“…… Therefore, please do not question the Sower' plan from God's point of view, because you can have today, just as I can write this book today, or you are in the mood to read this book, without the sacrifice of these children, we would not have the peaceful life we have today. Now that we think about the 'Sowers' program, we should be more grateful to all the participants in this program for their dedication to us, allowing us to build such a barrier for us during the massive invasion of the ACA's TF, rather than drowning us in the vortex of 'humanity' and 'fraternity'......"

- "Zenith - Rethinking the 'Sower Project'", Icarus Press, 2169 edition, written by a prominent leftist radical parliamentarian.

***

"Who are you?!"

"Real force!"

"What are you?!"

"We are the vanguard and treasure of the Alliance!"

"What's the point of your zài?!"

"The last hope to protect human civilization!"

"What are you going to do with your enemies?!"

"No mercy, sweep away!"

"What should you do if you are in a desperate situation?!"

"Protect yourself first! Save yourself to destroy more enemies! ”

Fourteen years ago, the maritime city "Heisenberg".

The Alliance's "Sower" Project No. 2 is a secret research, transformation, training and testing facility.

On the metal playground inside the base, more than forty children between the ages of 11 and 13 are standing in a phalanx in four rows, dressed in silver tights, and these "volunteer" children from various countries and races are gathered here, they are survivors of a total of about 1,000 children who have undergone remodeling surgery, and 160 other people are organized into five classes and trained.

The reason why "volunteering" is put in quotation marks is not because these children were abducted or kidnapped, but for a twelve-year-old child, the choice made under the "guidance" of family and society cannot be said to be fair.

But the alliance could not wait any longer, and the ACA had already made initial attempts to start putting their modified TFs into the battlefield, and caused a lot of damage to the alliance, and under the deliberate guidance of the media, the voices about whether it was legal to use child "volunteers" to enter the transformation were ignored intentionally or unintentionally.

The lieutenant's hideous face, as an instructor, seemed to show an imperceptible smile of satisfaction as the children answered with firm and unanimous answers, and he slapped the high-voltage electric whip on the palm of the machine, and then nodded.

"Okay, disband!"

Giving the final command, the children who had been trained for a day did not disperse as if they had been amnestied, but turned around and walked out of the playground in a neat manner, and came to the living area under the surveillance of the guards and the evasion of the staff along the way, and walked into their own separate rooms one by one, and then were automatically closed in isolated spaces by the electronic door.

Without any communication, without any relaxation, these twelve or thirteen-year-old children were like a group of fifty-year-old people - the League did not know how to educate and control these powerful and terrifying reformers, and under the double pressure of whether they could control their destructive power well, and the need to do everything possible to deal with the ACA, the personnel and the military acquiesced to the mechanical cultivation method that was full of a lot of corporal punishment and isolation from communication - This is supplemented by a psychiatrist for each TF as compensation.

But psychologists can't solve all problems, especially the child's innate rebellion.

The problem, which is stricter than rebellion, is the gaze of others on board Heisenberg - a maritime city is unlikely to offer a completely closed and isolated training area, especially an integrated city that combines combat readiness patrol, scientific research, and TF training, and in addition to sleeping at night and studying theoretical knowledge, these young superhumans have to face the gaze of others - curiosity and sympathy at first quickly turn to fear and rejection after several conflicts The 12 to 13-year-old physical and mechanical TF can already compete with a professional soldier who has been trained for many years, and in fact, in terms of speed, reflexes, and sheer strength, these teenage supermen can easily take down two or three adult ordinary guards.

So when a rebellious teenager TF kicks the spine of a disruptive guard, the last sympathy of others for these supermen disappears, especially after the injured guard had to be discharged from the army and the teenager TF was only locked up for half a day without pain.

There is no fairness, between TF and the human soldiers, TF is a valuable asset of the Alliance, not only in the cost of an average of 8 million universal coins, but also in the precious genome - it is not that the money and technology can make TF.

And the latter is just a consumable that can be called up at any time.

Those researchers who lack emotional intelligence even explicitly wrote in the textbook for the young TFs that "as a valuable asset of the alliance, if the TF falls into adversity on the battlefield, it has the right and is required to take the initiative to preserve its own strength, abandon human teammates to enhance the ability to break through and reorganize, and if necessary, abandon TF teammates who cannot act, and use qiē to preserve the greatest combat strength." ”

So when the children stood in four rows shouted "Protect yourself first!" in the crowded playground. Save yourself to destroy more enemies! The disdainful glances cast by others were something that the guys who soaked in the upper scientific research area did not see and did not intend to change.

The name is Spartan-style education.

But where there is oppression, there is resistance, especially for these children who are in a rebellious period.

Especially for Ling Yu.

***

At two o'clock in the morning, it had been four hours since the power had been cut off in the residential area, and the sound of fists hitting sandbags on the empty training ground that should have been empty seemed unusually cold in the silent air.

The reason why the boy named Ling Yu dared to make noise here with such fanfare was because he often did so.

Most children will sneak out, of course, the price of being caught is also heavy, the average child sneaks out, will go to the cafeteria to steal some snacks, or go to the entertainment room to play video games and the like, but since being caught a few times, those places have become a key monitoring area.

The children who retreated to the second place either went to the rooftop to make nonsense, or they went to play some pranks, and there were also Cun Zài who took pleasure in chasing the guards, but Ling Yu was not one of them.

The boy likes to punch at the reinforced punching bags in the training ground, and many times, this is not a practice, just the boy beating the punching bags alone in anger.

He didn't know why, but he thought it would make him feel refreshed, and he would imagine Sandbag as a lot of people, but most of the time, it was an ACA officer whose face he couldn't see clearly.

