The emergency red light was still scanning, flashing across the cracks in the wall like an old-fashioned projector stuck in time. Ye Mo stood by the window, his hand still pressed against the glass, his fingertips covered in mortar and a few metal shavings. His work pants had a ripped knee, but he didn't move. The street outside was quiet, and car headlights occasionally streaked across the ground, illuminating half of his face in light and the other half in shadow.
Tony sat at the control panel, half of his armor shell removed, his left arm wrapped in bandages, his glasses slipped down to the tip of his nose, and a stylus in his hand tapping on an offline tablet. The screen light cast a narrow shadow under his brow bone. He didn't speak, but his jaw was taut, and the stylus tip tapped the threshold parameters rhythmically, as if he were arguing with someone.
Emma Frost stood in the middle with her eyes closed, a pencil in her left hand suspended above the sketchbook, her eyelashes trembling slightly, and the veins on her temples faintly visible. She had a small silver device in her ear, an ear bone conduction device, connected to the signal Circuit of the first resonator prototype. Seven undulating lines had been drawn on the paper, representing the emotional baselines of seven monitoring points.
No one spoke, and no one moved. The only sounds in the air were the low hum of the computer fan and the faint scratching of a pen tip against the paper.
Three seconds later, Emma Frost opened her eyes, her pencil falling to the ground as she circled one of the curves. "South Fifth Avenue, three o'clock position, three targets just passed through the Starbucks back alley."
Tony immediately adjusted the feed, swiping his finger across the tablet to pull up a locally stored surveillance video playback. The street corner camera captured three people, dressed casually, walking with identical strides, the reflective coating on their cuffs flashing briefly. "The synchronization is too high; it's not a coincidence," he whispered. "They're not here for coffee."
"They're scouting ahead," Ye Mo replied, finally releasing his grip on the glass and turning to walk towards the toolbox in the corner. "I'm going out for a bit."
"Your ribs still hurt," Tony said without looking up.
"I know," Ye Mo, squatting down to rummage through the box, "But we can't let them walk around our front yard like it's a pedestrian street before saying hello, can we?"
"It'll be too conspicuous for you to go alone," Emma Frost said. "And if they really are listening in, going out now would be telling them—we've been caught."
"That's why I'm not going through the main entrance." Ye Mo pulled a palm-sized black device from the bottom of the box. Its surface was engraved with heat dissipation patterns, like a thickened manhole cover nameplate. "This is the resonator prototype Tony gave me. I said I'd set up physical locations for it."
Tony looked up. "Are you sure you can avoid them? Those three guys were swift and clean; they've clearly been trained in counter-surveillance."
"I don't need to hide." Ye Mo stood up and stuffed the device into his coat pocket. "I'll just walk right under their noses, but they won't see me."
After he finished speaking, he walked to the wall, reached out and pried open a loose tile, revealing the fiber optic connector buried behind it. He placed his fingertips on it, closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opened them again, his eyes had changed slightly—not because his ability had been activated, but because the system was silently providing feedback in the background.
"Found it." He whispered, "The residual energy on this line is off; it's like it's been scanned twice at high frequency. They used short-pulse detection, not conventional listening."
"That means they're looking for a signal source," Tony quickly noted. "Then we absolutely cannot expose our location using electromagnetic equipment."
"So I'll use physical embedding." Ye Mo pulled off his backpack, stuffed in a miniature drill and two spare batteries, and said, "Find a crack in the wall, insert the resonator, and let it oscillate against the urban background field to passively receive abnormal frequencies. As long as they get any closer, Emma Frost will be able to receive the pulse signal."
"Where do you plan to bury him?" Emma Frost asked.
"The alley behind Starbucks, the last place they disappeared." Ye Mo zipped up his backpack. "There are hidden walls there, maintenance access left from the renovation of old buildings, blind spots in the surveillance system, and it's close enough to the main road that the energy field is stable."
Tony stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly reached under the table, pulled a folded blueprint, and threw it at him. "East exterior wall structural diagram. Red marks are gaps between load-bearing columns, and blue marks are pipe passages. Don't fucking try to drill your own holes; if it collapses, it's your fault."
Ye Mo took the unfolded document, glanced at it, and smiled, "Thanks, boss."
"I'm not your boss," Tony said coldly. "You're a temporary worker; you haven't signed a contract yet."
"How about we settle the wages? At least reimburse the cost of the worn-out shoe soles." Ye Mo folded the blueprints and stuffed them into his pocket, then casually grabbed the tactical gloves hanging on the wall and put them on.
Emma Frost didn't stop her anymore. She simply put down her pencil, picked up the bone conduction device, and checked the interface. "I'll lock onto the emotional flow in that area. Once a 'silent state' occurs—that is, when the group suddenly stops communicating and their behavior becomes uniform—a level three response will be triggered immediately."
"Understood." Ye Mo walked to the door and placed his hand on the doorknob. "Wait for me to come back for a late-night snack. Remember to save me a slice of pizza."
"If you don't reply in ten minutes, I'll assume you've been turned into a pizza." Tony continued adjusting the parameters, head down. "Now get lost."
The door opened and closed, the footsteps faded away, and the laboratory fell silent again.
Tony stared at the screen, his fingers clicking non-stop, but his mouth didn't stop either. "Do you really think he can handle it?"
