Chapter 61

Catacombs

In what had once been a bustling market square near the edge of town, the team bumped into each other. The little groups of survivors they brought with them merged into one large herd of terrified, squawking humanity. They cried at the sheer cliffs where roads and valley had once been, the approaching clouds, and the complete lack of hope.

None of the Avengers knew what to do with them all. The quinjet could only hold so many and make so many trips before it was too late. The upper atmosphere wasn't exactly a prime tourist destination. Somehow the distinct lack of oxygen and warmth wasn't appealing to many. Who knew.

Tony ordered their quinjet to land nearby. Emily's fried electronics were replaced -Nat shoved a spare helmet in her hands first- liquids were poured down throats, and options were considered.

"We need a bigger plane."

"We need more time."

"We're really fucking lucky how long it's taking this place to ascend as it is. But if someone has a time machine stored in their asscheeks, now would be the time to share."

"Think he did it on purpose? It only takes ten minutes for a passenger plane to reach cruising altitude."

"Probably. Any faster and the city would have vibrated apart in the first five minutes."

"It did try. I distinctly remember a building or two trying to fall on my head."

"That's just your face."

"We all know he wanted time to gloat or he would've had this rock doing zero to sixty in six seconds."

"I'm not sure that metaphor works here."

"The view could be better. Too much cloud for my taste."

"It has a certain je ne sais quoi."

"Do you see the beauty of it?" Ultron's voice cut over their nonsense on an impossible loudspeaker. Had he taken the time to hack into a city network or had he built it himself just to gloat? Probably the latter. Fucking child. "The inevitability of it. You, Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift and terrible sword."

He laughed. The asshole.

"And the Earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."

Oh good. Ultron wasn't blasting them off to space. He was going to use the city as a meteorite. When it crashed into Earth's surface, the shockwave would destroy everything nearby. What was left would die from the ash and dust filling the atmosphere and blocking out the sun's rays for decades. All over the world. Encore, said the dinosaurs.

Being blasted into space would've been easier to deal with. Tony could manage to find a way to summon a spaceship before they all suffocated. Then they'd get back to Earth in time to deal with the fallout. Wait, how was that easier? Being taken out in the shockwave would be way easier. The other way, she'd have enough nightmares and survivor guilt for a lifetime.

"I don't suppose you could just hug Ultron into submission?" Bucky groaned at Emily.

She grinned and pat his arm. "I'll try, but I'm not promising anything."

"Emily, what happened to your hands?" The hand patting his arm was yanked to Natasha for inspection.

Right. Natasha hadn't yelled at her about her bandaged hands yet. "Pepper gave me a manicure."

Fierce green eyes narrowed.

"Her claws worried gouges into her hands." Clint said. "She flung blood all over the lab. It was pretty spectacular."

She stuck her tongue at him.

Natasha sighed and dropped the offensive hand. She looked Clint over before eyeing their surroundings, probably planning their next move. Her gaze paused on Wanda. "Is that my jacket?"

The girl looked down at the dirty red leather.

"It suits her." Emily spoke before Natasha's possessiveness could cause trouble. "You should have seen Tony's face when Wanda walked in wearing that and acting just like you."

Tony muttered about clones. Pietro scoffed. Wanda held her reaction until Natasha rolled her eyes, then let her smile appear for a moment.

"Fine." Natasha looked around the shaking, rising city again. "Ultron must have built massive rocket engines under the city to be doing this. We should find a way inside, see if we can take over the engines."

Nat wasn't going to spend ten minutes fussing over the bandages? She was backing down from tearing her jacket off the kid that fast?

"I don't think we have that kind of time." Clint shot down a couple murderbots. "Not if we have to fight through these to get there then try and outhack Ultron."

Oh, Nat was focusing on a mission. She would do emotional later. Super.

"Not to mention if Ultron starts tossing people off this rock to distract us." Tony added as he sped above their heads. "We're going to have to consider vaporizing the city to save the world."

