The countdown on the control panel stopped at 21 minutes and 43 seconds, and Ye Mo's fingers were still resting on the Vibranium fragment. The metal had just gotten hot, as if someone had heated it through a furnace.
He didn't move or speak, but simply tightened the bone conduction headphones in his ears. The seven signal streams remained stable, and the city was as quiet as three minutes before waking up. But the heat he felt just now was too real; it wasn't a system false alarm, nor was it environmental interference—it was the first time the " High-Heat-Source Tracking Protocol " had been actively triggered.
An encrypted pop-up window appeared on the screen: [Three instantaneous high-temperature points have been detected, and their coordinates have been locked: 33.7490° North latitude, 84.3880° West longitude, with the location identified as "Former site of the Atlanta Seventh Military-Industrial Complex"].
Ye Mo blinked. This place had long been abandoned; they hadn't even bothered to update the satellite images. The weeds grew taller than the walls, so theoretically no one would go there. But just two hours ago, after Tony's assistant Pepper made her last public appearance, her convoy departed from the New York headquarters, originally scheduled to go to Stark's R&D center in New Jersey. However, the monitoring was interrupted three times along the way, and the last time the location was pinpointed, it was only five kilometers away from this abandoned factory.
Coincidence? He didn't believe it.
What made him frown even more was the system notification that immediately followed: [Residual unnatural mental suppression field detected, intensity level: B+, source type: targeted consciousness shielding technology.]
"He wasn't lost," he said softly, "He was grabbed by the back of his neck and dragged away by a belt."
With a swipe of his finger, he brought up the real-time playback of the infrared monitoring network. In the footage, a black van suddenly turned onto a side road under maintenance at a suburban intersection, and the camera went black for four seconds. When it came back on, the car was gone. But the thermal imaging captured an abnormal trajectory—a human-shaped heat source was carried into the factory area, with a body temperature as high as 392 degrees Celsius and still rising.
" The Extremis Virus... it's really been introduced into humans?" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "These people really dare to try."
Without hesitation, he immediately shut down all external broadcasting frequencies, not even reactivating the emergency contact line Tony had left. Reporting now would only alert them, and given Tony's personality, he might just drive his armored vehicle straight in, turning a rescue into a hostage situation, which would truly become a massive social disaster.
He grabbed his coat and pulled it on, casually pushing his silver half-rimmed glasses up his nose. As he left, he nodded to the technician on night watch. "I'm going to the East Coast. The base is in your hands now. Don't let anyone touch the control panel."
Just as the man was about to ask where they were going, Ye Mo had already turned into the elevator. In the last second before the doors closed, he heard the system dryly add a sentence in his mind: [High-intensity biological thermal energy is being released in the target area. It is recommended to activate the individual protection protocol.]
"I know, stop chanting," he muttered, "But you're not even offering me an umbrella."
Twenty minutes later, a modified private helicopter landed in a cornfield three kilometers away from the abandoned factory. When Ye Mo jumped down, the wind was strong, making the hoodie slap against his shoulders. He crouched down, took out a pair of tactical goggles from his backpack, put them on, and switched to thermal mode. In the distance, among the rusty factory buildings, three red dots were moving slowly, all with temperatures exceeding 380 degrees Celsius. One of them was steadily stationary in the central control room.
"Are the patrolling people living or modified beings?" He squinted for a while, unable to determine their breathing rate, only noticing their stiff movements and precise turning angles that were unlike those of a human.
He went around to the west side of the factory area, where there was a section of the wall that had collapsed halfway. The ground was covered with pressure sensors, and the green lights were flashing enthusiastically, indicating that the other party was very confident and thought that no one would dare to come.
Ye Mo smiled, pressed himself against the wall, held his breath, and slid his body slowly into the gap. His basic agility kept him from triggering any landmines, but he only dared to tentatively activate five percent of the Wall Phasing module—last time he overused it and almost got stuck in a cement pillar, feeling like someone was stuffing a mixer into a crack between bricks.
He rolled into the inner courtyard, then tumbled into the drainage ditch, dodging the searchlight sweeping overhead. Fifty meters ahead was the main factory building, its iron gate ajar, a dark red light emanating from within.
He crouched low as he approached, stopping ten meters outside the control room. Through the glass window, he saw a man in a white lab coat standing with his back to him in front of the lab bench, holding a syringe in his hand, the syringe glowing orange-red. Data streams scrolled across the background screen, with the top line clearly visible: [Subject P-01: Phase One Initiated].
