Anticipating the conspiracy
Ye Mo's ears were still ringing.
It wasn't the wind or the engine noise of a distant street sweeper. It was a low-frequency vibration, as though someone were lightly scraping his nerves with a fingernail. He remained motionless, his back against the sheet-metal wall of the corner convenience store, his left hand still supporting the back of Emma Frost's neck as he confirmed that her breathing was as steady as before.
The metal shard in his right palm began heating up again.
He glanced down-the phone, its screen long since shattered into a spiderweb, had already been discarded, but fragments remained in his pocket. Natasha's text had arrived under suspicious circumstances. Stranger still, how had she known he was with Emma Frost? The surveillance cameras had been blown up, the signal cut off, and even the system had fallen silent. Unless...
Someone had seen them use Wall Phasing.
Or watched footage of it.
He narrowed his eyes, scanning the glass curtain wall of the office building opposite. In its reflection, a black van was slowly driving away from the subway exit. Mud obscured its license plate, and its exhaust pipe was slightly warm. Clearly, its engine had only recently started.
Thermal Vision activated automatically.
There were two heat signatures inside the van, sitting stiffly, unlike an ordinary driver and passenger. One had his head lowered as he spoke, his lips moving slightly. Ye Mo couldn't hear anything, but a strange itch suddenly stirred in his mind.
As though someone had gently tugged a thread.
"Fuck..." he cursed under his breath. "You're unlocking a new function for me now?"
He closed his eyes and tried to focus on that itching sensation. Emma Frost had taught him a few basics-Telepathy was like tuning a radio; he had to find the right frequency. But there was no time to tune it slowly now. He could only force the dial over.
His consciousness reached a little farther forward.
In an instant, two voices exploded directly inside his mind:
"The hard drive has been handed over... all traces erased."
"The identity of Wall Phasing remains unknown... recommend initiating the internal purge procedure."
Ye Mo's eyes snapped open, cold sweat beading at his temples.
He hadn't heard that. He had read it. Across thirty meters and through the van's metal body, he had actually caught fragments of thought.
"System, fine, play dead, but you pull this at a critical moment?" he said through gritted teeth. "So you have to wait until I'm nearly dead before you'll upgrade?"
There was no time to complain. The van had already turned onto an arterial road, heading toward the outskirts of Manhattan. A handoff like this couldn't take place just anywhere. There had to be a base behind it.
He gently laid Emma Frost flat in a corner of the space behind the convenience store's rear door, slipping the resonant metal shard beneath her. It could interfere with tracking signals and also serve as an alarm-the metal would heat up whenever someone approached.
"Sleep for a while. I'll treat you to hot pot when I get back." With that, he turned and left.
The van wasn't moving fast, deliberately avoiding surveillance cameras on the main roads. Ye Mo followed at a distance, not daring to get too close. He knew Obadiah wasn't an idiot. If he could deploy drones on patrol, he certainly had other methods.
Half an hour later, the van stopped outside a building bearing a "Nova Energy" sign. It was three stories tall, its exterior painted industrial gray. Two flagpoles stood by the entrance, yet not even a national flag hung from them. One glance told him something was off.
He circled around the back and discovered that the ventilation opening was rusted shut. He reached out and pulled at it, producing a shrill metallic scrape. He frowned-Regenerative Phasing hadn't fully recovered yet. If he forced his way through a wall, he might get stuck halfway inside.
He needed another way.
He took the vibranium fragment from his pocket-spoils he'd picked up the last time he faced Ulysses Klaue. It was extremely sensitive to mutant energy. He had tested it at a terminal before; it could briefly disrupt encrypted signals.
He pressed the fragment against the edge of the vent, mobilized the residual genetic frequency within his body, and injected a trace of energy into it.
Hum-
An extremely faint tremor sounded.
The camera inside the duct flickered, and its feed began playing on a loop.
It worked.
He seized the opportunity, making his right arm intangible and slowly passing it into the wall. His bones felt as though they were being crushed and reassembled, the pain nearly making him bite through his lip. But he didn't stop. He kept pushing until his fingertips touched the main control wiring connector.
He shoved the resonant metal shard into the wiring and immediately withdrew his hand.
The entire circuit briefly shorted out, blacking out the surveillance completely for three seconds. That was enough.
He vaulted into the basement level, into an archive room. The lighting was dim, and several electronic screens hung on the walls. One was receiving a data stream, its progress bar already at 97%.
He rushed over and pressed his palm against the screen.
The vibranium fragment rested against the casing. The instant it made contact, the screen flashed, and a decryption window popped up.
A scanned agreement appeared before him:
"Memorandum of cooperation concerning the joint seizure of control over Stark Industries and the elimination of suspected mutant entities"
Signatories: Obadiah Stane, senior leadership of the Hellfire Club.
Time: three o'clock yesterday afternoon.
An operational plan was attached. Its very first entry read: "Target: Ye Mo. Abilities unknown. Possesses wall-phasing and psychic interference characteristics. Classified as an S-rank threat. Priority elimination recommended."
Ye Mo sneered. "I thought all you could do was hold meetings and fight over seats. Turns out you've already started writing the script behind the scenes?"
He was about to take a screenshot when the screen abruptly turned red.
[Data incineration procedure initiated] Countdown: 10 seconds.
There was no time to use a phone. He immediately closed his eyes and imprinted the entire display in his mind as a psychic image. The agreement's contents, the locations of the signatures, the official seal number-he forced himself to memorize all of it.
Then he turned and ran.
The moment he burst out of the archive room, every light overhead came on. No alarm sounded, but footsteps approached from both ends of the corridor. Without looking back, he charged straight at the side wall and activated Regenerative Phasing.
His body was only halfway through when alarm bells suddenly blared in his mind.
Three hostile thoughts locked onto him.
Someone was using psychic powers to scan him in reverse!
He immediately cut off his outward perception, retaining only inward vigilance. After passing through the wall, he sprinted five hundred meters without stopping and ducked into an abandoned roadside phone booth.
After a few gasping breaths, he retrieved the backup phone hidden in the base of a streetlight-he had set up a contingency before transmigrating, just in case.
He inserted the vibranium fragment into the phone's port to use as an amplifier.
Then he closed his eyes and replayed the psychic image in his mind.
The image was clear, every detail intact.
The signatures were authentic, the official seal number could be checked, and the timestamp was correct.
"Now Tony should believe me," he said quietly.
The phone had only 20% battery left, and its signal was barely usable. He didn't connect to the internet. He simply transcribed the agreement from memory and saved it in an encrypted folder. He couldn't retain the original, but this record would be enough to get Tony to act.
He checked the time.
Seven twelve in the morning.
Stark Industries' morning meeting began at eight, and Obadiah would definitely attend. If he could get the evidence out before the meeting, he could disrupt his plan.
He stood and rolled his shoulders.
A dull, serrated pain came from his ribs. The side effects of Regenerative Phasing lingered. But he could still walk, still fight, and still screw people over.
Just as he was about to leave the phone booth, he abruptly stopped.
The metal shard in his pocket had trembled again.
Not heating up. Vibrating.
As though responding to some kind of signal.
He took it out and looked. An extremely fine line of markings had emerged on its surface, as though some sort of code had been activated.
He stared at it for two seconds, then suddenly understood-
This was a two-way positioning signal.
He wasn't the one tracking someone else.
Someone was following this fragment to track him down instead.