Morning sunlight filtered through the basement's small window, casting a slanted patch of light onto the cement floor covered in Lin Mo's practice marks. He stared at the wall, his fingers trembling slightly with nerves—this was the third day since he had gained Shadowcat's ability, and his first attempt at "long-distance wall phasing."
His first two practice sessions had gone smoothly: he phased through the pile of beer cans in Ted's basement—cleaning up three empty bottles while he was at it—slipped through the safe at the repair shop where Carlos hid his private stash, which contained only five crumpled dollar bills, and even used a screwdriver to loosen screws in the next room while phased, a new method for testing precision.
But today's target was the apartment building's load-bearing wall—more than half a meter thick and reinforced with steel bars. It was the biggest challenge he had encountered so far. His wristband warned him, [This wall contains metal structures. Phasing difficulty increased by 30%.] Still, Lin Mo wanted to try. He needed to know where his limits were. Especially under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance, the deeper he could hide, the safer he would be.
"Deep breaths..." Lin Mo drew a cross in front of the wall as if cheering himself on. He activated his Phasing Ability, and his body instantly gave off a faint translucent glow, like a wet tissue. Based on his previous experience, he first pushed his palm through the wall and felt the resistance of the steel bars—it was harder than he had expected, like passing through a red-hot wire, with a faint sting.
"Now!" Lin Mo gritted his teeth and charged forward.
The smooth passage he had imagined never came. His shoulders and chest passed through the brick wall without issue, but his waist became firmly trapped by a horizontal steel bar, as if clamped in iron jaws. Lin Mo looked down, and his heart nearly stopped—his upper body was in the hallway while his lower half remained in the basement, with his torso embedded in the wall. Rough brick pressed against his left side, cold cement against his right, and the steel bar dug directly into his ribs, making him bare his teeth in pain.
"Fuck!" Lin Mo tried to back out, only to find that he could not exert any strength while phased. The more he struggled, the tighter the steel bar wedged him in place. Brick scraped against his skin like sandpaper against flesh. Then he heard Ted humming in the hallway, getting closer and closer, and quickly held his breath.
Ted's footsteps stopped right above him, followed by a click—the sound of a mailbox opening. "That kid Lin Mo was tinkering around till midnight again," Ted said in a hoarse, hungover voice. "His wall-phasing sounded like he was tearing down the building. Next time, I'm charging him a noise fee."
Lin Mo's face instantly turned dark red. Ted had known he was practicing all along? Then all those times he had phased through the wall at night to "visit" Ted's comic collection... Ted had heard every bit of it?
The footsteps gradually faded away. Lin Mo sighed in relief, only to panic even more. He tried adjusting his position, hoping to squeeze past the steel bar, but he moved too suddenly and his phased state fluctuated—his right hand became solid again and slammed into the bricks with a bang, nearly making him cry out.
"Is anyone there?!" Lin Mo called in a lowered voice, his throat tight with anxiety. No one was in the basement. Carlos would not open the shop until noon; Ted had gone to work; Peter was at school... At this moment, the only person in the entire building who might be home was old Martha. But how could he possibly shout, "I'm stuck in a wall"?
Time ticked by, second by second. The sunlight shifted another half inch across the floor. Lin Mo's ribs throbbed from the steel bar, breathing became harder and harder, and sweat ran down his forehead, soaking the back of his shirt. He suddenly remembered his wristband's warning: [Maintain emotional stability while phasing. Anxiety may cause ability fluctuations.] He quickly closed his eyes and silently repeated, I am air. I am air...
He imagined himself becoming a gust of wind, slipping through the cracks between the bricks. He imagined the steel bars turning soft like water plants, able to bend at will. He imagined the wall suddenly becoming transparent glass, letting him see every step in the hallway...
Then, a strange loosening sensation came from his waist, like jammed gears suddenly falling back into place. Before Lin Mo could react, the ground vanished beneath his feet—the phased state abruptly ended. He lost his balance and fell out of the wall, crashing heavily onto the hallway's cement floor hard enough to rattle the stair railing.
"Ow!" Lin Mo clutched his waist and grimaced. Just as he tried to get up, he saw a pair of floral cloth shoes stop before his eyes. Looking up, he found old Martha holding a grocery basket and glaring at him, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, its ash nearly falling onto his face.
