For 30+ Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
The library carrel, their secluded sanctuary, felt more like a clandestine research lab than a study space. Peter had swiftly executed the necessary, semi-legal maneuvers to access the main server's processing power, hooking his laptop up to the university's high-speed network. He placed the Quantum Entanglement Communicator (Q.E.C.), a complex sphere of silent silver rings, onto a thick, dense textbook—a temporary, non-conductive pedestal.
"Okay," Peter said, running a preliminary diagnostic scan. The exhaustion from the night before was battling the sheer thrill of working on technology this advanced. "This thing is reading off the charts. It's transmitting on a continuous, encrypted wave, but the signature isn't radio or microwave. It's... something else. It's using entangled particles to transmit data instantaneously, meaning it doesn't leave a conventional path. No IP address, no tower ping."
"It is communication that defies the laws of this world," Diana observed, leaning closer, her dark hair brushing his shoulder. She looked at the silent, beautiful artifact with the intense focus she usually reserved for analyzing ancient Greek scripts.
"Exactly," Peter muttered, pushing his glasses up his nose. "And that means we can't track where it's talking to, only how it's talking." He opened a complex analytical program he'd written during a particularly boring high school physics lecture. "I'm running a cross-spectrum frequency analysis, looking for the second entangled particle—the receiver. It should have a corresponding residual signature in the local energy field."
For twenty minutes, the only sound was the furious, rhythmic clicking of Peter's keyboard and the soft whir of the laptop's fan. The screen was a frantic collage of spectral graphs, algorithms, and lines of unreadable code. He hit a wall, his mind slamming against the sheer, unconventional complexity of the device.
"It's no good," he sighed, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "The residual field is too broad. It's broadcasting through the whole city's infrastructure. It's like listening for a whisper in the middle of a rock concert."
Diana placed a gentle, grounding hand on his shoulder. "Then we must stop listening for a whisper, and listen for the song."
Peter turned, confused. "The song?"
"Yes. You said M.O.D.O.K. is a psionic weapon. A living mind," she explained, her gaze intensely thoughtful. "The Q.E.C. is designed to control it. It is not sending mathematical data; it is sending thoughts, directives, emotional and psychic commands. It must operate on a principle of resonance. The frequency will match the creature's own profound, painful energy signature that we felt."
A jolt of realization shot through Peter. She was right. He had been looking for a digital fingerprint when he should have been looking for a metaphysical one. It connected his rational world of science with her world of innate, intuitive understanding.
"The psychic scream," he breathed, remembering the raw, agonizing wave of energy that had nearly shattered his mind. "If this device is paired with that... it has to vibrate at the same resonant frequency. It's a bio-signature."
He immediately shifted his search parameters, discarding conventional quantum physics for a fusion of quantum mechanics and bio-electromagnetics. He used the university server's capacity to run a highly specific spectral filter, stripping away the city's electronic noise and searching for a specific, chaotic frequency that mirrored the M.O.D.O.K. incident's trauma.
The minutes bled into one another. The library around them filled with the normal afternoon crowd, but they remained oblivious, sealed in their bubble of high-stakes conspiracy. Peter felt the familiar, cold thread of guilt snake into his focus, reminding him he should be home making amends with May, but Diana's presence kept the guilt at bay, channeling it into fierce, focused determination.
"There!" Peter suddenly exclaimed, his finger slamming down on the screen.
A single, faint, chaotic line of energy had appeared amidst the noise. It was a secondary, intermittent signal, far smaller than the primary broadcast from the Q.E.C., but it was responding directly to their attempts to ping the entanglement field.
"That's the return signal," Peter whispered, his voice tight with adrenaline. "It's the actual location of the M.O.D.O.K. containment unit. It's not a permanent base; it's a mobile transport. They're moving the asset."
He cross-referenced the coordinates with public maps, then zoomed in. The location wasn't the warehouse; it was a high-security perimeter on the opposite side of the East River, near Roosevelt Island. The structure was a colossal, windowless tower—the Stark Tower Decommissioned Research Annex, a military-grade facility taken offline years ago.
"The location makes sense," Diana said grimly. "It's built to withstand a siege. And it is the ideal place to deploy a weapon of mass destruction from."
Peter's fingers flew, accessing the building's digital blueprints he could find publicly. "They're moving it into a firing position," he said, his voice rising with urgency. "The main ventilation shaft on the roof... it connects directly to the satellite uplinks. If they load the M.O.D.O.K. combat directives now, they could link it to any remote target. They could paralyze the entire city."
He checked the timing of the intermittent signal. "The transport is scheduled to arrive at the Annex in two hours. That's when they'll install the Q.E.C.'s counterpart and initiate the final upload."
He shut his laptop with a decisive snap. The quiet of the library suddenly felt unbearable, suffocating. The investigation was over. The fight was about to begin.
They looked at each other, the vast, unspoken reality of their partnership filling the space between them. The promise of the last few days—the love, the intimacy, the shared laughter—was about to be tested against the terrible demands of their secret lives.
"Two hours," Diana said, her deep blue eyes reflecting the gravity of the mission. "We must be there in time to intercept the transport and secure the Annex."
"Let's go," Peter agreed, already pulling his hoodie back up. He knew the drill. The separate, flimsy excuses. The frantic change. The convergence at the danger zone. "This time, we don't just stop the birth. We stop the deployment."
They walked out of the library, hand-in-hand, two students leaving their notes behind. But beneath the surface of the mundane, the signal was strong, unified, and ready for war.