Elsa relaxed when she saw how Luke bragged about himself.
Even though Luke was no longer a police detective and this case had nothing to do with the police, his unperturbed manner was still very reassuring.
She remembered Luke’s successes and the countless criminals he had taken down.
Besides, she didn’t have a better candidate.
After Elsa and Elena went to keep Margaret company, Luke sat on the side and sent a message to Director Selina.
There was something a little strange about this matter, and the PDD could get involved.
Although this would increase Director Selina’s workload, using a minor case like this as a field run was the best.
To put it callously, Haley wasn’t enough to make Luke anxious; he wasn’t that sentimental.
He had volunteered to help look for Haley for Elsa and Elena’s sake.
For the next few days, Luke didn’t look for Margaret again. He even pretended to stay at home.
In fact, he and Selina spent most of the time in the basement of the research institute, officially completing their first PDD assignment.
During this time, Luke simply gave reminders on the side, and let Selina decide on the details of the work.
An enormous intelligence network slowly started operating.
Although it had yet to reach its most efficient level, it was already astonishingly capable.
Details on King’s Park Sanatorium were pieced together bit by bit.
Looking at the name of a certain organization in the intelligence, Luke was a little surprised. “The Joint Advanced Research Unit? Amanda was indeed just a tool.”
Whoever the person behind the sanatorium was, quite a number of his men used to be mid-level members of ARGUS.
Clearly, ARGUS, half of which Luke had destroyed, hadn’t disappeared, but had held on and revived.
As long as the upper levels of the American government needed secret research carried out, these organizations would appear wave after wave.
Luke didn’t plan to touch this reborn ARGUS right away.
He was now aware of its presence, and it had a lot of holes in its surveillance which were a lot easier to manipulate than before.
What he was curious about was the sanatorium patient.
There was no information on this person on the Internet or in the sanatorium’s internal system; the research he was related to was probably classified.
1
On the other hand, Luke had found Patients 1 to 4, who were still locked up in the sanatorium.
From the drones’ ongoing surveillance of all the staff and guards in the sanatorium, it could be determined that these four patients with special code names had serious psychological issues and extraordinary abilities.
Luke also found some information on Patients 1 to 4.
Because of his overly active brain, cold emotions and extremely strong ability, Patient 1 had been plagued with problems since he was young.
In the end, he found pleasure in torturing and killing his own kind, and became the classic serial killer.
However, the man had always been in Kansas, where Luke rarely went.
Patient 2 had a pair of wings on his back which allowed him to glide.
He was treated as a monster from birth and was sent to a secret organization. After more than ten years of being locked up, he went crazy.
A few years ago, Patient 3 had still been a cosmetic surgeon.
One day, he realized that he had a strange ability in his hands. He could cut skin with his bare hands, and even use his ability to operate on people.
Then, this guy became obsessed with dissecting and couldn’t extricate himself from it. He couldn’t help but treat more than ten of his female clients as cadavers, and studied them bit by bit.
He was caught sooner or later.
One day, a “sister” of a client finally reported her sister missing. When the police questioned her, she named this man as a major suspect.
According to this “sister,” “the doctor looked like he wanted to cut me open when he put the silicon in my chest.”
That was right, this person was also one of the cosmetic surgeon’s clients, who successfully put an end to the man’s career of cutting things apart before she herself turned into a cadaver.
Patient 4 was a felon who had been sent to the sanatorium after an abnormality was discovered during the prison checkup.
The man could turn into a fish. He had an ability similar to a merman’s, but he didn’t look like one.
He was very fast in water, and his skin acted like fish gills to take in oxygen.
Luke wasn’t too interested in the information on these patients’ superpowers.
If there was a chance, he would obtain them, but if not, it wasn’t a shame to give them up.
These people might be part of Amanda’s Suicide Squad project.
Amanda was black-hearted, but she was capable.
Luke destroying several important ARGUS bases put huge pressure on some people in the government.
These bigshots didn’t care who was right or wrong, nor did they care if the members of the Suicide Squad were good or bad, or how many ordinary people died.
They just needed to train a team to fight superhumans.
As for why the sanatorium was located in New York, it was basically to satisfy Patient Zero’s request to stay in New York.
The information had been inadvertently picked up from a conversation between two researchers – there was no written record of it.
In fact, all the information on Zero had already been packed up and moved.
Luke’s two experimental drones in the sanatorium, along with a bunch of Ant drones, hadn’t found any detailed information on this mysterious Zero.
But from the superpowers of the four patients, it could be deduced that Zero’s superpower definitely wasn’t ordinary.
Otherwise, the researchers wouldn’t have set up the research center in the sanatorium and sent away all the information on Zero so quickly.
If things went wrong, Zero might become a difficult opponent.
A week later, Elsa and Elena both called and told him that Margaret’s mental state was deteriorating.
Luke simply said that he got it. Then, he secretly went to Margaret’s place that night and treated her with his three abilities.
The next day, Elena called and said that Margaret seemed to be getting better, but she was a little forgetful.
She could only suspect that there was something seriously wrong with Margaret’s mental state.
Luke told her to keep an eye on Margaret.
After hanging up, he refocused on the case.
Using his abilities to directly change Margaret’s mindset would be taxing and unrewarding.
So, he used the most economical way of making her forget so that Margaret wouldn’t remember most of what happened to her sister, Haley.
But given how much Margaret relied on Haley, this wouldn’t last.
However, it shouldn’t be long now.
He picked up the intelligence which Selina had just sent him and looked at the man and woman wearing caps and masks. He murmured, “Gotcha, Zero.”
3