The Mutants's body was still twitching, and the blue light under his skin flickered like a broken fluorescent light tube. Ye Mo's Steel Bone armor on his right arm had not completely disappeared, and the joints still gleamed with a cold metallic light. He was half-crouched three meters away from the man, his left hand on the ground, and a thin arc of electricity was burning in his right hand, jumping back and forth between his fingertips.
"Don't come any closer." Emma Frost's voice came from behind. She was sitting cross-legged on a collapsed concrete slab, her hands folded on her knees, sweat trickling down her forehead. "This guy is a living signal repeater. His consciousness has been remotely erased; he's just full of interference waves inside."
Tony stood beside the armor, his mask half-open, his face covered in dust and grease. "So what we were fighting just now wasn't real people, but puppets?"
"Not entirely." Emma Frost said, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed. "They are real Mutants, but their brains have been synchronized with a certain frequency, like a formatted hard drive, leaving only space for receiving instructions. That high-speed target we just saw was one of the command nodes."
Ye Mo stared at the person on the ground and suddenly spoke, "System, mark this body's life fluctuations. If the heart rate exceeds 180 or the body temperature rises sharply, immediately issue an alarm."
[Target vital signs have been recorded; an abnormal trigger will trigger an immediate alert]
Tony clicked his tongue. "Who are you talking to now?"
"System notification sound." Ye Mo replied casually, "It says this guy's about to explode."
As soon as he finished speaking, the blue light on the person's body suddenly surged, and the muscles began to twitch irregularly, as if something was trying to crawl out from under the skin.
"Attack!" Emma Frost suddenly opened her eyes, raised a finger, and unleashed Mental Blast directly into the man's skull. The man twitched twice, the blue light went out, a section of his chest collapsed, and he became completely still.
The scene was silent for a few seconds.
"Dead?" Tony asked.
"It's just a disconnection." Emma Frost took a breath and closed her eyes again. "The real control source is still in the southeast. I just traced it back along the residual signal... about three kilometers away, in an abandoned industrial area, there's a warehouse."
Ye Mo stood up, brushing the dust off his pants. "Then what are we waiting for? Should we take a car or fly there?"
"We can't fly." Tony pointed to the armor's fuel indicator light, which was flashing red. "That last burst used up 60% of our fuel. Now we can only glide at low altitude. If we fight another round, you'll have to carry me back."
"Then you slide, I'll run." Ye Mo flexed his wrists, and the Steel Bone armor slowly retreated below his shoulders. "The system gave me a heat map; there are ambush points on the main road, and the underground pipes are the fastest."
Emma Frost opened her eyes. "I need to keep monitoring the stream of consciousness over there; it can't be interrupted. While you're leaving, I'll scan in sync, providing density feedback every thirty seconds."
"Okay." Ye Mo nodded. "You take care of the brains, and we'll take care of the hands and feet."
Tony had already activated his armored stealth mode, the thrusters emitting only a faint orange glow. He crouched low, sliding forward along the edge of the ruins. Ye Mo, on the other hand, moved quickly along a broken drainage ditch, the shards of glass beneath his feet making a soft, crisp sound.
The city night air carried the smell of burning as the three communicated via a short-range encrypted frequency band.
"Turn left, there's a ventilation shaft ahead in the aging factory," Emma Frost's voice came through the earpiece. "The density of consciousness clusters is rising in the southeast direction; they're gathering."
"Roger that." Ye Mo turned into a narrow alleyway, where a rusted iron gate stood. " Tony, can you hear me? The door's stuck here."
"Can't get around it?" Tony's voice came from above, the armor gliding close to the building's shadow.
"It's an alternative, but it's a waste of time." Ye Mo raised his right hand, and an arc of electricity condensed at his fingertips again. "I'll use electrofusion."
"Don't make too much noise," Emma Frost cautioned. "They have jamming equipment, but they haven't detected us yet. Now is the window of opportunity for a surprise attack."
Ye Mo nodded, turned the current to the lowest setting, and let the electric arc wrap around the door lock like a hair. The high temperature slowly softened the metal, and with a gentle push, the door opened a crack.
It was pitch black inside, and the air smelled of a mixture of engine oil and ozone.
"It's in," he said softly.
Tony landed on the roof, his armor went into silent mode, the thrusters shut down, and only the charging indicator light for his palm cannons flickered faintly. He crouched down and moved to the ventilation opening, peering down through the gap.
The warehouse was dimly lit, and a dozen figures were gathered around a large piece of equipment in the center. The device resembled an inverted bell, its surface covered with antennas and heat dissipation vents, emitting a low-frequency hum. All of them wore uniform gray-black combat suits with half of the "AIM" logo printed on their chests, as if it had been deliberately burned.
"As expected, they're Killian's old henchmen," Tony gritted his teeth. "Those persistent bastards."
"Not only that." Emma Frost's voice suddenly tightened, "Two of them weren't wearing helmets, and their Mental Barrier were weak; I could break through."
"Can you control them?" Ye Mo leaned against the wall, lowering his voice.
"It's not control, it's manipulation." Emma Frost's breathing became long. "They have fear in their hearts, and I amplify that feeling—like 'your teammate wants to kill you,' and they'll believe it."
"Enough." Ye Mo's lips curled into a smile. "That's exactly what I was waiting to hear."
He slowly approached the side door, drawing a faint arc of electricity from his right hand again. This time, it wasn't to melt the lock, but to sense the electrical structure behind the door. After confirming there were no trigger alarms, he gently pushed the door open a crack and slipped inside.
