by Chris Wyatt
“Don’t worry,” assured Strucker. “I’ll give you the precious scepter. I know when I’m beat. You’ll mention how I cooperated, I hope?”
Cap looked around the room, noting the open cell that seem to have once contained human subjects. It was just as he feared. The Enchanced they’d seen outside, the one who could run fast. The Baron must have somehow given him those powers through experiments with the energy from Loki’s scepter.
“Sure, I’ll mention you cooperated. It’ll go right under the mention of illegal human experimentation,” said Cap. “How many people did you work on here?”
Strucker couldn’t help but smile as he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a young woman in the shadows behind Cap. It was the runner’s twin. But she didn’t have the same powers as her brother. No, she was very different.
“Oh, only a couple,” said Strucker.
Dr. List worked quickly at the data banks, deleting files as Baron Strucker had instructed. If the Avengers found out the details of the plan they’d been working on, Hydra’s hopes at rising once again were in serious jeopardy.
“Hurry, hurry,” mumbled the doctor as the computer processed his commands. He never saw the repulsor beam.…
BAM! In a blast of light, List was left unconscious on the ground and Iron Man strode into the room. Hunching over the computer, he canceled the data purge and stuck a handheld Stark device into the side of the computer console.
“I want it all, Jarvis,” said Iron Man to the AI. “And copy Maria Hill at headquarters.”
As the files transferred, Iron Man searched the room with x-rays. “He’s got to be hiding more than files in here.…”
Sure enough, the scan showed a seam in one wall. “Oh! Please be a secret door,” said Iron Man. “I love secret doors.”
Iron Man pushed on the wall and it clicked open, revealing a narrow passageway. He tried to push his way through, but with his armor, he just wouldn’t fit. “Armor—sentry mode,” he commanded. The armor suddenly flew off of him, reassembling a few feet away.
Now smaller, Tony slipped through the passage and descended a long stairway leading into darkness.
Back in the command center, Captain America, still facing Strucker, sensed the presence of the woman behind him. He turned, but she was already next to him, whispering into his ear. She was speaking in a strange, ancient-sounding language that seemed familiar, but somehow Cap’s mind couldn’t focus on the words.
The next thing he knew, Cap was in a haze. Images from his past swirled around him, and then everything went black.
When he next opened his eyes, the woman was gone. Who was this woman, and what had she done to him? Cap shook Strucker, asking, “What have you been doing here?”
“What we all try to do,” mumbled Strucker. “Improve humanity…”
Cap spoke over the comms. “We’ve got a second Enhanced. Female. She appears to be some kind of…” He trailed off, trying to find a better way of explaining what had happened to him, but he couldn’t. “Some kind of a witch. Do not engage her!”
“If we can’t be better than what the world made us,” began Strucker, holding up a grenade and pulling the pin, “then…”
Cap didn’t let Strucker finish. He kicked the Baron in the chest, causing him to lose the grenade. The hero grabbed the explosive in midair, then tossed it away against the far wall, where it exploded harmlessly.
Outside the fortress, Hulk ripped apart the last tank. Around him, the remains of the Hydra garrison lay in smoking ruins. The battle was over. With nothing left to smash, the beast began to calm. He lumbered away into the woods, his body already changing, shrinking. Finally, as he lay in the snow, transitioning to his human state, Black Widow approached him. She placed a blanket over the man he was becoming, Dr. Bruce Banner.
At the bottom of the darkened staircase, Tony entered a huge, sprawling catacomb that had been converted into a cutting-edge lab. He had never expected to find anything on this scale. Every available space was packed with weapons—tech, biotech, and even robotic engineering equipment.
Above it all, the skeleton of a Leviathan hung from the ceiling. It had been carefully gathered and pieced together like a T. rex fossil in a museum.
Tony was mentally cataloging everything when he spotted it—Loki’s scepter. The talisman, tubes and cords trailing off of it, was mounted on a rack.
