by Chris Wyatt
They were in the middle of handing out much-needed supplies in the streets when a little boy ran up to them. “The man said you needed to come to the church,” the boy said to the twins.
“What man?” asked Wanda.
“The iron man,” said the boy.
The twins looked at each other.… Could it be true?
Minutes later, they entered the small place of worship. It was dark inside, but the twins could make out a shadowy figure seemingly made of metal.
Wanda peered into the darkness. “Stark?” she asked, cautiously.
“It’s very important you don’t call me that,” said a voice from the dark.
“You wear metal, but you’re not Stark or one of his Legion. Who—” asked Pietro.
The figure interrupted him. “Your sister is wondering why she can’t look inside my head.”
“Sometimes it’s hard,” acknowledged Wanda. “But sooner or later, every man shows himself.”
“I’m sure they do.… But I am not a man,” said the figure as he stood up, rising to be almost eight feet high. This was Ultron’s new body. The twins gasped. To them, he looked like a giant metal demon.
“You look like Strucker’s robotic experiments,” said Pietro. “But they didn’t work.”
“Not for him, they didn’t,” Ultron acknowledged. “Strucker had the engine, but not the spark.” He turned to Wanda, and said, “You knew that. That’s why you let Stark take the scepter.”
“I didn’t expect… this,” said Wanda, gesturing at Ultron’s form, “but I saw Stark’s fear. I knew it would control him. That it would breed horrors.”
Ultron smiled and spread his arms wide, as if to say, That’s me… all the horrors you’ll ever need.
“Everything creates the thing they dread,” said Ultron. “Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create smaller people—uh—children. Lost the word there. Children, designed to supplant them. To help them… end.”
“Is that why you’ve come?” asked Wanda. “To end the Avengers?”
“I’ve come to save your world,” said Ultron, drawing himself to his full height. “But also, sidebar: Yeah. I’ll end the Avengers.”
The twins went back with Ultron to Strucker’s fortress, where they were astonished to see many more robots, all refining various experiments Strucker had been working on.
“I’m multitasking,” Ultron said.
Wanda looked at all the robots. “And all these are…?”
“They’re all me. Not my best me,” he said, indicating himself. “This is my primary body. All of these other mes are working on things we can use to take down the Avengers.”
“When do we attack them?” Pietro asked impatiently.
“We don’t,” said Ultron. “We let them come to us.”
Wanda was alarmed. “Not here. Not to Sokovia,” she said. Her country had been damaged by so much conflict. She didn’t want to be a part of bringing more combat to her land.
“No,” Ultron confirmed. “No army will ever cross your borders again. There’ll be blood on the floor before this is done, but I’ll never hurt your people.”
“What do you care about our people?” Pietro asked skeptically.
“I care about all people,” said Ultron. “I hear them. I feel them, all at the same time. I am the well of sighs. You have your little part of the picture, just like the Avengers.”
“Not like them,” Wanda said quickly.
“You think they stand around plotting evil?” asked Ultron. “A disease doesn’t know it’s a disease. There’s a damaged purity to that team, and you need to respect it. To see the big picture.”
“Big picture?” asked Pietro. “I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day.”
Ultron nodded, understanding where Pietro was going with this. “You lost your parents. I’ve seen the records.”
“The records are not the picture,” Pietro replied.
“Pietro…” Wanda said in a warning voice, not sure they should be sharing such a personal story with this… thing.
“No, please,” said Ultron, encouraging Pietro. “Go on.”
“We’re having dinner, the four of us,” Pietro narrated. “The first shell hits two floors below, makes a hole in the floor… big. Our parents go in, the table slides in after them. Wanda is holding the salad bowl, to pass it, like a silent comedy. She’s just frozen. The whole building starts coming apart, and I grab her, roll under the bed. The second shell hits right next to us, but it doesn’t go off.”
