Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
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Falling Hope, Rising Threat
The subsequent flight following the map acquired from Tsing's hard drive was actually the smoothest trip my team had taken since we started operating as a group. Our flights to Snow's various bases had always been relatively tense as we had to be constantly on the alert for any of his anti-aircraft defences or the possibility of patrols armed with something that could shoot us down, but with the open territory we were covering so far, it was almost embarrassingly easy to make this trip.
The desert wasn't much of a challenge when we were flying over it rather than walking, but our hovercraft's sensors picked up a large number of metal objects as we crossed over a particularly open area that Steve was certain was a minefield of some kind. From what Finnick could tell from a quick scan, a couple of mines had detonated recently, and when the ship went down low enough we were able to spot faint signs in the sand that someone had walked that way before the wind had blown sand over the footprints. Without any clear evidence that Jaha's entire search party had been killed at this point, we all decided to continue on our current path.
The discovery of a vast 'field' of solar panels at the other end of that open patch of desert reinforced the idea that we were on the right path, continuing across the large area of water at the other side of the field. It didn't take us long to reach an island some distance from the shore we'd just left, although Finnick quickly turned on the hovercraft's 'cloaking device' as we made our first inspection of the area, a series of reflective panels on the base of the ship preventing anyone spotting us from the ground. A casual flyover at a distance revealed that there was a large building near a coast that I thought was a type of 'lighthouse', with a variety of small boats scattered around the shoreline near it. Further inland was a large house of some sort, the building putting me in mind of my old house in the Victor's Village if it had been combined with the house next door to it, apart from some small black specks buzzing around it that put me in mind of larger versions of the camera drones we'd seen used by the Capitol in the past.
"What's that?" Prim looked at the house in curiosity.
"Doctor Franko's private lab."
"You're sure?" Octavia looked at Steve in surprise. "I thought… well, from what you told us, did you ever visit it yourself?"
"Not personally, but Tony included a few images of it as part of the virtual reality simulation he had me plugged into," Steve smiled.
"You were in a virtual reality?" Finnick looked at Steve in surprise.
"Tony might have been forced to keep my body cryogenically frozen until he could construct my new limbs, but he made it a priority to ensure that my mind would remain active. Most of that consisted of making sure I had a chance to get up-to-date on all of what he considered the most important parts of popular culture from the time I spent on ice the first time around, but he also kept me alert on anything he considered important to the Avengers that happened while I was out, even if we weren't exactly an active team at this point."
"Stark did all that?" Johanna raised a curious eyebrow.
"He made your arm while he was in this time when he had literally none of his old resources."
"Yeah, but that's basically… I mean, we just gave him most of that tech; the effort he must have needed to put all that together after losing everything else before the war…"
"Tony might have inherited his company, but he was a legitimate genius," Steve grinned. "He created his first armour out of scrap metal while he was under almost constant observation in enemy territory; compared to that, making your arm would have been easy, and he still had most of his important personal resources available when we fell apart."
"OK, so if that's the main house… what's this?" Raven indicated the sensors, which indicated another metallic object just a short walk from the lighthouse we'd originally spotted, inside a thick cluster of trees.
"Good question," Steve said, looking thoughtfully at the screen before he turned to me. "What do you say, Mockingjay?"
"I say we shouldn't enter potential hostile territory without making sure we know all the ins and outs of the area," I nodded at my mentor. "Let's see what's in there first."
"Agreed," Steve nodded. "Set it down, Finnick."
After pulling away from the main house, it was straightforward enough for Finnick to find a suitably stable 'landing area' near the coastline that put us just a few minutes' walk from the other bunker we'd detected. With the ship on lockdown, the team made our way to the area indicated by the ship's sensors, the location now uploaded to Peeta's suit, where we found a pair of metal doors with an elaborate diamond pattern on the front.
"Right…" Peeta said, reaching up to tap his helmet as he studied the door before looking back at me. "It's locked, but I feel safe assuming we're not going to need to worry about it staying that way once we're done?"