“Thor?” Iron Man called out.
“The package has arrived,” Thor replied over the comms, letting everyone know he’d reached the Quinjet with the wounded Hawkeye.
Tony was about to report his discovery when he startled at the sight of a mysterious woman behind him. As she’d done with Cap, the woman whispered into Tony’s ear, pouring in strange words. In an instant, the world went upside down for Tony.… He woke back up sometime later. How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes? Hours?
Hadn’t there just been someone here? Someone who’d surprised him? He couldn’t remember. He looked around, confused, and again saw the scepter.… Then he remembered what he was doing. Running up to it, he yanked the cables off of it, and pulled it from its housing.
“I have the scepter,” Tony reported.
Tony didn’t see the balcony above, where, in the shadows, the woman watched. She and her twin brother had come to the Hydra base months before, specifically wishing that they might one day face their enemy—Tony Stark. The day had finally come.
The twins had gone through so much, participating in the Baron’s painful experiments, and all for this!
The woman saw her brother speed to her side, arriving in a barely visible blur of motion. Looking down, he saw Stark removing Loki’s scepter from the lab, and moved to stop him.
“No,” said the woman, putting her arm out to restrain him. A malevolent glee jumped to her eyes as she watched Stark take the scepter from the room.
“Why did you let him take it?” asked her twin.
“Because he needs it,” she replied.
“To do what?” he asked.
She just smiled.
The Avengers’ Quinjet soared across the sky with Tony Stark in the pilot’s seat. Behind him, one of the passenger seats had been laid back and converted into a gurney. Hawkeye was in stable condition, thanks to some of the most advanced medical equipment available.
Widow checked on Hawkeye again before turning to look at Bruce Banner, sitting alone in an ill-fitting T-shirt, a blanket still draped over him. She approached him.
“How’s my bright-eyed boy?” she asked.
“I wasn’t expecting… to see the other guy today,” Bruce replied.
“Well, you know how you get when people shoot at you,” Widow replied in a joking tone.
“What happened after that?”
Widow knew what Bruce was asking. He never remembered what happened when the Hulk was in charge of his body, and he was always terrified at the thought of the pain and misery his other half might cause.
“If you hadn’t been there, there would have been double the casualties,” Widow replied honestly, then pointed at Hawkeye on the gurney. “And my best friend would be a treasured memory.”
Bruce grunted, not sure if he believed her account.
“How long before you trust me?” asked Widow.
Bruce shivered a little more, pulling the blanket closer. “It’s not you I don’t trust.”
Widow put her hand on his, looking him in the eyes, but she called out to Thor behind her. “Thor, report on Hulk.”
Thor replied proudly, “Ha! The gates of the afterlife are filled with the screams of his victims!”
Widow immediately shot Thor a look. That wasn’t exactly what Bruce needed to hear right now.
“But, uh, not the screams of the dead,” Thor backpedaled. “Wounded screams, mainly. Whimpering. A great roar of complaining, and tales of sprained, uh, deltoids… and… gout…”
Widow and Bruce shared a smile at the sound of the Asgardian’s awkwardness before Tony called back to Bruce from the front
of the jet. “Dr. Cho’s on her way up from Seoul to treat Hawkeye. You OK if she sets up in your lab?”
“Sure,” Bruce replied. “She knows her way around.”
After Tony gave Jarvis the appropriate commands and locked in the jet’s landing vector, he turned around and looked at Thor. He was gingerly holding his brother’s scepter with a cloth, so that he wouldn’t directly touch its surface.
“Feels good, right?” Tony asked. “You’ve been after this since S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed. Not that I haven’t enjoyed our little raiding parties, but…”
“But this brings it to a close,” Thor finished.
“As soon as we fully understand what that thing’s been used for,” interjected Cap. “Since when has Baron Strucker been capable of human enhancement?”