"Sleepwalking?" The old woman's voice rasped across his ears like a file, but she reached down and pulled him up. "Crawling out of a wall? What do you think you are, an eel or a ghost?"
Lin Mo's face instantly reddened from his ears all the way down his neck. He wished he could crawl right back into the wall on the spot. His mouth hung open, but he could not form a complete sentence. "Mrs. Martha... I... um..."
"Cut the nonsense." Martha rolled her eyes, then took out a sandwich from her grocery basket and shoved it into his hand. "Freshly toasted. Ham and egg. Look how skinny you are—you'd topple over in a breeze, and you're trying to phase through walls?"
Lin Mo froze. The sandwich in his hand was still warm, and the buttery scent mixed with the old woman's cigarette smell in a strangely comforting way. "You... you saw that?"
"Obviously. I was cleaning the windows on the third floor and watched you stick to that wall like a rice cake." Martha pointed at the faint marks on the wall with her cigarette—the traces left when he had struggled earlier. "If you hadn't been hurting so badly, I would've called the cops already. Breaking into private property and playing with superpowers? That's enough to put you away for half a year."
Lin Mo's heart sank. She knew everything! He quickly lowered his head and apologized. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Martha. I didn't mean to. It's just... I haven't mastered the ability yet."
"Ability?" Martha raised an eyebrow, suddenly leaning closer and lowering her voice. "Like when you saved Snowball last time? The kind that lets you phase through things?"
Lin Mo hesitated for a moment before nodding. There seemed to be no point hiding it from this old woman—she had even dared to curse out S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. The last time Phil Coulson came to investigate the meteor crater, she had chased him out with a broom, telling him, "Stop hanging around my door. You'll scare my cat."
"At least you're honest." Martha snorted and turned toward the stairs. "Come with me. There's something I want to show you."
Lin Mo hurried after her, taking a bite from the sandwich in his hand. Its salty, savory flavor spread through his mouth. As he watched Martha's back, he suddenly felt that the old woman might be more extraordinary than he had imagined—why was she not surprised at all? Had she met Mutants before?
Martha's room smelled even more strongly of smoke than usual. She dragged an old chest from beneath her bed, its surface covered in dust and secured with an old-fashioned brass lock. Lin Mo was about to help, but the old woman waved him off, pulled a thin wire from her hair, and picked the lock in a few quick movements—skilled as a career thief.
"Look at this." Martha took out a yellowed photograph from the chest. It showed a young man in military uniform holding a little girl, with the X-Men's base in the background—Lin Mo had seen it in the comics. "My son. Ben Parker's comrade-in-arms. He used to be with the X division. He could talk to animals."
Lin Mo's eyes widened like saucers. Ben Parker? Peter's uncle? He had actually been connected to the X-Men? No wonder Martha was so calm about superpowers!
"He died in an explosion at Moira's laboratory." Martha's voice trembled slightly as she brushed the dust from the photograph. "Before he died, he told me that if I ever met a kid who could phase through walls, I should tell him this: abilities aren't for playing around. They're for plugging gun barrels."
Something struck Lin Mo's heart, and the sandwich nearly slipped from his hand. He finally understood how many unknown stories were hidden in this run-down apartment building—Ted's Spider-Man launcher beneath his bed, Peter's obsession with spiders, Martha's knowledge of Mutants... They were all fighting against this crazy world in their own ways.
"I understand, Mrs. Martha." Lin Mo put the photograph back into the chest, gently brushing his fingers over the man's face. "I won't use my ability recklessly."
"Good." Martha locked the chest and shoved a bottle of milk into his hands. "Get back to practicing. If you get stuck in a wall again, I'll have Snowball scratch you with his claws."
Back in the basement, Lin Mo looked at the faint marks on the wall and suddenly smiled. That embarrassing incident had been awkward, but it had taught him two things: abilities needed to be respected, and he could not force things; the people in this building were more dependable than he had thought.
He started practicing again, this time choosing a thin wall—the partition between Ted and him, only twenty centimeters thick. He drew a line on the floor to mark the start and end points, took three deep breaths, activated his ability, and walked forward step by step.
