Sharing information

When Ye Mo walked into the conference room, Tony was scrolling through a tablet with his legs crossed, a coffee cup tilted beside him and an "I saw through everything ages ago" smile on his lips. Coulson sat across from him, his suit immaculate, his tie clip gleaming coldly, exactly as he had looked at their last meeting.

No one spoke.

Ye Mo did not sit down. He walked straight to the projection screen and took out his phone to connect to JARVIS. With two light swipes of his fingertips, a seven-second audio clip began to play-crackling and humming continuously, like resonating metal, or some kind of signal trying to penetrate a barrier.

"This is an encrypted pulse the manor's network received three hours ago," Ye Mo said. "Its frequency matched the timing of the vibranium fragment's glow exactly."

Tony put down his tablet. "So? You're saying someone used a piece of scrap metal to call you remotely?"

"They weren't calling me." Ye Mo opened a waveform graph. "They were trying to activate it. The first time, I interrupted it with a resonance countermeasure. The second time, they made indirect contact through the equipment Coulson brought. The things you S.H.I.E.L.D. people carry around are a little sensitive."

Coulson's brow did not move, but his gaze darkened slightly.

"I'm not shifting the blame." Ye Mo put away his phone. "I'm just stating a fact: this is no longer aimed solely at me. They're testing ways to establish a connection. The target could be anything carrying mutant energy-including samples you've studied, or..." He paused. "The Iron Man Armor's core reactor."

Tony abruptly sat upright.

"Wait." He raised a hand. "What proof do you have that this thing can actually affect my armor?"

"The fact that Obadiah bypassed level-three clearance last week to access the Mark II's power module schematics." Ye Mo brought up a fund flow chart. "The money came out of a shell company in Luxembourg and eventually flowed into the Hellfire Club's underground accounts. And the verification key for this transaction was generated by simulating mutant brain waves."

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

"How did you get this?" Coulson asked.

"I extracted it from a mind controller seized when Emma Frost was being hunted," Ye Mo said evenly. "That thing could induce hallucinations and record emotional fluctuations. I hacked its cloud backup while I was at it."

Tony whistled. "You didn't awaken an ability. You just switched on a hacking cheat, didn't you?"

"The system notification said information is the new weapon." Ye Mo shrugged. "I'm just listening to the system."

Coulson stared at him for two seconds. "You've been collecting all this?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Ye Mo countered. "Wait for you to show up at my door one day, say I'm suspected of illegally possessing superpowers, and throw me straight into an underground laboratory?"

The atmosphere abruptly turned cold.

Tony stood and walked to the window. Outside, dark clouds filled the sky, and the wind sent the trees' shadows swaying wildly.

"Listen," he said with his back to them. "I know S.H.I.E.L.D. has a 'protective oversight' program. On the surface, it's supposed to stop mutants from losing control. In reality, it's surveillance, registration, and recordkeeping. The military used to treat me the same way. They said the weapons I developed were too dangerous and that I had to hand over control."

He turned to look at Coulson. "Now you want to do the same thing to Ye Mo?"

"Our duty is to assess risks," Coulson said steadily. "Not suppress individuals."

"But what are your criteria?" Ye Mo interjected. "Will I automatically be classified as a threat just because I don't obey? Should I walk through a wall right here so you can decide whether to initiate an elimination protocol immediately?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you were thinking it." Ye Mo looked him straight in the eye. "Just now, your right thumb brushed your knee three times-that's a little gesture people make when they're concealing their true intentions. The system told me those kinds of microexpressions don't lie."

Coulson did not deny it.

Tony walked back and plopped into his chair. "All right, since everyone's putting their cards on the table. Ye Mo, what do you want? Don't give me empty talk like 'peaceful coexistence.'"

Ye Mo took off his glasses and gently tapped one temple.

"I want a rule," he said. "I can share intelligence. I can sense any mutant energy fluctuations anywhere in the world. The moment a red dot lights up, I know where someone has awakened. You want to assess threats? I'll provide the data. But on one condition-you must notify me before taking any action. I won't sign anything, give my fingerprints, or go into your database."

"You want to be an independent node?" Tony raised an eyebrow.

"I want to stay alive." Ye Mo put his glasses back on. "I don't want to wake up one day and discover my ability has been labeled 'high risk,' then have a bunch of agents break down my door in the middle of the night."

Coulson was silent for a moment. "If the intelligence you provide is accurate, S.H.I.E.L.D. can consider establishing an informal cooperation channel."

"Informal?" Ye Mo laughed. "Meaning you'll deny everything if something goes wrong?"

"Meaning we can overlook certain procedural issues." Coulson looked at him. "As long as your intelligence remains useful."

"Then I have one more condition." Ye Mo opened his tablet and brought up an encrypted map. More than a dozen red dots blinked across the globe, concentrated in Eastern Europe, South Africa, and Southeast Asia.

"These are signal sources from mutants who awakened in the past two weeks. One is at an abandoned base in Kazakhstan, with an energy signature highly similar to the power of death Hela released. Another is in the Congo rainforest, with a fluctuation pattern close to the Phoenix Force."

Tony leaned in for a look. "You're sure these aren't false positives?"

"The system doesn't misjudge." Ye Mo closed the tablet. "But I need to confirm whether organizations have already contacted them. The Hellfire Club won't pass up a single newcomer."

Coulson's expression finally changed.

"You're saying they're already recruiting?"

"Not just recruiting." Ye Mo stared at him. "Screening. They don't want ordinary people. They only choose high-potential targets. That's how Emma Frost was taken away-six years old, her Telepathy only just emerging, and she was forcibly trained into a mind-reading tool."

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

Tony broke the silence. "So now you want to build your own intelligence network?"

"I just don't want to sit around taking hits." Ye Mo leaned back in his chair. "You have S.H.I.E.L.D.'s technology. I have my sensing ability. Rather than guarding against each other, we should first figure out who our common enemy is."

"Like whoever's controlling the vibranium fragment?" Tony asked.

"Like whoever gave Obadiah the nerve to collude openly with the Hellfire Club," Ye Mo added.

Coulson nodded slowly. "I'll request a priority review of those two leads."

"Don't just review them." Ye Mo looked him straight in the eye. "I want to participate in the follow-up analysis. No matter how classified the results are, I need to see a summary."

"That goes beyond standard clearance."

"Then don't do it by the book." Ye Mo stood up. "I can keep hiding things, or I can package all the data and post it on the dark web tomorrow. The choice is yours."

Tony chuckled quietly. "I like this guy. Thick-skinned, quick-thinking, and he knows how to negotiate."

Coulson stood. "Cooperation requires mutual trust."

"Mutual trust?" The corners of Ye Mo's mouth rose slightly. "Right now, I don't even know whether you can keep your promises. But I'm willing to try-after all, the system notification said that when three forces converge, the most fragile thing isn't secrets, but silence."

Coulson glanced at him, said nothing, and turned to leave.

The moment the door closed, Tony turned to Ye Mo. "That 'system notification' line just now-did you secretly use Telepathy again?"

Ye Mo did not answer. He merely tapped the frame of his glasses lightly.

Tony shook his head. "You really are something."

Ye Mo smiled and looked down at his tablet. A new message had just arrived from an unknown number:

[The Congo signal source has moved.]

He raised his head and looked out the window.

A gap split the dark clouds, and sunlight slashed down at an angle, striking the glass and refracting into a dazzling ray.