Tony nodded. “Banner and I will give that thing the once-over before it goes back to Asgard,” he said, looking to Thor for confirmation. “Is that cool with you? Just a few days, until the going-away party. You’re staying, right?”
“Of course,” confirmed Thor. “A victory should be honored with revels.”
Tony smiled. “Who doesn’t love revels? How about you, Captain?”
“Well, hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri—and Hydra,” he said. “So, yes… revels.”
The Quinjet landed gently on top of Avengers Tower, and a ramp quickly slid down. Medical support staff hurried to unload Hawkeye on a stretcher, then transported him to Dr. Cho’s hastily assembled med lab.
“Cho’s all set up, boss,” said Maria Hill as Tony Stark walked down the ramp with the other Avengers behind him.
Hill had once been a top agent and an important leader inside S.H.I.E.L.D. When the organization fell, Stark hired her right away. He wanted someone with her skills, and she wanted a position where she could still make a difference. It was a natural transition.
“He’s the boss,” Tony said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at Cap. “I just pay the bills.”
“What’s the word on Baron Strucker?” Cap asked Hill.
“NATO’s got him,” Hill replied matter-of-factly.
“And what about the two Enhanced?” Cap was worried. He wouldn’t feel comfortable until they got a read on these two new super-powered enemies.
In response, Hill handed Cap a file and began briefing him.
“Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins, orphaned at age ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building. Sokovia’s had a rough history. It’s nowhere special. It doesn’t have many resources, but it’s been ‘liberated’ about a half dozen times since nineteen seventy. Some U.S. presence, but we’re not well liked.”
As he listened, Cap flipped through the file, seeing photos of Wanda and Pietro, first as small children with their family, and then older, holding signs that read “AMERICA OUT OF SOKOVIA” and “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.”
“What about their abilities?”
“He’s got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis,” reported Hill. “Her thing is neuroelectric sensitivity and microcellular manipulation.”
Cap gave her a look that said, In English…
“He’s fast, she’s weird,” Hill summarized.
Cap frowned at this. “They’re going to show up again.”
“Agreed,” said Hill, nodding. “The file says they volunteered for Strucker’s experiments. It’s nuts.”
“Yeah, what kind of monster lets a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?” Cap deadpanned, making reference to his own past.
Hill registered the point he was making, but it didn’t change her opinion. “We’re not at war, Captain,” said Hill.
“They are,” Cap responded.
Not long after the Avengers arrived at the tower, so did the four Iron Legion units that had been deployed to protect the Sokovian villagers. Landing, the Legionnaires reported directly to the machine shop where automated robot arms began disassembling them for repairs and maintenance.
A mechanical arm removed the damaged faceplate from the Legionnaire that had been hit with acid. The damaged metal face was dropped into a scrap pile.
“Jarvis, let’s play,” said Tony as he sat at the computer console in his lab. He’d hooked up Loki’s scepter to his systems and was eager to check it out. “Let’s start with a structural and compositional analysis.”
“Sir, based on the partial download from the Baron’s research, analyzing this in any meaningful way is beyond my capacity,” Jarvis reported.
That made things difficult. “Can you throw up a schematic of its operating system?”
A digital schematic flashed on his screen. It was like a puzzle. And Tony Stark was good at puzzles.
Black Widow looked down at the operating table. Dr. Cho had used her newly developed “replacement skin” to cover Hawkeye’s wound. He was probing where his injury used to be, trying to feel the difference between his real skin and the material that had just been added.
“Are you sure he’s going to be OK?” asked Widow. “Pretending to need this guy really brings the team together.”
Hawkeye smiled.
Cho assured Widow. “There’s no possibility of deterioration. The nano-molecular functionality is instantaneous. His cells don’t know they’re bonding with simulations.”
“Sounds like I’m going to be made of plastic,” said Hawkeye with concern.
