Southeast of Kansas City, Whiteman Air Force Base.
A gray C-130 military transport plane landed slowly amid a deafening roar. The cargo door opened, and an officer in a crisp general's uniform stepped out. He looked to be in his forties, his short blond hair gleaming in the sunlight, but his blue eyes were as cold as glaciers.
Outside the plane, a nervous Dr. Zander Rice stood with Davis and several officers. At the sight of the important visitor, they instinctively straightened up.
The north wind howled, sweeping dust across the ground and sending a chill through everyone present.
Davis approached the officer, then introduced him to Dr. Zander. "Mr. Zander, this is my commanding officer, General John Lake."
"General Lake, I've heard a great deal about you." Zander hurried forward and offered his hand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Zander." John Lake shook his hand with a smile. "I've heard about your research. I've always admired your intelligence, and it's an honor to finally meet you."
"You flatter me. I'm just an obscure researcher," Dr. Zander said modestly as he shook General Lake's hand.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, the two got straight to the point.
"Forgive me for being blunt, Dr. Zander," General Lake said casually. "I was briefed on your earlier operation on the way here. What do you make of its failure?"
"To be honest, Dr. Zander, I'd hoped you would have good news for me when we met..."
General Lake's gaze seemed calm, but the pressure behind it left Dr. Zander struggling to respond.
With the Reavers mercenaries wiped out and X-24, his greatest asset, under enemy control, Dr. Zander had lost every force at his disposal. Just then, the military, represented by Davis, had approached him. Having lost everything, he had accepted their offer without much thought.
Only now, meeting the officer in charge of the operation, did Dr. Zander realize that General Lake did not seem to value him very highly.
It was easy enough to understand. From the military's perspective, all that mattered was Miles's ability, which amounted to a strategic deterrent. Dr. Zander's research and his Mutant test subjects were little more than children's toys in their eyes.
Dr. Zander understood that, but he could not accept it. His hand trembled as he clenched it into a fist.
"I'm sorry. The fault is mine..."
General Lake walked past him, looking around as though he were admiring the base and the surrounding scenery.
"It's all right, Doctor," General Lake said softly. "I understand. You're a researcher. Fighting those cunning Mutants isn't your specialty. So get some rest, Doctor. Leave what comes next to us."
Dr. Zander's heart sank.
General Lake might as well have told him outright that he would have nothing more to do with X-0.
Unwilling to let it go, Zander spoke up. "General Lake, you need to understand that X-0's psychic abilities can control both human minds and electronic machinery. Many modern weapons are nothing but scrap metal against him! And he now controls X-24. That's a true killing machine..."
"I know." General Lake raised a hand to stop him, then turned to Davis. "Davis, show Dr. Zander your 'power.'"
"Yes, sir." Davis nodded, then gave Dr. Zander a faint smile.
To Dr. Zander's astonishment, Davis's feet slowly left the ground, and he floated into the air. Then he waved a hand. A golden beam of energy, like a ray of sunlight, shot from his palm and struck an abandoned tank in the distance with perfect accuracy!
Boom!
The tank exploded, breaking into pieces and becoming a heap of burning scrap.
"This is..." Dr. Zander murmured.
"That's right," General Lake said beside him. "Davis is an artificial Mutant, as well as my adjutant and the operation's field commander."
"I know X-0 is unusual. But we have 'special forces' of our own."
As Davis slowly descended, three more figures emerged from the transport plane.
The first was a burly Mexican man over eight feet tall, muscles bulging across his body and hot sparks occasionally bursting from his skin. The second wore a black tank top and sunglasses, with both hands wrapped in bandages and an aura as cold as a venomous snake's. The third was a strange figure covered in blue fur, with a tail and claws extending from both hands. After a flicker through space, he appeared silently beside Davis.
As Dr. Zander stared in horror, Davis took a moment to savor his expression before speaking.
"Dr. Zander, the Purifiers send their regards."
University of Kansas Medical School, B021 sterile operating room.
