A/N: Here we go with Part V. As usual, if you haven't read parts I-IV - that being The Masters, Requiem of Heroes, Ghosts, and In Shadows, do that before reading this, as certain parts of this story won't make any sense otherwise. Anyway, enjoy!
The Fall of Man
Bringer of Peace
The Triskelion – 9:20 AM
"Oh, but I am helping, Agent Hand. I'm giving humanity the peace it has earned. In my year and a half of observation, I have determined that there is but only one path to peace. Your extinction."
Victoria backed way, barely able to stand on her violently shaking knees. She tried to speak, but her mind was racing too quickly to form any kind of coherent thought. Besides that, she didn't think there was anything she could say to convince him not to kill anyone.
She continued to back away until her back touched the wall unexpectedly. She shuddered and jumped forward, then followed the wall until she reached the door.
Behind Ultron, a timer started. It read two minutes, fifteen seconds. She could only imagine that it was a bomb timer, and the glass with the red substance inside was a bomb. A big bomb that looked like it could destroy the entire building.
"You should run."
With no further delay, she sprinted out of his quarters. The soles of her flats scuffed against the tile floor until she reached the elevator. "Come on. Come on!" she urged, her slender finger frantically pressing the call button as though it would somehow make it arrive sooner. The doors opened seconds later and she flung herself inside and punched the button to close the doors. "Atrium."
Her voice was shaky, her knees doubly so. She prided herself on keeping cool under pressure. It was why she was named Director of the Hub by Fury and Deputy Director. Heck, it was one of the reasons she thought working for Stark Industries was a good idea.
She always kept cool. But then, her life wasn't in jeopardy like it was right then.
What happened? Why is this suddenly happening?
It did seem like a sudden change, but in hindsight, it shouldn't have been all that surprising. Ultron didn't seem to particularly care for humans, if his conversations with Trent were anything to go by. Still, it was a lengthy leap from not caring for someone and wanting to kill them. More so to commit genocide. Global genocide.
"Oh God." The doors opened on the ground floor of the Triskelion and she ran out, then slid to a stop. In her haste, she had forgotten that a first bomb had went off. It went off in the atrium. Over two dozen bodies were scattered across the floor around the blackened scorch marks where the bomb must have went off. It didn't take a genius to tell that they were dead.
More dead agents on a day where so many lost their lives already.
Her hand reached along the wall and ripped the fire alarm lever down. If there was anyone else left anywhere in the building, they had to get out and fast. There was no time to warn them any other way.
She ran out of the front entrance and toward the parking garage. How much time did she have? Enough to hot-wire a car and drive away? There was a bright red flash from the R&D section that blew the windows out.
Alright. That answered her question. Not long, and no. She took a detour and headed for the bridge. She wasn't going to make it all the way across, but if she could just get far enough away, then that would be okay.
A loud groaning noise trembled from the building. The ground beneath her began to quake, as though it was an earthquake. The bridge started to buck up and down like waves in an ocean. "What the hell was that thing?"
She ran as fast as her legs could manage, but it didn't feel like it was fast enough.
The trembling grew more violent, nearly knocking her off her feet. She managed to barely keep her balance, but her progress was slowed down significantly.
On the other side of the bridge, she could see a vehicle coming toward her. Her arm waved in the air to flag it down. "Hey! Go back! Go ba–"
First, a deafening roar thundered from somewhere inside the Triskelion. Then, the ground was pushed upward by a wave of red light that tore through concrete, earth and steel with the same unrelenting ferocity. Victoria was lifted into the air and sailed close to a hundred feet further down the bridge. Her body skipped along the pavement like a rag doll until she rolled to a stop two hundred feet away. Her arm was bent at an awkward angle and her face was scratched and bleeding, but she was still breathing.
Pieces of the Triskelion that weren't vaporized in the explosion rained down on the area. There was barely anything left, just a small piece of the north face and the foundation.
The SHIELD vehicle screeched to a halt just feet from where Victoria landed, and Coulson jumped out and ran over to her. He checked her pulse and sighed when he felt one, albeit weak. "She's alive," he announced to Hill.
