American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

Chapter 755 Silence Doesn't Mean You Have a Chance!

He quickened his pace.

The mud crunched underfoot, each step feeling like walking on a giant, soft sponge. The sour smell in the air grew stronger, mixed with a rusty, metallic odor, like the smell of a dusty, cobweb-covered room in an old factory that hadn't been entered in a long time.

At the end of the drainage ditch was an open space. Beyond the open space stood a gray wall with an irregular gap in it, the bricks at the edges jagged, as if something had knocked it open from the inside. The gap wasn't large, but it was enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

As Lynn squeezed through the gap, his clothes rustled against the bricks. He crouched down, pulled his gun from its holster, and released the safety.

Inside the walled area is the chemical plant's premises.

It was larger and more spacious than he had seen on the satellite image. The factory was a huge, rectangular concrete building with a flat roof containing several ventilation ducts and an iron frame of unknown purpose. All the doors and windows were sealed shut with sheet metal, the welds coming one after another like rows of large, ugly stitches.

But there were no lights. Absolutely no light. The entire factory was as quiet as a tomb.

Lynn's heart sank.

They were late.

Miles squeezed through the gap and crouched down beside him, panting. His glasses were fogged up, so he wiped them with his sleeve and squinted at the dark building in front of him.

"Nobody here?" Miles asked in a barely audible voice.

"Not necessarily," Lynn said. "Don't relax."

He took his phone out of his pocket and sent Chen a message: "Start."

Thirty seconds later, the beam of headlights swept across from the west. Chen's car drove up from that road, the lights shining on the front wall of the chemical plant, making the gray-white concrete wall look like a giant movie screen. There was nothing on the wall, no doors, no windows, no graffiti, only a long, rusty streak washed by rain, stretching from the roof to the ground like a dried-up waterfall.

The car didn't drive into the factory area. It was parked outside the wall, with the front of the car facing the factory buildings. The high beams were on, and two white beams of light shone straight ahead, illuminating every detail of the factory buildings' facade clearly.

Lynn waited for ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

Thirty seconds.

There was no movement.

No one came out of the factory. There were no gunshots. No engine sounds. There was no sound at all.

"Something's not right," Miles said.

Lynn didn't speak. He stood up from the grass, hunched over, and moved towards the factory. Each step was light, his toes landing first, then the ball of his foot, and then slowly transferring his weight. This was the most basic approach technique he had learned at Quanti Science, one he hadn't used in a long time, but his body remembered it.

When he reached the outer wall of the factory, he reached out and touched the wall.

The concrete was cool. But not icy; it was the natural coolness of someone not feeling body heat, and with no light or heat source nearby. He crouched down and placed his hands on the ground against the wall.

The ground was also cold.

If anyone had been inside the building in the past few hours, the ground would retain some heat. Especially in dry areas with large temperature differences between day and night, concrete acts like a giant sponge, absorbing and storing any heat. But now it's completely cool, as cool as the night breeze.

Lynn stood up and walked around to the main entrance of the factory.

The door was closed. It was welded shut with sheet metal, and there was no sign of it being opened from the outside. But he noticed a small gap at the bottom of the door, about the width of a finger. He crouched down and reached his hand into the gap.

What did my fingertips touch?

A piece of paper. A very small piece, blown by the wind and stuck in the crack of the door. He pulled it out and looked at it by the light of Chen's car headlights in the distance.

At a glance.

It was the wrapping paper of a medicine box. The torn corner had the name of the medicine printed on it. He recognized the name. It had the same ingredient as the heart medication Wayne used, but was a different brand. This brand was more common in Mexico.

He folded the piece of paper and stuffed it into his pocket.

Wayne has been here before. But he's no longer here.

Lynn stood up and walked around to the other side of the building. Miles followed behind him, his footsteps making a soft sound as he walked on the gravel. The night wind masked most of their footsteps, but in the absolute silence, any sound felt like a needle pricking the eardrums.