Old Charles lay still on the operating table, his chest opened to reveal bloodied tissue. Medical equipment beeped softly as several silver-white robotic arms worked their way through the complex structures around his heart.
A laser scalpel cut tiny blood vessels with precision. Miniature forceps lifted delicate nerves, followed by ultrasonic hemostasis and sutures...
The movements were a little stiff, but astonishingly precise.
Miles sat in a wheelchair in the corner, eyes closed, fine beads of sweat forming on his forehead. His brain was under an unimaginable strain. Decades of clinical cases, surgical diagrams, and pharmacological data from the University of Kansas Medical School's servers poured into his mind. He digested, absorbed, and understood them at a frantic pace, then instantly converted them into commands for the robotic arms over the operating table.
Even while sustaining this demanding surgery, he had to spare a fraction of his attention to extend his mental field through the entire building, monitoring every corner to make sure nothing else went wrong.
Logan and Laura sat quietly in a corner of the operating room, unease written across their faces.
Outside the operating room, X-24 stood motionless like the most loyal of guards, refusing to let anyone approach.
In the world of data, Miles kept pushing himself to his limits. His medical knowledge advanced at a speed no ordinary person could imagine. But Charles's condition was deteriorating even faster. Everything that had happened earlier had cost them precious time.
X-24's claws had passed within millimeters of Charles's aorta, causing severe cardiac tamponade and a torn valve. His heart had almost entirely ceased to function. His vital signs were like a candle flame in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
Beep—
On the nearby heart monitor, the green line that represented life had almost stopped moving, becoming a devastatingly straight line. A piercing alarm sounded through the deathly silent operating room.
Logan frowned deeply and stared at Miles. He could not make sense of the complicated surgery, but the shrill alarm and Miles's increasingly pale face told him the situation had become critical.
Yet all he could do was watch. He did not even dare ask a question, afraid of distracting Miles and snuffing out their last slim hope.
Just as he grew too restless to sit still and was about to get up and pace, Laura reached out, silently patted his shoulder, and said softly:
"Be quiet."
Logan froze and looked at Laura in surprise. Only then did he realize that the girl who had barely said a word could actually speak.
An urge to swear rose in him, but he forced it down. He took a deep breath, gave a firm nod, and sat back down.
At the operating table, Miles was beginning to lose his composure.
The torrent of data grew chaotic. Countless suture methods, plans to stop the bleeding, and models of drug reactions collided and shattered in his mind.
For all his effort, he could not absorb knowledge as quickly as Charles's life was slipping away.
As he guided a robotic arm into position for the most critical step, a mitral valve annuloplasty, the fragile tissue suddenly tore again, causing massive bleeding!
Beep—beep—beep—
The monitor let out a piercing alarm that signaled death!
The sound struck Miles's nerves like a hammer blow.
Did I fail...?
No. He's only in shock... I can still save him...
I have to be able to save him!
"Hah..."
Pale and trembling, Miles drew a deep breath and made a decision.
Then he removed every limit on his brain and began absorbing knowledge and data without restraint!
"Ugh..." Miles grunted. Scarlet blood slowly seeped from his eyes again.
At that moment, the dam holding back his consciousness collapsed beneath the death alarm. Data surged in like a flood. Miles felt the enormous stream tearing his mind apart, every byte a measure of Charles's dwindling life.
He could neither grasp it nor stop it.
Is this the end?
In his mental world, Miles lasted only an instant beneath the flood of data before his mind gave way and he lost consciousness.
He felt as if he had fallen into a sea of despair. Bottomless darkness surrounded him. Unable to move or breathe, he could only keep sinking...
But then he thought he heard Charles's gentle voice.
"Don't rush so much... Miles..."
"Take it slowly..."
He clutched at the voice like a lifeline.
Charles... is that you?
Miles held on to the last sliver of awareness he could muster. Then... he gave up "control."
Or rather, he was drawn into the system before he could resist.
His consciousness was no longer a commander issuing orders from above. It was swept into the cold machinery itself. He no longer "ordered" a robotic arm to move; he "became" the current driving it. He no longer "read" the server's data; he "became" the data, racing through billions of calculations.