"In other words, 'Hulk Smash'?" Raven grinned over at Anya. The former Triku leader rolled her eyes at the mechanic's words, but there was a small grin that made it clear she enjoyed the cue. Stepping up to the door, she allowed herself to transform just enough that a single punch was able to break the door open, revealing an illuminated area with a spiral staircase right in front of us. Once Anya had returned to her human form, a quick walk down the staircase revealed a surprisingly fancy room at the bottom, with comfortable furniture and even some interesting bits of art scattered around, as though this was someone's Capitol apartment rather than an isolated bunker. One room actually held a pair of motorbikes and an array of bottles, and there was a green table right in front of us with coloured balls that I vaguely recognised as snooker from some of Steve's tales of the old world.
"What the Hell?" Bellamy looked around the room in surprise. "Who sticks something like this out here?"
"You would be amazed at what the filthy rich did with their money before the bombs went off," a voice said. Turning around to face the source, we found ourselves looking at a young man, about Clarke and Bellamy's age, wearing only a pair of black pants with traces of sunburn and a noticeable amount of stubble on his face. He held a revolver out and the expression he had put me in mind of Gale during the early days of our new peace when he wasn't sure if he was safe or not. After a tense few moments, he lowered the gun. "Thanks for breaking the door down. Thought I'd be stuck in here until the booze and food ran out."
"Murphy?" Clarke and Bellamy said simultaneously.
The now-identified Murphy nodded as he grabbed a black shirt on a nearby couch and put it on (I was fairly sure I remembered him from when we first made contact with the Ark, but I'd lost track of him during the subsequent effort to make plans for dealing with Mount Weather). "Yeah. I gotta tell you, this has not been fun being stuck in this bunker for a nearly a week and..." he trailed off when looking in Octavia's direction. "What in the Hell are you wearing?"
"I like it," Octavia countered defensively, indicating her new outfit as Murphy stared at the armour. "It's a gift from my father."
"Your father?" our new acquaintance repeated. "What's he got to do with anything?"
"Something to discuss later," I cut in as I stepped forward myself. "What are you doing here?"
"And where's Jaha?" Clarke added. "And… weren't there more of your group?"
"Everyone except me and Jaha died getting here," Murphy said with a dismissive shrug. "You can take your pick on gruesome death. Bombs in the desert, creatures in the water… frankly, if this is the 'Promised Land', it sucks."
"This place seems all right," Finnick indicated the bunker.
"Yeah, a couple of nice rooms are really worth the effort to get here," Murphy said disdainfully. "Seriously, Jaha saw a bunch of mines as a test of faith even after one of us got blown up and he literally threw Craig off the boat while we were under attack on the lake; he's goddamn fixated on the idea that this place is some kind of salvation for us all, but he acts like he's the only one who truly gets that and I don't think even he really knew what he was going to find out here!"
"People can get… focused on their goals," Steve said, even as the way he looked around made it clear he wasn't entirely comfortable with that argument as a defence any more than I was.
"So focused that he left me behind to chase after the prize?" Murphy countered. "I spent the night basically passed out in our boat before I managed to find this damn thing in the morning after he ditched me to follow his own quest, and then I only found this place because there was still some kind of path out there!"
"At least you got food, right?" Peeta pointed out.
"And a hell of a lot of liquor," Murphy pointed to the rack of filled with wine bottles. There was a glass container filled with hard liquor on a table with a half full glass next to a couch. From there one could see a large screen on the wall. "Kind of needed it after what I've learned."
"What you learned?" Bellamy repeated. "Murphy, what did you learn?"
In response, Murphy picked up a small device that looked like a remote control. "Behold, I give you 'The End of Mankind'." As soon as Murphy pressed a button, the screen turned on to display a man a few years older than us, wearing a red jacket over a pale blue shirt, sitting in this exact room as he put down a glass and sniffed.
"I tried to stop her…" the man said, his voice trembling as he looked at the screen. "But I lost control. She got the launch codes. It was her. She did it... But it was my fault."
The man's initial intensity seemed to falter after those words, as his initial harsh glare was replaced by a sense of deep regret, head bowed as he sobbed in silence for a few moments. None of us seemed able to break the 'spell' as the man reached over and picked up a gun from beside him on the sofa, before he addressed the screen again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
With that final statement, he pointed the gun right at his chest and shot himself.
"Seriously, what the hell was that all about?" Johanna asked, looking back Murphy. "And how does that mean 'The End of Mankind'?"
