Late at night, New York Harbor was brightly lit.
Wade and Cate landed silently on top of the highest gantry crane, both having changed into pitch-black night-ops gear.
Wade, wearing a Nightingale mask, crouched on the ground, his gaze scanning the mountain of shipping containers. "Our goal is to confirm the situation inside those two containers. If there's a chance, we'll extract memories from key figures; if not, we'll let it go."
"O-Okay," Cate stammered, wearing a black cat mask as she lay trembling on the steel frame. "Uh... why do we have to stay so high up? The wind is so strong..."
As if to prove her point, the gantry crane began to sway rhythmically from side to side.
Wade stared at the two target containers to the southwest, not looking back. "If you manage to fall off, I'll consider it my loss."
Just then, a burst of clamor, sounding like a variety show, mingled with the roar of port operations.
In the northeast warehouse area, several broadcast vans bearing the Vought logo drove in, their spotlights illuminating a large area.
Under the lights, Starlight was back in her modest yet ornate platinum supersuit.
Her eyes and hands glowed with light as she easily scattered the masked, armed robbers who were surrounding her.
The Deep followed closely behind her, delivering secondary blows to the robbers she had sent flying.
A few minutes later, the lights dimmed. The robbers were led away by police who had arrived on the scene, while the film crew chatted and laughed together.
By the shore, The Deep, acting like a circus clown, said something to Starlight before immediately running off.
From the distant crane, Wade couldn't hear them at all. 'They're playing house over there. Is it intentional... or?'
Cate took out her phone and snapped photos frantically. "Wow, what luck... Starlight and The Deep are fighting crime!"
"With that many cameras, they're probably filming a movie." Wade withdrew his gaze and returned to watching the containers.
Outside the doors of the target containers, two burly men were prying open the door locks with their bare hands.
"Don't make a sound, something's happening." Seeing this, Wade immediately grabbed Cate and leaped down from the crane.
The two landed silently on the roof of a warehouse and continued to observe while prone.
The doors of the two containers were pulled open one after another, and figures began to emerge. Most were Mexican, mixed with a few Asians, and the majority were adults.
Wade blinked, his pupils contracting. He sensed that the blood in more than half of their bodies was pale blue and flowing at an abnormally fast rate. 'They really are Supes! But why is their energy signature so weak?'
Cate touched his finger, sending a mental message: 'They're almost all gone. Aren't we going to stop a few?'
Wade pointed silently below. Three figures wearing white pointed hats and gaudy hero costumes had blocked the path of the stowaways.
"In the name of justice!" a chubby young man with a round belly shouted, waving his pudgy arms. "The 3K Knights are here! Evil has nowhere to hide!"
A man in a wheelchair flying in mid-air shouted, "Get down on the ground, you filthy parasites!"
A man wearing a hockey mask with glowing blue eyes pressed his fingers to his temples, sparks of electricity flickering constantly. "I love branding illegal immigrants. Which of you wants to go first?"
On the warehouse roof, Cate quickly grabbed Wade's hand. 'It's the sophomores—Fortress, Sky Patrol, and Laser Eye. What are they doing here?'
Wade figured out the key and replied, 'Could they be the group that came for field practice this afternoon? They might have been drawn here by clues just like us... Don't move, let's see what happens first.'
Below, the two burly men who had opened the locks shouted a few words in Spanish, sounding like some kind of command.
In the next moment, a sudden change occurred. The men and women who had looked numb and cowardly suddenly had a fierce light erupt in their eyes, and their bodies underwent terrifying mutations.
Some arms turned into mucus-covered tentacles; others spat out corrosive acid; still others let out ear-piercing shrieks that formed visible sonic shockwaves.
Fortress stood at the front, tanking the combined strangulation of the tentacles and the spray of acid, trying to use his body to block the attacks and protect his companions. "You damn Mexicans, you dare sneak attack... Watch me..."
But after only ten seconds of stalemate, several huge gashes were torn into the rolls of flesh on his body, spraying blood and fat.
Laser Eye's hat was blown off by the sonic waves. He tried to fire his lasers in terror, but was suppressed by an invisible force, the energy merely flickering in his eyes.
Several mutants swarmed him, pinning him down. Accompanied by a short, shrill scream, his laser-firing eyes were brutally gouged out.
Sky Patrol narrowly dodged the first two waves of attacks thanks to his flight mobility, but his precision wheelchair, which he relied on to fly, was tightly entangled by several tentacles.
Watching his companions die instantly and miserably, he let out a desperate cry: "You filthy, disgusting monsters, let me go!"
On the roof, Cate's body trembled, tears welling in her eyes. 'They... they're really dead... just like that... If we had gone down just now, wouldn't it be us who died?'
Although she didn't like these racist classmates, watching them die in such a gruesome manner inevitably filled her with sorrow and terror.
Sky Patrol screamed, pushing his wheelchair to its limit in an attempt to break free and escape upward, but the acid had already corroded the critical transmission structures. With a harsh sound of metal snapping, the wheelchair emitted black smoke and spun toward the ground.