To the east of the building is a small parking lot. The parking space lines on the ground have faded so much that they are almost illegible. There are many tire tracks on the parking lot, a mix of old and new, like a ball of yarn that has been scratched by a cat.

Lynn crouched down and swept the tire tracks with the beam of his flashlight.

New. Very new. The edges of several tire tracks are still clearly visible, not yet smoothed out by the wind or covered by dust. At least two vehicles have different tire tracks; one has coarser and deeper treads, like an off-road vehicle's tires. The other has finer and denser treads, like a regular sedan or SUV.

Two cars. Maybe more.

"Lynn." Miles' voice came from a few meters away, low but urgent.

Lynn walked over.

In a corner of the parking lot, near the wall, stood a black sedan. It wasn't a Ford Explorer, but a Volkswagen Jetta with Mexican license plates. It was quite old, with several scratches on the paint, and the side mirrors were taped shut. The car was parked haphazardly, the driver's side door ajar.

Lynn walked to the car and used the muzzle of his gun to pry open the driver's side door.

The interior lights came on.

There was no one in the driver's seat. But there was someone in the back seat—no, not a person. It was a backpack and a neatly folded dark jacket. The backpack was half-unzipped, revealing its contents. Lynn reached in, felt around, and pulled out a passport.

Mexican passport. The photo section shows a man's face, around thirty years old, with black hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones.

He stared at the photo for two seconds and recognized the face.

The driver in the tollbooth surveillance screenshot. The one whose code name Drake had associated with in the old system.

He stuffed his passport into his pocket and continued rummaging through his backpack. Inside were a cell phone, two magazines, a folding knife, a roll of tape, several unopened packets of biscuits, and a map. He unfolded the map; it was a city map of Reynosa, with several locations marked in pencil: the market, the hospital, the chemical plant, and another place further south, near the river, circled twice in red.

Lynn took a picture of the map, folded it, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Miles had already walked around to the other side of the car and crouched down to look under it. "The engine is still warm. It was just turned off not long ago."

Maybe twenty minutes, maybe less. They heard us and ran.

Lynn stood up and looked around. There was an exit on the east side of the factory area leading to a dirt road, which ended at a wider asphalt road. In the moonlight, he could see that the dust raised on the dirt road had not yet completely settled, and it was slowly dissipating in the night breeze, like a thin veil.

"They can't go far," Lynn said. "That Ford is too conspicuous to stay in town. They headed south to the river. That unofficial ferry crossing."

His phone vibrated. A message from Chen read: "The factory is empty. There's no one here."

Lynn typed one word: "Receive".

He looked up, about to speak to Miles, when he suddenly heard a voice.

It wasn't the wind, it wasn't a car, it was the sound of footsteps. Very hurried, very fast, the sound of running across the gravel. It was coming from the southeast corner of the factory, approaching the parking lot.

Lynn didn't hesitate. He pulled the car door handle, opened the driver's side door completely, blocking half of his body, and pointed the gun in the direction from which the sound came.

The footsteps grew closer. Then a figure rushed out from behind the wall in the southeast corner of the factory.

The man ran very fast, bent over, one hand clutching his chest, the other waving at his side. He didn't look ahead.

He turned to look back at something, as if he were hiding from his pursuers. He was not tall, with narrow shoulders, and wore a black hoodie. The hood was not pulled up, revealing that his hair was dark and short.

He didn't know there were people there.

Lynn stood up from behind the car door when he was less than ten meters away from her.

"Don't move."

The man stopped abruptly. His reaction was incredibly fast; in less than half a second, his body went from full speed running to complete stillness, then he lunged to the right, rolling half a circle on the ground. He braced himself with one hand on the ground while drawing a gun from his waist with the other.

He moved very quickly.

But Lynn was faster than him.

Lynn's gun was still aimed at him. As he rolled, Lynn moved closer and pointed the gun at his head.

"If you make a move, I'll kill you."