Is this hatred? He didn't know, he just liked it.

With a punch that knocked the hundred-kilogram sandbag flying, the boy took a step back, stretched out his hands to hold the bouncing sandbag, breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and raised his head.

Then he saw a security guard standing ten meters away, holding a can of coffee, looking at him.

His expression was as stunned as his own.

"Do you want to drink?"

The two stared at each other for a full three minutes, and then, the guard wearing the tactical helmet on the opposite side let out a clear, feminine voice.

***

"Aren't you going to report me?"

"If you report it, no one will give me a raise."

The guard sister wearing a tactical helmet took out another can of coffee from the vending machine next to her, then sat down next to Ling Yu and shrugged her shoulders.

Ling Yu looked at the girl in her twenties seriously, she had never taken off the tactical helmet that covered her entire face above her nose, so the boy could only guess her appearance through the blue eyepiece lenses.

"Helmet...... Don't you take it off? After a moment's struggle, the boy still asked.

"It's too ugly, I'm afraid I'll scare you when I take it off." The girl stuck out her tongue, then snapped the tab of the can, "It's a little special that you're here now." ”

"I've been here for almost a month, and no one has ever walked by." Ling Yu shook his head and put on an expression that a dead pig was not afraid of boiling water - anyway, the big deal was confinement, and if he dared to come out, he would definitely have this awareness.

"Can't sleep?"

"Hmm."

"Me too."

"Is your family still there?" The guard girl held the coffee, but she didn't drink it, just looked at the white smoke coming out of the canned coffee heated by the vending machine, and suddenly opened her mouth to ask.

"All dead, the Haizhou bombing a year ago." Ling Yu's expression was indifferent, as if he was talking about a tragedy that happened to someone else.

"I'm sorry." The guard girl sighed, "But most of the students ...... It's all about the same background. ”

Ling Yu didn't speak, just drank coffee silently.

"It's a pity that I'm too old and my genes aren't suitable." The girl smiled wryly, "I've done four genetic tests with four pseudonyms, but unfortunately I can't do it." ”

"Do you want to be Superman that way?" Suddenly, Ling Yu stretched out his hand, clenched it into a fist, and spoke coldly.

"Strength is a tool, Superman is also a man, grew up in Kansas and loved Batman." The maiden guard raised her hand and tapped her head lightly, and the composite helmet made a dull sound, "As a human being, the pursuit of tools is probably not wrong, if there is a purpose." ”

"The purpose? Do you have someone you want to get revenge against? Ling Yu turned his head and looked at the blue eyepiece, he seemed to be able to feel that the girl's natural and gentle gaze was looking at him through the barrier of the eyepiece.

"No, I just want to protect some people." The maiden guard shook her head and smiled, "A child like you doesn't need to come back to this steel coffin. ”

"What do humans have to protect," Ling Yu smiled bitterly and shook his head, "No matter what you do for them, they will still abandon you eventually, such as having a stronger protector, such as if you fail even once." ”

"Protection for the purpose of return is not called protection, just like some college student delivering pizza," the guard girl looked up at the dim ceiling light, "I just want to protect, if someone can take pleasure in destroying the world, why can't I take pleasure in protecting the world?" ”

***

Ling Yu opened his eyes and saw a dim yellow light.

He had a dream, very long, very real, so real that it was not a dream, but a real memory.

He couldn't remember how long it had been since he had dreamed of that early morning encounter, all that had been his dreams were filled with cold waters, warm blood, and despair mixed with endless fear.

Unlike those dreams that struggled in the cold waters, even the moment he opened his eyes, all that surrounded him was the warm feeling of the can of coffee in the palm of his hand.

Just like the smile of the girl who never took off her helmet and let Ling Yu see her face, nothing could block it, giving the cold boy the truest warmth.

***

Jeunse knew she was reaching her limits.

It's been three whole days, and even for a mechanical TF, fighting for seventy-two hours without food and without sleep is already a remarkable thing.

But she still had no intention of taking a step back.

Tear the few remaining knights' outfits into rags, and barely cover the bleeding wounds with makeshift bandages - medical equipment and everything have long since been used up, and now all that the young knight has left is a barely burning power furnace and the will not to retreat.

Reluctantly standing up—the simple act of standing took Jeunse a full minute, and she took a deep breath, gritting her teeth as she looked at the corpses of the monsters that littered the ground in front of her, and the monsters that continued to rush towards her.

"Even if it ends here, I won't take a step back!"

As if to strengthen her faith, the scarred girl knight stretched out her right hand, clenched her fist with difficulty, looked at the first monster rushing towards her, and shook her fist violently.

But nothing hit.

Jess was stunned for a moment, raised her head, but only saw a black lightning bolt passing by her, hitting the first monster's jaw with a knee, knocking its head straight up into a ninety-degree turn, and breaking the monster's cervical vertebrae with one blow.

And this is not the end, he turned sideways, let the monster that pounced on him pounce into the air, and then flew up with a kick, and smashed the monster on the back with a downward split, directly folding the monster into an acute angle.

In the next moment, the black figure rushed straight in front of the last monster, and before the other party could react, he smashed into the monster's head with a punch!

The huge fist wind even brought a shock wave like a sonic boom, and the monster's head was smashed into the body, and then the whole body suddenly exploded.

"Whew...... It's amazing...... It's more powerful than I thought, this body...... Although it may take a while to get used to ......"

Ling Yu stood in place, moved his wrist for a moment, then turned his head and looked at Jath, revealing a smile.

"Thank you for your hard work, next, leave it to me."