Chapter 160 Chapter 160 We must demolish at the same time...
“…Elio…”
Blüdhaven and Gotham are separated by the same inseparable sea, a branch of the Atlantic Ocean.
But strangely, Elio never thought it was the same place. When he looked across from Gotham, he saw the dark abyss. He knew that the concrete pillars under the bridges were filled with the finger bones and shrunken corpses of Gothamites. He knew that the evidence of crimes bound in stones sank at the bottom of the sea, and wandered the souls of the dead who could never return home.
This is Gotham's sea.
No matter where he goes, the abyss will always call him quietly.
"Elio..."
But Elio vaguely saw the sea of Blüdhaven. How could it be the same sea? The beautiful sunset clouds piled there like a veil, and Blüdhaven's harbor gently held the setting sun, swaying in her arms... until the water surged, until the waves rose, until she swallowed the setting sun, the colors of sea and sky mingled indistinguishably, and Elio was still there.
The Elio who thought he had a bright future was still there.
This is beautiful, he thought.
"Elio," he heard a voice call softly. Someone was looking for him, probably Leopold's. But Elio didn't turn back, gazing longingly at the sea at Bludhaven. A snow-white seagull skimmed across the surface, sending up a shower of white water that, like a snowflake, caught Elio's eyelashes...
"Elio!"
Elio gasped. He woke up, his head aching and his vision blurry. For a moment, Elio could barely remember where he was. He pinched himself, forcing himself to remember a few key words: nuclear bomb, water source, human. Wake up! Elio told himself.
But with just the slightest movement, he realized something was wrong. Elio fumbled around, finding what looked like a seatbelt around his waist, nothing else. He wasn't sitting, standing, or lying down. Elio stopped moving, wiped his face, and blinked back his aching eyes.
Light slowly returned to the assassin's vision.
Elio saw where he was, and his still-throbbing head suddenly went blank, filled with noise. Above him was a thin safety belt, below was a bottomless abyss, and next to him was the shattered cabin. He was probably stuck between the cliffs. If he moved, he would probably be shattered.
After all, he couldn't expect to find a cart of straw to pick him up in the wilderness and snow.
"Or petals?" said the Ring.
Or petals, Elio thought approvingly.
He didn't move, but glanced at his left hand, intending to check the time, but saw a scarlet blood on his hand. Elio almost thought it was someone else's blood, but when he pinched his fingers, it was still warm, and it turned out to be his own blood.
Elio breathed a sigh of relief. Then his chest protested with an earthquake-like pain, perhaps a broken bone.
Damn it. That was Elio's first thought.
How much time is left? This was Elio's second thought.
Since he was still hanging there half-dead, the nuclear bomb must not have exploded yet. Elio twisted the ring with his bloody fingers, barely lighting a golden flame to heal his wounds; at the same time, he turned his head slightly and saw the cabin with completely shattered glass. Not far away was a cliff.
He should be able to climb up from here, Elio thought.
The sounds of the snowy world grew clearer. He heard a faint breeze, the creaking of metal above him, and the thuds of fighting above him—probably Ethan and August. Elio glanced up and saw the detonator at their feet, but they were so entangled in the fight that neither could reach it.
Elio glanced down again. He wasn't looking at the sky, but at the safety belt around his waist.
Now, he was faced with a paradox: if he wanted to climb up, he had to unfasten the safety belt. But if he unfastened the safety belt rashly, he would definitely fall down and smash into a meat pie.
Elio wondered if he would be a delicious piece of meat pie.
Unsure of what to do, Elio tentatively reached out. The gray-black cliff was clearly a place an assassin could grab, but as soon as he reached out, he felt the safety belt hanging on his body sway dangerously, causing the entire cabin to tremble dangerously. Elio had to pause his exploration, blink hard, and reassess the final distance—
He can't reach it.
Even if he stretched out his hands and tensed every muscle from his shoulders to his fingertips, he still couldn't reach it. Elio tried hard, and there were times when he almost thought he touched the cold rock, but he still narrowly missed it; in the process, the safety belt hanging on him began to swing again, and the cabin stuck between the rocks no longer protested with its metallic creaking, but instead scraped off a number of small stones, and Elio heard them rustling down.
The Ring didn't know what he saw, but he sounded devastated. "Please, can you please call Superman?"
"Four more minutes," Elio checked his watch. "Superman has his own things to worry about, too."
The harness was still dangling. Elio glanced at the cliff face, then up at the dangling harness, and suddenly an idea struck him.
He could swing through here!
Meanwhile, as Elio swung from the real "safety belt" like a swing, trying to fling himself onto the cliff face, Ethan and August's brawl above was about to come to a head. August had a tight grip on Ethan's neck. Ethan, a head shorter than him, couldn't get his arms free, so he suddenly had an idea and went for his head. Ethan first jumped up, his legs off the ground, then landed hard, using the momentum to flip August behind him over—there was a cliff in front of them!
He successfully flipped August over. But August didn't let go at all, and the two agents fell to the ground together and rolled into a ball; in a hurry, Ethan grabbed a rope at hand, but he still slid down dangerously, and distanced himself from the detonator on the cliff edge.
This is the rescue hook from the helicopter. A red hook is hung on the stone, hanging the helicopter in the air.
Now, there are two dried-meat-looking people hanging on it.