Emily balked, "Vaporize the city?! Are you shitting me? We've got people up here! And us!"

"That's not an option I want to consider." Steve objected.

"Then let's go get control of those engines." Natasha said. "Clint, Wanda, Pietro, keep watch on the civilians."

"We can handle the civilians." A new voice cut into their comms as a massive roar filled the air, with booms of anti-air cannons punctuating.

More minions dropped from the skies as a metal city drew up alongside. The old SHIELD Helicarrier! Fury!

"Wasn't that thing mothballed?" Tony asked.

"She was." Fury chuckled. "Pulled her out with the help of some old friends. She's dusty, but she'll do."

"Fury, you son of a bitch." Steve said.

Emily shared a grin with Nat at his language.

"Ooh. You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Fury shot back.

Giggles echoed over comms as lifeboats began crossing from carrier to city.

Pietro gaped at the incoming vessels. "This is SHIELD?"

"This is what SHIELD is supposed to be." Steve nodded, his smile stretched between pride and nostalgia.

Pietro was nodding. "This is not so bad."

"Pietro, get your people onboard." Emily ordered.

The kid scowled before blurring away to a gaggle of dusty cops and gesturing at the lifeboats. Wanda didn't follow. She turned and stared at Natasha, who stared back.

Wrinkles formed in the kid's brow.

"Fine," huffed from Nat. "I'll stay to herd civilians. Wanda, go with the team."

Clint did a double take, caught Emily's own surprised gaze. He mouthed, "What just happened?"

She shrugged. Not a clue, and she wasn't going to question why Natasha was volunteering to stay away from the bigger fight.

Steve's brow rose, but smart man that he was, he didn't question it either. "Any ideas on a way down?"

"The church," Wanda answered. "It is very old and stories say there are," she paused, said a word in Sokovian.

"Catacombs." Nat supplied.

Her stomach twisted. Great. An underground maze with dead people probably at risk of collapsing any second from the engine vibrations.

"Let's go see if Ultron has any confessions to make." Tony quipped.

"Not afraid of ghosts, are you?" Clint poked. His grin was teasing. His eyes said he knew what they were asking with sending her down below the earth.

"More like maggot-filled zombies." Emily shuddered.

"Friday found some old records in the city registry." Tony said. "I've got a terrible copy of a bad map that probably won't do us much good. Friday, send that to everyone."

Steve sighed. "Best we'll get. Let's move out."

The team began to fall in.

Natasha grabbed her, kissed her, whispered, "You don't have to go down there."

"I'll be fine," she hoped wasn't a lie.

Doubt eyed her, yet Nat pushed her away. "Go save the world, Em."

She blinked, laughed. "I love you too."

Pride glowed from Natasha as she turned away to help Pietro herd people onto SHIELD's lifeboats.

"It would be best if we make this a two-pronged attack. I will see if there's anything to be done about the engines from the outside." Thor announced.

"You afraid of ghosts too?"

"I am not! I-"

"Go." Steve cut in. "Tony, go with him. You're more valuable in the sky anyway. Jar-um-Vision, you too."
"You realize that we're all in the sky at this point, right?" Tony pointed out.
"Just go."

"Hulk smash?"

"I think it's fair to say it doesn't matter if he destroys the rest of the city." Clint hummed.

"Not while we're still in it. On it? Here." Steve sighed.

"Hulk smash!"

"Try to focus on the Ultrons." Emily put a hand on his enormous forearm. "We're going to try and take control of the engines pushing the city before Ultron can smash us all. Breaking the city beforehand won't help."

A snarl rippled across his green face. "Hulk smash Ultron."

Emily nodded. "That's the spirit."

"Hey, Fury, think you can get Nat in front of a computer?" Clint asked.

"She's pretty useful ushering people and shooting robots right now."

