The sound of bones crunching and groaning against one another filled his ears. The popping sounds like shooting stars across the dark still of his mind. For the first time Loki could ever recall, it didn't hurt to breath. In fact, he couldn't feel himself breathing at all, but rather than alarming him, instead his body felt like all the weight had been pulled from his shoulders and thrown into the atmosphere where it could never touch him again.
If this was what death was like, Loki wouldn't mind spending eternity like this, even if the strange sound of gnawing in his blood and bones grated against his ears.
Lights played behind his eyes (were his eyes even closed? Did he even have eyes anymore?) in his own private aurora borealis. But the noise kept growing louder. Loki frowned and tried to focus on the sound, but it felt like it came from right beside his ear, constantly following around him and getting louder each time he tried to identify it. Metal burned against his mouth then his tongue, tasting like rancid pennies and feeling like something was running around his throat. Slowly his body began to piece itself back together, and he could identify where his fingers, arms, AND shoulders were, or at least that he had them.
Then the pain began rolling in over his body, waking up his chest, and the rest of his body as pain crashed over him, and he swore he could feel himself being ripped apart and then knitted back together by invisible hands using his blood as the thread to tie him together.
"Loki!"
A voice cut through the pain and the swirling aurora around him. He tried to place the voice but...
"Loki! Get up! Come on babe, you've got to be okay."
Babe? Who called him that? He felt the pain bloom in bright orange, red and yellow behind his eyes. Red.
Red and gold.
He knew those colors. The burning painful colors pulled together, swirling into the face of a man leaning over him, "Loki!"
Loki gasped, choking as air forced its way into his lungs, and he knew exactly how a fish pulled out of water felt in that instant. He gasped and choked, clenching tightly at the hand holding onto him.
He closed his eyes against the burning lights of the space around him and focused on just trying to breathe in slow, deep breaths. His chest hurt, but the pain didn't feel crushing anymore, instead it felt like pins digging through his bloodstream with thread.
"Loki? Babe, you okay?" That voice asked again.
He opened his eyes and looked to the man again. He knew him. He knew him...
The pin thread blood rushed up his neck and he moaned as it hit his head and everything came rushing back in a tidal wave that dragged him under a tumultuous sea of faces, and moments that crashed around him. The mansion, dum-e, Jarvis, Tony, the suit, the refinery, the shot to his shoulder. He coughed and gripped tighter at the firm hand in his grasp.
A solid hand...?
He forced his eyes open again and squinted towards the hand holding onto him. The sleek black of the suit met his gaze, connected to the still very holographic Tony Stark who sat by his side, smiling widely. "Hey there hot shot."
"I am alive?" Loki asked, his voice croaked from disuse. "...water?"
Tony nodded, letting go of Loki's hand long enough to go get some water and bring it over to Loki.
Loki sat himself up and eagerly drank the entire glass.
Tony smiled a little more, "Got some soup if you're hungry."
Loki nodded, "Thank you," he murmured, but didn't attempt to stand up yet. "You are certain I am alive?"
Tony smiled, "Positive babe. Not your time to clock out yet."
"How am I not in the hospital?"
"We got you covered here between me and Jarvis. Figured you'd rather be at home than carted across the city in the arms of Iron Man again. Romantic as that might be." Tony grinned.
"How long have I been out?" He put a hand to his head, everything still felt fuzzy around him, like his body was trying to get the world in focus.
"Um well..." Tony frowned, "Jarvis, help me out here."
"Loki has been unconscious for two days, ten hours and 43 minutes."
"Two days and you did not think to call the hospital?" Loki stared at Tony.
"Look, I was monitoring your stats the whole time!" Tony protested, "I would have gotten you to a hospital if you needed it. Besides I thought you'd be happy not being dragged off to the hospital for some random tests and surgeries that you didn't want."
Loki took a deep breath, "Yes, you are right. I am sorry. I am just feeling a bit disoriented."
"What do you mean?" Tony frowned, "Jarvis, any abnormalities?"
"Heart rate is increased and brain activity is higher than normal but vitals are steady and there are no signs of distress." Jarvis answered after a moment.
"Just, what happened?" Loki asked.
"What do you remember?" Tony asked, reaching over to take Loki's hand again.
It felt natural to let his hand fall into Tony's grip. "I remember the refinery and starting the self destruct mode, everything after that is a bit of a blur."
"Well yeah, you continued that whole doing things without telling me plan and activated self destruct then got yourself shot. I got you back here and worked to get you stabilized." Tony said, "I'm still pissed you didn't tell me what your plan was."
"Well I think I learned my lesson." Loki tried a smile.
Tony relaxed a bit, "You sure you're feeling okay?" He asked.
Loki nodded, "I do. I feel a little confused and foggy, but otherwise I feel better than I have in a long time. Maybe I just finally caught up on all the sleep I have missed over a lifetime."