The man lay prone on the ground, his gun half-raised, not yet fully aimed at any target. He stopped. Not because he wanted to stop, but because he realized that continuing was pointless. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, like the last flicker of red from two extinguished embers.

Lynn stepped on his gun-wielding hand. The sole of his shoe pressed down on his fingers, and he groaned, releasing the gun. Lynn kicked the gun away, crouched down, pressed his knee against his back, twisted his wrists together with one hand, and took out handcuffs from his waist with the other.

The metallic clicks sounded particularly crisp in the empty factory area, like a period being forcefully drawn on a piece of paper.

Miles ran over, gun in hand, pointing in the surroundings to prevent anyone else from emerging from the darkness. The wind blew, the grass rustled, and the tall shadows of the factory buildings moved slowly in the moonlight. But no one else appeared.

Lynn pulled the man up from the ground and made him lean against the door of the Volkswagen Jetta.

The handcuffs were tight, digging into his wrists and leaving two white marks on his skin. He sat on the ground, leaning against the car door, looking up at Lynn. The moonlight shone on his face, and Lynn could see him clearly—black hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones. The face in the passport photo. The face in the tollbooth screenshot. The person whose code name was associated with in the old system.

He looked younger than in the photo, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, perhaps even younger. There was a bruise on his left cheekbone, as if he had been hit by something hard, and it was slightly swollen. His lips were chapped, and there was a shallow crack in the middle of his lower lip, from which a little blood oozed. His eyes were dark brown, and his pupils were large in the darkness, like two bottomless wells.

He looked at Lynn but didn't say anything.

Lynn crouched down to be at eye level with him.

"You have the right to remain silent," Lynn said in English, slowly, each word like a nail driven into the night wind. "But you're no longer in America. Here, silence doesn't mean you have a chance."

The person blinked. The movement was slow, like a camera shutter being forced to extend its exposure time in low light.

"Which way did your accomplices go?" Lynn asked.

The man looked at him, still saying nothing. But his eyes shifted slightly to the southeast. It was so subtle, almost imperceptible, that it would have been impossible to notice if Lynn hadn't been staring at his face from less than half a meter away.

Lynn stood up and glanced at Miles.

Miles nodded, turned and ran two steps southeast, then used the walkie-talkie to call Chen and O'Brien.

"Southeast, dirt road, towards the river. Speed ​​up."

Lynn looked down at the man on the ground. The man leaned against the car door, the handcuff chains jingling softly between his wrists. His gaze shifted from Lynn's face to the direction the dirt road had disappeared into in the distance. On that road, his accomplice, with Wayne, had vanished into the night.

The wind blew from the direction of the river, ruffling the man's hair. A few stray strands of hair swayed in front of his eyes, but he didn't raise his hand to brush them away, because his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Lynn took out her phone and sent Chen a message.

"We've caught someone. You guys keep chasing him, I'm taking him back to the hospital."

After sending the message, he put his phone back in his pocket and glanced down at the person again.

"What's your name?" Lynn asked.

The man didn't answer. His lips moved, but no sound came out. It wasn't out of hesitation; it was more like someone accustomed to not answering simply didn't have the "answer" function in their body.

Lynn didn't ask any more questions.

He pulled the man up from the ground and pushed him toward the gap in the wall. The man was unsteady on his feet and slipped on the gravel. Lynn grabbed his arm—not to support him, but to grab him, but not hard enough to leave a bruise.

The man glanced at him, and something flashed in his eyes like a spark, but it quickly disappeared.

They squeezed through a gap in the wall, walked across the drainage ditch, and crossed the overgrown open space.

Chen's car was parked on the side of the road, but it was gone. Chen drove it southeast in pursuit, the beams of its headlights like two thin, white swords cutting through the darkness in the distant night, only to merge again in the deeper darkness.

Lynn pushed the man to the side of the road and made him squat down.

The moon peeked out from behind the clouds, turning the entire road silvery-white.