Studying the particles, the enlargement mechanism

It was 5:03 a. m., and dawn was approaching.

Ye Mo slowly loosened his fingers from the edge of the control panel, leaving a blurry mark on the metal surface from the thin layer of sweat on his palm. He didn't wipe it away, but just stared at the fragment of the Yellowjacket armor lying quietly in the sealed analysis chamber—the blue light was still flickering, like a heartbeat that refused to stop.

"Even if you stare at it all night, it won't say 'Where did I come from' on its own." Scott's voice came from behind, accompanied by the buzzing sound of the suit modules that had just been charged.

Ye Mo didn't turn around. "The system is telling me not to rush."

"The system again?" Scott rolled his eyes and slammed the controller on the table. "Last time you said the system made you tough it out with the cold wave backlash, and you ended up lying in bed for two and a half days, needing to be fed. Are you going to believe it again this time?"

"This time is different." Ye Mo finally turned around, a slight dark circle under his eye. "I'm not reading the data stream anymore; let's try a different approach."

Scott squinted at him. "You're not thinking of banging your head against the wall again, are you?"

"Reverse spectrum stripping." Ye Mo walked to the terminal and pulled up the waveform diagram from last night. "Using the Pym Particles standard model as a ruler, measure this thing segment by segment to see where it's crooked. Don't you always say that when repairing circuits, you have to find the breakpoint first? Now we're just peeling the outer layer off this bunch of encrypted signals."

Scott leaned closer to the screen, his finger tracing the unusually high-frequency fluctuations. "Here... the frequency almost perfectly matches the peak of the neural electrical signal during scaling. This is no coincidence."

"Yes." Ye Mo zoomed in on a detail, "It's not just an amplification command trigger; it's more like a interference probe, specifically designed to disrupt your nervous system's rhythm. Darren's suit wasn't copied; it was a trap."

They both fell silent for a second.

"So he's after the person who has the scaling ability?" Scott asked in a low voice.

"At least I don't want you to use it properly." Ye Mo turned off the projector. "But we don't care about motives now, we're just breaking the mechanism. If you can take apart the router, I dare to take apart this board."

Scott grinned. "Sure, you be the welder, and I'll be the quality inspector."

The experiment officially began.

The alarm sounded three minutes after the first scan began.

[Sample activity fluctuation exceeds threshold, detection failed]

"Here we go again." Scott frowned. "This thing is practically alive; it doesn't even shut down when it's powered."

"Then let it calm down." Ye Mo raised his right hand, a wisp of extremely cold air condensing at his fingertips, drifting towards the isolation chamber like mist. "Minor cooling, keep it above the critical point, don't freeze the structure."

When the cold air touched the particle's surface, the blue light contracted sharply and then stabilized.

"All done!" Scott immediately adjusted the detector's sensitivity. "I'm locking the trajectory!"

Over the next ten minutes, they captured three brief energy pulses, each precisely corresponding to the instant the "volume expansion" command was issued.

"Found it." Scott stared at the dynamic graph, his voice strained. "The amplification isn't uniform expansion; it's a chain reaction—particles are excited at a specific frequency, causing cells to expand in a coordinated manner. It's like pushing Domino; once the first one falls, the rest follow."

"That's where the problem lies." Ye Mo pulled up the simulation model. "If we reproduce the process according to this logic, energy conduction will overflow."

On the screen, the virtual human body suddenly distorts when it is magnified to twice its size, the boundaries of the tissues become blurred, and some areas begin to stretch abnormally.

"If that were actually done, people would be fried into chewing gum." Scott swallowed hard.

"This means it's missing a brake." Ye Mo stared at the model. "Just like an engine has an accelerator and a clutch, this mechanism only accelerates but doesn't provide a buffer. The original Pym Particles must have contained some kind of regulating factor, which they cut out."

He paused, a sense of unease flashing through his mind—a familiar fragment of ability trembled slightly on the 7th floor of the Gene Spiral Tower, like a resonance between Healing Factor and Molecular Anchoring, reminding him of something.

But he didn't move.

"You're making that face again," Scott nudged his arm. "It's that face you make before you say, 'System, let me try.'"

"I don't plan to try it." Ye Mo shook his head. "I just feel... we need a biological damper, like neurofeedback regulation, to let the body know 'this is enough' on its own."

"In other words," Scott typed rapidly on the keyboard, adding new parameters, "We're adding a 'neural feedback damping coefficient' to the model, assuming the original particles contain unknown physiological adaptation components?"

"Give it a try."

A new round of simulation operations.

This time, the virtual human body was successfully enlarged to two and a half times its original size, maintaining its structural integrity with only slight oscillations and attenuation at the edges.

"It's stable!" Scott almost jumped out of his chair. "It's still shaking a bit, but at least it won't explode!"

"And look here," Ye Mo pointed to the energy distribution curve, "The oscillations are concentrated in the extremities, with minimal impact on the core organs. This means that even if it gets out of control, the problems will start on the periphery, and it won't disintegrate on the spot."

"So, they can be saved?" Scott's eyes lit up.

"Just don't sprint ten meters in one go," Ye Mo glanced at him. "Besides, your current limit is only 3.2 centimeters, what are you talking about with ten meters? The system suggests you practice squats first."

