Chapter Four: The Hunt Begins
"All our work is gone. Ultron used the Internet to escape." Bruce clicked idly on a mouse on one of the lab computers as Will perched on the desk next to him. The lab had survived the Ultron attack relatively unscathed (compared to the living room, which was a shambles, and reminded Will of the time the Hulk had pounded a Loki-hole into the ceramic tile) and the team had gathered there in the aftermath. Tony had sent Helen Cho back to Seoul on a Stark Industries jet. The doctor was very shaken after the attack, and Will didn't blame her a bit. She was the only person there that hadn't ever been in a combat situation, and it had rattled her pretty good.
Will raised a hand. "Uh, he's a robot, right? So how-"
"He's a computer program," Bruce corrected. "Artificial intelligence. He transferred from the bot to the computers through Tony's smart house system and out."
Will whistled. "God, am I glad I have a dumb house," he shrugged, and Bruce gave him a ghost of a smile.
"He has access to everything. Files, surveillance, probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha said through her arms on the desk.
The movement was subtle, so subtle that nobody probably noticed it…except for Will. He saw his brother's eyes go a little wider, saw his body tense. But then, it was gone instantly, and Will wasn't quite sure what had just happened.
"He's in your files…he's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?" Rhodey asked, standing next to Maria.
"Nuclear codes," Maria Hill offered, and Rhodey nodded. "Look, we need to make some calls. Assuming we still can."
"Nukes?" Natasha cut in. "He said he wanted us dead."
"He didn't say dead," Cap corrected her grimly. "He said extinct."
"He also said he killed somebody," Will added.
"There wasn't anyone else in the building," Maria said, but Tony's voice cut off the conversation.
"Yes there was," he said quietly. The black panel in the middle of the floor lit up, and as they watched, gold light appeared. To Will, it looked like a holographic projection of a broken globe or some kind of sphere. But the way Tony was looking at it…it must've been more than that.
Bruce stepped over to it, poking one of the golden pieces with his finger. It fell to the bottom of the projection like he'd popped it out.
"This is insane," he said, looking over the top of his glasses at Tony.
"JARVIS was the first line of defense. He would've shut Ultron down. It makes sense," Clint spoke up, ever the tactician, who'd realized what they were looking at instantly. He looked at Natasha for confirmation and the spy nodded.
"No." Bruce countered. "Ultron could've assimilated JARVIS." He looked at Tony. "This isn't strategy…this is rage."
And he would know, Will thought to himself.
Suddenly, Thor came crashing into the room. In one swift move, he blew past Clint, grabbed Tony by the throat, and pinned him to the wall. "Whoa!" Rhodey gasped.
"What the-" Clint began.
"Use your words," Tony choked out. Thor fixed him pointedly with his dark eyes.
"I have more than enough words for you, Stark." The god's anger was barely controlled, and Clint had no doubt that the demigod could snap Tony in half with little effort.
"You guys are on the same team!" Will yelled from his spot. Please, please please don't let this turn into the helicarrier all over again. He'd never been more terrified in his life-including the time there was a nuke headed for San Francisco.
"Thor!" Steve commanded, trying to get the Asgardian back on track. Thor's eyes flickered his direction. "The legionnaire?" Steve asked. Thor had chased the flying robot drone with Loki's spear out into the night after the attack.
Thor didn't take his eyes off Tony as he replied, "The trail went cold about 100 miles out, headed north. And he has the scepter." He let Tony down and Tony coughed, scrambling for air. "So we have to retrieve it. Again."
"The genie is out of that bottle," Natasha shrugged. "The clear and present danger is Ultron."
"I don't understand," Will said. He looked at Tony. "You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"
"Us?" Clint repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah," Will said, raising an identical eyebrow. "I was in the room, you know."
To everyone's surprise…Tony snorted. Which then turned into a full on chuckle.
"You think this is funny?" Thor growled at him.
"No," Tony coughed. "It's probably not. Right?" He looked at Bruce, who was shaking his head warningly. "This is terrible. Is it?" He made a face. "It is."
"He's cracked," Clint whispered to Will.
"This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you didn't understand!" Thor said.
Tony dropped the laugh instantly, his eyes turning serious. "No. I'm sorry. This is hilarious. That you don't get why we need this."
"Tony," Bruce said. "Maybe this isn't-"
Tony turned on his friend, his eyes blazing. "Really? That's it? You just roll over and show your belly every time someone snarls?"
