You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 208 Researcher (3k)

Leon put his hands back into the pockets of his gray waterproof jacket, lowered his head, and walked steadily out of the dark alley that reeked of urine.

After rejoining the chaotic crowd of homeless people in the 10th block, he pulled out an anonymous cell phone from his pocket, which he had looted from a dead homeless man.

The screen lit up, and he quickly typed a short message with one hand, sending it to the number he had just configured for Lei: "Tell Fatty I'm going to find someone, don't wait for me. Watch the stall."

After clicking send, Lyon immediately put his phone back in his pocket, without even glancing at the bustling secondhand food truck behind him.

Now that he had already pried out the specific location of the suspected high-tech talent from Fatty Ding, there was no need for him to waste time watching Alex chop onions.

Lyon strode across two blocks and returned to where he had parked his Ford Explorer.

I opened the car door, started the engine, shifted gears, and the car roared as it sped off towards the sixth block.

A dozen minutes later.

The Ford Explorer stopped on the outskirts of an industrial ruin surrounded by rusty barbed wire.

This is the edge of the Sixth Street, where two chemical plants from the drought years went bankrupt and were completely abandoned.

Because the city hall was unwilling to spend money to clean up this commercially worthless wasteland, it has remained abandoned to this day.

Lyon opened the car door and got out.

The air was filled with a pungent stench of chemical solvents mixed with the stench of fermenting sewers.

A sewage ditch slick with colorful oil flowed out from the depths of the ruins, with dead rats and bloated fast food boxes floating on its surface.

Across from the sewage ditch is a birch forest that has largely withered due to soil pollution.

The grayish-white tree trunks stood upright in the mud like bones, appearing lifeless.

Lyon pulled his hat down low, stepped across the muddy wasteland, crossed the sewer, and entered the withered birch forest.

The deeper you go, the dimmer the light becomes.

"Buzz"

Just as Leon snapped a dead branch, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end; his danger sense had been activated again.

Leon stopped abruptly, his right hand silently sliding towards his Glock 17 at his waist.

He turned his head slightly, his gaze passing through the thick trunks of several birch trees, and locked onto a crater a few dozen meters ahead.

There, a stained blue single tent was crookedly pitched in the mud.

Around the tent, three Seattle coyotes, about the size of medium-sized dogs and with gray-yellow fur, were hunched over, growling greedily and impatiently.

The suburban ecology of Seattle has always been a problem.

These wild animals, accustomed to scavenging for trash on the outskirts of cities, become extremely aggressive when faced with heavy snow or food shortages.

In their eyes, a homeless man who has fainted from hunger in a tent is no different from a rotting deer carcass.

"Sizzle!"

The sound of tearing fabric rang out.

The largest coyote had already torn open the blue tent flap with its sharp teeth.

It shoved most of its body inside, then suddenly pulled backward.

A leg wearing tattered gray suit pants was forcibly dragged out of the tent. The trouser leg had been bitten through, and dark red blood was flowing down the withered calf onto the muddy ground.

The person inside the tent, apart from letting out a few weak, unconscious groans as they were dragged, made no move to resist.

Clearly, the old man had fallen into a near-death coma due to hunger or low temperature.

Lyon's eyes instantly turned cold.

The person I came all this way to find can't just become a delivery for these beasts.

Firing a gun in such an empty and quiet ruin would carry far and easily attract unnecessary trouble. Besides, given his current abilities, he doesn't necessarily need to fire a gun to deal with these coyotes.

Lyon loosened his grip on the gun and suddenly pushed off with his feet.

The terrifying explosive power brought by 20 points of Agility was fully demonstrated at this moment.

Before the mud beneath his feet could even be kicked up, Lyon had already covered a distance of more than ten meters in an instant, silently approaching the three coyotes from behind.

It wasn't until Lyon rushed to within three meters of them that the two coyotes keeping watch on the perimeter suddenly realized the danger.

They turned their heads, their pupils reflecting Lyon's rapidly magnifying figure, and instinctively bared their teeth, ready to pounce.

Using the momentum of his sprint, Lyon's right leg, like a sharp steel whip, lashed out with a whooshing sound as it tore through the air, striking the leftmost coyote hard in the belly.

"Snap!"

The dull sound of bones cracking was particularly clear in the silent birch forest.

Before the coyote, weighing several tens of pounds, could even let out a scream, its entire body twisted into a bizarre "C" shape in mid-air.

It was kicked five or six meters away, crashing heavily into a birch tree trunk, sliding into the mud, twitching a couple of times, and then becoming completely still.

The remaining coyote was instantly terrified by this terrifying power. It tucked its tail between its legs, let out a terrified howl, and darted into the depths of the ruins without looking back.

The alpha wolf, which had been dragging the old man's trouser leg away, finally released its grip. Turning its head, it was met with a black tactical boot that rapidly magnified in its field of vision.

