The feedback flow from the third node was delayed by 0.8 seconds, like a fine needle pricking Ye Mo's nerve endings.
He didn't open his eyes, his fingers still resting on the Vibranium fragment, his palm able to feel the metal was slightly cool—not once, but three times. The first two occurred two minutes and three seconds after Thor activated the Bifrost, the third lasting only 0.3 seconds, almost negligible. But this time was different; this time the fluctuation occurred outside the signal blind zone.
"It's not natural interference," he thought to himself.
The system notification sounded immediately afterward: [Unknown danger detected approaching].
The voice was the same as usual, dry and emotionless, like a broadcast coming from an old radio. Ye Mo had gotten used to using it as an excuse, readily spouting the words "according to system analysis," but now he knew that he couldn't fool himself with that statement.
He opened his eyes; the countdown on the control panel screen was stopped at 24 minutes and 51 seconds.
The seven signal streams remained stable, and the city was so quiet it didn't seem like a battle had just ended. Reconstruction of New York City had begun, Tony's emergency system was on green, Emma Frost went to the rest area after finishing her training, and Thor returned to Asgard. No one called the police, no one called him.
But he just sat there, his back straight, even his breathing was soft.
He pulled up the node data from the past twelve hours, zoomed in on the timeline to its finest detail, and went through it frame by frame. He had bone conduction headphones in his ears, looping the raw waveforms of the seven feedback streams. The sound was deep, like the hum of an old air conditioner, but he sensed something was wrong—the 0.8-second delay at the third node had a slightly elevated frequency, like... someone gently knocking on the door.
"A probe," he whispered, "Not an attack, but a knock."
He said this to the system, and also to himself.
He turned off the global monitoring screen and instead entered the nineteenth level of the " Gene Spiral Tower " in his consciousness. A series of rotating ability fragment models appeared before his eyes: Wade's Healing Factor, Shadowcat's Wall Phasing module, Emma Frost's mental shielding layer... all of them floated quietly, like exhibits in a museum.
He began scanning the spectrum of all the energy fluctuations he had recently absorbed, examining them one by one. Suddenly, a strange residual heat energy caught his attention—the temperature peak exceeded four hundred degrees Celsius, lasting for an extremely short time, but it resonated weakly with Wade's Healing Factor. The way it resonated was strange; it wasn't restorative Regeneration, but rather... a forced burning and then reorganization.
"A high-temperature mutant?" He frowned.
A name popped into my mind: the "failed case of human enhancement project" that Tony mentioned. It was said that the military conducted a secret experiment to create super soldiers who were fearless of death. The subjects' body temperatures went out of control, their bodies spontaneously combusted, and the few who survived all went insane, attacking anyone they saw, shouting, "I felt perfection!"
He laughed it off when he heard it, thinking it was just a dark chapter in his urban legend.
But now, this memory has been dragged out and pieced together with that afterimage of abnormal heat energy; the more you look at it, the more it resembles the same thing.
"It's not Mutants, and it's not magic." He leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's a virus... a thing that reshapes life forms through extreme heat."
The word " Extremis Virus " popped into his mind.
It wasn't an official name, nor a term from a database; it was purely a code name he came up with himself. Just like how he used to call that villain who always pretended to be dead "Tin Can" or that alien who loved to tell lame jokes " The Fridge Face," he named things entirely based on gut feeling.
But as soon as the name was mentioned, he felt a tightness in the back of his neck.
He immediately cut off all external communication channels, including S.H.I.E.L.D.., Avengers internal communications, and even Tony Liu's private encrypted line. Then he opened the shared database and created a new to-do item in the latest readiness list, titled: "High-Temperature Biological Threat - Preliminary Modeling".
Set permissions to allow only the user to edit.
Next, he created a hidden window in the lower right corner of the main control panel and named it " High-Heat-Source Tracking Protocol ". The program automatically connects to global meteorological satellites, urban infrared monitoring networks, and underground facility temperature control systems. It is set to immediately trigger a red alarm once three or more abnormal high temperature points (temperature > 380℃, duration < 90 seconds, no open flame record) are detected.
He didn't say a word throughout the entire process, and his movements were slow; he even stopped midway to drink a sip of his now-cold coffee.
But he knew perfectly well that this was neither a drill nor a misjudgment. The 0.8-second delay, the reaction of the Vibranium fragment, and this strange thermal resonance—these three things combined could not be a coincidence.
The real trouble is just beginning to emerge.
He put his glasses back on and glanced at the tactical sand table. The heat map of the United States East Coast was loading, the colors were distributed normally, and there were no clusters of red spots. But he knew that this kind of thing wouldn't be deployed all at once; it would definitely test the waters in remote areas first, and then expand outwards once things stabilized.
Just like Hydra back then, they initially just placed a job advertisement in the corner of the newspaper.
He touched the Vibranium fragment in his pocket; its temperature had returned to normal. But the icy sensation from just a moment ago still lingered on his fingertips.
"System," he asked in his mind, "Did that signal leave a path?"
[No valid intrusion trajectory detected]
"Is it possible that it's cross-dimensional infiltration? Something like Loki's mental projection?"
[Energy characteristics do not match; this hypothesis is recommended to be ruled out.]
Ye Mo narrowed his eyes. The system rarely denied anything so decisively; it usually gave ambiguous statements like "low probability" or "needs further verification." This time, it directly said "excluded," indicating that the other party was not using a magic route at all.
What is that?
Biohazard? Technology? Or some new gameplay he'd never seen before?
He didn't want to guess anymore.
Emma tapped a few keys on the keyboard, encrypting and packaging the words " Extremis Virus " into an offline folder accessible only to Emma Frost. The accompanying note was a single sentence. "Don't let anyone near the high-temperature laboratory."
He knew she would understand.
Although she is now sleeping in the rest area, although she asked him yesterday if he had become less human, and although there has been a vague and unspoken tension between them lately.
But he believed her.
He also trusted Tony and Thor.
But some things can't be done until everyone is there.
Some people say "you're in charge," but secretly they've already prepared ten contingency plans. He's the same. He keeps a backup plan, not because he doesn't believe in it, but because he's afraid that if something really goes wrong, no one will be there to take his place.
He stood up and stretched his wrists and neck. His back was a little sore from sitting for too long. The sky outside the window was gray, and the morning light was trapped under the clouds, unable to shine in.
The control room was quiet, with only the soft hum of the equipment cooling fans.
He walked to the tactical sand table, swiped his finger across the screen, and brought up the location markers of all abandoned military industrial bases in the United States. These kinds of places are most likely to be used for secret experiments because they are well-ventilated, highly isolated, and have little surveillance.
He designated seven key areas, all located near underground water sources or abandoned power grids, to facilitate concealed power supply.
These seven points are then included in the priority scanning scope of the " High-Heat-Source Tracking Protocol ".
After doing all that, he glanced back at the control panel.
The seven signal streams remained stable, and the countdown reached 22 minutes and 17 seconds.
No one called the police, and no one noticed.
The city is still breathing, people are going to work, children are going to school, and bakeries are opening their doors to bake the first batch of toast.
Everything seemed peaceful.
But he knew the wind had already reached the doorway.
No one has heard the leaves rustle yet.