Tony grinned, "Getting your sense of humor back I see?"
"Hopefully my biting wit will be back soon too." He said as he slowly sat up again and carefully put his feet to the ground. Holding tightly to Tony for support, he stood.
For a moment, the room swirled around him in a web of colors then it steadied itself again and he made his way to the kitchen. Tony guided him to the table and got Loki sitting down before he went and put together a bowl of soup.
"Did you make chicken noodle for me?" Loki asked.
"Uh no, that would have just resulted in fires and tears. Jarvis made it."
"Thank you Jarvis."
"My pleasure."
Loki took a hesitant sip of the soup, and the second the liquid hit his mouth, his stomach roared to life, ravenous. Loki devoured three bowls of the soup, much to Tony's shock, before he sagged back into his seat and took another few deep breaths. "I think I feel human again." He murmured.
"You sure? You're eating enough for two or three humans." Tony teased.
Loki smiled and shook his head, before sitting up straight. "God, the refinery. What happened to it? Did the self destruct take?"
"Yep. It went boom real good. Handy little feature, but it would have been nice to know about from the get go. Would have been really helpful..."
Loki nodded then glanced at Tony and frowned, "Helpful? What else did I miss?"
Tony sighed, "Don't freak out."
"Stark..."
"There might have been a small issue at another refinery while you were unconscious."
"What!?" Loki slammed back from his chair. It clattered to the floor behind him.
"It's fine. Everything is dealt with and is just dandy, don't worry."
"What did you do?"
"I fixed it!" Tony insisted, "I uh... transferred the bad bits of code into a repair bot guy and then flung it through the atmosphere."
"How did you transfer that kind of data without total corruption?"
"It went through me."
"You what?"
"God, stop looking at me like that. It was fine. Everything's fine."
"And you yell at me for ridiculous plans that I do not tell you about and you go letting corrupted software transfer through YOUR PROGRAM!"
"Loki, it was fine. My coding is a language it doesn't know so it couldn't have interacted with me."
"And after you deleted the corrupted section?"
"I just left it empty and without power and flew off into the sunset dramatically. Jesus, give me some credit here, I reinstalled the clean reboot version you have in your things. It was up and fully operational. That Victor whoever dude even called you to tell you great job. Surprised he hasn't called back with some new crisis he needs help with. It's a wonder that place functions without you at all."
"Jarvis, can you pull up all the data from the second refinery crash that Tony handled. I want to review all of it."
"That data is already compiled sir. I will pull it up for you in the lab-"
"On the living room screens. You're still recovering." Tony cut Jarvis off.
"Of course sir."
Loki nodded and headed into the living settling onto the couch and wrapping up in one of the blankets. That strange gnawing noise still echoed in his ears but now that he was accustomed to it, it almost became a soothing white noise. Perhaps he had some sort of inner ear damage that was still healing and that was where these strange noises came from.
He looked over the data as Tony sat beside him. "This is the same issue as the first failure."
"Yeah I noticed." Tony sighed, "Was doing a pretty bang up job on running itself into the ground too with all the nice little security bots again. Jarvis is still buffing the dings out of the main body of the armor."
"A thrilling job." Jarvis snarked.
Loki smiled faintly as he continued studying the code. "It is not identical though, it almost appears like a second version, updated to deal with some of the problems from the first. This moves a lot faster and more ruthlessly. It cut through the system in a matter of minutes, not hours."
"So whoever is doing this, is getting better."
"Creating an entire update in the span of a day or two is not possible, not with something this complicated. It would take a team working 80 hours to finish something like this in a week."
He frowned when a single line caught his attention. He paused the coding and zoomed in on the one line, his frown deepening before he got to his feet. "Jarvis, when Victor was here was there a data breech of any sort?"
"Checking time log now. "Jarvis said, and a few seconds later, "Unidentified data access from living room at 8:37 am corresponds with Victor's visit."
"Shit." Loki sank down into the couch, putting his head in his hands.
"Lokes?" Tony stepped over to his side, "What's going on?"
"I think Victor has activated an AI I developed and abandoned." Loki murmured.
"Say what?"
Loki took a deep breath, "Before I left I started the AI Ultron."
"Oh that's the one that you said was kinda crazy and didn't work right?" Tony asked.
Loki nodded, "I believe Victor has taken it and is not activating it."
"Well, if he just got that one place, problem dealt with, right?"
Loki shook his head, "No. I have to talk to Victor."
"Calling now." Jarvis said.
The ring tone vibrated across the room but no one picked up and it went to voicemail. "Try office phone."
The next number rang through to voicemail.
Loki frowned, "Get me his home address and directions."
"I'm going with you." Tony stood up.
"No you are not."
"Loki!"
"I need you here, watching the other refineries for any other problems. If something pops up, I need you to call me and then come pick me up."