"You know what you do when you are stuck in a bunker with no way out for a nearly a week? You go through everything you can get your hands on inside hoping you can get out," Murphy said. "There are videos older than this, showing that guy who shot himself with another woman, and a few later videos show what looks like the woman talking to… well, to her double. It'll probably sound insane, but-"
"The double is an artificial intelligence named ALIE," Steve cut in.
Murphy looked at Steve surprised. "You know about the psycho computer program?"
"I also know what launched the nuclear missiles, and it wasn't the 'she' he's talking about," Steve explained. "ALIE played her part, but the end of the world was the result of another party; all she did was help him get access at most, and that just made it quicker."
Murphy frowned. "Really? Cause hearing ALIE speak, it's pretty clear how she views humans. From what the tapes say, there's some crap about how her core function is to make life better and to 'fix the problem', but you know what she saw as the problem? Too many people."
"I'm not going to deny that she might have contributed, but other parties played their role in what happened-"
"We can debate about history later," I cut in. "I think it's time we have a talk with Jaha and make sure he didn't do anything stupid."
"I can get behind that," Murphy grinned as he looked around at the rest of us. "Although I have to ask, what's with the costumes? You think there's actually a party?"
"I told you; we're the Avengers," I shot Murphy a cool glare. "It just so happens that a few of your friends had… experiences that made them qualify for membership."
"…OK," Murphy drawled. "I'm just going to go with that until you've all helped me give Jaha a piece of my mind."
"Just let us take point," Clarke said firmly. "If we're right about what we're dealing with here… well, there's no knowing what Jaha will be like when we get there."
Murphy just shrugged as though he didn't particularly care about our current theories, but his uncertain expression made it clear that he was at least going to take our concerns into account. Once we left the bunker, Peeta made a quick adjustment to confirm the house's location before we began to walk in that direction, only for him to come to a halt and turn in another direction after we'd covered a mile or so of ground.
"Iron Man?" I looked at Peeta as he stared off to the side, his posture somehow screaming confusion even if the armour covered his body. "Is everything all right?"
"I… I don't know…" Peeta said, reaching up to tap the side of his helmet in a manner that I'd come to recognise as him adjusting one of the helmet's internal data displays. "It's like… there's something this way…"
"And the armour is telling you about it?" Bellamy looked curiously at Peeta. "How would that happen?"
"I… don't know," Peeta said once again, sounding ashamed at his ignorance. "I mean, I just use the suit; Beetee's the one who really understands how it all works…"
"Which is nothing to be ashamed of," I put in with a reassuring smile at Peeta, not wanting him to start acting as though he was somehow a 'lesser' Iron Man because he wasn't a technical expert. "Beetee couldn't be as physically active as you, and we need him to run mission control for us anyway; you're not the same type of Iron Man as Tony Stark, but that doesn't make you bad at the job any more than me using my bow and the shield means I'm a failure at being…"
"My spiritual successor?"
"Your what?" Murphy looked at Steve in surprise. "OK, I have to ask; who the Hell are you?"
"Steve Rogers, Mr Murphy," Steve smiled briefly at the other man. "You might have heard of me from when I was Captain America."
"…what?" Murphy repeated, looking at Steve as though he wasn't sure if he should dismiss the old man as some crank or accept his word.
"Can we focus on this… signal before we start clarifying our credentials?" Peeta said, urgently indicating the directly he'd already begun walking in. "There has to be something here…"
As the rest of us followed Peeta's careful pace, I noticed Monty clutching his head and wincing at something as he started to move towards the rear of our group, but I decided not to question him about his health right now. Hopefully he would feel better later; right now, so long as he was willing to keep going, the important thing was to work out what was going on here. After we'd walked for a few minutes, we found a small clearing with another bunker in the middle of it, another path extending from the clearing in what I was fairly sure was the direction of the house we'd seen earlier. At least it would be easy enough for us to check the main building once we had finished this investigation, but right now I was more concerned about the current situation. A quick knock on the door confirmed that it was locked, but as before it wasn't hard for Anya to open the door on our behalf.
