The sound of machinery whirring in the distance rose again, now even closer than before.
Ye Mo leaned against Captain America's back, the back of his head against the other's fairly sturdy shoulder blades, and could feel the super soldier's body tensing slightly. He didn't move, but his eyes slowly closed.
"What are you doing?" Steve whispered, his voice as if it were being ground against sandpaper.
"Let's try another method." Ye Mo's voice was a little hoarse. "Don't make a sound, and don't touch me."
He knew this wasn't the time to be reckless, but with the system so laggy, he couldn't unleash lightning, Wall Phasing Technique crashed halfway through loading. If he waited any longer, those people outside doing live streams might actually turn this broken cage into a permanent exhibition hall on the spot.
He has to do something.
It wasn't to escape; it was to find someone.
Bucky —the Winter Soldier whose brainwashed mind and whose metal arms were colder than his expression—was someone Steve had desperately tried to bring back. Now, Ye Mo wanted to try and see if he could use his unreliable Telepathy to pull out the last bit of "humanity" from that guy.
This ability was a fragment of genes he had borrowed from Emma Frost in his early days. It was always unstable, working sometimes and not at all, like tuning an old-fashioned radio—you had to tap it a couple of times for it to work. But the good thing was that it was a mental operation, not based on electrical conduction, so theoretically it couldn't be directly cut off by a pulse field.
He calmed himself, searching his mind for the ability node called " Psi Link." It was located on the second level of the Gene Spiral Tower, marked like a crooked Wi-Fi signal icon, with a small note next to it: [Source: Emma Frost Thaddeus Ross | Status: Incomplete | Compatibility: Low].
"Alright, it's crippled, as long as it connects." He muttered to himself and began to slowly activate it.
A headache immediately struck, like someone was drilling a screwdriver into his temples. A layer of red light appeared at the edge of his vision, a silent warning from the system: neural overload. But he didn't stop, continuing to push his consciousness waves, the target vague—just casting a wide net in the direction Bucky had just left.
Memory became the Anchor.
He recalled something Steve had mentioned, "When he was a kid, he lived in East Brooklyn and always wore that old jacket in the winter; the collar was always frayed."
Ye Mo seized upon this point, constructed a psychological projection, simulated emotional frequencies, and immersed himself in that feeling of poverty, coldness, and loneliness, then gently pushed towards that unknown mental space.
They crashed into an iron curtain.
Cold, hard, and seamless, like a single piece of armor plating. That's the brainwashing program's defense mechanism against external consciousness, automatically intercepting all abnormal signals.
Ordinary people should leave here; forcing their way in could result in anything from mental shock to fainting on the spot.
Ye Mo gritted his teeth and, instead of backing down, put even more effort into it.
He stopped trying to access the memories and instead activated "emotional scanning" mode—like searching for a warm document among a pile of gibberish. Anger? Yes, but mechanical, like a pre-set script. Fear? Yes, but with a programmed rhythm, unreal. Until one moment, an extremely brief afterimage flashed by: snow, footprints, a red scarf hanging on the barbed wire, fluttering in the wind.
In that instant, he caught a glimpse of hesitation.
It wasn't a data stream, nor a logical judgment, but an almost instinctive pause—like a finger trembling before pressing the delete key.
"Damn... there really is one?" Ye Mo's heart skipped a beat.
He immediately locked onto that frequency, tuned his consciousness to resonate with it, and silently recited, "Do you remember that winter? Someone gave you a red scarf."
He made that up; it was pure guesswork, just to stimulate potential associations.
But in the very next second, a response came from deep within that iron curtain.
It is neither language nor images.
It's an emotion—a suffocating sadness, like a bubble rising from the deep sea, so fragile it could burst at any moment, yet undeniably real.
Ye Mo suddenly opened his eyes, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, but he grinned. "I caught you... You're still alive, Bucky."
"What did you say?" Steve asked, turning his head.
"Shh." Ye Mo wiped away the blood and closed his eyes again. "I'm pulling him back."
He knew there was no further news from Emma Frost. The faint mental signals that had interrupted a few times hadn't returned. Now he was fighting alone, without support or backup, relying entirely on sheer willpower.
The system notification flickered: [ Ψ-Link Module overload warning]. His fingers began to twitch uncontrollably, and blood trickled from his nose, sliding down his philtrum to his chin.
But he didn't care.
He leaned against Steve's back, clasped his hands together in front of his forehead, and, as if in prayer, poured all his remaining mental energy into the sensory channel.
This time, he no longer cautiously probed, but instead deliberately crashed into that iron curtain, even if the price was a knife-like pain inside his skull.
He constructed a beam of light in his consciousness.
It belongs to no one, nor does it represent any specific thing; it simply symbolizes a path—the path of return.
He kept repeating, "You are not a weapon, you are James Buchanan Barnes."
Each call was accompanied by excruciating pain, as if someone were churning his brain with a red-hot iron hook. But he persisted, calling out again and again, until that faint emotional fluctuation began to respond slightly.
It's no longer about passively receiving; there's now feedback.
Like an eye blinking in the darkness, though it was only for a moment, it truly brought light.
Ye Mo felt like his consciousness was about to fall apart, but the corners of his mouth were still turned up. He knew this didn't mean victory, it didn't mean Bucky would wake up immediately, and it certainly didn't mean they could escape immediately.
But this means that person is still alive.
Even with only a single Mars remaining, it wasn't completely extinguished.
The rhythm of the mechanical sounds outside changed, becoming more rapid, as if some kind of remote control device was accelerating calibration. The blue-purple current of the power grid flickered, and the transparent layer of the Force Field shield rippled slightly.
But he ignored it.
He continued to push his consciousness in, the voice growing softer yet more resolute in his mind. "I remember your name. You lived in a small house in Brooklyn, where the windows let in drafts in winter, and you covered them with newspapers. You had a friend who always called you ' Bucky,' and he hasn't given up on you to this day."
That emotional fluctuation trembled slightly.
It sounded like a response, yet also like a struggle.
Ye Mo smiled slightly, blood dripping from the corner of his lips and onto the knee of his work pants, spreading a small patch of dark red.
"You heard me?" he muttered. "Then don't fall asleep. We still have a battle to fight."
He leaned against Steve's back, breathing heavily, his forehead covered in cold sweat, looking as if he had just been pulled out of the water. But his mind remained fixed on that passageway, refusing to let go.
He knew this state couldn't last long.
My body is nearing its limit. System warnings are coming one after another, and the Ψ-Link Module has already started automatically reducing its frequency for protection. If this continues, I could suffer short-term amnesia at best, and mental paralysis at worst.
But he can't stop.
As long as that glimmer of light is still flickering, he must keep lighting the fire.
Steve noticed his unusual behavior and asked in a low voice, "Can you still hold on?"
"I'll hold on." Ye Mo's voice was weak, but his answer was decisive, "I won't die."
He raised his hand, wiped the blood from his nose, his fingertips stained with blood, then pressed it back to his forehead and closed his eyes again.
This time, he didn't call out names, but instead released a single emotion—a scene from the night before he traveled back in time: the streetlights below the dormitory building were dim, he sat alone on the steps eating bread, his phone was dead, his bank cards were frozen, and the future seemed like a tangled mess, yet he still looked up at the starry sky and thought, "If only I could do it all over again."
That emotion was pure, genuine, and tinged with a resentment born of despair.
He pushed it over.
Like throwing a seed.
He knew Bucky might not understand these things, but emotions don't need translation.
A few seconds later, another tremor came from deep within the iron curtain.
It's clearer than before.
It sounded like someone was gently tapping the wall three times from beneath the ruins.