Bruce didn't flinch. "Only when I've created a murder bot!"
"We didn't!" Tony said. "We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"
Before Bruce could argue, Steve held up a hand and stepped between the two. "Well, you did something right, and you did it right here," Steve said matter-of-factly.
Tony raised one eyebrow at the de facto team leader. "Does anybody remember when I saved New York by shoving a nuke through a wormhole?"
"Noo," Rhodey drawled. "It's never come up."
"What nuke?" Clint rolled his eyes at the same time Natasha deadpanned, "There was a nuke?"
Tony glared at the three of them. "A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We are standing 300 feet below it," Tony said, pointing to the roof. "We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there?" He waved his pointer finger in the air. "That's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating them?"
Steve said, "Together."
"We'll lose," Tony said instantly.
"Well, then we do that together too," Steve replied seriously. "Look, Thor's right, Ultron is calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."
Will wasn't sure how he could help, other than to report in to Ethan and Benji, let them know he was fine and what was going on. They were still in Sokovia, helping with some of the relief work-not only was it the right thing to do, but it was a perfect opportunity to ingrain themselves with the locals and continue their research mission. Will promised to keep them appraised. Ethan offered to have a contact at IMF do some searching for any strange activity, but Will, though grateful, didn't think he'd get anywhere.
There was 'strange activity' all over the damn world at any given moment.
Tony had been in his lab for the past eight hours straight with Bruce, and Will didn't have a clue what they were looking for. Data scrolled past them on the screens so fast he couldn't catch any of it. He was on the main floor sweeping glass when the elevator door dinged and Steve and Maria stepped off. "They're coming in from all over," Maria was telling Steve. She glanced up when she saw Will in the sea of glass shards.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Official Avengers business?" Will made a grand gesture of covering his ears, making Steve smirk. Then, he and Maria were headed up the stairs. "Reports of a metal man, or men," Maria continued, apparently no longer caring if Will heard.
"Any fatalities?" Steve questioned.
"Only when engaged," Maria sighed. "Mostly guys left in a fugue state, going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see."
"The Maximoffs?" Steve said, and Maria nodded. "Well that makes sense, I guess. They have something in common." SHIELD's intel on Baron von Strucker's lair in Sokovia had included two secret files on two enhanced young people, a twin brother and sister named Pietro and Wanda. "What's their deal again?"
Maria launched into the official medical and scientific descriptions, but at Steve's clueless look, sighed. "He's fast and she's freaky."
Will snickered. From the top floor, Steve called out, "Keep sweeping, Will. I heard that."
Clint was on his cell, staring out a hall window over the city skyline, speaking in a hushed tone."I don't know. It might be awhile again….Yeah. I know, and I'm sorry." His tone was quiet and apologetic. He had one arm resting against the window as he tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear. His other hand he ran over his face.
"Barton," Steve called his name, making the normally stoic archer jump. He turned. "We might have something," Steve told him.
Clint blinked. "Yeah. Hey, I gotta go." He hung up abruptly and turned to Steve.
"Who was that?" Steve asked.
"Girlfriend," Clint said quickly. Steve raised an eyebrow. "I thought-"
"Yeah," Clint shrugged. "Don't tell Natasha," he teased, as he brushed past Steve and into the lab, where Tony, the aforementioned Tasha, and Thor were. Steve was carrying a tablet and he handed it to Thor.
"What's that?" Tony asked, coming around the table. Thor thrust the tablet into his chest with an audible thud. To Tony's credit, he didn't even flinch.
"Ultron killed Strucker," Steve explained as Will came upstairs to join the group. He exchanged a quick look with his brother. Clint seemed a little preoccupied, but he couldn't figure out with what.
"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene," Tony noted. He flipped the tablet around so everyone could see the word 'peace' scrawled on the wall behind Strucker's lifeless body in blood, presumably his own.
Natasha swore, and Will glanced at the screen of the desktop computer she was sitting at. "Everything we have on Strucker's been deleted," she said, not sounding surprised.
"Not everything," Tony said. He pointed at Will. "Thing Two, need you." Will frowned at his brother, and Clint shrugged. Will followed Tony out of the room and down two floors. "What are we doing?" Will asked.