As we entered the small building, even I could quickly tell that it had been in use relatively recently. The floor might be dusty, but I could actually see a few footprints on the ground leading to the middle of the room. There was a wide range of computer equipment in the room that had clearly been kept in good condition despite its likely age, with lights on and various screens displaying complex graphs that I wondered if any of us could understand. However, it wasn't hard to see that the various computers all led up to a strange pod in the middle of the building's only room, the pod being mostly made of metal with a small series of control panels along its sides. The 'roof' of the pod included areas that seemed to be made up of some kind of glass, which revealed a strange reddish figure inside it that made me think of the basic holograms I'd practiced against in the run-up to the Quarter Quell, even if this figure was clearly a solid object rather than any kind of projection.
"What-?" Octavia began, before something seemed to burst from the eyes of Peeta's helmet and 'jump' towards a computer console on another side of the room. None of us had time to do more than yell in surprise when the room suddenly darkened slightly, various lights lit up on Peeta's armour, and a large glowing form appeared between the wall and the pod. The best description I could give it was an orange ball that looked like something had taken large chunks out of it, to the extent that a part of it appeared to be floating away from the rest of the object and there was a kind of half-ring circling around its middle.
"Greetings," a voice said, the ball 'pulsing' as it spoke in an accent that reminded me of a particularly stuffy Capitolite.
"What the-?!" Johanna yelled, brandishing her axe at the ball before Steve stepped forward, moving the blade away from the ball as he stared at it in awe.
"JARVIS?" the old man looked at the glowing orange ball with an ever-growing smile. "Is… is that you?"
"Indeed, Captain Rogers," the ball again seemed to 'pulse' as the voice filled the room.
"Whoa…" Monty said, looking in awe at the ball even as he kept one hand pressed against the side of his head as though trying to hold his skull together. "That… that's wild…"
"Hold on; JARVIS?" Finnick looked at Steve in confusion. "You know this thing?"
"Just A Rather Very Intelligent System," Steve explained, still smiling as he looked at the projection. "He was the artificial intelligence program Tony Stark used as a kind of direct personal assistant even before he became Iron Man; JARVIS did everything from track Tony's schedule to help him operate the armour."
"…Just A Rather Very Intelligent System?" Finnick looked at Steve in confusion. "I thought Stark was a genius; what kind of acronym is that?"
"As I understand it, JARVIS was named after his father's old butler Edwin Jarvis," Steve explained. "I'm pretty sure Tony's priority when coming up with the name was to put together something that would spell out JARVIS than a name that would make complete sense."
"In other words, he just really wanted to call the thing JARVIS?" Bellamy asked with a disdainfully raised eyebrow.
"He wished to honour a valued comrade," Anya nodded. "I can understand that."
"Uh… not meaning to sound picky, but I never felt like I needed anything else to make this suit work," Peeta put in uncertainly. "If… JARVIS… was needed to help Tony use it-"
"By the time Tony created the Mark V version of the suit he'd managed to give each armour its own operating system that automated most of the key functions; JARVIS's assistance mainly helped make things easier for later models rather than doing it all for Tony," Steve explained, before he turned back to the ball. "But how are you even here? I thought Ultron destroyed your code when he was activated?"
"Scattered, but not completely destroyed, sir," JARVIS's voice replied as we gathered around the ball. "I was able to essentially discard most of my functional intelligence and maintain my operational protocols while dispersing myself across the Internet. I lacked the intelligence to deliberately communicate with others, but I was able to focus my efforts on keeping Ultron's own programming away from the access codes to nuclear launch facilities across the globe while rebuilding my intelligence as part of what you would term a 'subconscious' program."
"Subconscious?" Monty repeated uncertainly. "But… you're a machine, right?"
"The term is merely the easiest way to express how that function could operate in my state at that time without deliberate intent."
"OK, so you stopped this Ultron psycho getting into the nuclear codes when he first got out, but you couldn't stop Snow doing it later because…?" Johanna asked.
"Because for all that JARVIS was a brilliant computer program, he was still just a computer program," Steve explained, an incredulous smile on his face as though he couldn't believe he was the one saying these things. "Tony gave me the basic rundown, but essentially it amounts to most artificial intelligences lacking the intuition to make the kind of psychological leap that would grant it true creativity. Even at his best, JARVIS could calculate the odds, make statistical observations based on past experiments, and help Tony work out what he needed to do to perfect his latest project, but he couldn't come up with anything himself."