Ye Mo's pupils contracted.
P-01, the first letter of Pepper's name.
Just as he was about to get up, the man suddenly spoke, his voice not loud, but steady. "I know you've come, Mr. X."
Ye Mo paused.
The man turned around, removed his gloves, revealing a refined face with fine lines around his eyes, but his gaze was frighteningly bright. "Aldrich Killian," he introduced himself, his tone like someone speaking at an academic conference, " Stark Industries, once a runaway, is now... the doorknocker of the future."
Ye Mo didn't move, nor did he take off his glasses. "So you deliberately made me chase after you?"
"It wasn't intentional," Killian shook his head. "It was expectation. You people hiding in the shadows always think you're in control. But you forget that true change is never hidden, it's revealed."
He raised the syringe, the liquid gleaming like molten iron under the light. "This isn't kidnapping, it's evolution. Pepper Potts will be the first light of a new era. And you— Tony, you, all of you who rely on armor and superpowers—will learn humility in this fire."
Ye Mo stared at the syringe in his hand when the system suddenly prompted in his mind: [High-intensity biological thermal energy release detected, source: human individual, threat level upgraded to orange.]
"The price you're talking about, is it burning her to death?" he asked.
"It means allowing her to transcend death," Killian said calmly. "This virus will cause the body to cycle between destruction and rebirth, each time stronger and purer. She won't die; she will become an indestructible being."
"Sounds like a mass-produced madman," Ye Mo sneered. "The last time I saw a guy with this kind of temperature out of control, he ended up burning himself into a charcoal-grilled pizza."
Killian laughed, a soft, cold laugh. "You think you're stopping a disaster? No, you're blocking humanity's leap forward. This virus will make you pay."
The air suddenly felt heavy.
Ye Mo didn't move or refute. He knew that reasoning with him was useless at this point; the other person was already trapped in their own narrative logic, and he couldn't persuade or wake them up unless they fell down on their own.
He quietly reached into his pocket and touched a piece of Vibranium that had cooled down. It had burned again when he got close, but now it was quiet, as if it had been marked.
"Why don't you attack me?" he asked.
"Because I have other things to do." Killian put down the syringe and straightened his cuffs. "And I don't need to kill you now. You'll walk in yourself when she starts to burn."
After saying that, he pressed his wristwatch, and the sound of mechanical locking came from deep inside the factory. A few seconds later, all the lights went out, leaving only the green sign for the emergency exit still lit. By the time Ye Mo rushed to the window, the room was empty, except for the unused syringe on the lab table, with a drop of orange-red liquid still clinging to the needle tip.
He didn't chase after them.
It's pointless to chase them down. Their retreats are all pre-planned; they might have planted self-ignition traps along the way, or even used Pepper as a human bomb. Rushing in now would be falling right into their trap.
He retreated into the shadows, opened the encrypted channel, and typed a message: [ Pepper is missing, suspected to have been taken away by Killian. Location confirmed, virus experiment initiated. No firefight yet, I have control of the situation.]
After sending the data, he squatted at the control room door, pried open the terminal casing with his personal tools, and inserted the data extractor. The screen lit up, and the remaining logs were being automatically deleted, but he managed to get three seconds of backup: a set of thermal peak curves, syringe numbers, and the complete spelling of "Project Extremis".
He casually snapped a photo of the syringe, then rummaged through a nearby trash can and pulled out a torn sleeve from a light gray women's jacket with the letters PB embroidered on the cuff. He put it in an evidence bag and kept it close to his body.
After finishing, he stood up and stretched his wrists. The wind outside had picked up, making the tin roof rattle. He looked up at the sky; the clouds hung low, as if a storm was imminent.
The system notification sounded again: [The thermal fluctuations have not subsided; the threat level remains orange.]
He didn't reply, but leaned against the wall, staring at the dark control room door.
Tony hasn't replied yet; he's probably still dealing with post-war matters. No problem, there'll be something to see when he gets here.
He touched the Vibranium fragment in his pocket; its temperature was normal. But the burning sensation from just a moment ago still lingered on his fingertips.
It's like someone lit a fire on his nerves, not in a hurry to burn him to death, but waiting for him to reach out and touch it.