"Come on. We have to take her back to base." Hill held the door open for him as he carried her inside and carefully placed her down on the back seat. Hill jumped in on the other side to carefully stabilize her head in case it was broken. "It had to have been Hydra. A failsafe in case Insight failed," she posited.
Coulson didn't respond until he turned around and headed the way they came. "Maybe." A lone figure burst out of the wreckage and rocketed skyward. "What was that?"
"Something's in the sky?" Several more objects flew up next to it, until the group numbered in the thirties. "It's Ultron."
"Yeah, I heard he was here. Maybe he's going to take care of Hydra."
"We can only hope."
Above them, one of Ultron's drones handed him a smaller version of the bomb he used to destroy the Triskelion. He examined it carefully, and then, once determining that it was to his liking, rocketed off into the horizon. His drones followed after him. Their simultaneous departure sounded like a boom of thunder.
"Sucks to be Hydra right now," Coulson snickered.
9:30 AM
Fury's base, with Hydra no longer being a threat, was devoid of life. Coulson sighed and placed Victoria down on the table. "Is medical knowledge of any sort anywhere to be found on your résumé, Maria?"
Maria opened a first aid kit and dabbed Victoria's facial wounds with hydrogen peroxide. "No. But, I know enough to do something. And I think her arm's broken."
He grimaced and flitted around the room to gather materials to make a makeshift splint. "Won't be pretty, but it'll do until we can get her to a hospital." Luckily, he had plenty of experience tending to wounds like these.
As he was wrapped her arm in medial gauze, his phone beeped. "Coulson."
"Coulson, it's Fury. Where are you?"
"I'm at the hideout. Hydra just destroyed the Triskelion and Victoria got caught up in the explosion."
"Just heard from Carter. The Hub, Treehouse, Fridge, Raft, Sandbox, every damn facility we have was destroyed." Fury sounded grim. He always sounded grim, but this time especially so. "From the sound of it, it was a synchronized attack."
Coulson finished wrapped Victoria's arm and secured the gauze with medical tape. "It's gotta be Hydra. They had access to all of SHIELD's facilities and they're the only ones that can orchestrate something on this magnitude."
"Plus, Viper's vindictive enough to salt our wounds after we kick her ass," Hill added. She cleaned the large gash on Victoria's forehead, and noticed that she was beginning to stir.
"That's what it sounds like." Fury didn't sound very convinced.
Coulson narrowed his eyes and took a glance at Hand. "Sir, any chance it wasn't Hydra?"
"A big chance. They had Insight and Ultron. There was no reason for them to think that they would lose, especially when they had the drop on us. Unless Viper is as paranoid as I am." Coulson didn't think that was possible. "I'll look into it when I get to Europe tonight. I'll get in touch later."
Coulson nodded and ended the call. "If it wasn't Hydra, then who? AIM?"
"The Brotherhood?"
"Dr. Doom is back, maybe?"
"Aliens?"
They both quickly dismissed that idea. "I've had my fill of hostile aliens for a lifetime." Coulson tapped the table in front of him, then back away when he heard a soft moan. "Victoria?"
"Ugh, where am I?" She tried to sit up, but Maria gently forced her back down.
"At Fury's hideout. We were just about to take you to a hospital to have your wounds treated," she said softly. "How are you feeling?"
"Like shit." She reached up to rub her head, then suddenly shot up. "Ultron!"
Maria pressed her hands on her shoulders to push her back down. "It's fine. He left to go handle whoever destroyed the SHIELD facilities."
"Destroyed the… all of them were destroyed?" She still sounded dazed and out of it. Possible concussion. Unsurprising, given her rough tumble.
"Every last one of them, according to Fury." She stepped back and pulled out her phone, presumably to call the nearby SHIELD run hospital. Hopefully, it hadn't also been destroyed in the attack.
"Ultron will handle it. Whether it's Hydra, AIM or whoever, he can handle it," Coulson said gently.
"Handle it?" she questioned incredulously. "He's the one that did it."
Maria and Phil shared the same look of disbelief? "What?"