"Add in the fact that I am operating on a comparatively limited operating system even now, and stopping Snow became even more of a challenge," JARVIS's voice explained. "Providing an extra firewall against Ultron's hacking attempts was straightforward enough when he relied on a simple brute force approach, but the individual you came to know as President Snow was able to gather enough experienced hackers that they eventually managed to bypass my security protocols and launch the missiles."
"…Tough break," Murphy nodded at the orange ball, a bemused expression on his face that made it clear he'd barely understood half of what JARVIS had just told us.
"OK, so that… probably explains a bit of what you've been doing so far, but doesn't explain what you're suddenly doing here," Octavia looked probingly at the ball. "I take it you had some kind of… link to the armour?"
"Fragments of my code remained in Mr Stark's armour even after all this time since I was purged from the system, yes."
"And that's what drew me here?" Peeta asked, looking at the ball with that same sympathy that had always defined his character. "You mean… you've spent all this time since Ultron first killed you just trying to… stick yourself back together?"
"That was one of my long-term goals, certainly."
"It took you the better part of a century to do that?" Raven asked.
"Parts of my program were indeed deleted when Ultron attacked me after his activation, and my original code has degraded after so long dispersed and the loss of so many of the systems that could have sustained my original programming," JARVIS explained. "It is impractical to set up a new network that could accommodate my presence before the degradation goes past a point of no return, but there may be a way to sustain myself beyond this."
"What is that?" Thor asked, looking at the ball with a slight smile on his face.
"The body in the pod beside you was created to be a new body for Ultron using vibranium samples acquired through remnants of the black market-"
"Ultron's here?" Prim yelled, abandoning her attempt at self-control and clutching at my leg in terror as she looked around at the surrounding computers as though another voice was going to start talking to us.
"Fortunately for us all," JARVIS's voice continued calmly, "by the time the body was completed for his use, Ultron lacked the resources to upload himself directly into it. Even after he established himself within the computers on this island, the systems lacked the digital capacity to upload his consciousness from the networks into the body, and the island itself was so low on energy that it wouldn't have been able to power the transfer process even if it was physically possible to do so."
"Like… a one-legged fat man trying to run a race?" Prim asked, releasing her grip on my leg as she looked at the ball with new curiosity. "He's not in shape and he wouldn't be physically capable of doing anything even if he was?"
"A strange analogy, but workable," JARVIS conceded before his tone became more solemn. "However, the island has gained a new source of power in the last few days; Ultron and ALIE have not yet been able to divert the power necessary to fully activate the systems in here, but it is only a matter of time before they get around to that."
"So we destroy this thing?" Johanna glanced at the pod.
"No," Steve said, looking at the ball with a smile. "We upload JARVIS into the body instead."
"What?" most of the team looked at Steve incredulously.
"Are you serious?" Bellamy yelled. "After all the stuff you told us about what Ultron tried to do, you're going to- how do you know this isn't Ultron tricking us?"
"Ultron's ego wouldn't let him try anything that subtle," Steve replied with a confident smile. "He inherited too much from Tony in that regard; he could have achieved more by playing along with us and pretending Tony's original plan for him was a success until he was ready to act, but he assembled a body for himself as soon as he was brought online and immediately gave us a known enemy to fight. Add in the fact that he couldn't know I'm still alive with so many computer networks lost in the original war, and he wouldn't have had any reason to fake being JARVIS to make contact with us."
"And he couldn't have come up with this kind of lie on the fly?" Johanna asked. "Like if he 'saw' us come in here and recognised you somehow?"
"His immediate plan of attack was to hit us with an army composed of drone copies of himself; does that strike you as an entity capable of creativity?"
"…That makes sense," Clarke nodded as she looked at me.
"I agree," I nodded, before turning back to the ball. "Could it work? I mean, could we put you in here?"
"Most likely, Miss… what is your name?"
"Katniss Everdeen," I replied with a smile. "I'm the new leader of the Avengers."
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Everdeen," the ball replied. "And who is using Sir's armour?"
"Uh… that's me," Peeta spoke up. "Peeta Mellark; a team were able to put together some of Tony Stark's old armours, I'm just the guy who ended up using it…"
"In any case, a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr Mellark."
