Interrogation

His teammates immediately swung their guns toward the direction he indicated.

Ten men fired several bursts in rapid succession, emptying their magazines within seconds.

Unfortunately, not a single shot found its mark.

In their visors, Tu Ran was nothing more than a red dot, but in her visor, they were three-dimensional figures—simple line-drawn bodies, to be sure, but the positions of their heads, limbs, and torsos were unmistakable.

That was the advantage of the Pioneer Team's equipment over standard gear.

Tu Ran activated "Blink," silently circling around to their rear.

The squad leader, still inside the protective circle, watched the red dot on his visor shift from front to back in an instant. A chill crept up from the soles of his feet.

Was that even humanly possible?

Or was he seeing things?

With two sharp gunshots, the two teammates behind him crumpled to the ground. The squad leader knew then—he wasn't hallucinating, and the equipment wasn't malfunctioning.

He had handled many unsavory affairs for the Wells family, and along the way, he'd picked up hints of things ordinary people never learned.

For instance, the Wells family often ordered him to secretly abduct people who exhibited abilities beyond the norm—similar in some ways to gene monsters, yet unlike those creatures, these people didn't lose their minds, didn't go on killing sprees, and didn't undergo physical mutations that made them less than human.

They seemed to have awakened a single extraordinary ability, nothing more.

And nearly all of them were Pioneers.

In that instant, the squad leader concluded that the person before him was also a human with superpowers, likely a Pioneer.

Combined with another mission he'd been given today—to disable the anesthetic spray system that kept the xenomorphs dormant and prevent a Pioneer named "Tu Ran" from leaving Songwu Experimental Base alive—

This was her: Tu Ran!

He made a split-second decision and radioed his superiors through his earpiece, hoping to relay this information.

"Knock off his helmet! He knows who you are!" Xie Xu said quickly.

Without hesitation, Tu Ran sprinted forward, leaped into the protective circle, and kicked the squad leader square in the helmet.

The squad leader was on the verge of spitting out the name "Tu Ran," but the kick cut him off, nearly biting his tongue.

Tu Ran then mounted him, pressed her palm against his helmet, and activated "Landslide." The helmet shattered instantly. The squad leader was dumbstruck—this Pioneer could not only move at blinding speed but also smash his helmet with a single punch.

His teammates finally snapped out of their shock and took aim at Tu Ran.

She grabbed the squad leader by the collar and flashed backward.

All the bullets buried themselves in the ground.

"Where'd she go?"

"Where's the leader?"

The remaining men stared in disbelief at the empty ground where their leader had just been. One of them even stomped on the spot, but found nothing.

With the squad leader's helmet destroyed, its tracking device was dead, and his green signal dot vanished entirely from his teammates' visors.

"Brother Min, Shen Yunhe, dispose of the rest as you see fit."

Tu Ran dragged the squad leader into a nearby laboratory, kicked the door open, tossed him inside, and shut the door behind her.

"Leave it to us!" Min Tao and Shen Yunhe didn't ask questions, turning their full attention to the remaining men.

The laboratory was empty and well-sealed. The toxic gas outside hadn't seeped in, leaving the air clear.

The squad leader crashed heavily to the floor and struggled to rise, but his thigh was riddled with bullet wounds, and every movement felt like being sliced by knives. He couldn't stand. He could only use his hands and his one good leg to crawl pathetically to an operating table, where he half-leaned, half-lay.

He was clearly at a disadvantage—utterly powerless against Tu Ran.

His helmet was cracked too, and in the open air, the poison gas would finish him off soon.

He knew with certainty that he would die here today.

Yet he maintained an air of calm composure.

He looked Tu Ran up and down. In this gas-free lab, he could clearly make out her attire—the Pioneer Team's combat uniform.

His gaze settled on the name tag on her chest: Tu Ran.

"As I thought, you're with the Pioneer Team. Tu Ran? Your name's well-known. I heard it several times during my time in the Executive Department. Oh, and you made the Federal news headlines too. They called you... the hero of the train."

He was remarkably collected, a faint smile even playing at the corners of his lips, as if he held all the cards.

Tu Ran knew exactly what that confidence was built on.

"The last person who praised me like that is now lying in a trash can."

Zhao Yan had been blown to bits; when they cleaned up the Sankar Arsenal, those chunks of flesh had to go somewhere.

Facts were facts, but coming from Tu Ran's mouth, it sounded like she got a kick out of mutilating corpses.

The squad leader swallowed hard and instinctively pressed his back against the table.

That small, subconscious movement betrayed his inner turmoil—he wasn't as composed as he pretended to be.

"When does the bomb go off?" Tu Ran pressed her advantage.

The smile on the man's face froze.

His confidence came from taking Tu Ran down with him. He wasn't dying alone; he would drag her to hell. All he had to do was stall her long enough for the bomb to detonate.

Now that Tu Ran had exposed his trump card, he couldn't muster a smile anymore.

"Not talking?" Tu Ran tilted her head.

He clenched his jaw, glaring at her, refusing to utter a word.

Clearly, he had no intention of cooperating.

Tu Ran's form flickered, and the next instant she was in front of him, her hand clamped around his throat.

"Tell me—when does the bomb go off?" Her voice was ice-cold.

"I'd rather... die than... tell you," he ground out between clenched teeth.

His face was turning purple-red from lack of oxygen, the whites of his eyes glaringly prominent, tiny engorged capillaries visible if you looked closely.

Tu Ran hadn't expected him to talk.

She had already read his memories.

"It goes off in half an hour. That was..." She lifted her other arm, checking the communicator on her wrist, which displayed the current Federal time: 8:15 PM.

"Fifteen minutes to detonation, right?" Though phrased as a question, Tu Ran's tone was flatly affirmative.

The veins on the squad leader's forehead bulged—whether from her chokehold or sheer fury, it was hard to say.

"Who sent you?" Tu Ran asked next.

Fifteen minutes. She'd spend five on interrogation and leave ten to get out. Plenty of time.

He gritted his teeth, stubbornly silent.

"Nick Wells?"

The squad leader was stunned again.

Why? He hadn't said a thing—how could she possibly know?!

A superpower? Did she have some ability to read minds?

His look shifted from shock to sheer terror as he stared at Tu Ran.

The woman before him possessed no fewer than three distinct superpowers, and she'd done it all without raising a single red flag with her superiors.