"What General Ross means," another woman cut in calmly. She wore a CIA-style uniform, her voice precise and cool. "Is that we need to understand him. His motives. Why he appears at certain locations. Why he fights. Why he… rushes supermarket shelves for half-price cup noodles. Is he being paid? Is there an organization behind him? Most importantly—does he have any leverage point we can use to restrain him? What is he afraid of? Or rather… what does he desire? Money? Fame? Food? Safety? A peaceful life?"
"Intelligence shows," the SPC technical director from earlier pulled up several blurry screenshots of electronic bills and municipal welfare records, "that the target individual has repeatedly appeared at specific discount times in certain cheap supermarkets in Queens. His suspected places of residence are all low-cost apartment blocks at the city's edge, or… abandoned buildings. His financial status… has persistently hovered right at the welfare minimum."
The conference room once again sank into that strange atmosphere.
A being who could, with a single stomp, obliterate the heart of Manhattan… worried about half-price eggs? Getting his bonus docked by the Hero Association?
Absurd! Unbelievable!
And yet, somehow… it also seemed like the only trail they had.
"Form a 'Special Contact Team'."
General Ross stayed silent for a full half minute before finally making his decision. His eyes were like a cornered tiger's—ferocious, yet carrying a trace of helplessness.
"I will personally draw up the list. Their mission is to make contact, observe, analyze, evaluate… any radical measure—any action, even just him pointing a single finger in a specific direction—must be approved by me personally! In addition…"
His gaze turned razor-sharp.
"Prepare the top-level 'Fortress Protocol'. The designated target… is that bald man sleeping under the bridge. I know how blasphemous and insane this sounds! But as long as there is even the slightest possibility, we cannot allow a bomb that could kick the Earth around like a ball… to snore away under New York!"
Top-priority orders were dispatched.
A special observation and analysis team—integrating the military, intelligence agencies, scientists, and even possibly a few "volunteers"—was hastily created under the cover of night: the "Watcher Unit".
Their first mission:
Monitor the exits of the sunken tunnels beneath Brooklyn.
Codename: Bridge Hole.
And at this very moment…
In the damp, freezing, dust-choked tunnel alcove under that bridge, surrounded by piles of discarded junk…
Saitama smacked his lips in his sleep and muttered a line of dream-talk no one could hear clearly.
"...So hungry… tomorrow… supermarket… steak… half-price..."
Deep beneath the Brooklyn sunken tunnels, the underground torrent raged like a forcibly plugged wound. The water still roared through the depths of darkness, but that deadly sapphire-blue radiation from the scepter had completely vanished from Jarvis's global scanning models.
The entire underground river system had become like a gigantic, opaque stomach, silently swallowing and digesting the scepter.
The Avengers' limited search resources were like blind men feeling an elephant, stumbling through the vast, labyrinthine network of subterranean water channels and finding nothing at all.
At the same time, a new kind of "contamination"—far subtler yet deeply unsettling—was slowly spreading, like drops of ink falling into clear water.
In several old Brooklyn neighborhoods whose streets either intersected with, or merely lay adjacent to, the sunken tunnels' underground water system, the police hotline was gradually being flooded with bizarre reports.
"...Officer! I'm not crazy! I really saw it!
"Last night, I heard Tommy next door pouring his heart out to a pile of blue, glowing sludge, crying about how his wife ran off with his pension! He even knelt down and kowtowed to it!
"And then this morning, Tommy… he went to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge hugging his old cat! After they pulled him back, he just stared blankly and kept saying the old cat is his wife… Officer, sir! His wife died three years ago!"
(End of Chapter)
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