Inside the warehouse, two enemies without helmets stood to the left of the equipment, one holding a gun and the other adjusting a control panel. Ye Mo moved close to the shelves, less than ten meters away from them.
"Ready," Emma Frost's voice rang in his mind, "Three, two, one—now!"
Instantly, both of their eyes froze.
"Watch out!" the man on the left suddenly shouted, turning his gun directly at his companion. "He's about to attack!"
"Are you crazy?!" The other person exclaimed in shock and anger, instinctively backing away.
But in that instant, Emma Frost's implanted mind took effect—fear was amplified to an extreme, and rationality was suppressed to the minimum. The man no longer saw his teammate, but a killer pointing a gun at him.
"I'll kill you first!" he roared, raising his hand to fire a shot.
The bullet struck the man in the chest; his body armor absorbed most of the impact, but he was still thrown to the ground. The others reacted immediately and turned around.
"Enemy attack! There's a mole among us!"
Chaos erupted.
Seizing the opportunity, Ye Mo lunged forward, his Steel Bone right fist striking the nearest man directly in the back of the neck. Before the man could even turn around, his neck snapped to the side, and he collapsed on the spot.
" Tony, get him!" he growled.
The roof vents suddenly exploded, and Tony's armor descended from the sky, firing three shots from his palm cannon, accurately hitting the wrists of the two gunmen. The blast wave knocked two people nearby over, and the scene descended into complete chaos.
"Don't fire! Don't fire!" someone shouted, "They can't tell who's on their side!"
Emma Frost's voice rang out again. "Push them again, make them even more chaotic."
Ye Mo took a deep breath and activated a long-dormant fragment of ability within his body—a rudimentary Mind Resonance module he had absorbed during a previous encounter with a comatose Mutants. Originally, it could only vaguely perceive emotions, but now, he used it as a megaphone to amplify the mental fluctuations released by Emma Frost.
In an instant, everyone in the warehouse felt as if they had been plunged into the same nightmare.
Some people clutched their heads and screamed in agony, some threw punches at the air, and others knelt down and begged for mercy. Two guards who were originally on duty even started fighting, exchanging blows and shouting, "You betrayed the plan!"
"Great." Tony landed, his armor turning towards the central device. "This thing looks like a psycho-amplifier; we need to take it apart."
"Don't touch it!" Emma Frost suddenly shouted, "There's a self-destruct mechanism; the energy reading is rising!"
Tony stopped and switched to scanning mode to examine the bottom of the device. "Found it, the power core is underneath, but it's covered by electromagnetic shielding, and can't be opened by conventional means."
Ye Mo was finishing off the last conscious enemy, kicking him in the knee and then elbowing him down. He walked over, panting, and said, "Let me try my Lightning Control. I'll probe in with a micro-current; maybe it can short-circuit something."
"High risk." Tony frowned. "If reverse charging is triggered, you'll be turned into a kebab."
"It's better than letting them restart the chain of command." Ye Mo squatted down, and the electric arc at his fingertips condensed again, this time becoming thinner and more stable, like a silver thread slowly probing towards the gap in the shield.
Inside the warehouse, everyone else was still fighting amongst themselves in the chaos, and no one noticed what was happening here.
Emma Frost's voice trailed off. "I can't hold on much longer... Some of them are starting to resist the hallucinations... The helmet is working..."
Ye Mo didn't turn around. "Just ten more seconds, just ten seconds."
The current smoothly entered the shielding layer and spread along the internal circuitry. A few seconds later, the device's humming stopped abruptly, and the top indicator light turned from red to black.
"The power's out." Tony chuckled. "You didn't blow up."
"System notification: Eight seconds remaining on cooldown." Ye Mo withdrew his hand, and the Steel Bone armor began to dissipate. "Don't make me risk my life next time."
Tony was about to retort when he suddenly looked up, "Wait, there are people upstairs."
On the second-floor platform of the warehouse, a dark shadow flashed by, moving so fast that it was almost an afterimage.
"The commander!" Emma Frost's eyes snapped open. "He's been hiding up high up the whole time! He was the one who manually executed all the signal-cutting maneuvers!"
"Should we chase them or not?" Ye Mo asked Tony.
Tony checked the remaining fuel, then glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor. "I'll go up and intercept him. You flank him from the side. Don't let him get away."
Ye Mo nodded, about to take action, when Emma Frost suddenly pressed her temple. "No... there are still people outside... a new group of consciousnesses is approaching... at least twenty..."
Before he could finish speaking, a loud crashing sound came from the west wall of the warehouse, as if some heavy machinery was breaking through the wall.
Tony cursed, "This isn't a surprise attack, it's a diversionary tactic!"
Ye Mo quickly assessed the situation. "You keep an eye on the second floor, I'll hold off the outside."
He charged toward the west wall, his Steel Bone armor rapidly covering his legs and rising upwards. At the same time, an electric arc once again gathered at the tip of his right finger. This time, the current was no longer a thin thread, but began to swirl in his palm, forming a leaping blue light.
A crack appeared in the wall, and dust fell down in clumps.
The next second, the entire wall collapsed with a roar. Amidst the smoke and dust, a dozen figures dressed in insulated suits and wielding pulse guns rushed in. The leader wore a full-face helmet and held a high-voltage stun baton, pointing it directly at Ye Mo.
"Welcome to the new era," the person said, their voice electronically processed, cold and grating.
Ye Mo grinned, the ball of electricity in his palm spinning faster and faster. "Sorry, but I hate people who are always on time."