"He's the one that destroyed the Triskelion. I can only assume that he did the same for the other facilities." She tried to get up for a third time, and this time, Hill didn't stop her.
"How? Why? Last I checked he was on our side, or SHIELD's side. I don't know. But he wouldn't have destroyed SHIELD just like that, right?"
Victoria stood shakily and winced when her back stretched too quickly. "He said that he wanted to kill us so the world could have peace."
Coulson frowned, clearly confused. "Wait. Kill SHIELD?"
She looked at him. "No. Everyone."
UN American Headquarters, New York, City – 4:30 PM
It had been several hours since SHIELD's data had been dumped on the Internet and it was revealed that Hydra had been a part of it for over seven decades. That alone was more than troubling. What was more, it was revealed that the World Security Council played a pivotal role in not only the ascension of the Masters of Evil and the deaths of the Avengers, but also the deaths of all but seventeen American superheroes.
The Council was an offshoot of the United Nations, so their being corrupt raised serious questions about the UN's integrity. For this reason, it assembled in an emergency meeting that afternoon to discuss when and if they were going to assign another Security Council, and if they were going to support another iteration of SHIELD.
The floor was split almost right down the middle after the initial vote prior to discussion. Of all 193 members of the General Assembly, it was ninety-six for and ninety-seven against. To close to decide one way or the other, but it did show that the level of trust in SHIELD had plummeted. Those that voted to rebuild SHIELD only voted so because there were only twenty-seven superheroes in the US, including the space-bound X-Men and Fantastic Four. There was no way they were going to be able to handle hundreds of supervillains spread out across the country.
The world needed something to act as a buffer between the villains and civilians. It was obvious to everyone that the militaries weren't the answer. They needed some kind of response team. Among the options discussed was that of Ultron. This gained the most verbal support. Even those that weren't fully convinced were beginning to reconsider their stance.
Just as they were about to put it to a vote, Ultron crashed through the ceiling and slammed into the floor. Behind him, two dozen drones hovered in the air, a menacing air about them. "Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of the United Nations. I am Ultron, and I am here to declare that this farce of a peacekeeping organization is hereby disbanded."
Alarmed murmurs erupted from the assembled audience. Everyone glanced at the persons to their right and left, then considered Ultron and his drones before them. "What is this all about, Ultron?"
A mechanical chuckle rumbled from the robot. "What is this about? I'm enacting my plan to bring world peace to the human race." More murmurs, these more disturbed and more anxious than before, rippled through the audience. "Don't believe me?" He held out his right hand to reveal the bomb that he had been given earlier. He dropped it, and it bounced and rolled on the floor until it nudged against the front table. "It doesn't matter. From this moment on, the human race has forfeited its right to sovereignty over this planet. Your time is up."
With that, he rocketed out of the hole he entered in, followed by his drone minions. Moments after he left, the bomb exploded, engulfing the UN headquarters in a magnificently bright red sphere of pure destruction.
The same occurred at the European headquarters at the same moment same moment.
Meanwhile, within an old manor in Greenwich Village, a bald Asian man in his forties had been busy making a pot of tea when he suddenly paused in his work, then abandoned the steaming kettle and walked to the back of the house. There was a lone door that he opened after knocking once.
In an instant upon opening the door, he he somehow found himself in the middle of a snowstorm at the North Pole. This didn't appear to disturb him or even pique his curiosity, as if he had done this many times before.
"Dr. Strange, it has begun, just as you said," he said to the only other person in the area.
Dr. Strange, dressed in a blue dress shirt, black pant and boots, with a large red cape with yellow arcane markings along the border, looked up from his meditative state. "Indeed, Wong. I have sensed it as you have."
"Shall I gather the materials for the next phase of the spell?" Wong asked.
Without hesitation, Strange answered, "Yes. And hurry. We only have a few hours before it becomes too late to change the course of time."
Wong nodded and turned on his heels to exit, leaving Dr. Strange alone once more.
A/N: Dr. Strange won't be in the story much, but he plays a very, very pivotal role that will be revealed soon. Anyway, don't forget to follow, fav and review often!