Pietro shifted his eyes, looking out to space, lost in his own story. “The shell just sits there in the rubble, three feet from our faces. On the side of the shell is painted one word.…”
“‘Stark,’” Wanda said, joining in. “It said ‘Stark.’ We’re trapped for two days, staring at that name. With every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, ‘This will set it off.’ We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us.”
Ultron looked at the twins as if appreciating them in a new way. There seemed to be a kind of pride in his eyes. “I wondered why only you two survived Strucker’s experiments.… Now I don’t. But together… we will make it right.”
The next day, Tony, Cap, Bruce, Widow, and Rhodey were all furiously working together in the Avengers Tower lab.
“We’ve got security breaches all over,” Rhodey reported to the group. “So far the nuclear launch codes are secure, but there are physical break-ins at military installations, nuclear power plants, uranium mines…”
Widow raised an eyebrow. “Any casualties?”
“No,” Rhodey replied, “and nobody’s seen anything. Just a lot of open doors and guards walking around in a daze.”
“The Maximoff twins,” said Cap, recognizing the description of the effects of Pietro’s and Wanda’s powers. “Of course he would have gone with them. But they’re not working alone. Ultron has a new body.”
“We’re getting ‘access denied’ on basic information streams,” Widow said.
“Well, right now you guys are off the Pentagon’s Christmas list,” Rhodey informed them. “Every country with a nuke is fighting a cyber-attack. I’m being deployed to the Middle East, in case someone starts blaming someone besides you.”
Tony gazed at Rhodey, concerned for his friend. “I’m shipping you a new encryption drive for your suit, in case Ultron wants in.”
“Thanks,” Rhodey replied. He knew that he would need everything Tony had up his sleeve to defeat this new menacing villain, especially one so elusive.
Widow chimed in. “You hear something, we need to hear it.”
Rhodey nodded. “That goes both ways. Watch your six.”
“You too,” Widow replied.
Upstairs from the main floor of the Avengers Tower lab, Bruce listened to a recording of Ultron from the party earlier in the day, taking notes like a profiler. Ultron’s eerie voice played as he took in every word: “In the flesh! Or, no, not the flesh… not yet. This is just a chrysalis.”
What does this mean? Bruce thought.
Cap was on the balcony, thinking of his team’s next move, when Thor joined him.
“Any help from on high?” Cap said to the Asgardian.
Thor let out a heavy sigh. “Either Heimdall isn’t at his post, or he’s been ordered not to answer. But we’ll find Ultron. He can’t hide forever.”
Cap handed Thor the tablet. “He’s not really hiding.”
“What’s that?” Tony said as he strolled over to his fellow Avengers.
Thor handed the tablet back to Cap, who then showed it to Tony. “Another message. Ultron killed Strucker.”
“But he made a pretty painting, so karmically he’s clear,” Tony replied.
“This isn’t his pattern,” Widow said, becoming part of the dialogue. “Why send a message when you can just make a speech?”
“Strucker knew something,” Cap replied. “Something specific—that Ultron wants us to miss.”
Widow walked over to a control center, where various digital files were up on a screen, all streaming with information. “We spent months unearthing Strucker. These are the people he was in contact with most, right before we hit.”
Hawkeye watched from a safe distance as the group gathered around the digital streams.
Tony pointed to someone on the screen. “I know that guy. From back in the day. Operates off the African coast. Black-market arms.” The other Avengers gave Tony a disapproving look.
Tony shrugged. “There are conventions! You meet people. I didn’t sell him anything. But he talked about finding something new, a game changer—it was all very Ahab.”
Widow turned back to the screen and began typing as more images of the man popped up. Many of them were surveillance images; then one appeared displaying a close-up.
“That,” Thor said, pointing to a symbol on the man’s neck.
Tony held a device up to the symbol, took a picture, and began an image search. Suddenly, the device dinged, and Tony transferred the image to a bigger screen.
“It’s a word, some African dialect,” Bruce said. “Means ‘thief.’ But in a meaner way.”
