Once the comms mute button was pressed, only the low hum of equipment remained throughout the base. Ye Mo raised his hand and traced a circle in the air, sending out three faint neural pulse signals simultaneously-the order to begin the operation.
Emma Frost understood at once. She pulled her goggles down half an inch, her pupils lightened, and her consciousness entered a shielded state. Their new ally, Echo, stood in the corner with both hands pressed against the sonic generators at his waist, slowing his breathing. The camouflage thermal suits they wore automatically adjusted their temperature. Within seconds, their body temperatures matched the frozen ground outside exactly.
The door opened.
Ye Mo led the way, his footsteps as light as if he were walking on cotton. Snow half buried the maintenance passage entrance. He crouched and brushed aside the loose snow, exposing a rusted metal plate beneath. The place looked long abandoned, but the system had warned him that passive sensor arrays lay underground. One touch would set off a red light.
He did not force his way through. His right palm grew hot, and a blue line flashed and vanished. Regenerative Phasing-the product of fusing his Healing Factor with his Wall Phasing ability. Now he would test whether he could pass through without triggering an alarm.
His body sank into the metal plate bit by bit, as though sinking into a thick liquid. Halfway through, an electric current surged up through him. He gritted his teeth and held on. Three seconds later, he vanished from the spot.
On the other side, Ye Mo emerged from the floor and quickly surveyed his surroundings. The passage was cleaner than he had imagined, with no guards or patrol robots. He opened a temporary channel. "Clear. Come in."
Emma Frost followed close behind, her movements crisp and efficient. Echo hesitated a moment before activating his device and following. His passage did not go quite as smoothly. He stumbled as he emerged, knocking his knee against a pipe by the wall with a faint clang.
Ye Mo raised a hand for them to stop. All three pressed themselves against the wall and waited ten seconds. The surveillance system showed no reaction.
"You need practice," Ye Mo said quietly.
"First real operation. A little nervous." Echo caught his breath. "Won't happen next time."
"There is no next time." Ye Mo stared at the alloy door at the end of the corridor ahead. "We only get this one shot."
That door was the first security barrier. A Hydra emblem was printed on its surface, authentication ports were embedded on either side, and four rotating cameras hung overhead. The scan of the area beyond the door showed a turret-covered zone. Once an alarm was triggered, the entire passage could be locked down within thirty seconds.
"How do we handle this?" Emma Frost asked.
"Echo, try jamming it." Ye Mo stepped back half a pace. "Not too hard. Cutting the power will activate the backup supply."
Echo nodded and adjusted the frequency on his generators. A silent shockwave spread outward. The indicator lights on the door blinked twice, then abruptly went dark. He had only just breathed a sigh of relief when the emergency lights came on and the overhead cameras rotated, locking onto their position.
The alarm did not sound, but the turrets activated.
"Fuck!" Echo jumped back.
"Shut up!" Ye Mo shoved him to the floor. The turrets' scanning beams swept back and forth, nearly passing over their faces.
Emma Frost immediately extended her psychic shielding, suppressing all three of their emotional fluctuations to a minimum. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Shielding at this intensity was mentally exhausting, but she said nothing.
Ye Mo narrowed his eyes and saw it clearly with Thermal Vision: the turrets' blind spot was only seventy centimeters wide. Their route would have to be precise down to the centimeter.
"Zigzag," he said. "Stay against the wall. Move slowly."
The three edged along the left wall toward the control box beside the door. The turrets turned three times along the way. The closest pass came within twenty centimeters of Ye Mo's nose.
They finally reached the control box. Ye Mo reached out to remove the panel and discovered dual circuits inside-cutting power to the visible circuit would trigger a counterattack from the hidden one.
"I'll have to phase straight through," he said.
"If you use Regenerative Phasing now, the current might exceed what you can withstand," Emma Frost warned.
"I know." He took off his gloves. "I won't know my limit until I try."
He pressed his palm against the gap in the door, and the blue lines appeared again. His body began to sink in. The instant he passed through the alloy door, a high-voltage current surged up his arm. His muscles spasmed and his vision went black, but he did not retreat.
The two abilities clashed wildly inside him: Self-Healing repaired his nerve damage while Wall Phasing kept pushing him forward. Five seconds, seven seconds, ten seconds... He tore the wiring inside the door apart with his bare hands, and the turrets instantly shut down.
He fell to the floor, his right hand smoking.
"Are you all right?" Emma Frost helped him up.