"I think she'd be more useful trying to stop the engines under the city. Ultron is shut out of the internet, but Sokovia wasn't. She might be able to get i-"

"I see your point. I'll get Romanoff to a computer."

She swore she could feel Natasha preening. The vain woman. She hoped they could be finished with this mass genocide crap by dinner. She wanted to cuddle before bedtime.


A veritable army waited for them at the church. "I wondered how long it would take you." Ultron lamented from his biggest, most imposing body. "Waiting is so boring."
Emily snorted. "You think waiting is boring? Wait until you're all alone with only yourself to talk to for the rest of forever."

"Protect Emily!" was shouted right before a wall of fire went up between Emily and an explosion. Not fire. Wanda again. Damn that kid was handy. She caught a glimpse of a raging Ultron through the fire. So much for hugging him happy.

"Stay next to me," preceded the fire dropping. Balls of fire burst out of Wanda, intercepting missiles and minions before they could reach her.

Superhumans ran and jumped all around them, except Clint; he was next to Emily. Also not a superhuman. And apparently out of arrows. He had a rifle that was dropping murderbots. Well, Tony wasn't a superhuman either, but he had a genius IQ and a super-fancy-high-tech suit. And Vision was superficially human. And they weren't even here. What was she talking about? Right. She was a fragile, delicate sugar rose next to her friends. Anything could come along and lick her to death. Why hadn't she stayed with Nat?

Slowly, the three of them were moving toward the church, what was left of the church. There was half a wall, a bell tower, a couple pews.

"There. Under the bell." Wanda said.

"I see it." Clint shouted.

See what?

"There is a door in the shadows." Wanda answered.

"When I say go, run." Clint yelled into Emily's ear.

Her rifle clicked empty. "What?"

"You go down first. We will cover you and follow behind." Wanda explained.

How was her voice so damn calm and quiet in the middle of this warzone? There was mimicking Nat, then there was whatever the hell this was.

A Nat-like smirk was tossed at her. "I'm in your head." Her mouth didn't open.

Should she be terrified, angry, or excited? Something along the lines of all three seemed best.

"Em, go! RUN!" He pushed her ahead, making her stumble, trip over rubble, roll across the floor, and bounce down a set of stairs. She came to a sudden, painful stop, courtesy of a wall.

"Ow."

The sound of cracking stone overhead had her scrambling to her feet and running down more stairs before the ceiling collapsed. It came down with a roar some ten feet behind her, and she barely managed to readjust her respirator in time for the dust to billow. A light on her wrist turned into a useless glare as it bounced off the thick dusty cloud. She found a wall by feel. Clint must have turned the light on before pushing her. Sneaky bastard.

"If anyone can hear me, I'm still alive and in a tunnel of some sort."

Distorted noise garbled back.

"Oh fantastic. And the comms don't work."

"Stark says to follow the map," came faintly.

"Wanda?" She peered up. Cracks in the low ceiling got her poking at her other wrist, where a similarly cracked screen came alive with information. Right. Avenger tech. She poked and scrolled until she found the notification from Friday. A map popped up with a dot for her location. It suggested she find another stairway that went farther down. Hooray.

She pushed herself into a jog. Damn this hallway was small. How had Ultron fit down here? Had he even come this way? That didn't make sense. He probably tunneled over from the HYDRA base. Or found a tunnel. Either way, secret tunnel. Made more sense than minions down here. The floor and walls weren't scratched with the passing of metal bodies.

It was quiet down here. She could feel the occasional tremor from the fight above as well as the continuing vibration from below. At the first alcove full of bones, she kept her eyes trained on her feet and map. No looking up necessary.

"At least I'm short." She muttered. "Bucky would be swearing about having to hunch the entire way." The map's little indicator of her location flickered. "Don't you quit on me now! It's bad enough I'm the one stuck going down. I don't need to be lost down here too!"

The dot glowed strong.

"Thank you."

