Five hours and eleven minutes.
Ye Mo adjusted his glasses again, the exact same movement as before, except this time his fingertips rubbed the temples a little longer. He knew it was a bad habit, like repeatedly checking if his exam admission ticket was in his pocket before an exam—knowing it was, but still having to take it out to check. But at this crucial moment, who doesn't have a bit of OCD?
The wind seeped in through the cracks in the building, carrying the distinctive smell of rust from the subway entrance, mixed with the stale aroma of oden broth from a convenience store. The city was still the same city, no collapses, no explosions, the traffic lights changed on time, and delivery riders cursed as they turned at intersections—everything was so normal it was unsettling.
Emma Frost tapped her fingers on the railing again.
Three short and one long.
"It's still there," she said.
Ye Mo nodded, and was about to return the gesture when he suddenly felt a sharp pain on his forehead.
It wasn't pain, but the kind of numbness you get when a dentist uses an electric pen to drill into your tooth, pushing upwards along your back molars, all the way to the top of your head. He snapped his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, his pupils had shrunk to pinpoints—the ancient warning string at the bottom of the Gene Spiral Tower had been activated.
It didn't come from the sky.
It's the ground.
"Something's not right." He lowered his voice, almost torn apart by the wind.
Emma Frost didn't turn around, but her hand on the railing tightened instantly, her knuckles turning white. Her mental energy network, which had been spread out to the sky, suddenly sank down like a fishing net, shrinking from a hundred kilometers to within five kilometers in an instant, penetrating in a targeted manner.
Three seconds.
Her eyelid twitched.
"The pedestrian street south of Central Park." She uttered seven words, each syllable seeming to be squeezed out from ice crystals, "High-intensity combat fluctuations, four moving targets, surrounding one."
Ye Mo had already pulled out his phone and opened the map, but stopped halfway through swiping—it was unnecessary. The system's built-in Spatial Perception fragments automatically activated, and a semi-transparent street projection appeared at the edge of his field of vision, with four red dots frantically squeezing around a blue dot. The blue dot was the captain, whose breathing rate had soared to forty beats per minute, heart rate of 180, and whose left shoulder muscles were showing disordered signals, clearly indicating that he was injured.
"Not a street thug." Emma Frost's voice was even colder. "The attacker showed no mental activity; the blankness lasted for more than five seconds. Either it was a machine, or... its brain was cut out."
Ye Mo pulled down the hoodie over his head, casually removing his silver-rimmed glasses and stuffing them into his chest pocket. Those things blocked his vision, and he might even trip over them in a pinch. He glanced down at his shoelaces, making sure they were tied tightly, then walked directly to the edge of the rooftop.
"Take the west alleyway," he said. " Third Avenue has blind spots in the surveillance system; that will save you thirty seconds."
Emma Frost didn't move. "Are you sure you don't want to call for backup?"
"By the time they've finished putting on their battle uniforms and holding their operational meeting, the captain's bones will have been torn apart and burned as firewood." Ye Mo braced himself against the railing with one hand, then flipped and jumped.
Before he even landed, his body twisted in mid-air, his right hand shot forward, his fingertips brushing against the wall, and his toes pushed off the air conditioner unit on the adjacent building, propelling him forward. This was a crude method he had pieced together early on by absorbing speed fragments from a low-level Mutants. It didn't have an official name; he called it " the Diarrhea-Style Rush "—ugly but effective.
Emma Frost followed suit, her robe billowing in the wind for a moment before she landed as lightly as a Yezi. Her face was a little pale; the mental focus she had just exerted had taken its toll, but now was not the time to rest.
The two plunged into the alley one after the other. Trash cans, fire ladders, and clotheslines all became obstacles, but also cover. Ye Mo ran close to the wall, listening to the sounds above him—no helicopters, no sirens, and hardly any passersby. The place seemed to be muted.
"The captain's shield usage frequency has decreased by twenty percent," Emma Frost reported as she ran. "His parry intervals have lengthened, and he's not putting enough force into his left leg; he might have sprained it."
"What does the enemy use?" Ye Mo asked.
"Unknown. The energy signature doesn't match any known arsenal. The movement pattern is uniform, like a puppet being pulled on a string."
Ye Mo's heart skipped a beat.
This was not an ordinary attack.
This is a test.
Someone wanted to see just how thick the Avengers ' defenses were, so they started by hitting the hardest brick to test its strength.
And the team leader is that brick.
He quickened his pace, and by the time he turned the seventh corner, he could already hear the sounds of fighting—the muffled clanging of metal like a fight inside a quilt, occasionally punctuated by a muffled groan or two, the captain's voice.
The view ahead suddenly opened up.
The pedestrian street on the south side of Central Park, which used to be a place for jogging grandmothers and office workers walking their dogs, is now empty. One of the streetlights is crooked, several paving stones are cracked, benches are overturned, and even trash cans have been overturned. Five dark figures are fanning out around the person in the middle, their movements perfectly synchronized, like five industrial robots operating in sync.
