The alarm still echoed in their ears, and the message had yet to disappear from the screen.
Ye Mo's finger hovered over the confirmation key, but he still had not pressed it. Emma Frost's eyes were open, her breathing a little steadier than before, though her face remained somewhat pale. She had just finished an intense session of psychic training, and her consciousness had not fully recovered.
"Something's wrong with this signal," Ye Mo said. "It didn't come through the regular link."
He pulled up the system logs and reviewed them line by line. A low-frequency pulse was mixed into the data stream, on a band that seemed more suited to an old military radio. That frequency had long since been phased out; civilian networks would never connect to it.
"It's a backdoor Tony left," he said. "An emergency channel. Receive-only, activated only under extreme circumstances."
Emma Frost frowned. "How do you know?"
"I took apart his armor's circuit boards before." Ye Mo quirked his lips. "That guy always likes leaving himself a way out. He even planted triggers in obsolete frequency bands."
He reached toward an inconspicuous little port on the side of the main console and pulled out a rust-covered antenna module. It looked like a part from an antique radio, but it was actually a backup receiver Tony had used for a secret project in his early years.
"If this were fake intel, there'd be no need to use such an obscure channel." Ye Mo plugged the module back in. "Only a specific encrypted waveform can wake it up."
Emma Frost slowly sat up straight. "You mean... this message might be real?"
"Eighty percent chance." He tapped a few keys, marking the signal source as highly credible. "But coordinates alone are useless. We still need to figure out who's driving this."
He turned to Emma Frost. "Can you read the emotional residue in the data stream? Keep it light. Don't go deep."
Emma Frost shook her head. "I'm not stable enough right now. Forcing a probe could easily cause a backlash."
"Don't force it." Ye Mo activated Thermal Vision and scanned the console's internal wiring. "Let's make sure the equipment is safe first."
Red light swept across the circuit boards. There were no areas of abnormal heat and no hidden signal transmitters. He withdrew his ability, picked up a pen, and drew a simple flowchart on paper.
"You only need to anchor your consciousness in that little house," he said. "Then let your perception drift along the data stream for a bit. The moment you touch any emotional traces, pull back."
Emma Frost stared at him for two seconds. "You still remember the room I told you about?"
"A fire burning in the fireplace, a book of poetry on the table." Ye Mo shrugged. "You said it was the only place where you felt safe. I might forget other things, but I remember words like that clearly."
She said nothing, gently closing her eyes and resting her fingers on the neural interface port. The connection light glowed a faint blue, as though afraid of disturbing something.
Ye Mo watched her face. A few seconds later, her brows stirred slightly.
"There's something." Her voice was very low. "Very faint, but... I can feel malice."
"What kind?"
"Not just ordinary hostility." Emma Frost took a breath. "More like a desire for control, with an oppressive sense of command. Like... someone watching you from far away, waiting for you to make a mistake."
Ye Mo's gaze darkened.
He knew that feeling all too well. The last time, it had come from people in the Hellfire Club.
"Is it connected to them?" he asked.
Emma Frost opened her eyes. "Not entirely. The method is similar, but the energy pattern is cruder. Like an imitator who only learned half of it."
"Someone's using their technology." Ye Mo quickly entered several lines of commands, setting "Congo rainforest + surge in Hydra activity" as a priority-one monitoring item. "And if they dare mobilize personnel on this scale, they have sufficient resources backing them."
He activated a long-term tracking protocol to automatically collect satellite images of the surrounding area, fluctuations in communication bands, and ground vibration data. A countdown window popped up on the screen: [Next data refresh: 47 minutes, 32 seconds]
"Contingency plan codenamed 'Red Line,' phase one initiated." He pressed the record button. "Trace information sources, allocate resources, personnel on standby."
After finishing the recording, he stuck a sticky note beside it and wrote: [Congo · Red Mist].
Emma Frost disconnected the cable, her fingers still trembling slightly. She said nothing, simply returning the interface to its original position before settling back into her seat.
"Still holding up?" Ye Mo asked.