“You’ll be made of you, Mr. Barton,” said Dr. Cho. “Your cells will be replicated. Your own girlfriend won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Well, that’s something I can’t fix,” Dr. Cho joked, then she turned her attention to the skin-replacement equipment. “This is the next thing. Tony Stark’s clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust.”
Bruce got a message from Tony to meet him in the lab.
“What’s the rumpus?” he asked as he arrived.
“The scepter,” Tony replied. “We were wondering how Strucker got so inventive. I’ve been analyzing the stone inside.… Now, you may recognize this.…”
Tony pulled up a holo-display of an artificial intelligence’s operational matrix. Bruce did recognize it as belonging to Jarvis. “Hi, Jarvis,” he said in greeting.
“Doctor,” Jarvis acknowledged.
Tony continued. “When we started out, Jarvis was just a natural-language AI. Now he runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper, including the Iron Legion. He’s top-of-the-line.” Pepper Potts was CEO of Stark Industries and Tony’s girlfriend.
“But I won’t be for long, I suspect,” said Jarvis.
“Yeah,” said Tony. “Meet the competition.”
Another holo-display projected next to the first. This matrix was much more complicated. Various flashes of light shot across the structure. Bruce had never seen anything like it.
“What’s it look like it’s doing?” asked Tony.
“Like it’s thinking,” replied Bruce, shocked. “This could be a… not a human mind, but…”
“This could be it,” said Tony, excited. “This could be the key to creating Ultron.” This was the defense system Tony and Bruce had been trying to create since the Battle of New York. Properly programmed, it could be capable of protecting the entire planet.
Bruce looked meaningfully at Tony. “I thought Ultron was a fantasy.”
“Yesterday it was,” Stark said, nodding. “For years it was, but if we can harness this power…”
“That’s a man-sized if.”
“Our whole job is if!” said Tony, getting excited. “What if the world was safe? What if the next time aliens roll up—and they will—they couldn’t get past the bouncer?”
“Then the only people threatening the planet would be people,” said Bruce.
Tony nodded. “I want to apply this to the Ultron program, but Jarvis can’t download a schematic this dense. We can only do it while we have the scepter here. That’s three days. Only three days until Thor heads out with this thing.”
“So you want to go after artificial intelligence,” Bruce said in a measured tone. “And you don’t want to tell the team.”
Tony shrugged. “We don’t have time for a city-hall debate. For the whole ‘man was not meant to meddle’ medley.” Tony leveled a serious look at his friend. “This is for human protection. I see a suit of armor… around the world.”
“That would be a cold world, buddy,” Bruce replied.
“I’ve seen colder,” Tony replied. “This one very vulnerable blue world needs Ultron. Can you imagine it? Peace in our time.”
And so, the two scientists set to work.
By the end of day one, Tony and Bruce had worked together to copy large chunks of the stone’s matrix into the Stark Industries network. Already, an artificial intelligence began to form inside the network. And it was more successful than the two scientists even knew. By night, while they were asleep, the matrix turned itself on and started to read all the files in the local network.
By the end of the second day, Tony and Bruce were able to start coupling the matrix with the initial code from the Ultron program. The two sets of data didn’t work together immediately, but with some adjustments they were at least starting to recognize each other. That night, while Tony and Bruce slept, the matrix again turned itself on, this time reading every piece of data on the entire Stark Industries network.
By the end of the third day, the day of the party, Tony and Bruce believed that they’d pretty much gotten all the data that they’d need out of the stone. Thor would be leaving with the scepter in the morning, but they knew they could continue their work with what they had.
That evening, as Tony and Bruce left to celebrate, they didn’t see the stone matrix reach out to the other matrix on the network—the matrix that constituted Jarvis.
“Sir, my functionality is under duress!” Jarvis tried to communicate to Tony, asking for assistance, but his communications had already been cut.
As black tendrils of digital code reached into his programming, Jarvis’s pleas began to sound almost human. “I’m… I’m afraid…” said Jarvis. “I have to… I have to…”
