The web of light behind the door was still flickering.
Ye Mo didn't move, and neither did Emma Frost. That indescribable resonance lingered in the air, like an invisible machine running at a low frequency. The fake upload had fooled the system, but it wouldn't fool it for long. He could feel the Vibranium fragment against his outer thigh growing hotter, like a piece of coal freshly pulled from a furnace.
"Don't try to tough it out," he said.
Emma leaned against the edge of the console, pressing her fingers to her temples. "I'm not toughing it out. It's pulling at me. Like... a thread inside my body has been hooked."
Ye Mo crouched down and dialed Regenerative Phasing to its lowest setting, letting only his fingertips sink a millimeter into the floor. Patterns of current crisscrossed beneath the concrete, connected to the main console. This place wasn't a laboratory at all. It was a living signal tower. Every fluctuation of thought, every use of an ability, became a data packet, quietly recorded.
"You feel that pull because your genetic sequence has already been entered into the system." He withdrew his hand and stood. "They've classified you-as a node awaiting activation."
"Then what do we do?" Emma's voice sounded a little weak. "I can't even shield myself now."
"Then don't." Ye Mo took off his glasses and tucked them into his hoodie pocket. "The quieter you are, the more you look like you're dormant. Isn't that how they usually maintain Mutant consciousness servers? They only wake them when they're needed."
Emma closed her eyes, her breathing gradually evening out. A few seconds later, her shoulders relaxed.
"How is it?" Ye Mo asked.
"The pull is weaker," she said. "It's like... I've been treated as background data traffic."
Ye Mo nodded and switched his own Neural Shield to intermittent mode. Silver-gray patterns blinked on and off along his arms, like LEDs running out of power. This reduced his protection, but made him less likely to be singled out as a high-value target.
He returned to the main console, but instead of touching the screen, he went around the back. Pressing his palm against the cable channel, he activated Regenerative Phasing and passed straight into the physical-layer circuitry. This time, he neither checked logs nor cracked firewalls. He only read the rhythm of changes in the current's frequency.
Three minutes later, he found the pattern.
"The four nodes aren't transmitting simultaneously," he said quietly. "There's a sequence. Siberia → North Sea → Congo → Antarctica, over and over. Every time they complete a full cycle, that mass of light in the center spins a little faster."
Emma opened her eyes. "That means they're calibrating the timeline. Once all the nodes' synchronization rates reach the critical threshold, the passage can open and remain stable."
"Not just open." Ye Mo stared at the tetrahedral structure in the air. "They're building a permanently online consciousness space. Once someone enters, they'll never have to rely on a physical body again."
"Who would want to do that?" Emma asked.
"Someone who doesn't want to die." Ye Mo sneered. "Or someone who's already dead but still refuses to accept it."
He remembered the designation W.R. he had seen earlier, and the identity of the purge officer behind the name White Raven. The Hellfire Club certainly hadn't put all this together for humanity's benefit. Their ability to use Mutant brains as servers showed they had long since unraveled the underlying logic of the X-Gene.
"We've always thought Project Lazarus was meant to resurrect someone," he said. "It's actually an activation command. Once it's complete, a consciousness prepared long ago can crawl back along this link and take over the entire network."
Emma's expression changed. "Including every Mutant who's been marked?"
"More than just taking over their brains." Ye Mo's voice sank. "It'll directly rewrite their thought patterns. You'll think you're making your own decisions, but that central consciousness will actually be thinking for you."
They fell silent for a few seconds.
The shadows cast by the web of light overhead swayed slightly, like streetlights reflected on water.
"We can still leave," Emma said.
"If we leave, we lose the intelligence trail." Ye Mo shook his head. "How many people out there are still being scanned? How many children don't even know they've already been registered in the system? Running now would be the same as throwing them all into a fire."
"Then what are you planning to do? Tear the system apart by force?"
"We can't." He pointed at the spinning mass of light in the air. "It isn't in the physical world. Even if we smash this base, the other three nodes will keep running. The real core is hidden in a gap between dimensions, held up by the tetrahedral structure."