"Yes," she said. "I can do a deep probe next round, as long as you give me ten minutes to prepare beforehand."
"No rush." He shook his head. "The trickiest issue right now is the source of the intel. An anonymous sender isn't scary. What's scary is that they know we're here."
The base's location was top secret. Even S.H.I.E.L.D. had no record of it. To deliver a message to this exact terminal meant either an internal leak or someone possessing some kind of tracking method.
Ye Mo took out the Vibranium fragment and laid it in his palm. The metal was slightly hot, not because of mutant energy, but because a high-frequency pulse had swept over it while the signal was being received.
"This thing's been reacting too often lately," he said. "First that time at Tony's estate, then Obadiah, and now another round."
Emma Frost looked at him. "You suspect the system's been exposed?"
"The system itself doesn't manifest visibly or produce light effects." Ye Mo put the fragment back in his pocket. "But anyone who's come into contact with it leaves traces. Every time it absorbs an ability, it produces a tiny genetic resonance wave."
"You mean... we're glowing?"
"More or less." He smiled. "To certain people who know their stuff, we're like fireflies in the dark."
Emma Frost fell silent for a moment. "Then what do we do next? We can't keep hiding forever."
"Of course not." Ye Mo stood, walked to the other side of the main console, and opened an encrypted folder. "Since they've taken the initiative to send us a message, that means they need us to act."
He brought up a map with the Congo rainforest region already circled. The original Hydra base's location had been crossed out. The new coordinates were seventeen kilometers away, right on the boundary between an abandoned mining area and virgin jungle.
"The direction of the shift was deliberate," he said. "To the north is a United Nations monitoring station. To the south, it's close to Wakanda's border. Choosing this spot means they're either provoking someone or luring people in."
Emma Frost leaned closer to look. "You think it's a trap?"
"One hundred percent." Ye Mo enlarged the satellite image. "But there are real and false traps, too. Some people set traps to kill you. Others want you to see something."
He pointed at a blurry shadow on the edge of the image. "See that? There are tire tracks there, but the vegetation is recovering slowly. That means heavy vehicles come and go frequently, yet no one's deliberately covering the tracks."
"Leaving an opening on purpose?"
"Right." He nodded. "They're waiting for an audience."
Something suddenly occurred to Emma Frost. "If we're the targets, why not attack directly instead of notifying us this way?"
"Because they aren't sure whether we're really dead." Ye Mo leaned back in his chair. "The news all says Ye Mo was blown to ashes, but what if Mr. X is still alive? So they toss out some bait first and see whether there's a response."
"Then how do you plan to respond?"
"I'm not playing along." He straightened. "I'm going to let them know that not only are we alive, we can see everything clearly."
He entered a string of code and activated the decoy signal generator. The equipment began simulating fluctuations in several kinds of mutant energy, including the frequency of Wade's Healing Factor and Shadowcat's Molecular Phasing band.
"Put out some noise," he said. "Keep their listening systems busy."
Emma Frost watched false signals stream out across the screen and suddenly asked, "Will you go to Congo?"
"Not right now," he said. "But I need people to think I will."
He brought up the remote drone control interface and set an automatic flight route-starting on the outskirts of New York and heading straight for central Africa.
"A feint needs the full treatment." He checked the encrypted transmission option. "Once they've locked onto this aircraft, we'll have time to investigate the real vulnerability."
Emma Frost said nothing more. She put the interface back on, closed her eyes, and began regulating her breathing.
Ye Mo glanced at her. "What are you doing?"
"Preparing for the next probe," she said. "If you're going big, I can't drop the ball."
He smiled and did not stop her. He knew that once Emma Frost made a decision, trying to dissuade her was useless.
He turned back and continued staring at the screen. As the data refresh countdown entered its final minute, he suddenly felt the Vibranium fragment heat up again.
Not from his palm-but from inside his pocket.
He took it out and saw an extremely fine red line appear on its surface, as though something had brushed across it.
Before he could react, a new alert suddenly popped up on the console:
[Unknown signal reflection source detected. Location: third basement level, sector B-9 electrical shaft]