Just then, a streak of orange lightning cut across the street and swept through the battlefield.
Squelch—
The mutated stowaways attacking Sky Patrol, along with their twisted limbs, were instantly turned into a spray of flesh and blood, as if they had been thrown into a shredder.
A-Train appeared at the edge of the battlefield. He pushed the wheelchair and caught the falling Sky Patrol, his face full of simulated compassion.
The remaining stowaways who tried to flee were accurately blocked by several throwing stars shot from behind after only a few steps.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Amidst the flames of explosions, a pitch-black figure sliced into the crowd like a ghost.
The twin blades in Black Noir's hands became a whirlwind of death. Whether it was tough tentacles, acid spray, or sonic shockwaves, he dodged them all in succession.
Amidst the dancing blade light, severed limbs flew. The mutants who had been so fierce moments ago fell like wheat being harvested, completely unable to fight back.
Sky Patrol landed on the ground, still in shock. Facing the corpses scattered everywhere, he repeatedly crushed them with his wheelchair while cursing incoherently: "Damn Mexicans! Scum! Go to hell!"
A-Train walked up and patted him on the shoulder.
On the warehouse roof, Wade watched this familiar scene, his thoughts drifting.
In this massacre, the general power characteristics and attack patterns of each mutant were identical to the features of the "Improved Compound V" in the leaked experimental files.
Newbies wander in, encounter a mutation, nearly get wiped out, and are finally saved by the strong clearing the field.
'Same recipe, same flavor,' he sneered inwardly. 'Vought has moved the same trick they used at the drug cartel camp right here, completely unchanged.'
Cate held up her phone, faithfully recording everything happening below, her expression sorrowful. 'It is very similar... but, it was those stowaways who attacked and killed first.'
Just as A-Train was comforting the wheelchair man, the silent Black Noir raised his head without warning. His lenses pierced through the darkness, accurately locking onto Wade and Cate's hiding spot.
Swish! Swish!
Two throwing stars arrived in an instant, accompanied by the shrill sound of breaking air.
Wade reacted lightning-fast, grabbing Cate around the waist as the air around him surged quietly.
The two of them were pulled as if by an invisible hand, sliding rapidly backward along the warehouse roof.
A moment before Black Noir climbed onto the shed, they narrowly rounded a right-angle turn and ducked into the shadows under the warehouse eaves.
Their bodies were pressed close together, hidden in a blind spot.
Cate was completely buried in Wade's arms. Feeling his warm body temperature and heartbeat, a strange mix of agitation and humiliation welled up in her heart: 'Damn it... now I'll never be able to turn the tables on him...'
Wade quickly covered her mouth and nose, adjusting their position from time to time. 'Don't move!'
'What are you so smug about... one day I'll...' Cate made empty threats in her mind, but her body subconsciously adjusted its posture, shrinking further into his arms.
Wade sensed her intense mental fluctuations and physical reactions and loosened his grip slightly.
'If I weren't afraid of A-Train running away, I'd have to slaughter this nut-allergic mute ninja.'
He guided the airflow to disperse their residual scent, doing his best to suppress their presence.
Tap, tap, tap—
On top of the shed, Black Noir paced several times before leaping down.
Wail— Wail—
The shrill sound of police sirens approached from afar, quickly surrounding the area.
Next, the lights of even more vehicles flooded in—it was the broadcast and interview vans of various major news stations.
Reporters and photographers rushed in like sharks scenting blood, carrying their cameras and microphones. Spotlights turned the site of the recent bloody massacre as bright as day.
"Viewers! We have just received word that The Seven's superheroes, Black Noir and A-Train, have successfully stopped an extremely dangerous Supe terrorist infiltration at New York Harbor!" a reporter shouted excitedly into the camera.
The camera immediately panned to Black Noir and A-Train, who were cleaning up the battlefield. Black Noir silently wiped the blood from his blades, while A-Train faced the camera with a heroic expression of dejection and sorrow.
The wheelchair man who had just been cursing was now surrounded by reporters, tearfully accusing the "terrorists" of brutality and describing how Black Noir and A-Train had "descended from the heavens" to save him, an unfortunate Supe student caught in the middle.
Cate was stunned. 'How can it be such a coincidence? They... they are...'
Wade silently watched the broadcasting equipment being set up below. The perfectly timed arrival of the reporters made everything self-evident.
He looked at The Deep, who was secretly recovering miniature camera devices. 'Using the lives of ignorant students to pave the way... Vought is really going all out!'
Wade then pulled Cate away from the warehouse area. The two of them flew high into the sky and silently evacuated the harbor district.
Cate lay back in the air and put away her phone. "Is the video I recorded still useful? Black Noir and A-Train's actions count as acting for a good cause, right?"
Wade looked back at the harbor. "No, they're just acting. And in our hands, we have the script, the behind-the-scenes footage, and the bloody bloopers they didn't have time to edit out."
"Audiences love to nitpick at the Director's Cut. We need to go back and prepare."
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