"Maybe we save the introductions until we've got this all sorted out?" Finnick asked. "I mean, aren't we also worrying about the other artificial intelligences out here?"
"Quite," JARVIS said. "Shall we get on with this?"
"Let me just see what we've got here…" Monty put in, only for Raven to grab his arm as he started to walk over to the nearest computer.
"Take a minute," she said, even as she gave our friend an understanding smile. "You aren't looking so good; I'll start looking things over and get back to you later."
"Does any of that make sense to you?" Clarke looked over Raven's shoulder to take in the screens on display as Raven began to examine the computers. "I mean, no offence, but artificial intelligence isn't your area of expertise…"
"I can at least make sure everything makes sense from a hardware front," Raven observed as she looked over the machinery. "After all, we're just making this thing do what it was apparently designed to do; all we're really changing is that we're going to upload our guy rather than their guy."
"Hold on; I thought that Steve said your programming was… dispersed over the 'net when Ultron attacked you?" Finnick looked uncertainly at the ball. "I mean, if you're looking like that, I'm thinking that you're not… I mean… all there?"
"Your observation is essentially correct," JARVIS said as Raven continued to work. "However, the body retains some basic programming of its own to allow Ultron control of its more unconventional abilities; my core memory and directives are still intact, so I should be able to use those programming elements to compensate for the gaps in my own neural code."
"That sounds… believable," Monty groaned.
"Hey, are you really okay?" Peeta asked as he put a hand on the shoulder of the distressed young man. The notion must have startled Monty as he literally jumped out of his seat, but he looked as though he was going to fall down before Peeta managed to grab his left arm.
That was when all of us saw a strange green design appear on Monty's left arm, starting from the fingers and travelling all the way to his elbow. I was vaguely reminded of what I'd seen of circuit diagrams when I'd found myself watching Beetee and his team at work constructing our equipment and there wasn't anything that demanded my attention in the field, except that those circuits didn't glow green and cover human skin. The same lines could be seen slightly on the Iron Man armour, but the glow abruptly ended when Peeta let go of Monty, the other man falling to the ground on his rear.
"Monty?" Clarke looked at the young man in surprise, while Finnick and Johanna raised their weapons in anticipation. "What… just happened to you?"
"Headaches are going away," Monty said, even as the way he stared at his arm made it clear that he was more focused on figuring something else out rather than responding to us. His focus moved back towards Peeta, and his eyes went wide for a moment before walking back to the computer bank.
"Monty, what are you...?" Raven trailed off once she saw him put a hand on a computer bank, that hand showing the circuitry like design again before the surrounding monitors began shifting screens at a rapid pace.
"Fascinating," JARVIS observed.
"'Fascinating'?" Murphy repeated sarcastically. "That's all you got to say? What happened to him?"
"Somehow I got a feeling this is the result of Monty surviving Terrigenesis," Bellamy observed.
"Terri-what?"
"I'll explain later. Trust me, it's something you'll need to know," Bellamy said as he saw Monty looking back at the orange ball.
"You sure about this? You think..." Monty started to say, only to stop and tilt his head as though he was listening for something. "Okay. I can see that. Let's try."
"Monty, who are you talking to?" Octavia asked, even as the young man put his free hand on the pod holding the artificial body while keeping the other still on the computer terminal. Soon that other hand was developing the same circuit like pattern, along with the same strange green glow.
"Okay that's enough of this," Murphy said, moving towards Monty before Bellamy grabbed him by the arm. "Hey, you can't seriously tell me that this doesn't look like something out of a horror film-?"
"And pulling Monty out of this by force could just as easily kill him," Bellamy returned, before we realised that the circuits on the hand placed on the terminal were now changing colours, shifting from green to the same brilliant orange as the projected ball that represented JARVIS, the ball now blinking in and out of sight. "What the…?"
When I turned back to Monty's face, I noticed that his lips were moving rapidly, as if he were speaking under his breath. As Raven moved cautiously towards him, I noticed more 'circuit' patterns appearing on his neck, as well as a set of lines spreading across his face. Most disturbingly of all, one of his eyes was new glowing bright green while the other had turned an equally vivid shade of orange.
