Coulson came calling

Ye Mo stood before the glass curtain wall, clutching the Vibranium fragment. The notification that had sounded in his mind had long since faded, as though it had never appeared. He did not move or smile, nor did he immediately open the system interface to check it as he had after his last upgrade. He knew this was no time for excitement.

The patterns on the fragment no longer glowed, and its temperature had dropped. Yet the instant he loosened his fingers slightly, he noticed something unusual-the signal fluctuated. It was neither a phone signal nor a system notification, but an electronic frequency hidden in the air, as though a pair of invisible eyes were scanning him from afar.

He quickly slipped the fragment into his hoodie pocket and turned toward the study. He kept his footsteps light, as though afraid of waking someone. The hallway was empty, and JARVIS had not spoken. The entire estate was almost too quiet. He pulled up the surveillance playback and switched to footage of the eastern treeline. At 6:43 that morning, a man in a suit had appeared outside the garden fence, carrying a briefcase. His gait was natural, but every step precisely avoided the cameras' primary fields of view.

The man paused for a few seconds and looked up at a window on the second floor, then turned and left. His tie clip flashed silver, shaped like a small shield.

Ye Mo enlarged the image and saved a screenshot. The system returned no match, but the man's appearance was too standardized-gleaming leather shoes, a strip of snowy white shirt showing at his cuffs, even the swing of his arms looked trained. Someone like that would not wander around, much less get lost.

He exited the surveillance system and leaned against the desk, thinking for a moment before turning back toward the bedroom.

The curtains were tightly closed, leaving the room rather dim. He closed his eyes and activated Thermal Vision. The walls, the floor, the ceiling... everything was normal. Then, as he scanned the space inside the curtain track on the right, he discovered a tiny heat source, smaller than a fingernail. Its temperature was constant, unlike an electrical fault.

It was a listening device.

He neither dismantled nor touched it. Instead, he took a hair-thin metal wire from his pocket-a scrap of wiring he had stripped from the Vibranium fragment last time. Using Regenerative Phasing, he slowly pushed the wire into the curtain track and attached it to the back of the listening device, then fed in a sequence of fabricated vital-sign data: steady breathing, a slow heartbeat, and slight movements of turning over.

Done.

Now, anyone outside would believe he was still sleeping in his room, that he had not gone out, checked the surveillance footage, or even noticed their presence.

At 11:17 that night, after Tony entered the laboratory, he quietly slipped into the private server terminal. Using Tony's cached login credentials, he bypassed three firewalls and accessed the access logs for "Anomalous Incident Reports." All external IP addresses from the past forty-eight hours had their origins marked. Most came from the media, police, or partner companies. Only one address passed through seven redirects, ultimately pointing to an encrypted node.

SHIELD-7.

He stared at the screen for three seconds, then shut it down and left.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had arrived. Not ordinary agents, but a team dedicated to anomalous incidents. And only someone at Coulson's level could access reports like these.

At seven the next morning, Ye Mo deliberately walked into the backyard wearing slippers. Sunlight spilled over his face. He narrowed his eyes and glanced toward the eastern woods, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. No one knew whom he was looking at, but he smiled all the same.

Back in the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of water, and casually said to Tony, who was drinking coffee, "Tell me, would anyone think that helping a friend root out a mole means you have to be invited in for tea?"

Tony looked up. "What, did you get into trouble?"

"I didn't." Ye Mo unscrewed the cap. "Someone just thinks I'm so capable that I ought to take the civil service exam."

Tony gave a soft snort. "Then remember to bring your résumé."

Ye Mo smiled, then turned and left.

Back in his room, he took a blank card from a drawer. Rather than write on it, he projected the message directly through Telepathy-targeting the exact spot where the man in last night's surveillance footage had stopped.

"If you want to talk, meet me at the back gate guard booth at nine tomorrow morning. Don't bring any equipment."

After sending the message, he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

He knew Coulson would see it. People like that were methodical, accustomed to observing, recording, and assessing. But now, he had turned the tables and taken control of the other party's pace. If you won't show yourself, I'll give you a meeting place; if you want to investigate me, then do it face-to-face.

He neither waited for a reply nor felt any urgency.

He was still here anyway. He had not left, fled, deleted any data, or blocked any signals. Like a magnet, he quietly waited for the other party to approach on their own.

An hour later, the listening device in the eastern woods stopped working. It had not been removed; its internal circuitry had burned out, seemingly struck by a reverse surge of high-frequency current. All that remained at the scene was a short length of melted wire, wound inside the curtain track, unnoticed.

Meanwhile, in a secure room somewhere in S.H.I.E.L.D., an agent stared at the signal source that had suddenly gone dead on his screen and reported with a frown, "Signal lost in the target area. Preliminary assessment is countermeasure interference."

The man sitting opposite him removed his headphones. He was nearly forty, his gaze steady, his fingertips tapping lightly against the desk.

"It's not interference," he said quietly. "It's a warning."

He rose and picked up the trench coat draped over the back of his chair.

"Prepare a request for an off-the-record trip. At eight tomorrow morning, I'm going to the perimeter of the Stark estate."

His subordinate hesitated. "Should we notify the director?"

"No need." The man buttoned his trench coat. "This time, I'm going to meet someone in a private capacity."

He walked out. The corridor lights fell on the silver tie clip at his chest, reflecting a cold gleam.

At that same moment, Ye Mo rolled over in bed, opened one eye, and glanced at the phone on his nightstand.

The screen was dark. No messages.

But he knew the other party was already on the way.

He closed his eyes again and reached beneath his pillow, touching the Vibranium fragment that had already cooled.

His fingertips gently brushed it once, then he tucked it away.

Before nine arrived, a fallen leaf slowly slid across the flagstone path outside the back gate guard booth.