Scott laughed and cursed, "Screw your system!"

They continued to optimize the model, importing all seven sampling data points and comparing the particle activation rhythm frame by frame. During the process, they encountered two more instrument errors: one was due to overcooling causing temporary sample inactivation, and the other was due to the detector misinterpreting the resonance peak as noise and filtering it directly.

Each time they restart, they become a little more accurate.

By 6:40 a. m., the sky outside the window was already turning white, and the morning mist on the edge of the city drifted in, carrying with it the sounds of distant traffic. The laboratory lights automatically dimmed, activating energy-saving mode.

"Almost there." Scott stretched, his shoulders cracking. "We've come up with a usable amplification mechanism model. We don't know what's missing from the original recipe, but at least we understand how the enemy plays dirty tricks."

Ye Mo didn't reply, as he was checking the last set of data. Suddenly, he noticed a tiny lag in a certain delayed response—0.3 seconds after the particle chain reaction started, a very weak reverse signal was transmitted back.

"Wait a minute." He zoomed in on that frame. "Something's not right."

"What's wrong?"

"It doesn't just receive commands," Ye Mo pointed to the waveform, "It also provides feedback. Although it's weak, it's definitely sending something to the user's nervous system."

Scott leaned closer. "What are you bringing?"

"I don't know," Ye Mo shook his head, "But it's definitely not a good thing. Normal scaling shouldn't have this kind of reverse path. This thing is like... a listening device."

The air was silent for a few seconds.

"You mean, the person wearing this suit is being recorded for everything they do?" Scott asked in a low voice.

"Not only that," Ye Mo said, turning off the screen, "It uploads everything, including how you shrink, when you shrink, and how much neural load you're under. We haven't found out who's collecting this data yet."

"But now is not the time to investigate this." He stood up, rubbing his temples. "We just need to figure out the mechanism first. The rest can wait until we can conduct safety tests."

Scott nodded, packaged and encrypted all the research results, and stored them in a level-three protected database. A copy was simultaneously transmitted to a portable terminal and inserted into the suit's built-in slot.

"Do you think... I could try tuning the controller using the new model?" he asked.

What do you want to do?

"Not a real race," Scott waved his hand. "Just... try one more lap at the edge of the safe zone. Ten laps at 3.2 centimeters, see if the stability improves."

Ye Mo looked at him without saying a word.

He knew what Scott was thinking—last night's battle almost ended everything. If Ye Mo hadn't risked the backlash to pull them back, and if Emma Frost hadn't given the final signal, all three of them would be buried in the underground pipe network.

Now that we have a new model, even if it's just a theoretical deduction, it gives us peace of mind.

"Okay," Ye Mo finally said, "But you're not allowed to cross the line. Three point two centimeters, forty-seven seconds—not a second less."

"Got it." Scott laughed. "I'm not a high school student, I don't know what rules are."

"Even high school students aren't as reckless as you." Ye Mo walked to the main control panel and brought up the training ground monitoring interface. "Tell me when you're ready."

Scott flexed his wrists, put on gloves, and pressed the controller against the module on his chest. He took a deep breath and looked at Ye Mo.

"Here we go."

Ye Mo pressed the record button.

The shrinking process was smoother than before, and the suit's luster flowed smoothly without the flickering and abrupt changes commonly seen in the past. Data showed that the neural synchronization rate increased by 12%, and energy fluctuations decreased significantly.

First lap complete, second lap into the curves, third lap...

"Stabilize your breathing rhythm." Ye Mo stared at the numbers. "Don't rush."

"Receive."

At the end of the fourth lap, the monitor displayed a warning: [Pym Particles fluctuations are approaching the metastable critical value].

"Stop!" Ye Mo shouted immediately.

Scott instantly reverted to his original form, his forehead covered in sweat.

"How are you?" he asked, panting.

Ye Mo looked at the screen. "You almost drifted halfway through the seventh lap. The new model does improve control, but your driving habits are still holding you back."

"Does that mean... we still need to practice?"

"Practice." Ye Mo turned off the terminal and turned to him, "But this time you're on the right track. You know how to change it."

Scott nodded, but his face showed no disappointment; instead, it held a sense of relief.

He knew there were no shortcuts on this path.

The two packed up the equipment and put the experimental area back into standby mode. The cleaning robot slid out and began sweeping away residual dust particles on the ground.

Ye Mo stood in front of the isolation pod and took one last look at the fragment.

It was still flashing, but the rhythm had changed. It wasn't as aggressive as before; instead, it was like a trapped firefly fluttering inside a glass pane.

"Who do you think made it?" Scott suddenly asked.

"That's not important," Ye Mo said. "What's important now is that we know how it works."

He turned and walked toward the exit, his steps slightly unsteady, his strength not yet fully recovered.

Scott followed, stuffing the terminal into his tactical bag as he walked.

One by one, the laboratory lights went out, leaving only the central control console with its standby green light still on.

Ye Mo stopped and looked back at the data analysis screen, where the last line of conclusions was clearly visible:

[The core of the amplification mechanism has been preliminarily analyzed, key clues have been confirmed, and we can now move on to the application verification stage.]

He reached out and turned off the power.

As darkness fell, he said to Scott beside him:

"You can try it now."