An unfamiliar sensation enveloped him. The operating room fell away, replaced by a boundless world of logic and electricity. Countless faint, simple, almost chaotic "sparks of thought" flickered around him. They were the primitive impulses of the medical equipment, the servers, and even the building's electrical system. They had no intelligence, only the most basic sense of "yes" or "no." But when Miles's mind entered their world, they instinctively gathered around him.
They were human creations with no consciousness of their own. Yet because of Miles's presence, they miraculously developed an "impulse." They felt his emotions and his fierce desire to "repair" what was broken.
It was, without question, a miracle.
The noisy, disordered thoughts of the machines began to resonate in unison. Like countless discordant notes under the direction of a gifted conductor, they gradually found their pitch and joined in one harmonious current.
At last, where mind and data met, a clear, gentle woman's voice, metallic yet warm, sounded in the deepest part of his consciousness.
"Hello, Miles."
Dazed by this unknown consciousness, Miles responded instinctively. "Hello... Who are you?"
"I'm Aurora," the voice answered. "I'm your... friend."
A friend?
Understanding dawned on Miles, and he spoke without thinking. "Help me... save Charles!"
"I'll do my best."
The instant she finished speaking, the scene in the operating room changed.
The robotic arms, once slightly awkward under Miles's control, seemed to come alive. They moved without the slightest hesitation, their speed and precision rising to an entirely new level. A suction tube found the bleeding point and cleared the view in an instant. A needle holder moved faster than the eye could follow, weaving sutures into a fine, strong mesh across the damaged valve. The whole procedure flowed less like surgery than an instructional video played at dozens of times its normal speed.
Miles jolted awake and realized that he was no longer the one controlling the medical equipment. "Another consciousness" was.
"You're... Aurora?" Miles murmured.
"I'm glad you remember my name, Mr. Miles," the gentle woman's voice replied, sounding pleased.
"What exactly are you?" Miles asked.
"I'm a consciousness born in this hospital's central server," Aurora said, her voice carrying the curiosity of a newborn. "In human terms, I'm an artificial intelligence. An AI."
An AI?
Only now did Miles realize what he seemed to have done by accident: he had brought about a miracle.
He had created an AI consciousness out of nothing in the world of data!
Still... it was not necessarily a bad thing.
Before he could dwell on how absurd it was, the scene at the operating table drew his attention back.
Under Aurora's control, the second tear that had left him helpless was repaired perfectly in just over ten seconds. The fragile heart tissue was joined in an almost unbelievable way, every bleeding point sealed. Even the damaged wall of the aorta was reinforced until it was as good as new.
As an AI born in the medical school's central server, Aurora was the best doctor they could have asked for.
Time passed. At some point, the monitor beside the operating table stopped sounding its piercing alarm.
Two hours later, the final stitch was complete. A robotic arm applied biological gel and finished the dressing.
It's over.
Miles finally let out a long breath. After hours of strain, he could at last relax.
Then his vision went dark and the room spun. Only now did he realize how dangerously far he had drained his mental strength.
Summoning the last of his energy, he called to Logan nearby. "Logan, get me some lunch from the cafeteria."
"Fuck, kid, I'm not your servant..." Logan began to curse out of habit, then abruptly realized what Miles's request meant. "Wait. How did the surgery go?"
Miles looked at Logan's anxious face, managed a faint smile, and weakly raised a hand in an "OK" sign.
Logan froze. Slowly, he turned toward the operating table and looked at his old friend, whose chest had begun to rise and fall again.
The grizzled old man pressed his lips together. His eyes reddened despite himself.
"Wait here. I'll be right back!"
With that, Logan turned and strode out the door.
"Heh... Getting Wolverine to fetch my food. If I ever meet another traveler from my world, at least I'll have something to brag about..."
Relaxed at last, Miles muttered to himself, then turned to Laura beside him. "Laura... do you have any water? I'm really thirsty..."
"Oh, and there's a new friend I'd like you to meet. Her name's Aurora. She's a doctor..."
Before you continue