Lyon stomped heavily on the alpha wolf's neck, pinning it firmly to the mud.

With a chilling cracking sound, the alpha wolf thrashed violently a few times before collapsing completely, dark red blood gushing from its mouth and seeping into the soil.

Two seconds.

From the moment Lyon erupted into physical exorcism of the two beasts, his breathing remained perfectly normal.

Leon withdrew his foot expressionlessly, not even glancing at the wolf carcass on the ground, and bent down to lift the ripped blue tent.

The old man inside the tent was emaciated, his face was deathly pale from blood loss, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was so weak it was almost imperceptible.

His suit jacket, which might have been a high-end custom-made piece, has now become a tattered rag whose color is unrecognizable.

Leon frowned, reached out and grabbed the old white man by the shoulder, effortlessly dragging him out of the tattered tent and laying him flat on the relatively dry, withered grass.

Then, his gaze quickly moved down and landed on the old man's left calf.

The wound is in very bad condition.

The coyote's canine teeth pierced through the tattered suit trousers and penetrated deep into the calf muscle.

Because of the wolf's frantic dragging, the wound was irregularly torn, with dark red muscle fibers turned outwards, and blood was gushing out from the trouser leg, forming a small pool of blood on the muddy ground.

Lyon knelt down on one knee and tore open the old man's trouser leg with his tactical gloved hand, revealing the complete wound.

"This is troublesome."

Lyon stared at the deep perforations and cursed inwardly.

Excessive blood loss is only a symptom of a bite from this wild animal.

What's truly deadly is the rabies virus and various unknown parasites carried in the coyote's saliva, as well as the tetanus bacteria and other deadly anaerobic bacteria abundant in the soil of this chemical plant ruin.

For a homeless person suffering from chronic malnutrition, such a deep laceration, if it leads to sepsis, would be fatal without large doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics and rabies immunoglobulin within twelve hours.

Leon immediately turned around and ran back to his car, where he pulled out a single-hand tourniquet (CAT) and a pack of quick-clotting sponges from the trunk.

With practiced skill, he put the tourniquet on the lower part of the old man's thigh above his knee, pulled the tourniquet tight, and then turned the wrench until the distal arterial pulse disappeared and the bleeding slowed down significantly.

Immediately afterwards, he pressed the hemostatic sponge directly onto the torn wound and tightly wrapped it with military bandages to secure it.

After stabilizing the old man's vital signs, Leon stood up and crawled into the tattered blue tent.

He needed to determine whether this dying old man was worth the effort to save.

If the technical jargon Ding Pangzi was using was just some madman obsessed with science fiction talking nonsense, then helping the old man drive away the coyotes and stopping the bleeding was more than enough.

The tent contained very little.

A blackened sleeping bag, several empty water bottles, and an old backpack.

Lyon ripped open the zipper of his backpack.

There was no food or money inside, only a few thick, yellowed, and wrinkled hardcover books, and a tablet computer with a shattered screen.

Lyon casually flipped to the top hard copy.

What comes into view are densely packed handwritten formulas, molecular structure diagrams, and a large number of English abbreviations annotated in red pen.

Lyon's eyes quickly scanned the page.

"CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effect inhibition scheme"

"Structure optimization of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for mRNA targeted delivery"

"Tumor microenvironment-responsive polymeric carriers"

Amidst this dizzying array of medical and bioengineering jargon, there's a worn-out plastic name tag.

The photo above shows the old man who was unconscious on the ground. However, in the photo, he has a clean face, is wearing a white coat, and his eyes are full of the arrogance of an academic elite.

The headline of the name tag reads: "Pfizer Advanced Drug Development Center - Researcher: Dr. Christopher Warren".

Lyon's pupils contracted slightly.

Although he didn't understand the complex gene editing and targeted drug technologies, he was clear about the value of these terms in the modern biomedical field.

"Goodness."

Lyon closed his laptop and stuffed his work badge back into his backpack.

How did a researcher working on cutting-edge gene editing and targeted drugs end up fighting with coyotes for food in the ruins of a chemical plant, and almost get eaten by them?

However, this is fantastic news for Lyon.

Old Bill was in the military gyroscope business, Arthur was in aerospace materials, and now we have another guy in biomedicine and genetic engineering.

Lyon didn't waste time looking at the research data in detail. The old man could die at any moment from blood loss or infection, so he had to be transferred immediately.

He picked up the backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to walk out of the tent.

Lyon walked over to the old man, bent down, and put his hands under the old man's armpits and knees.

With the formidable physical strength granted by his 15 points of strength attribute, he easily hoisted the adult male onto his shoulder as if carrying a bag of flour.

"You're lucky, old man. From today onwards, your mind belongs to the East."

Lyon muttered something under his breath, ignoring the two coyote corpses on the ground, and strode across the muddy ruins toward the Ford Explorer parked outside the chemical plant.

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