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Traveling in broad daylight was, in the end, far less convenient than moving at night.

Especially since Kitty’s Duck-Leopard Armor had no stealth system installed yet, and its size wasn’t exactly small.

If it streaked through the daytime sky over the city, it would be highly conspicuous.

There was no guarantee some nosy citizen wouldn’t spot it, tell a tabloid reporter, and create yet another urban legend.

So this trip did not go all the way to Stark Pictures.

Instead, Reacher was dropped off near the outskirts of the city.

There, Henry had arranged a car overnight using Little Duck—a vehicle Reacher could drive himself into town.

Though it took more time, it spared him another full ride of brutal bouncing on the Duck-Leopard Armor.

Reacher naturally had no objections.

The vehicle Henry prepared was an old battered pickup truck.

When it started, the engine coughed and rattled as if it were about to shake itself apart.

Still, all four wheels remained attached, and pressing the gas pedal made it move.

According to Henry:

"When you’re done with it, just dump it by the roadside. No need to park it anywhere specific."

Reacher also didn’t leave Goat Valley Laboratory empty-handed.

The previous night’s vampire briefing had naturally included methods for killing vampires.

Crosses were useless.

Unless the cross was made of silver—and you were strong enough to hammer it into a vampire’s heart.

The real tools were garlic extract and silver weapons.

Ordinary garlic only triggered instinctive disgust in vampires. It had little killing power.

Silver, however, worked wonderfully.

Against werewolves too.

The downside was obvious:

Expensive.

Traditional silver bullets were indispensable tools of modern vampire hunters.

Because of the heat and speed generated when firing, bullets couldn’t simply be silver-plated.

The coating would likely burn off during discharge.

So traditional hunters had to cast bullets entirely from silver.

One could imagine the cost.

That expendable ammunition expense was one of the key reasons vampire hunters could not launch large-scale offensives.

Very few people could do what Blade did—fight vampires head-on with melee weapons.

Usually, if a hunter had to rely on close combat, it was already the signal to retreat.

Even with silver weapons, they might kill a few vampires—

But not many.

And they themselves would leave wounded or exhausted.

The silver nitrate rounds and ultraviolet rounds Black Super had developed were vastly more difficult to manufacture than traditional pure silver bullets.

But their cost was dramatically lower.

Unfortunately, the equipment Black Super had provided to Abraham Whistler—Blade’s quartermaster and mentor—for producing the special rounds had limited output.

Others who copied the machines produced flawed ammunition to varying degrees.

When they discussed this the night before, Reacher had asked:

"Why doesn’t anyone just hand these machines to an arms factory and mass-produce the rounds?"

But even as he asked, Reacher had already thought of the answer.

So he instead asked another question.

"How effective are these special rounds against ordinary humans?"

Henry replied:

"If you shoot a person, they’d probably only be slightly worse than rubber bullets.

"But high-concentration silver nitrate is corrosive to human tissue.

"And ultraviolet rounds carry mild radiation.

"So the wounds would be harder to treat than normal gunshot injuries."

Reacher nodded.

"So factories producing anti-vampire ammunition would simply become targets for vampires.

"The best method is still mobile small workshops—basically the current vampire hunter model."

"Correct."

After finishing the discussion, Henry still had BB-2 deliver Reacher a standard Beretta M9 pistol.

Along with it came:

one magazine loaded with silver nitrate rounds

one magazine loaded with ultraviolet rounds

one magazine of ordinary ammunition

Including the magazine already inside the pistol, that was more ammunition than an average patrol officer usually carried.

Once he had a weapon in hand, Reacher immediately ejected the standard magazine and loaded the ultraviolet rounds instead.

Then he handed the two standard magazines back.

For him, ordinary humans were manageable.

Vampires were not.

So firearms should be optimized for vampires.

Henry naturally said nothing.

That entire night, Reacher’s hunger for vampire knowledge had been intense.

Compared with that, Henry didn’t actually have endless intelligence to provide—

Unless Reacher wanted to hear old folklore and campfire stories about vampires.

Clearly, he did not.

So the large man who had taken a beating from vampires still managed to get some sleep.

Considering the young master on the East Coast might drive west at some insane speed once notified, Reacher set out at dawn from the Goat Valley wilderness.

Henry, meanwhile, had no choice but to wait for his own plane to land and then return from the airport to Stark Pictures by car.

No matter how urgent things were, speed had limits.

He had not submitted advance business-clearance requests days earlier, so this sudden trip could not use VIP customs lanes.

He had to queue with everyone else—

Just to receive an entry stamp on his passport.

The result:

Henry and Jack Reacher arrived at Stark Pictures at nearly the same time.

But the true owner of the building, Tony Stark, had already been sitting in the CEO’s office for who knew how long.

The moment Tony saw Henry, he opened fire verbally.

"How were you contacting me from a plane?

"When I got here and couldn’t find you, I was one step away from driving to your house and dragging you out of bed.

"Then I asked around and found out you were flying back from Sydney. You hadn’t even landed this morning.

"And another thing—your computer files consistently show concern about artificial intelligence.

"You don’t seriously think Skynet-style nonsense is easy to build, do you?

"Connected to a network and suddenly omnipotent? Distributed nodes impossible to track?

"That’s fantasy written by people who don’t understand technology.

"Just solving data-flow aggregation alone—do they think the human nervous system can all function as a brain?

"No... actually maybe they do.

"Given the size of their brains, a few nerve clusters would be enough.

"And blockchain systems—you know how much computing power and electricity that takes?

"If blowing up a power plant can cripple it, why are you afraid of it?"

The moment they met, Tony unleashed a torrent of questions and criticism.

Henry didn’t even know where to begin responding.

But Tony’s attitude did not mean he didn’t care why he had rushed across the country.

It meant the opposite.

The closer he got to the truth, the less he wanted to face it.

So he distracted himself by obsessing over anything else.

Henry answered none of the questions.

Instead, standing in the doorway, he called out:

"Yulian, three coffees please.

"And Mr. Stark and I need to discuss something.

"So no matter how important anything else is—hold it back for now."

"Yes, boss."

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