The moment the repairman's hand touched the doorknob, Ye Mo pressed the open button.
The gate slid open slowly, letting in a blast of cold air. A man with a toolbox on his back stood outside, looking up and winking at the camera. Ye Mo nodded without a word, then turned and walked toward the main control panel. He knew that from this moment on, the base was no longer an empty shell, nor anyone's refuge, but a place that was truly beginning to function.
He had just sat down when the quantum signal receiver suddenly flashed blue light three times.
It wasn't a regular communication frequency band, nor was it a newcomer registration signal. This pulse was disguised as a meteorological data stream, but the frequency fluctuated slightly, as if someone was adjusting equipment in the distance. Ye Mo squinted for two seconds, then directly pulled up the historical records of the isolation sandbox and compared the characteristic values—immediately locking onto the source mode: an electromagnetic interference pre-program commonly used in the underground technology black market, often used as the first step in paralyzing security systems.
"Here it comes," he said softly.
With a swipe of his finger, an encrypted text message was sent. "2:30 in Dongwei, little bug, don't wake the newbie."
Tony responded the fastest; the holographic projection popped up with a "whoosh," his voice arriving before he did. "Oh, someone's delivering a package on the first night? Should I sign for it myself in my armor?"
Emma Frost's reply was a confirmation symbol, and then the monitoring screen switched. She was now standing in the observation room, her hands clasped together, her eyes fixed on the heat source on the screen. Two moving targets were slowly approaching along the outside of the fence, their movements as precise as if they had received counter-surveillance training.
Ye Mo stood up and cracked his knuckles. He knew these people were either there to fight to the death or to test the waters. There was definitely a boss waiting to see their reaction.
He walked to the power control area, preemptively cutting off the main power supply to the eastern sensor array, leaving only the backup battery to maintain the false signal output. Then he activated the " Danger Sense " module, closing his eyes to sense the energy flow rhythm. Three seconds later, he opened his eyes. "It's here."
The first electromagnetic pulse struck the de-energized area, causing it to fail immediately.
The other party was clearly taken aback for a moment, and the signal was interrupted for five seconds. Immediately afterward, the fence vibration sensor alarmed—the two men had made their move, trying to climb over the wall to see what was going on.
Tony chuckled. "Alright, playing a real-life Minesweeper? JARVIS, unleash the swarm."
Twelve micro-drones, all Mark XV reconnaissance models, rose silently into the sky. They were unarmed but equipped with high-intensity flashlights and sound generators. They dispersed and flew into the high altitude, forming an encirclement, and suddenly activated strobe lights and high-frequency noise simultaneously.
The intruder paused, looked around, and was clearly distracted.
Emma Frost seized the opportunity and gently pushed out her mental energy. She didn't read minds or control them; she simply implanted a simple visual illusion in their minds—the red light of an infrared aiming point, which locked onto their foreheads respectively.
One of them suddenly raised his hand to cover his head, while the other immediately lay down.
"There's an ambush!" someone shouted.
They wanted to leave, but it was too late.
Ye Mo had already circled around to the outer passage, activated his " Steel Bone Body," and increased his speed to the limit. He appeared ten meters away, took off his glasses, and calmly looked at the two people.
"Didn't your boss tell you?" he said, "In this place, even the wind has to register to get in."
The two men stared wide-eyed, never expecting anyone to be waiting there. They turned and ran, dropping a chip on the grass in their panic.
Ye Mo didn't chase after him. He bent down, picked up the chip, and turned back to the main control panel.
Tony's projection was still there. "Sigh, just let them get away like that? What a perfect target."
"Trying to kill a snake but getting bitten instead" —Ye Mo inserted the chip into the read port. "Scaring them away now is more useful than catching them."
The data was quickly decrypted; it was a serial number tag from an anonymous hiring organization linked to three powerful conglomerates, none of whom were easy to deal with. But that didn't matter; he knew how to handle it.
He had JARVIS package the chip information, anonymously upload it to a dark web intelligence marketplace, and add an auto-message at the end of the file, "Send someone decent next time."
Tony almost burst out laughing when he saw it, "Your tone sounds like you're replying to a bad review."
"Then let's add a bit more service." Ye Mo thought for a moment, then added a public frequency broadcast, encrypted so that only specific devices could decrypt it. The content was simple. " Mr. X reminds you: Private territory, please do not trespass."
After listening, Emma Frost said calmly, "Not enough."
She closed her eyes, her mental energy tracing the network signal backward to locate the two intruders in real time. They were in a car, fleeing at breakneck speed. With a gentle push, she planted a fragment of a dream deep within their consciousness—an infinitely extending metal corridor with mirrored walls on all sides, the exit marked "Passage permitted only with Ye Mo's approval."
"They'll start having nightmares tomorrow," she said, "And they'll believe them."
A system notification sounded, "Provocation defused; Gene Spiral Tower's deterrent power increased."
Ye Mo felt the energy flow within his body accelerate, and the thirteenth layer area was slightly warm, as if a new ability combination was about to be unlocked. But he didn't rush to check it; instead, he turned on the internal broadcast.
"Routine test complete, everything normal," he said. "Training continues, assessment tomorrow as scheduled."
After saying that, he got up and looked around. Frostmark was still asleep, the South Africa youth was snoring, and the maintenance technician was already tidying up the equipment in the tool shed. No one knew what had just happened.
He returned to the control panel, sat back down, and stared at the ever-present "heartbeat" signal on the screen. It didn't move or send any new content, but the connection was stable, as if it were observing and waiting.
Ye Mo tapped the desktop, bringing up the archive page for this incident, marking it as "S-0 level threat response," and setting the status to "closed."
Tony's projection flickered one last time. "Alright, you guys keep watch, I'm going back to catch up on my sleep. Next time, I'll capture one myself in my armor."
"You're too noisy," Ye Mo said. "You're not suited for doing things secretly."
"Hey, that's my aura!" Tony retorted. "How can you be a superhero without aura?"
The projection disappeared, and the monitoring screen returned to normal. Emma Frost walked out of the observation room, stood next to him, and without saying a word, simply touched his shoulder lightly.
"You don't have to go out yourself every time," she said.
"If I don't go, who will?" he laughed. "We can't let the newcomers bleed on their very first day."
She nodded, turned and walked quietly towards the rest area.
Ye Mo remained alone in front of the control panel, staring at the screen. The "heartbeat" signal was still beating, its frequency stable, like some kind of response.
He suddenly remembered something, opened the permission log of the Gene Spiral Tower, and found that when dealing with the provocation just now, the system automatically recorded the actual combat data of a "three-way collaborative defense" and generated a new protocol prototype: a linkage mechanism based on Telepathy warning, technical countermeasures and physical suppression, named " Silent Defense Line V1.0 ".
He clicked save.
It was still dark outside, the wind had stopped, and the base was as quiet as if nothing had happened.
But some things have changed.
He picked up the Vibranium shard; it was slightly warmer than before. It wasn't an illusion; the energy resonance was intensifying.
A finger glides across the surface of the chip, leaving a shallow mark.
He knew that this show had only just begun.