The helicopter below began to shake even more. Elio, who had just clung to the cliff face, hadn't had time to unbuckle his seatbelt when he felt a sudden force tug at his waist, threatening to pull him back into the cabin. The assassin nearly lost his grip, his palms shedding a thin layer of sweat. Like a cat on glass, he slipped a few times before finally clinging firmly to the rock, a successful humanoid gecko.
But the successful humanoid gecko immediately released one hand, hanging in mid-air with only his right hand, and his left hand was about to release the hidden blade and cut the safety belt. Elio no longer needed it.
A Hidden Blade, after years of use, is almost like an extension of an Assassin's body. It is almost his arm, his fingers; just as a person almost doesn't need to think, he will naturally assume that his hand can pick up what he wants, so Elio almost doesn't need to think, he naturally assumes that his Hidden Blade will spring out as usual and cut the safety belt.
But it didn't.
Elio was stunned for a moment. This was even more unbelievable to the assassin than the news that two nuclear bombs were about to explode. Elio lowered his head in astonishment and tried to fire the trigger a few more times. He was shocked to find that the safety was stuck.
Seriously? At a time like this?!
At the same time, Ethan probably thought the same thing.
The detonator was right at his fingertips, and if he climbed a little higher, he would undoubtedly be able to reach it. But August was clinging to his ankles, and Ethan kicked him several times but couldn't get him off; at this moment, the rock on which the rescue grappling line was hooked suddenly broke apart without any warning, and the red hook suddenly cut a long way off the cliff, and then got stuck on a rock again, barely holding on to the helicopter and the two American agents who were almost falling off.
Elio was nearly dragged down, too. In the nick of time, he switched to his right Hidden Blade, slashed the safety harness, and fastened himself to the wall. He was now climbing rapidly, not even having time to glance down. A moment later, the helicopter plummeted, crashing to the ground in a burst of flames.
The heat even warmed Elio a bit.
"I was wrong." Elio thought so sincerely.
The Ring cried with joy, "Are you finally ready to call Superman?"
"I meant," Elio replied, "that I should be a roast, not a meat pie."
Amid the Ring's cries, the assassin climbed up without distraction. He took a shortcut, quickly climbed over the cliff, and grabbed the neglected detonator. There was only one minute left. But as Elio grabbed it, he froze for a second at this critical moment.
Ethan didn't have time to tell him where to demolish.
Fortunately, at this moment, a hand suddenly hit the edge of the cliff. Elio recognized it as Ethan's hand and was overjoyed. He rushed over and pulled him up.
"I thought you were dead!" "You're still alive?!"
They shouted almost at the same time. Before they could say anything more, Elio immediately stuffed the detonator into Ethan's hands. Ethan was overjoyed and immediately started to dismantle it. "Benji, I got the detonator!" He announced in the channel.
But there was no movement in the channel.
"Benjy, can you hear me?" Ethan pressed the headphones. "Ilsa? Luther? Can you hear me?"
The countdown continued. They only had forty-five seconds left.
"…It must be the distance," Ethan muttered. His hand slid weakly from his ear, and the agent looked at the assassin.
"What's wrong?" Elio noticed that Ethan had stopped dismantling the building. "Why did you stop?"
Thirty seconds left.
"We have to dismantle them at the same time to short-circuit them," Ethan said.
Elio's face changed drastically. "What do you mean?"
"By removing this detonator key," Ethan held the detonator and tapped the red button with his thumb, "we can short-circuit the failsafe. But shorting it out isn't enough to solve the problem. The fuses of both bombs must be cut at the same time before we can stop this."
Elio understood everything. His face was pale, blood clotted on it, but Ethan was no less vulnerable. Both men were covered in wounds, their strength at its end. They exchanged a bleak glance, then looked down at their father. Time ticked by, and the highland wind bit hard.
"Want to bet?" Ethan asked him.
Twenty-three seconds left.
"Is there anything else we can do?" Elio asked.
"I forgot to tell you," Ethan shrugged, "I heard the Justice League is on a business trip in outer space."
He sat down on the ground, clutching the detonator in one hand. Elio stood there, silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on Ethan's face. The agent gave him a wry smile, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but there's always a reason why our IMF team is deployed."
"You were trying to calm me down," the assassin said calmly. "I understand."
Elio sat down beside him. The countdown continued, but the agent and the assassin, sitting on the cliff edge, chatted with an unusual calmness.
"It's so beautiful here," Ethan said.
"Yes," Elio said, "I've never seen anything like it."
They looked out and saw a vast expanse of snow beyond the gray-black mountain wall. In the howling mountain wind, Elio took the detonator from Ethan.
"I'm an assassin, you know," Elio told him calmly, "and my hands never shake."
Ethan looked at him and smiled. "Wait until it counts to the last second?"
Elio nodded, "Your team, you have the final say."
They leaned their heads together, staring at the detonator. Elio unsheathed his Hidden Blade, the tip of the blade catching the trigger. They waited with bated breath, just as Benjy and his companions, far away in the Nubra Valley, held their grip on the pliers, breathlessly waiting for the countdown to run out.
Three, two, one.
A clear eagle cry.
In the lush, beautiful valley, a Sahiwal cow raised its head from munching on grass. Its round, amber eyes reflected the tranquil beauty. High in the sky, an eagle soared over the snow-capped peaks, resembling ice cream, towards the sun in the distance.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