"He's more reliable than he seems." Emma Frost closed her eyes, reconnecting to her emotional network. "And he knows his limits—he won't try to be a hero, nor will he back down."
"But he was clearly in a lot of pain," Tony muttered. "His right hand trembled when he pressed the glass."
"That's why he stood there for so long," Emma Frost whispered, "To calm himself down before he dared to move."
Tony didn't say anything more. He simply recalibrated the receiver array of resonator #01, confirmed that the local closed loop was correct, and then clicked save.
On the other side, Ye Mo had already passed through the abandoned corridor, climbed out of the underground pipes, and appeared in the back alley of the block. He walked close to the wall, bypassed a pile of trash cans, and his gaze swept over the mezzanine wall behind the Starbucks. The brickwork was old, the cement was peeling, and there were indeed signs of repair.
He crouched down, opened his backpack, took out a miniature drill bit, adjusted it to the lowest noise level, and gently pressed it against the junction of the brickwork. The drill bit slowly cut in, dust falling in a flurry. As he operated, he kept an eye on his surroundings—no footsteps, no sense of being watched, but the back of his neck felt a little numb, as if something invisible had swept over it.
"It's not an illusion," he thought to himself. "They're watching."
After drilling was complete, he took out the resonator and carefully pushed it into the gap until he heard a slight "click," indicating that it had clicked into the preset slot. He put away his tools, took two steps back, and looked up at the monitoring camera above him—the angle was fifteen degrees off, just out of reach of this corner.
"It's done," he whispered.
At that very moment, I heard three short and one long pulse vibrations in my ears.
He knew that it was a confirmation signal from Emma Frost: the first ring had been set up.
He didn't rush back. Instead, he stood against the wall for a few seconds, his breathing steady, his gaze sweeping across the street. A bus drove by, the streetlights flickered, a deliveryman turned a corner on his bicycle—everything seemed normal.
But Ye Mo knew that some things were different now.
They planted the first nail.
The other party probably noticed it too.
He turned around and headed back the way he came, his steps neither fast nor slow, like an ordinary person who had just finished working overtime and was going home.
In the lab, Tony looked at the "Resonator #01 activated" message that popped up on the screen, and finally stopped typing.
"He got it sorted out," he said.
Emma Frost opened her eyes, her pencil falling to the ground as she added the eighth curve to the paper, "Signal stable, background field normal. But they won't get any closer easily again."
"Because they know we're waiting." Tony took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. "So next time, it won't be scouting, it will be testing the waters."
"Then let the test come." Emma Frost closed her sketchbook, straightened up, and said, "We are not who we were yesterday."
Tony glanced at her, then looked out the window.
Ye Mo's figure appeared at the street corner, walking towards the building.
When he pushed the door open, he brought with him a touch of the cool night breeze, and casually tossed his backpack on the floor.
"The work is done," he said. "The nails are in place; now we just have to see if the fish bite."
"You weren't discovered?" Tony asked.
"I don't know." Ye Mo walked to the water bucket, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip of water. "But I left a fake signal source in the trash can next door; they'll think it's a jammer."
"You're quite the actor," Tony scoffed.
"Life forces me to do this." Ye Mo wiped his mouth. "After all, I'm not Iron Man; I don't have that many suits of armor to change into."
"You're not an ordinary person either," Emma Frost said, looking at him. "When you were setting up the points, your heart rate was consistently at 68 beats per minute, and even your breathing didn't change. It's not normal for you to remain calm under such high tension."
"That's what the system taught me," Ye Mo shrugged. "It said—don't panic, or you'll lose."
"It's the system again." Tony rolled his eyes. "Next time, have it generate a battle plan directly, so we don't have to hold a meeting."
"If it could talk, I would have sent it to a debate competition long ago." Ye Mo walked to the control panel and looked down at Emma Frost's newly drawn emotion diagram. "These three lines... are they the area from before?"
"Yes." Emma Frost pointed to one of them, "This is the fluctuation after they left. It should have naturally subsided, but now there's a plateau—the emotions are suppressed, not spontaneously calmed."
"Human intervention," Tony interjected. "They're cleaning up the traces and adjusting their strategy."
"That means we've hit a nerve," Ye Mo said with a slight smile. "They're scared."
"Fear is what makes things interesting." Tony put his glasses back on and swiped his fingers across the tablet. "Next, we'll wait for them to make their move. We'll remain calm and continue to reinforce our defenses."
"I'll be in charge of the remaining six nodes," Ye Mo said. "We'll begin deploying them in batches starting tomorrow morning."
"I will update the emotion model," Emma Frost nodded. "Refresh the baseline every twelve hours to prevent them from faking it."
"I'll switch all resonators to independent power supply mode to avoid cascading failures," Tony typed the last line of code. "Also, I've disconnected all external data ports, and JARVIS is in deep sleep unless manually woken up."
The three exchanged a glance, and none of them said anything more.
Everything that needed to be done has been done.
All that's left is to wait.
Ye Mo walked to the window and placed his hand on the glass again. The street outside remained calm, with car lights flowing by like a silent river.
He suddenly remembered something and pulled out the charred printed paper from his pocket—it had four words drawn on it: Defense Upgrade, Background Investigation, Information Blockade, Reverse Tracking, and a big "X" in the middle.
He added a line of smaller text below:
"--The bait has been cast; let's see who loses their patience first."