Captain America stood in the center of the circle, shield held horizontally across his chest, breathing heavily. Blood trickled down his forehead, soaking half his eyebrow. His left shoulder was ripped open, the skin and flesh exposed, but he remained standing, his eyes unwavering. When Ye Mo and Emma Frost appeared, his lips twitched, but he didn't speak. He simply raised his shield five centimeters, assuming a defensive stance.
"You two got here pretty quickly." His voice was hoarse, but steady.
"There's no traffic on the road." Ye Mo stood to his right, blocking the path of a dark figure rushing diagonally. "It's just that these guys are so unruly. Instead of clocking in early in the morning, they're having team building here?"
Emma Frost stood on the left, her hands hanging at her sides, her palms slightly warm. She hadn't activated her Diamond Form, but her mental energy had already locked onto the movement prediction points of five targets. As long as the opponent's muscle fibers twitched, she could tell Ye Mo how to dodge 0.3 seconds in advance.
"Not human," she whispered. "Neural signal disruption; movement commands are coming from outside."
"Oh." Ye Mo nodded, as if he'd just heard a weather forecast. "Then there's nothing to discuss."
Before he could finish speaking, the dark figure directly in front of him suddenly sprang up, his arm deformed, and a serrated metal blade popped out from his elbow joint, piercing straight into Ye Mo's throat.
Ye Mo didn't move.
He's waiting.
Waiting for Emma Frost's prompt.
0.3 seconds later, Emma Frost's lips moved slightly. "Seven degrees to the left, bend over, then follow with a right sweep kick."
He did as instructed immediately.
He ducked, shrugged, and the serrated blade grazed his scalp. At the same time, his right leg swept out, his heel slamming into the back of the opponent's knee with a sharp crack. The leg bent into a Z-shape instantly. The dark figure staggered backward, and the other four immediately adjusted their formation, forming a new encirclement.
"Captain, can you still hold on?" Ye Mo asked, catching his breath.
"They won't die." Steve gritted his teeth. "It's these guys... their movements are too synchronized, it's disgusting."
"Don't rush, we'll break them apart in no time."
Ye Mo squinted at the four people opposite him. Their faces were hidden under hoods, so his features were not visible, but there was a ring of dark red lines around their necks, like solder joints on a circuit board. He suddenly remembered something and reached up to touch the back of his neck—he had felt a similar burning sensation there before, a scar left from when he was parasitized by the Dark Elves.
" Emma Frost," he whispered, "Try to see if you can 'hear' what signal they're receiving. Frequency, band, direction of origin, anything will do."
Emma Frost closed her eyes, her brow furrowing into a deep furrow. Her mental energy, like a probe, slowly approached the brain region of one of the dark figures. Just as she touched the surface, she suddenly shuddered and abruptly opened her eyes.
"Something's doing a reverse scan!" she cried out urgently. "It's not mind reading, it's... formatting. It wants to get rid of me!"
Ye Mo pulled her behind him. "Don't push it in head-on, let it in a little, we'll track it from the opposite direction."
"Are you crazy? That thing can burn through my barrier of consciousness!"
"Trust me this once, the system has a backup plan." He patted his pocket, implying, "Didn't you access my messy database of abilities before? You pretend to break down, make it think it's succeeded, then follow its trail back to see where the source is."
Emma Frost glared at him. "You say that every time, and I almost got brain dead."
"Last time was an accident! Who would have thought that Telepathy could trigger the Self-Healing process?"
"If I really become paralyzed this time, will you take care of me?"
"Free meals and accommodation, free WiFi, and I can even use my newly unlocked ' Regenerative Phasing to watch shows without buffering."
Emma Frost rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
The next second, she swayed, her face turning deathly pale, as if her soul had been ripped from her body. Three dark figures immediately pounced on her, their movements faster and their attacks more ruthless than before.
Ye Mo blocked the attack, punching the nearest man in the face. The man's head snapped back, his hood slipped down, revealing a blank face—pale skin, cloudy eyes, and dried blood at the corner of his mouth; he was practically a corpse.
"Damn," he muttered under his breath, "Is this being controlled by a dead person?"
The captain swept his shield, forcing back two, and said breathlessly, "More troublesome than dead men. Dead men don't know how to form tactical formations."
"Then let's not let them line up." Ye Mo cracked his knuckles, staring at the remaining three. " Emma Frost, what do you think?"
Emma Frost didn't open her eyes, but her lips moved. "Got it... The signal source is... the third basement level of the abandoned substation in the East District... Frequency... 17.4..." Before she could finish speaking, she swayed again, as if she had been hit hard by something.
"Enough!" Ye Mo grabbed her shoulders. "Take your hands back!"
She opened her eyes, her pupils still trembling. "I saw... something inside... turning... like... a tower..."
Ye Mo's heart skipped a beat.
Gene Spiral Tower.
His tower, too, is turning.