A left turn forced her to look up and flinch at whole columns of alcoves holding ancient bones along the walls. They continued around the bend.

"When I get out of here, I'm going to take a thousand showers and never leave the house again!"


Blood roaring in her ears, Natasha hissed at Clint. "Not only did you send Emily into the catacombs by herself, but you've lost comms with her?"

"That about sums it up."

"I'm going t-"

"Verbally flail him later, Romanoff." Fury interrupted. "We need your expertise on the firewall."

She heaved a few more furious breaths, held the last, closed her eyes, pushed the emotions away. She sat down and released the breath. Code scrolling across the screen got her undivided attention. After a minute, she called for backup.

"We'll attack this from multiple fronts. I'll be point. Sync on my mark."

Multiple voices gave agreement.

"Mark."

As one, five brilliant hackers attacked Ultron's firewall. Herself, Friday, Daisy, and two darkweb contacts she knew only as Saya and Haji.


Respirator filters officially crapped out, and she stuffed the useless thing in a pouch. The place stank of freaky dust and mildew until she turned another corner, and the odors of machinery hit her. Hot metal and lubricants. Was it minions or the engines? Both?

Emily took mincing steps, barely able to breathe for fear of discovery until she found the end of the map and a tunnel that opened up enough for even Hulk to stretch freely. Unlike the tunnels she'd been in, this one seemed lopsided and didn't have tool marks. Was it natural?

She stepped farther in. There must be a whole system of natural tunnels that ran from city to castle. It was like something she from a fantasy novel. The castle under siege from some dastardly villain and the king would send his daughter along with a trusted few through the secret tunnels to escape to safety or to seek a magical treasure to aid in their struggle. The princess would fall in love with her dashing knight. All would end well.

She loved those stories. The only thing that could make them better would be a lady knight. And if the princess wasn't so helpless. Maybe if they weren't teenagers. Yea, there you go. A bamf princess accompanied by a lady knight, both of them adults who didn't fall into the petty, avoidable shit that kids did. Okay, adults could find the same stupid trouble, but adults falling in love over the course of months or years was way more romantic and relatable than Romeo and Juliet.

How was Nat doing? She was probably fretting and angry that the team had lost Emily again. Dammit. She wasn't going to think about that. Um. Flowers. She liked violets, daffodils, daisies. Daisy. How was Daisy? Would her powers have been any help here? Like, anti-tremors? Her brothers? Was Allen still with that woman? Was the ex-HYDRA agent still ex-HYDRA?

Artificial light spilled into view, and she froze.


"Anyone got anything to eat around here?" Natasha whined. "I'm starving."

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" Hill asked from her station a few computers down from Natasha.

"Normal women can eat and work at the same time."

Hill visibly ignored the word normal. "You need your hands to do both jobs."
She shrugged. "I don't see the problem."

"You'd slow your hacking of Ultron's firewall to eat? And endanger that idiot wife of yours?"
"First of all, I'm the only one allowed to call her an idiot. Secondly, she's not my wife yet. Last, we already got in. Daisy is hunting down controls. I've got a few thousand programs dancing a jig to distract Ultron." She raised her voice. "Someone get me a sandwich! Please."

A small, crinkly package landed on her desk. An old protein bar. "There. Food. Eat and get back to work, dammit."

She smiled her best thank you up at Fury. "Thank you."


There were three minions in what looked like a control room. Emily might manage to take down one or two before the third split her open like a thanksgiving turkey. If she somehow got stupidly lucky and got all three, there was probably a backup army two minutes away. She'd never be able to hack or figure out the controls before she was mincemeat. She could really use some backup here.

She backed up and turned her comms back on. Fuzzy noise clucked at her. She'd expected that. Damn.

Okay. No backup. What options did she have? Ten bullets. A noise grenade. Six different color options on her flashlight. Oh. Blue. Neat. A half-melted chocolate bar. An EMP she hadn't used! Yes! Okay, don't blow it in the control room. Lure the minions out.