The instant he phased through, he could clearly "see" the poster Ted had stuck to the wall—it was a premiere poster for Iron Man 1, with Tony Stark in the Mark 1 armor, grinning flamboyantly. Lin Mo could not help poking the Iron Man on the poster with his finger. In his phased state, his fingertip passed through the paper and left a faint mark.
"I did it!" Lin Mo jumped in Ted's basement, only to forget that the place was piled full of comics. His foot slipped, and he fell flat on his back, crushing a stack of Ted's treasured "Spider-Man: Year One" comics.
"My books!" Ted's furious roar came from next door, accompanied by vibrations traveling through the wall. "Lin Mo, you bastard! Pay for my comics!"
Lin Mo hurriedly activated his Phasing Ability and slipped back into his own basement, his heart pounding wildly. Looking at the cracks in the floor—caused by Ted stomping just now—he suddenly felt that this kind of chaotic superpowered daily life was not all that bad.
On his way to the repair shop that afternoon, Lin Mo deliberately detoured through the community park. Several children were playing hide-and-seek there. A little girl in red was stuck inside a tree hollow and crying, while the adults nearby spun in frantic circles. Lin Mo hesitated, then quietly activated his Phasing Ability, reached through the tree trunk, and carried the little girl out.
"Wow! Mister can do magic!" The little girl stopped crying and laughed, clinging to his hand.
Lin Mo smiled and ruffled her hair. Just as he was about to leave, he saw Phil Coulson standing beside a bench in the distance. Coulson raised his coffee cup toward him, a barely visible smile at the corner of his mouth.
Lin Mo's heart sank, but this time he did not panic. He nodded to Phil Coulson and turned to leave—some things did not need to be hidden, like using his ability to help people.
At the repair shop, Carlos was frowning at a pile of parts. "This piece of junk has a stuck tape head. Can't take it apart." He tossed an old cassette player to Lin Mo. "Try that 'wall-phasing hand' of yours."
Lin Mo paused, then smiled. Carlos might not say it out loud, but he had clearly accepted Lin Mo's ability. Lin Mo activated his Phasing Ability, slipped his fingers through the cassette player's casing, and precisely nudged the jammed tape head. "Done."
Carlos took the player, pressed play, and hoarse rock music spilled out. It was Queen's We Will Rock You. "Not bad," he said, offering rare praise. "Pizza tonight. Extra cheese."
Warmth filled Lin Mo's heart. He looked out the window as the setting sun painted the streets of Queens gold. Peter ran past with his backpack, the glass jar in his hand glinting in the light—the spider inside was still spinning silk, weaving an ever-larger web.
He knew there would be many challenges ahead: S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance, Carlos's mysterious clients, Peter's coming "spider bite," and the Cosmic Cube Fragment hidden in the meteor crater... But as long as he could keep living like this—occasionally suffering embarrassing moments while phasing through walls, fixing things at the repair shop, helping children in the neighborhood—there was nothing to fear.
That night, while practicing wall phasing, Lin Mo nearly got stuck inside a wall again—this time because he heard Aunt May calling him to dinner and rushed too much. But he did not panic. Instead, he slowly adjusted his breathing and felt the texture of the brick and stone, just as Martha had said: "Think of yourself as the wind."
When he emerged from the wall, Peter was holding up a camera and aiming it at him. The flash clicked. "Brother Lin, you look so cool phasing through walls! Can I put this photo in my 'Superhero Observation Journal'?"
Lin Mo smiled, snatched the camera, and deleted the photo. Then he pulled Peter close, activated his Phasing Ability, and brought him through the kitchen wall with him, landing beside the dining table. Aunt May was carrying out roast chicken and nearly threw the platter in shock.
"You two..." Aunt May stared at them, then smiled. "Wash your hands and eat. The chicken's getting cold."
At the dinner table, Peter chattered away about school while Aunt May placed food on Lin Mo's plate. Moonlight gently streamed in through the window and fell across everyone's faces. Lin Mo took a bite of roast chicken and suddenly felt that perhaps this was the meaning of having abilities—not to fight against something, but to protect these ordinary moments.
As for those embarrassing moments of getting stuck in walls? He could just treat them as little bonus episodes that came with superpowers.
Before you continue