The damp, moldy smell in the ventilation duct slowly spread along the rusted metal walls, its pungent stench slipping through Lin Xiu's nose and into his lungs.
He pressed his knuckles against the nanointerface at the back of his neck. The burning pain there felt as though it had been repeatedly ground by red-hot pincers, waves of electric stinging spreading down his spine.
The Oracle System's data stream flashed across his retina in glaring blue light, subtitles pouring down like torrential rain—"Intrusion source: Nanocore."
His temples throbbed as if countless fine needles were tapping against the inside of his skull.
"Marco mentioned timeline rejection..." he muttered, tearing off a sleeve from his lab coat to wipe the cold sweat from his brow.
The metal watch reflected a cold silver-white gleam, revealing the darkness buried deep in his eyes. "Now even my core is leaking signals... The Time Variance Authority couldn't possibly be this passive... They're waiting for me to expose myself."
The laboratory alarm continued to buzz through his phone like a swarm of bees lurking beside his ear, making his eardrums ache faintly.
The knuckles gripping Lin Xiu's phone turned white, his nails nearly digging into his palm.
He suddenly recalled Marco's whisper before he vanished: "Quantum Sentinel"—it had been the first time he had heard that title from someone else's mouth since crossing over. It was like a fine needle piercing the depths of his memories, stirring up a dull ache.
The Nanocore trembled lightly in his chest. He could clearly sense that the silver fragment was resonating with the core, like two iron filings drawn together by a magnet, tugging at each other invisibly.
"Oracle, how much energy would it take to simulate the frequency of Time Prediction?" He turned and headed for the duct exit. His heels struck the rusted iron plating with hollow echoes, every step like treading on the skin of an abandoned drum.
"A high-grade fragment can sustain a false disturbance for three hours." The system's voice retained its mechanical calm. "However, it will expose the armor's quantum signature."
Lin Xiu's steps paused.
Cold air poured in through the vent, lifting the messy strands of hair over his forehead and carrying a trace of dampness from the night's un-dried rain.
He gazed at the dim yellow streetlight filtering in from the end of the duct and curled his lips into a cold smile. "Expose it? That's exactly what they want."
At two in the morning, Brooklyn Laboratory lay shrouded in pale blue security lights, the air carrying a faint scent of ionization.
Lin Xiu stood before the quantum chamber on the third basement level, his fingertips tapping rapidly across the console. Nanoparticles surged from the interface at his wrist, condensing in the air into a translucent web of light.
The faintly glowing particles were like spider silk woven from stardust, forming a false ripple in spacetime amid the darkness.
It was a "Spacetime Disturbance Wave" forged from his core energy, its frequency deliberately adjusted to the band most sensitive to Time Variance Authority trackers.
"It has begun." He stepped back two paces and watched the starlight flicker within the web. His Adam's apple bobbed, and his heartbeat gradually accelerated with the web's pulses.
In the alley outside the laboratory, Alia Kroll's Temporal Anchoring Device suddenly let out a piercing shriek, like a high-frequency tuning fork exploding beside her ear.
She crouched behind an abandoned trash bin, her wine-red hair tousled by the night wind. The mutant bloodline in her left hand gave her pupils a faint amber glow.
The cold air hit her face, carrying the scent of rainwater and engine oil.
"Finally." She gave a low laugh, the excitement of a predator lingering in her voice, and pulled a silver disc from her tactical waist pouch—it was a capture net capable of locking onto spacetime coordinates.
The moment the disc touched the ground, the laboratory windows erupted in blinding white light, shards scattering in every direction like hail.
The instant Alia looked up, she saw a figure standing in the shadows cast by the broken glass. The pale golden patterns of light on his wrist moved beneath his skin like living snakes.
"What exactly do you want?" Lin Xiu's voice was low, yet it pierced the night like an ice pick, its chill cutting through the air.