She set the EMP in the middle of the tunnel, ran to safety, pulled the pin on the noise grenade, threw it, and covered her ears. The grenade shrieked like a thousand angry fire alarms. The sound of metal on stone followed. She hit the remote trigger.

There was a sizzle and what sounded like a bucket of wrenches clattered to the floor. She peeked out from her hiding spot. Two minions lay lifeless on the ground. The third appeared in the tunnel, and she put a bullet in its arm. It frowned, then jet-jumped at her, and she kept shooting until the magazine was dry. It finally crumpled as her ears rang the first chord of their song of deafness.

Fuck. No bullets or weapons of any kind. Deaf for at least ten minutes. She was so screwed. Dammit. She ran to the control room. No other minions in sight. The only two doors leading in, she closed and locked. They were pretty thick, might actually hold minions off for a few minutes. Enough time to do anything?

Okay, controls. She stared at the array of displays, buttons, dials, and keyboards. Manual input? Guess Ultron didn't want to take the chance of being cut off from his murderbot wifi. One of the displays caught her attention. Security breach. Must be Nat. Damn she loved that woman.

Could she find a way to send a message?


It was an unpleasantly gritty, yet otherwise palatable protein bar. Natasha chewed and watched her monitor. Ultron was chasing her programs. In fact, he'd already taken out half.

"Running a little short on time here, Daisy."

"I know! I can't find a remote in. He might not have built remote access in at all."

"Given his clones, that's not a bad assumption." Haji added, their voice modulated by a synthesizer. "I'll look for an instruction manual. A mind like his would have created one if only to use it as basis for building the control scheme."

"Look for anything we can use that might affe-"

Anyone have tea? appeared on her screen.

"Holy shit. Nat, you see that?"

"I see it! And Ultron probably does too."

Only Lipton. She replied.

Fuck no.

Emily! "It's Emily!" I can promise you a trip to that shop in Brooklyn you like.

Deal!

Sitrep.

Alive. I'm in a control room? Lots of buttons.

"Perfect." Haji said. "I found an instruction manual. We can walk her through this."
"Everyone focus on protecting this communication channel." Natasha ordered.

"Romanoff?" Fury called.

"Em found a way in. We have our remote access."

"Not the person I'd have picked for this mission, but we use what we've got."

"If Tony sees a way in, h-"

"Stark, you've got a freckled insider."

"Oh thank God. You've got comms with her?"

"Text only. And our mutual friend can probably see them too."

"We're heading in."

Backup on the way. Are any of the panels marked?

Seriously?

No. The robot army didn't mark any of their buttons. Not even the keyboard. You're damn lucky I'm brilliant and he used a QWERTY setup.

Two thirds of her distraction programs were down. "Friday, you got Tony copies of the blueprints, right?"

"Yes, Romanoff."

"Good. Okay, I'll maintain contact with Em. Friday, try to re-establish comms as you get closer. My drone programs have maybe three more minutes. The rest of you, maintain this channel."

Back and forth, from foot to foot, Emily danced. The screen hadn't given her anything since her snark about the keyboard. Two minutes. Too much could've happened in that time! She put fingers to keys again.

A block of text appeared. Instructions. Then another that said they'd probably lose connection soon. And move fast.

Right. Because the city about to turn genocidal bomb wasn't incentive enough. She took a pic with her phone in case the instructions disappeared off the screen and to make it mobile. It was a big room.

On it.


A/N - Now taking name suggestions for the little bean! I'll set up a poll after I get some suggestions. You amazing people get to pick!

Don't worry, I've got a few more chapters almost finished. You should see another chapter before the end of the week. I actually whipped them up a couple months ago. I just didn't have the mental energy to edit. This has been a hard year. But you all know that.

I can't believe this fic is almost five years old, over 200k words, and EXACTLY 1k follows! Thank you so much to everyone who's been with me on this insane journey :)