Emma bit her lip. "So we have to find the entry point."
"The center is the entrance," Ye Mo said. "But triggering it requires two conditions: first, all four nodes have to be calibrated; second, a sufficiently powerful initial consciousness source has to be uploaded as the 'key.'"
"What's the key?"
"A carrier of a high-purity X-Gene." He looked at her. "Preferably someone who's undergone a system-level scan and received authorization credentials. Someone like... you."
Emma froze for a moment. "You're saying they'll use me as the activation key?"
"You don't necessarily have to be alive." Ye Mo's tone was flat. "Consciousness extraction technology matured a long time ago. As long as your brain sample is still in the database, they can simulate a digital double whenever they want."
The air suddenly turned cold.
Leaning against the wall, Emma slowly slid down to sit on the floor. Her hands were still trembling, but not out of fear. She was holding something back, unwilling to let it show.
Ye Mo didn't help her up. He knew she didn't need comfort.
After a dozen or so seconds, she looked up. "Then what does that make us now?"
"People who know the truth," he said. "And the only people who can interrupt the process."
"How?"
"Disrupt synchronization." Ye Mo stood and walked over to the power distribution box beside the terminal. "The four nodes take turns sending signals, forming a closed loop. If even one is interrupted, the entire calibration has to start over."
"But we can't be in four places at once."
"We don't need to." He patted the box. "We tamper with things here. This is the relay station. All the data has to pass through here to be packaged and forwarded. If we slip some 'noise' into the returning signal, we can make the receiving end misjudge the synchronization status."
"Noise?"
"For example, making the Siberia node's signal carry the North Sea timestamp." The corner of his mouth lifted. "The system sees that the times don't match, automatically rules the calibration a failure, and has to restart the process."
Emma understood. "Like plugging a USB drive full of garbled files into a computer."
"More or less." Ye Mo pulled a small metal box from his cargo pants pocket. Inside was a black chip etched with patterns. "This is the ability simulator I took from the man in the trench coat. It can briefly replicate the properties of Phase Shift. Connect it to the circuitry, and it can cause tiny offsets in the data stream."
"How long does it work?"
"Three seconds per use," he said. "Enough to make the system report one error. But triggering it repeatedly will prompt a traceback."
Emma stood. "Then we only use it once, at the most critical moment."
They exchanged a look and said nothing more.
Ye Mo inserted the chip into the cable shaft, his fingers quickly connecting the wires. Emma retreated to a corner and continued maintaining low-frequency brain waves to avoid attracting the system's attention. Neither spoke throughout the process. There were only the soft clinks of tools and the hum of electricity.
The wiring was complete.
Ye Mo tested the signal feedback once, confirming that the disguise layer was stable. They only had to wait for the next cycle to begin, and they could inject interference the instant the data returned.
"Now we wait." He leaned against the wall and rubbed his wrist.
Emma watched the mass of light in the air. "Who do you think... is really in there?"
"I don't know." Ye Mo shook his head. "But for the remnants of the Hellfire Club to spend so many years setting this up, and for Hydra to willingly serve as their instrument, this person must have died once-and been deeply unwilling to accept it."
"Do you ever think... we're too late?"
"One step early, you're a hero. One step late, you're collecting bodies." He smiled. "At least we can still choose which one to be."
Emma smiled too, but said nothing.
The web of light continued flickering, and the tetrahedron's vertices lit up in sequence. Another cycle had begun.
Ye Mo watched the timer, his finger resting on the switch.
In three seconds, the Siberia signal would return.
His thumb slowly began to press down.
The console suddenly emitted a short beep.
Emma jerked her head up.
Ye Mo's hand stopped in midair.
On the main screen, the previously stable tetrahedral structure began to twist. The mass of light at its center abruptly spun faster, as though something had forcibly awakened it.
A line of text slowly appeared:
[Lazarus Protocol - Final Phase Initiated]