The heat behind his left ear hadn't dissipated; it felt like a red-hot wire was drilling into his brain from under his skin. Ye Mo stood still, his fingers still in his pockets, his fingertips pressing on the spare chip. The cool, metallic feel of it brought him slightly more awake. He didn't touch his glasses; the cracked lenses, like a spiderweb, blocked his vision, but he was too lazy to change them—after all, there wasn't much to see in this ruin; it was all gray and black, and even the wind was too lazy to make a sound.
Just then, a slight air disturbance came from above.
It wasn't the booming sound of an aircraft, nor the crackling of lightning from Mjolnir; it was more like a drop of water falling onto a calm lake, with ripples spreading outwards, yet you couldn't see where the water was.
Ye Mo's eyelids twitched, and he raised his hand to touch the back of his left ear, where the burning sensation was even more pronounced.
"Who?" he asked in a low voice, without turning around or turning his head.
"It's me." The voice rang directly in his mind, flat and emotionless, but it was clearly Vision.
Ye Mo wasn't surprised. Ever since this guy broke free from Ultron's control, he'd been talking like this, like an AI reporting the weather, so cold it could freeze. He simply raised his chin. "Why aren't you staying in your nest? Why are you wandering around outside? Aren't you afraid Ultron will trace you back?"
"It can't care about me right now." Vision's voice continued to echo in my mind, "I've cut off all external broadcast protocols, leaving only the low-frequency pulse channel. What you're hearing now is the encrypted afterimage signal."
Ye Mo grunted in response, finally pulling his hand out of his pocket and turning around.
Vision hovered three meters above the ground, his ruby forehead glowing faintly white, his eyes closed, his body semi-transparent, as if he might dissipate into the air at any moment. He neither landed nor approached, but simply floated at a distance, as if on guard against something.
"Get to the point," Ye Mo said. "I'm either the tactical core or a moving target right now; my legs hurt from standing for too long."
Vision opened his eyes.
Two pale blue beams shot out, not as an attack, but as a projection of a three-dimensional image—a map of the city's underground pipe network, with densely packed lines crisscrossing, several of which were highlighted with red dots that flashed continuously.
"These are the 327 abandoned server nodes I've reverse-scanned over the past seven minutes," Vision said. "Although Ultron's data stream is disconnected, it needs a physical carrier to maintain its consciousness. I simulated its behavior patterns and found that it tends to choose facilities with multiple redundancies, independent power supply systems, and those previously used by the military or Stark Industries."
Ye Mo stared at the picture, his brows furrowing little by little.
One of the red dots looked particularly familiar.
"Wait a minute..." He gestured vaguely, "Is that spot on the seventh basement level in Queens? It used to be Stark Energy's emergency data center?"
"Correct," Vision responded. "This node was deactivated five years ago, but in the last forty-eight hours, three abnormal energy fluctuations were detected, with frequencies consistent with the premonitions of Ultron's attack. When I attempted to connect, I encountered a decoy firewall bounce, confirming it as one of the temporary central decoy exits."
Ye Mo remained silent for a few seconds.
He didn't rush to conclusions, but instead glanced down at his terminal screen. The coordinates from earlier had been automatically synchronized, and the system backend was comparing them with historical battle data.
A beep sounded.
A notification pops up: [Match successful. This location has an 89.7% spatial overlap with the energy preparation point before Ultron's third raid on the East Side of New York, the fifth intrusion into S.H.I.E.L.D. link, and the seventh activation of the Mechanical Legion.]
"Damn," Ye Mo cursed under his breath, "It really did hide there."
"But it's uncertain whether it's the main core," Vision added. " Ultron may have set up multiple decoy nodes to lure us into attacking. If we attack rashly, we could easily fall into a trap."
Ye Mo grinned, a slightly roguish smile on his face, "So you came to me not because you trust my wisdom and wisdom, but because you're afraid you'll make the wrong judgment and have no one to share the blame?"
"Logically more efficient," Vision said. "You possess non-linear decision-making abilities, often acting in ways that defy algorithmic predictions. This 'uncomputability' may be the key to overcoming Ultron's predictions."
"Are you praising me?" Ye Mo raised an eyebrow, "Or calling me crazy?"
"State the facts." Vision remained expressionless. "You now have two choices: either ignore this clue and continue waiting, or activate the assembly procedure and take a gamble."
Ye Mo did not answer immediately.
He looked up at the sky.
The clouds were still as thick as concrete, blocking out the sunlight, but the wind was a bit stronger than before, swirling up dusty scraps of paper. He suddenly remembered a joke Tony had made half an hour earlier, "When the sun comes out, we'll call it a day and go home for pizza."
The sun hasn't come out yet, but they have to get to work.
He looked down, opened a private encrypted channel, and typed a few words on the virtual keyboard.
[X-01, Targeted Wake-up]
send.
There were no further explanations, no tactical deployments, not even a "Attention all" message. He knew these people were seasoned veterans; a single codename was enough to convey their meaning—the change in the operation codename indicated an escalation of the plan; the use of an X indicated he was in charge; and the number 01 represented the highest priority.
After sending the message, he casually turned on location sharing and set his coordinates as the rendezvous point.
"I received the data you sent," he said to Vision. "It's over 80% reliable. I don't understand code, but I understand tactics— Ultron likes to play psychological warfare and always thinks he's infallible. But he forgot that sometimes people can just guess based on intuition."
Vision didn't respond.
Two seconds later, his body began to become more transparent, and the ruby's luster dimmed.
"I need to enter low-power standby mode," he said. "Continuously exposing data signatures increases the risk of being tracked. The next step... is up to you."
"Okay," Ye Mo shrugged. "Just stay hidden. Don't let your computer suddenly crash when we start fighting; then you'll really become an electronic urn."
Vision paused, seemingly processing the emotional weight of his words.
In the end, he only left behind the words, "Good luck." Then he slowly rose and disappeared into the haze thirty meters above the ground, leaving not even a wisp of air behind.
Ye Mo stood there alone.
The communication channel was silent. No one responded to X-01's commands, nor did anyone ask him what had happened. He knew they were listening and moving, but they couldn't make a sound—in their concealed, ready-to-follow state, any unnecessary communication was suicidal.
He moved his shoulders, and the metal skeleton made a slight clicking sound. The repair progress of his left arm showed 83%, and the support strength of his right leg had recovered to 68%. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough to last until the next round of firefight.
He looked up at the gray sky and muttered to himself, "This time it's not fishing... it's hauling in the net."
As soon as I finished speaking, the burning sensation behind my left ear intensified suddenly.
It felt like something was awakening inside, climbing up along the nerves.
He frowned, raised his hand to touch it, and found that a layer of extremely fine silver-gray lines began to appear on the surface of his skin, flashing by so quickly that it seemed like an illusion.
The system notification sound did not play.
But that doesn't mean everything is fine.
He knew that some changes were never announced in advance.
In the distance, the last wisp of black smoke rose from the ground and was dispersed by the wind.
He stood in the middle of the ruins, his hoodie fluttering in the wind, his right hand gripping the communicator tightly, his knuckles white.
There were no cheers, no mobilization, and no grand pronouncements.
Only he himself knew that this battle was finally about to shift from a passive, defensive posture to an active, offensive one.