Old Huang didn't know much about the mysterious Aunt Lan—or rather, he knew quite a lot, yet still couldn't read her.
He wiped the smile off his face, scanned the room, and led her up to his private office on the third floor.
If all they'd been doing was trading gossip about Tony, their beloved President wouldn't have paid any attention. But this reeked of secrets. President Maya very naturally—very professionally—let her perception drift outward.
I'm not eavesdropping. I'm not being nosy. I just care about Old Huang. That's all.
And just like that, her awareness slipped silently into Old Huang's third-floor study.
"Come, come, Aunt Lan! This Da Hong Pao just arrived from China—excellent quality. Have a taste!" Old Huang poured with genuine warmth.
Aunt Lan accepted the cup but set it untouched on the side table. She got straight to the point. "Old Huang, I'll cut to the chase. You're not the only one I'm visiting today."
Old Huang's expression sobered. Aunt Lan continued.
"Your restaurant employs mutants, doesn't it?"
His face changed. "Aunt Lan, you know they're—"
She waved him off. "Fellow Chinese. I know. I'm not here to hand them over to the American government. Sigh—it's not just you. Plenty of us, myself included, have been sheltering mutant compatriots. They're already struggling. Being Chinese in New York is hard enough. Now the environment for mutants is getting worse by the day. If we don't look out for them, who will?"
Old Huang relaxed. "So what are you thinking, Aunt Lan?"
She smiled bitterly. "What am I thinking? You know how it is. The kind of guests who come to my noodle shop tend to be well-connected people. I pick things up."
She paused and glanced around the room. "Is it safe to talk here?"
"Perfectly. I use this study because the restaurant below is too noisy—I had soundproofing installed throughout." Old Huang said confidently.
"Fair enough—you can't even hear the car horns from the street in here. I'm being too paranoid." Aunt Lan gave a self-deprecating smile, then her voice went flat. "The American government is planning a major crackdown on mutants. They may push through legislation—a formal legal framework targeting mutants specifically."
"What? Have the Americans lost their minds?" Old Huang stared, aghast.
"My reaction exactly, when I first heard. I've since cross-referenced multiple sources. It's essentially confirmed. This is no longer merely oppression—it's direct, deliberate harm, backed by the full force of law."
"This—this—before, they were going after people under the table, and you could at least write it off as individual misconduct. But codifying it into law? Setting aside the mass resistance that would trigger, this flies in the face of everything America's Constitution stands for—equality, freedom, and democracy!"
"Old Huang." Aunt Lan's voice sharpened. She was normally soft-spoken, almost serene, but her eyes had gone cold. "I didn't come here to debate constitutional theory. Those closest to it always know first. We know what's coming—we have to act. The others can fend for themselves, but our own people will not be handed over to these Americans without a fight."
"Then... what's the plan?"
"We move the mutant compatriots within the US to Canada. I'll personally handle New York. To avoid complications, we can't use normal channels—I'll arrange for them to cross over quietly. The groundwork on the Canadian side is already in place."
"Is it really this urgent? The law hasn't even passed yet—"
"We cannot gamble our people's lives on these Americans having any decency." Her voice was firm. "Once the government decides to move against mutants, their preparations will already be made. All they need is a flimsy excuse—detain a few people, hold them until the legislation clears, and then lock them up with the full blessing of the law."
Aunt Lan had seen too much to be naive about these things. Across every scenario she'd run in her head, a quiet border crossing was the safest option. Getting into the US was hard. Slipping out was comparatively easy—especially with how absurdly long the US-Canada border stretched.
And Manhattan was closer to Canada than most people realized. New York State literally shared a border. Drive north out of the city, through Westchester, and you'd cross into Kingston or Ottawa in under four hours (roughly 250 miles / 400 km).
When she finished speaking, Aunt Lan dipped a fingertip into the tea and wrote an address and a time directly on Old Huang's desktop.
"Memorize it. Show up at the time and place, and we'll take care of the rest." A small smile. "Honestly, crossing into Canada barely counts as 'smuggling.' A US green card still works there. And once this blows over, they might be able to come home in broad daylight."
Certain that Old Huang had it memorized, Aunt Lan made her farewells and left without lingering. She still had more stops to make.
Phone calls? Ha—absolutely not.
Even President Maya was rattled. This is big. This is going to change everything.
If Aunt Lan wasn't crying wolf—if the US government really was about to formally codify mutants as second-class citizens with a different legal standing from ordinary people—then mutants who believed in equality would not accept it quietly. Sooner or later they'd coalesce into a resistance, and that resistance would put them on a direct collision course with the government.
In Maya's memory, the American government wasn't supposed to be this reckless. Unless they had an ace up their sleeve. Unless they were absolutely certain of winning.
Have the Americans already built the Sentinels from the movies?
If there were Sentinel robots, Tony's Iron Man suit was a rounding error. The entire back half of the Marvel story would be irrelevant before it started. The game would already be over.
Give me three thousand Sentinels and I could roll straight over Asgard.
Five thousand and the Earth rules the galaxy.
Under ten thousand Sentinels? Already a force to fear. Hit ten thousand? Nothing in the universe stops them. The Earth Era begins. Roll credits.
Obviously, that was never going to happen. Every development followed rules—especially in scientific research.
Yes, President Maya was only in elementary school.
Yes, her school was a second-rate institution with a thin faculty.
Yes, at thirteen she'd never been exposed to the world's deepest, most carefully kept secrets.
But she'd watched Magneto lose his temper. She'd stood on the same stage as the best young minds in America. And just last night, Tony's equipment had given her a live demonstration of where current technology actually stood.
So. If you're bold enough to legislate against mutants—does that mean Magneto is just a joke to you now?
Magneto could wipe out a hundred thousand soldiers equipped with Tony Stark's best 3D Maneuver Gear without breaking a sweat.
And that gear represented the current peak of human technology. Even if you swapped to a different weapons platform, the hard ceiling on computing power and materials science was already set. How exactly were you going to build a robot that crushes Magneto with one hand when your entire tech stack has a fixed upper limit?
Same reason Maya's little stunt against Tony worked in the first place.
No 4G infrastructure? Doesn't matter how impressive your app ecosystem is—Taobao, WeChat, Alipay, short-form video, live streaming, all of it worthless. Static on a dead channel.
Why? Old truth: the foundation determines what you can build on top of it.
Even with alien technology, you still need a theoretical basis. You still need materials capable of realizing the design.