immediately shot dead the guard beside the communications soldier, then charged toward him. The instant the man drew his gun, Zhang Ye fired several more shots, blasting his hand to pieces.
"What did you mean by assassin just now?"
"Arghhh!!" The soldier did not answer Zhang Ye's question and only continued howling. But his cries were quickly drowned out by explosions and did not affect anyone on this battlefield.
Zhang Ye had no patience to waste on him. He stomped directly on the man's wound. Instantly, overwhelming pain engulfed the soldier's mind, and he let out a silent scream.
"Is President X here? Answer me!"
"Y-yes..." The soldier nodded repeatedly, tears and snot streaming down his face. Under the agony, his complexion had turned deathly pale, even his lips grayish-white.
"Where? Answer me!" Zhang Ye gritted his teeth. Learning that President X was actually in the same military base as him gave Zhang Ye no sense of security whatsoever.
Anyone else would have been one thing, but President X was a genuine mutant with telepathic abilities. He was completely different from Emma, who had already lost her powers.
No one knew whether President X had already discovered him, or whether she had silently invaded his mind. He could suffer brain death at any moment without even realizing it.
"I-I don't know, I really don't know." The soldier shook his head frantically and used his other hand to push with all his strength against Zhang Ye's foot, trying to force it away from his wound.
Zhang Ye believed him. He accepted that the man truly did not know. President X had been missing for so long, and her whereabouts were top-secret. How could an ordinary soldier know such precise details?
After putting another bullet through the man's head, Zhang Ye immediately moved away from the battlefield and ran toward the rendezvous point he and Pietro had planned, following the direction Pietro had described.
Zhang Ye was not worried about Pietro, because he wore a helmet immune to telepathy. But Zhang Ye was different. He had nothing. The one in danger now was him, so he had to get Pietro to take him out of here as soon as possible.
At the same time, Zhang Ye felt a faint thrill of excitement. If President X was here, that meant her secret chamber would be "unguarded." As long as he could leave this place, he could leave this universe.
However, when Zhang Ye was still several hundred meters from their planned rendezvous point, he suddenly saw an unbelievable sight on the other side of the factory building.
A huge hole had been blasted through the factory's outer wall. Pietro lay weakly on a mound of dirt outside, and from Zhang Ye's position, he could clearly see that Pietro's right leg was bent at an unnatural angle—it had obviously been broken by someone.
The time rewound to ten minutes earlier.
Pietro had been waiting for Zhang Ye to make his move. When he heard the alarm sound, he knew the time had come. The alarm was the signal he and Zhang Ye had agreed upon.
With the soldiers outside all alerted, Pietro took the explosives he had swiped from Nick Fury's Safe House and reached the power facility first. It consisted of four enormous generators, with quite a few soldiers stationed around them as guards.
But before Pietro, these soldiers might as well not have existed. Moving swiftly through the darkness, Pietro planted all the bombs and immediately detonated them. The next instant, a thunderous blast rang out. The generators exploded into countless fragments, and the burst of light even illuminated the sky.
The destruction of the power facility drew everyone's attention. The soldiers immediately split into two groups. One went to suppress the mutant prisoners who had not yet escaped, while the other rushed into a factory building and heavily guarded it.
Naturally, Pietro was extremely curious. In his memory, this had always been an abandoned factory building. The equipment inside had long since become too outdated to use, and forcing it into operation could easily cause accidents. President X had no money to replace the machinery, so she had ordered the building abandoned long ago.
But now, it seemed there was some hidden secret here.
Perhaps because this was on the only route to the rendezvous point he had agreed on with Zhang Ye, or perhaps because the smooth execution of the plan had made Pietro somewhat overconfident.
Normally, Pietro would not have wanted to stay here for even one second longer. Yet now, he actually wanted to see what the soldiers were protecting.
No sooner thought than done. Pietro darted into the factory in the blink of an eye. His super brain quickly surveyed the surrounding terrain, and he found a suitable place to hide.
He stealthily climbed onto an engineering ladder. Using the shadows as cover, Pietro turned his gaze toward the highest-ranking-looking soldier among them. It was a Black man. His upper body was clad in an Iron Suit that resembled Iron Man's. Pietro recognized him—he was someone who often stood beside President X on television.
At that moment, he stood before a White Container, knocking on its door with a mixture of fear and helplessness.
The knocking echoed through the empty factory. The surrounding soldiers were silent as cicadas. No one dared speak, and they did not even dare breathe too loudly, afraid of disturbing something.
After a while, a woman's voice came from inside the container.
"...Didn't I tell you not to disturb me lately?"
"My apologies, President X. It's something important." Beads of sweat appeared on the black officer's forehead, but he still forced himself to speak.
On the engineering ladder above the factory floor, Pietro covered his mouth the instant he heard those words, afraid he would not be able to stop himself from crying out.
"Is it unrest at the border, or has nuclear war broken out? I already told you, none of that matters. Once I succeed, the entire world will submit..." The woman's voice carried a trace of impatience.
"No, it isn't that, President X. Assassins have infiltrated this place. They destroyed the power facility and released the prisoners held in Mutant Prison. Those prisoners are about to break out now."
The White Container immediately fell silent, and the entire factory quieted down. The black officer nervously swallowed, lowered his head, and continued. "We suspect they are remnants of the Avengers. We don't know how they learned of your location. They intend to use the mutant prisoners' riot to assassi—ugh!"
Before he could finish, the black officer was instantly blasted away by a surge of red energy. He slammed heavily into the factory wall, blowing a huge hole straight through it.
Immediately afterward, the White Container's door exploded apart. A breathtakingly beautiful woman in a long red dress slowly floated out, aided by a stream of scarlet energy.
(It's not easy during the launch period for a new book. Please give it some support. Thank you.)
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