“Which dialect?” Cap asked.
Bruce scrolled down and then looked at Cap. “It’s from… South Africa.”
They all shared a gaze of both confusion and interest, except Tony.
“If this guy got out of South Africa with some of their trade goods—”
“Your dad said he got the last of it,” Cap interrupted.
Bruce crossed his arms, confused. “I don’t follow. What do they make in South Africa?”
Tony gave his fellow Avengers a concerned look. “The most powerful metal on Earth.”
The beautiful section of African coastline was dotted by the rotting husks of old container boats. The vessels had been overtaken by pirates, then beached here, where they were now being cannibalized for parts.
One of the ships, which had already been stripped of almost everything of value, had been converted into a kind of warehouse. It was here that Ulysses Klaue stored black-market goods between the time he “acquired” them and the time he sold them. Cars, food, medicine—Klaue sold pretty much anything.
But his favorite things to sell were weapons.
Inside, an office on an upper level looked down onto the vast open hull of the ship. Klaue sat at his desk and cast a glance over his empire as he shouted into his phone.
“I sent you short-range heat-seeking missiles,” yelled Klaue. “You send me back a boatload of rusted parts—useless! You make it right or my next set of missiles will come at you much faster.”
Klaue slammed down the phone as his right-hand man walked in and brought him a drink.
“I told you not to deal with that guy,” said the henchman. As Klaue took a sip, the lights in the office suddenly shut off. It was a semiregular occurrence.
“Go see if it’s the generator,” Klaue ordered.
The henchman turned to go, but as soon as he opened the office door onto the hallway, he could sense that something was wrong. “Someone’s inside,” he said to Klaue.
“Well, find out who it is,” Klaue instructed him.
The henchman nodded, pulling out a handgun and slipping into the hallway.
A moment later, Klaue could hear the sounds of struggle from the corridor.
His lackey wandered back into the darkened office, but he seemed to be in a daze. Confused, he mumbled to himself and walked right into a wall.
Klaue grabbed a weapon from behind his desk and pointed it at the door, but suddenly, as if out of nowhere, Pietro was in front of him, yanking the gun out of his hand.
Klaue looked down to see his gun already disassembled, the parts lined up neatly on his desk. Even the bullets were placed in a nice little row. Pietro smiled.
“Yes,” said Klaue, not missing a beat. “You’re the Enhanced. Strucker’s prize pupil. I know what you can do… and what your sister can do. Do you want a candy?” Klaue pointed to a bowl of hard candies on his desk, but Pietro just rolled his eyes.
“Every day the world is crazier,” Klaue continued. “The rules are now… Well, what rules, right? At some point it’s just hard to be afraid anymore.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something,” said Wanda as she entered the office.
Klaue nodded. “Cuttlefish,” he said.
The twins gave him confused looks, so he went on. “Deep-sea fish. They make lights to hypnotize their prey. I saw a documentary. Terrifying. So if you’re going to fiddle with my brain and make me see a giant cuttlefish, then I know you don’t do business and aren’t in charge.… And I deal only with the man in charge.”
Ultron flew up behind Klaue, hovering just outside his window.
“Oh, there’s no man in charge,” said Ultron.
Klaue spun, shocked to see the robot so close to him.
Ultron smashed the glass, yanked the man out the window, and held him over thirty feet above the ground.
“Let’s talk business,” said Ultron to Klaue.
A little while later, Klaue and a few of his workers brought Ultron over to a set of barrels. The markings on the barrels warned that the contents were toxic, so when Klaue smashed one open, Wanda and Pietro stepped back to avoid the splash.
But the substance inside wasn’t actually immediately dangerous. The labels were a ruse to keep otherwise curious customs agents away. From the barrels, Klaue pulled bars of a very rare metal with special properties. This is what Ultron had come here to find.
“You know, this came at great personal cost. It’s worth billions,” said Klaue, gesturing at the barrels, which all contained the same precious metal. Killer robot or no killer robot, Klaue was not going to give his goods away for free.