Tony sighed. "Let it never be said that I don't take care of my stuff," he said, as the door opened. Inside the room were stacks of record boxes. Tony grabbed one off the shelf nearest to the door and dropped it in Will's arms. Will groaned, but looked at the box. The writing was in German, but he recognized one word: STRUCKER.
He looked at Tony. "Strucker's work?"
Tony nodded. "Strucker apparently still believed in paper," he said. He stepped past Will and Will followed him out. "Ultron's too 21st-century for that." He shook his head. "Kids these days will never know the struggle."
They waded through the papers in the box. When they finished one, Will helped Tony fish out two more. As Bruce sat weeding through a file on Strucker's known associates, he shook his head. "These people are all horrible," he said.
Tony glanced at him, then his eyes widened. "Wait. I know that guy." He filtered through some papers. "From back in the day," he told Natasha, and she raised an eyebrow. "He operates off the coast of Africa. Black market arms."
Will closed his eyes, trying to recall any names he knew from IMF in Africa. "Guy could deal in anything, sell to anyone," Tony said. "But he used to talk about finding a 'game changer'."
"What's this?" Thor held up a photo of the man. Will looked at the photo, spotted the tattoo growing out of the man's shirt, reaching up toward his hair. What Thor was pointing at was a rectangle-shaped mark on his neck, outlined in a scarred red.
"It's a word in the African dialect of Wakandan," Will said instantly. His brother cocked his head and glanced at him. "IMF has tabs on him," Will explained. "Saw it in a database once. It's a brand. It means 'thief.'"
"Wakanda?" Steve turned to Tony in alarm. "I thought you said your dad got the last of it."
Bruce raised a hand. "I don't follow. What was in Wakanda?"
Tony and Steve both turned, to where Steve's vibranium shield lay against the cabinet. "The strongest metal on earth," Tony explained. He pointed to Steve's shield. "For those of you who didn't read the comics," he explained, "That's vibranium. It was found in a meteor that crashed in Wakanda."
"If Ultron makes his robots from that stuff…" Clint sucked in a breath and let it out. "They'll be indestructible."
"Pretty damn much," Tony agreed.
"And Ultron could be his game changer," Will realized. He looked at Clint. "I've never been to Africa before," he shrugged. "Can't wait."
The team dispersed to start suiting up. Will followed Clint down a few floors and watched as his brother ran his hand over a thermal pad on the wall. The veins in his hands glowed blue on the panel. BARTON, CLINT appeared on the monitor, and Will heard an audible click. The door slid open, and Clint ushered his brother inside the room.
"Wow," Will said, looking around. One wall of the room he was standing in was backlit in industrial blue, displaying Clint's preferred weapons of choice-his high-tech bow and quiver. The arrows were neatly displayed in a vertical row, minus the actual arrowheads, which Will knew were in the holders at the bottom of his brother's quiver. The other wall had two vertical tubes, each holding pieces of Clint's armored Avengers suit. The black utility suit he'd worn in the battle of New York was on one mannequin-the other, the one he'd been wearing in Sokovia with the deep purple accents. "Clint's room 'o fun," he drawled, and Clint chuckled.
"Yeah, Tony's got a flair for the dramatic," he shrugged. "Still, it's a nice place to keep all my stuff. Can you imagine if I had this back home in Baltimore?"
"Mom would complain that it's one more thing she'd have to dust," Will replied with a knowing smile. "Speaking of, have you been home lately?"
"Yeah, I was just back a few weeks ago," Clint replied as he pulled his quiver off the hooks and started loading it.
Will frowned. "Really? 'Cause I was back right before I went out to Sokovia and Mom said she hadn't seen you in at least a month."
He saw it this time. His brother's hand twitched on the arrow shaft he was holding. "Maybe it was a little longer ago," Clint corrected himself. "It's been a long couple of days," he shrugged. "Too much jet setting around the world, I guess." He yawned to punctuate the point.
"Right," Will said disbelievingly. "Could be. Hey, are you guys okay if I come along to Wakanda?"
"You sure you're up to that?" Clint asked.
"Says the guy who almost died three days ago," Will countered. "And yes, I'm sure. Worse comes to worse, I'll hang out on the jet with Bruce while you guys do the wheeling and dealing." He shrugged. "It's just an arms dealer, right? How bad could it be?"
Clint's grip tightened on his bow. He turned to look at his brother, their matching eyes both narrowed in seriousness. "I cannot believe you just said that."