Tony sighed but nodded, "Aye-aye captain. You must be feeling better."
"Like a new man." Loki hurried up stairs, getting himself dressed in some semi respectable clothes before pulling out his phone and grabbing the directions from Jarvis.
"Contact me if anything even looks faintly off balance. This next hit is probably going to move even faster."
Tony saluted, "I'll hail you the second one of them starts looking at me funny."
Loki smiled lightly, and leaned over to kiss Tony's hands, still wrapped in the suit and tangible to him.
"Be safe babe."
"You too Tony." Loki hurried out the door and onto his bike for the quick drive to Victor's beachfront house.
XXX
The house stood immaculately just in front of the shore of the beach. Victor had bought it and shown everyone pictures of it in the office, hosting several parties in it and claiming that the bonus from their latest AI had paid for everything.
Now, the house stood quiet and dark as Loki walked up to the front and rang the doorbell. It clanged loudly, echoing around the house but no one answered. Loki tried to peer through the windows into the mansion, but nothing moved or showed any signs of life.
'Victor?" He called into the mansion, peering in through the window and trying to catch any sign of life, but nothing stirred. He finally tried the door, not surprised to find it locked, but a lock didn't mean much to him. He pressed his phone against the control panel for the door for a few seconds, letting his program do the work and within another minute, the door opened and he stepped inside.
Everything sat in its proper place, every painting on the wall hung perfectly in line, and the floors lit up in a well-traveled pathway as soon as Loki stepped inside. Detecting the presence of life, the house itself woke up, turning on the lights and brightening up.
"Victor?" Loki called again, and despite the bright house inviting him in, Loki found himself wishing he'd brought the suit with him. Something felt off in the air, in the stillness of the house.
He swallowed hard, "Victor? What is going on?" Loki tried again, keeping his voice strong and loud, try to not show how nervous he actually felt.
He stepped into the living room, silent and clean with pristine white blankets laid atop spotless grey and glass sofas facing the window looking out over the beach as the tide just started to roll in. The crashing grey water didn't bring any sense of peace.
Loki took another deep breath and walked through the living and towards the back of the house where the bedrooms were. Victor had never married, and didn't like animals so everything about the house was still and silent. But Loki felt something crawling along his skin, watching his every step through the house.
Feeling more and more like a mouse that had wandered into a cat's home, Loki headed down the long, thin hall and went to Victor's bedroom. He could make out the mess of hair at the top of the bed, and for a moment relaxed. Just a misunderstanding, that's all that had happened here.
"Victor, what are-" He froze when the smell of copper, sharp and tangy hit him, and made his own blood start to chill in his veins.
He took another step closer and saw the thin line of blood running down the side of Victor's head and knew that his friend and coworker would never be answering any calls ever again. He immediately stepped backwards, and turned towards the hallway.
But something blocked the way.
Loki stumbled backwards, holding his hands up, "Who are you?"
The figure didn't speak and just took a step towards Loki. The movement caught his eye, too stiff to be human.
"What are you?" Loki said, forcing his feet to stay firmly in place, not reacting to the figure standing up straight.
"You were not supposed to come here." A mechanical voice said.
"I was just leaving." Loki slowly, taking another step back.
"You are not to leave." The figure stepped towards him and Loki got a look at the creature. He recognized the pieces of the metallic suit as scraps from the refinery, all put together, faintly crude but effective, and clearly modeled after the form of his own Iron Man suit.
Loki took a deep breath, "You are the Ultron program." He said, not needing to question it. "You have learned from the other programs."
"You are creator L. Ruser." The figure spoke, taking another step towards him.
"You know me?" Loki asked.
"You are creator."
"And if I tell you to shut down?"
"Order counter to my programing model."
Loki took a deep breath, "Ultron, you are not to be activated."
The figure took a step towards Loki, and Loki noted the thin gun in its arm started to raise and point at him.
"Order not accepted."
Loki's heart began to pound, racing across his chest, but he didn't feel the need to back down or try to hide. He held his head up high and faced the figure in front of him as the gun pointed at his chest.
"Ultron, do not do this." Loki said.
"Order not acknowledged." Ultron said.
Loki reached out and grabbed for the robot's arm just as it fired, he felt it burn through his body and then the floor flew up towards him as three more shots fired, each one burning less and less as he crumpled to the floor, staring at the ground, and watching as the metallic feet stood still for several timeless moments before turning and leaving the room. The thudding feet echoed the thudding of his heart against his chest. As Ultron began to fade from view, Loki felt his eyes starting to close, dying twice in the span of the week had to a new record, even for him.
He tried to get back to his feet, to crawl at least out of the house but he only managed to get just out of the bedroom before the world crushed down onto him and darkness washed over him once more.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Sorry for the delay! My second novella is coming out soon and I had to do final edits on it. I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK EVERYONE!