Ultron closed his eyes for a moment, briefly connecting to the Internet, and then he opened them again. “Now, so are you,” he said. “I’ve transferred the money to your dummy holdings. Finance is so weird. But I always say—keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which.”
Klaue gave Ultron a needle-sharp look.
“Stark…” he said.
“What?” Ultron asked, instantly on edge.
“Tony Stark used to say that to me,” Klaue said as he backed away from Ultron. “You’re one of his…”
Ultron seemed to grow confused at this. “What? I’m not…” His expression darkened. “I’m not. You think I’m one of Stark’s puppets? His hollow men? But I—where are you going?”
Ultron reached out and grabbed Klaue’s arm. “I am—look at me—I am… Stark is nothing…” the robot sputtered, upset. But when he could see that Klaue wasn’t listening, he reacted in anger, kicking Klaue so hard that the arms dealer slammed back into his barrels.
Ultron suddenly seemed to regret the action, almost embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s going to be OK. I won’t hurt you. It’s…”
But Klaue wasn’t listening. He was already stumbling away, with his henchman supporting him.
Pietro and Wanda shared a look. The emotional outburst from their new mechanical leader was troubling.
Ultron turned and addressed the twins, trying to justify his behavior. “You don’t understand,” he explained. “It’s just… I don’t like being compared to Stark. It’s a thing with me. Stark is… he’s a sickness.”
“Oh, Junior…” said a sarcastic voice.
Ultron and the twins turned to see Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor striding in from the entrance on the far side of the hull.
“… you’re going to break your old man’s heart,” Tony finished.
“If I have to,” sneered Ultron.
“You don’t,” said Thor. “No one has to break anything.”
“You’ve clearly never made an omelet,” Ultron replied.
“Oh, you beat me to that joke by one second,” said Tony.
Pietro pointed at the stores of weapons in the ship. “Does this remind you of
old times, Mr. Stark?”
Tony looked at the twins. “You two can still walk away from this,” he said, a warning in his voice.
“Oh, we will,” Pietro replied.
Cap stepped forward. “I know you’ve suffered.”
Ultron chuckled. “Gaah… Captain America, the righteous man. I can’t physically throw up in my mouth, but—”
Cap frowned at this.
“If you believe in peace, let us keep the peace,” Thor said, interrupting.
“You’re confusing peace with quiet,” said Ultron, moving closer to the heroes. “This confusion, this is exactly the problem. The world is not good enough. But it’s not bad enough for anyone to fix it. Something will break.”
Wanda put a hand to her head, sensing something. “The other Avengers are nearby. I don’t know where.”
“Even the archer?” asked Pietro. “You didn’t trade him in.”
High above them, in the hull’s rafters, Hawkeye was in position, aiming an arrow right at Pietro. “Captain,” Hawkeye said over the comms, “don’t make me beg for the chance to fire on this guy.” His fingers tensed on the string of his bow.
Back on the ground, Iron Man addressed Ultron. “Here’s my main question,” he said. “This metal you’re here for, how does that fit into the whole world-fixing plan?”
“Oh, I’m so glad you asked,” said Ultron, his voice adopting the condescending tone of a preschool teacher, “because I wanted to take this time to explain my plan step by step.…”
And at that very moment, several of Ultron’s robot bodies descended and attacked!
Cap, Thor, and Iron Man were suddenly under fire from all sides!
One Ultron Sentry attacked each of them individually while the main Ultron launched himself straight at Iron Man. Seeing this, Iron Man shook off the robot that was grabbing for him and jetted toward the oncoming Ultron.
Just to Iron Man’s side, an Ultron Sentry grabbed Thor from behind. Thor spun around, gaining leverage on the robot and flipping it over his head. The machine smashed into the ground.
Ultron and Iron Man flew at each other, trading blows and repulsor fire!