"Won't kill me." Ye Mo shook his hand. "Might shake like hell when I play games from now on, though."
Echo's eyes widened. "You really are insane."
"Only the insane survive to the end." Ye Mo steadied himself. "The door's open. Don't just stand there."
The three entered the main control level's antechamber. They had barely stopped when the floor shook. The sound of machinery came from the distance, as though some large piece of equipment were starting up.
"Someone's in there." Echo's ears twitched. "More than one."
"Mutant soldiers." Ye Mo took out a miniature EMP. "Exoskeletons, force-field shields, high attack frequency."
Before he finished speaking, three figures appeared around the corridor corner ahead. Black armor, gauntlets glowing blue, energy cores flashing on their chests.
The leader charged straight at them and punched the wall, the shockwave shaking chunks of debris from the ceiling. Echo dodged too slowly, and his shoulder was gashed.
"The shields' resonant frequency is forty-seven hertz!" Ye Mo shouted. "Find an opening to disrupt them!"
Emma Frost immediately unleashed psychic interference. One soldier slowed, his gaze losing focus. Echo seized the chance, cranked up his sonic output, and blasted the man in the chest.
Bang!
A crack split the shield. Ye Mo instantly phased through the wall to get behind him, locking his throat with one hand and seizing a joint with the other, twisting it backward. The man's armor buckled, and he dropped to his knees.
The other two reacted extremely quickly, immediately going back-to-back to defend themselves. Ye Mo did not dare close in recklessly. That last use of Wall Phasing had consumed too much, and its cooldown had not ended.
"Emma Frost, disrupt another one!"
Emma Frost closed her eyes and concentrated. A second soldier suddenly clutched his head and crouched. Echo took the opportunity to increase his output, his sonic waves striking the shield's weak point precisely. The instant the shield collapsed, Ye Mo lunged forward and knocked the opponent unconscious with an elbow strike.
The last one saw the situation turning against him, turned, and ran.
"Don't let him alert anyone!" Ye Mo chased him for two steps, then found his legs going weak.
"I've got him." Echo snatched up a fallen metal pipe and hurled it with all his strength. The pipe spun through the air and struck the fleeing man squarely in the back of the neck. He pitched straight forward.
Silence fell.
The three panted as they looked at the three unconscious soldiers on the floor.
"Done." Echo grinned. "Not bad, right?"
"Passable." Ye Mo inspected the prisoners' equipment. "But don't throw so hard next time. Hard to question him if he's dead."
He found a data card in a prisoner's belt pouch and inserted it into his portable terminal. The screen lit up, displaying an encrypted log titled "Project Lazarus."
"That name sounds like bad news," Echo said, leaning closer.
"A project to resurrect the dead?" Emma Frost frowned.
"Whatever it is, we take it first." Ye Mo removed the data card. "We don't have much time."
Just as he was about to get up, the terminal suddenly vibrated. A new signal fluctuation came from deep within the West African research station, its frequency extremely low, as though some enormous device were warming up.
"Something's wrong." Echo's ears twitched again. "That's no ordinary power system."
Ye Mo pulled up the building's structural plans and found a huge cavity on level B3, marked "Unknown Facility."
"Let's go down and look."
"Your hand's still smoking." Emma Frost stopped him. "And you just used your composite ability twice. Forcing it to activate again could damage your nervous system."
"That's why I'm not going alone." He looked at Echo. "You monitor the surroundings for anything unusual, she handles emotional shielding, and I take the offense. We're all in the same boat now. If any one of us drops the ball, we all go down together."
Echo straightened. "I'm ready."
"Then let's go." Ye Mo patted them both on the shoulder. "Remember, don't rush, don't push yourselves, and hit the deck when you hear anything."
The three descended the emergency stairs. Just as they reached the B2 landing, the floor suddenly shook violently. The lights overhead flickered, and an alarm sounded far in the distance, but it was not directed at them.
"Someone activated something." Echo pressed against the wall to listen.
Ye Mo stared at the terminal's signal chart. That low-frequency vibration was growing stronger, its rhythm accelerating.
"That's not an alarm," he said. "It's a countdown."
Emma Frost's expression changed. "If this is the Lazarus Project's core program... it might not be restarting equipment."
"It's waking something up."
Echo swallowed. "Like... dead people?"
Ye Mo did not answer. He took two steps forward and stopped before the metal door leading to B3. A sliver of dark red light seeped through the gap, as though leaking out of hell.
He placed his hand on the door handle.
The door was unlocked.