Hidden Clues

The door wasn't locked.

Ye Mo's hand still rested on the handle. His fingertips could feel a warmth in that dark red glow, creeping along the metal toward his palm. Instead of pushing, he stepped half a pace back and turned to Emma Frost. "Don't get too close."

Emma stood at the turn of the stairs, her goggles pushed up onto her forehead, her face a little pale. A moment earlier, she had nearly fallen, but Ye Mo had caught her in time. She took a breath and nodded. "There's something inside... not machines. People. A lot of them, nailed to the walls, with tubes connected to their brains... they're screaming, but there's no sound."

Ye Mo frowned. That matched the "Project Lazarus" on the data card he held. Bringing the dead back to life? No. This place was more like a slaughterhouse, except what it killed was consciousness.

He glanced down at his right hand. It was still a little numb from the last time he had used Regenerative Phasing to pass through an alloy door. The system notification suddenly sounded, its long-absent mechanical tone slamming straight into his mind:

"High-intensity X-Gene residue detected. Source: unknown group of mutant individuals. Recommendation: fuse 'Steel Bone Defense' with 'Mind Barrier' to enhance resistance."

Ye Mo froze for a moment. This was the first time the system had offered a "recommendation."

Before, it had only coldly announced successful ability fragment acquisitions or reminded him of cooldowns. Now it was actually offering advice on its own? That meant even the system considered whatever was inside dangerous.

He raised his left arm for a look, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes to concentrate. He had absorbed the steel bone ability from a mutant fighter in an underground fighting arena: metallic skin tough enough to withstand artillery shells. Regenerative Phasing combined self-healing with Wall Phasing, and now he had to put these two together.

It felt like assembling building blocks in his mind. After three failed attempts, they finally clicked into place.

Silvery-gray lines began emerging beneath the skin of his left arm, crawling upward one by one, as though liquid metal flowed through his veins instead of blood. The sensation was strange, cold and tight, like someone sanding his bones.

System notification: "Neural Shield · Beginner Stage activated. Can resist mild psychic impacts and electrical damage."

It worked.

He immediately held out his hand. "Emma, give me a hand."

Emma understood what he meant. She closed her eyes and released a low-intensity psychic probe. That familiar pressure struck him, but the lines on his left arm blocked it outright, leaving only a single twitch in his temple.

"It works." Ye Mo let out a breath. "This thing can block some of the interference inside."

Emma, however, did not relax. She stood against the wall, pressing her fingers to her temples. "What I saw just now... wasn't only pain. Those people's consciousnesses were being cut into pieces, packaged like files, and transmitted. This isn't an experiment. It's a production line."

Ye Mo's gaze darkened. He took out the data card, inserted it into the terminal, and pulled up the encrypted logs he had taken from the captive earlier. The title was still "Project Lazarus," but this time he noticed a small icon in the corner-Hydra's old emblem, the one with the serrated edges.

He remembered that emblem. He had seen it years ago in the Hellfire Club's archives, labeled "Consciousness Immortality Project." At the time, he had thought it was science fiction written by a lunatic. He had never expected anyone to actually do it.

"They're not trying to resurrect the dead," Ye Mo said quietly. "They're extracting living people's consciousnesses and turning them into batteries that never die. Lazarus isn't the project's name. It's the name of a grave."

Emma looked up at him. "What are you going to do?"

"Go inside and take a look first." Ye Mo stared at the door. "But we can't just force our way in now. Echo was injured earlier. The three of us came in together. We can't leave him outside alone waiting for news."

Emma nodded. "I can probe again, but I can't go any deeper. That last time, I almost got pulled in."

"Just look at one image," Ye Mo said. "Find identifying marks. A base number, a timestamp, anything that can pinpoint a location."

Emma closed her eyes, her fingers trembling slightly. A few seconds later, her eyes flew open, and her breathing quickened. "A snowfield... Siberia Station 07. There's a mutant tied up, with a brand on his forehead that looks just like Hydra's old totem. Then the image jumped here, like a remote synchronization."

Ye Mo understood immediately. "Linked facilities. They're doing the same thing in several places, using this as one of the main control nodes."

He brought up a map and entered the coordinates for Siberia Station 07. Three linked records appeared: one on the edge of Antarctica, one in an abandoned mining area in the Congo rainforest, and one beneath the North Sea.

"Four points." Ye Mo narrowed his eyes. "In a tetrahedral structure, with an empty center. They're building a network, not to resurrect someone, but to connect something."

Emma suddenly said, "Have you ever wondered why it has to be mutants?"

"Because our genes are unstable?" Ye Mo answered offhandedly.

"No." Emma shook her head. "Because the structure of our consciousness is different. The density of synaptic connections in mutant brains is more than three times that of ordinary people. They can carry large amounts of information, making them suitable server nodes. They aren't creating immortals. They're building a supercomputer."

Ye Mo fell silent for a few seconds. That explained it. Lazarus wasn't a name, but a code name. The goal of the entire project wasn't to bring people back to life, but to keep some kind of consciousness permanently online.

He recalled the system's earlier notification. High concentrations of X-Gene residue... that means a lot of mutants died here. Or rather, they never died at all. Their power was simply unplugged.

"We have to go in," he said. "But first, we have to make sure we can get back out alive."

The silvery-gray lines on his left arm still glimmered faintly, like some kind of living armor still adjusting to his body. He tried clenching his fist hard. The lines contracted with it, with a sluggishness that felt like a half-second delay.

"It's not completely stable yet," he muttered to himself. "Ten minutes of high-intensity combat at most."

Emma took a fragment of vibranium from her pocket and handed it to him. "Take this. It can absorb some energy fluctuations and help ease the strain on you."

Ye Mo took it and slipped it into his pocket. The vibranium grew warm, as though it had sensed something.

He looked at the door again. Dark red light spilled through the gap onto the floor, like a pool of dried blood.

"Are you ready?" Emma asked.

"No," Ye Mo said. "But someone has to do it."

He reached out and pushed the door.

The door opened.

The space inside was larger than he had imagined. Rows of metal racks stretched into the depths, covered with transparent containers. A person floated in each container, eyes open, pupils dilated, thick data cables attached to their heads. Their chests did not rise or fall, but the brain monitors displayed active waveforms.

Ye Mo's steps faltered.

"These people... are still alive?"

Emma said nothing. Her face had grown even paler. She saw more-those people had not volunteered. Their memories were being dug away bit by bit, leaving nothing but empty shells.

Ye Mo took a step forward, his foot landing in a shadow on the floor. The shadow shifted, in a way that did not look like an effect of the light.

He stopped immediately.

"Something's wrong," he said. "The light here doesn't cast shadows."

Emma noticed it too. The shadows on the floor were taller than they were, and... there was an extra one.

Ye Mo slowly turned around.

Behind them, the stairway entrance was empty.

But there on the floor, clear as day, were three people's shadows.