Alia's fingers paused over the disc. By the time she looked up, a professional smile had already appeared on her face. "Mr. Lin, I'm only here to confirm whether you've become a 'contamination source.'" She rose to her feet, her boots crunching over the broken glass with startling clarity, like the pendulum of some countdown clock. "The timeline has been too fragile lately. The Battle of New York, the Mind Stone..." She tilted her head, her gaze sweeping over the glowing patterns on Lin Xiu's wrist. "The Nanocore on you is far more dangerous than any of those."
Lin Xiu stepped forward. The armor's low hum vibrated through his chest as though some sleeping beast had awakened.
He noticed that Alia's right hand had remained hovering near the holster at her waist—it was not a conventional firearm, but the Time Variance Authority's unique "Corrector."
"So you monitored me, infiltrated my laboratory, and even used Marco as bait?" A chill rose in his voice, like the first thin layer of ice freezing over a winter lake. "Marco's timeline rejection was your doing too?"
Alia's smile froze for an instant.
Her mutant bloodline allowed her to vaguely sense the fluctuations of timelines. At this moment, the timeline around Lin Xiu resembled a crumpled ball of paper, glowing with dangerous violet light.
"Marco was only a volunteer." She licked her lips, her voice slightly hoarse. "The Time Variance Authority needs controllable variables, not sources of chaos. The way you analyzed the Mind Stone while fighting the Chitauri..." Her gaze swept across the glowing patterns on Lin Xiu's wrist. "It was too tempting."
"So I'm a test subject." Nanoparticles glimmered at Lin Xiu's fingertips as the Oracle System analyzed Alia's microexpressions—pupil contraction for 0.3 seconds, a slight twitch in the muscles at the corners of her mouth. Signs of lying.
"A candidate." Alia suddenly raised her voice, blue light from the Corrector shining through her holster. "There isn't another person in the entire Multiverse who can master quantum entanglement. We only wanted to..."
"Enough."
A thunderous roar split down from above, as though the sky itself had been torn apart.
The instant Lin Xiu looked up, the sky split into two cracks as if cleaved by a gigantic axe. A figure wreathed in lightning fell from the north—it was Odin. His spear, Gungnir, shone with golden light powerful enough to burn through dimensions, aimed straight at Lin Xiu's heart.
Purple mist poured from the rift to the south as Vela Knox emerged. Her robes still carried the sandalwood scent of Kamar-Taj, and within the portal gathered in her right hand, the phantoms of six Time Stones could faintly be seen.
"The power of time must not be touched." Odin's voice shook the ground until it cracked. "The energy within you is mixed with the origins of Asgard and Earth."
"But he has already touched the boundary of the laws." Vela's voice was colder. Her gaze swept across the glowing patterns on Lin Xiu's wrist. "The Ancient One said that the true player has not yet made a move... Perhaps that player is you."
Lin Xiu felt something explode deep within his core.
Nanoparticles poured out like a golden torrent, condensing over his body into armor in Oracle Form—this time, not the markings of a tactical assault, but those of the The End stage.
The energy matrix in his chest suddenly lit up. The crimson of the Mind Stone and the deep blue of the Tesseract twisted together within it like two flames that could never be extinguished.
"Who exactly am I?" His voice blended with the armor's roar. "Or are all of you merely actors in another script?"
The response was a black hole suddenly opening beneath his feet.
It was a darkness purer than a temporal rift, bearing the gravitational pull to devour everything.
The instant Odin's spear struck, Lin Xiu saw shock flash through Vela's pupils, while sparks burst from Alia's Corrector—every movement slowed, like footage paused in mid-playback.
At the final moment, he heard the Oracle System's notification: "Origin Energy Fragment resonance detected... Timeline Reboot Program activated."
As darkness wrapped around him and he fell, he remembered Marco's tears before he vanished.
That teardrop hanging in midair had looked so much like the entangled photon pairs in the laboratory—perhaps every meeting and parting was an equation already written by the universe?
Before his consciousness sank into darkness, he vaguely thought: When I wake up next time, which timeline's morning will it be?
Before you continue