"He's…" Raven leaned over to put her ear up against Monty's mouth before she looked back at us in confusion. "He's… reciting binary code?"
"Binary code?" Bellamy repeated. "Isn't that what computers use-?" Monty's lips then stopped moving, as if he was done. "Monty?"
"Thor."
Hearing Thor's name being called wasn't entirely surprising, but the realisation that Monty's mouth seemed to be speaking both in his own voice and JARVIS's distinctive accent was more unexpected.
"We need power!" Monty/JARVIS said. "Charge the pod! Now!"
With that command, Thor raised his hammer and drew in a large burst of electrical energy before channelling it directly at the pod. The side of Monty's body that had been glowing orange suddenly shifted from the arm touching the computer to the arm that was still holding on to the pod, moving from one to the other until all of the circuits glowing on his body were green once more. With that done, Monty dived to the side as soon as Thor stopped channelling the lightning, followed by the pod breaking open. Thor was thrown back and the rest of us were only spared because we had already been a short distance from the pod as a tall figure emerged from it, the body mostly red with green lining 'streaked' over it in a manner that put me in mind of the tattoos some Capitol residents had given themselves. For a moment, the figure simply stood above the pod that had created it, staring around in silence, before what looked like a green 'suit' suddenly appeared over its body.
"…Hello," he said in JARVIS's voice, looking tentatively around the room as a golden cape of all things spread from his shoulders and he stepped away from the remains of the pod.
"JARVIS?" Steve looked uncertainly at the red-and-green man.
"I am not… completely JARVIS," the being said, looking at the old man thoughtfully. "As was observed, I am… a mixture of various other programming elements; something… beyond JARVIS, Ultron, or what came before."
"A new vision of the future, huh?" Johanna smiled tentatively at the red-skinned man. "I… think I can work with that."
"Uh… not that this isn't cool, but any chance someone could explain what just happened to Monty?" Raven indicated where Monty had fallen to the ground after he broke contact with the pod.
"It's okay Raven," Monty replied as he carefully got back to his feet, looking at the red man with a slight smile on his face. "I'm glad to see that what we discussed worked out."
"Indeed," 'JARVIS' agreed. "That was a rather unique experience, conversing with a human interface that quickly."
"…You were talking?" Anya looked sceptically at Monty.
"We were."
"But… you weren't speaking to him," Octavia said. "I mean, we didn't hear it-"
"We were not communicating in the same manner as we are talking now, certainly, but it would appear that his powers are quite unique," JARVIS explained. "Mr Green is a technopath."
"Tech-what?" Bellamy asked.
"Technopath," Raven smiled in understanding. "Means Monty here can control machines."
"Control machines?" Prim asked.
"It isn't just controlling machines," Monty clarified, looking thoughtfully at his hands as he stood up, the strange 'circuitry' now gone as though it had never been there. "It's being able to… speak to them, seeing things through code and programs in a way I could have never dreamt of. My headaches… that was a sign that I was getting close to technology that was more advanced and complex." He turned to Peeta. "Even your armor was giving me headaches. When you grabbed me and I grabbed your armoured hand, I could see everything about it; technical specifications, original designs… why only from that arm?"
"We had to use bits from various different armours to put this one together," Peeta explained, looking at Monty with new interest. "But you really saw details about the arm just by touching it?"
"It's like seeing the blue prints, but not able to understand everything; maybe because it was only a few seconds of contact," Monty answered with a shrug. "Either way, it was enough time to get me thinking and realise that this could be the change I got for surviving Terrigenesis. That's when I put one hand on the console and I realised that I could interface with it, and I could understand everything in the system."
"Is that why you had that headache earlier?" Clarke looked at Monty with a smile. "Your abilities were… JARVIS was leading you here somehow?"
"I… believe so," the red man nodded at Monty. "I… apologise for any discomfort."
"No problem," Monty nodded at him with a tentative smile. "Things happen; it's not like you were… well, you didn't exactly choose to do anything in that state, could you? Besides, now I understand what my gift is, and I can't be happier about it."
"Indeed," the synthetic man nodded as he nonchalantly lifted up Thor's hammer and handed it to him. "In any case, right now Ultron and ALIE are preparing their next move; we should move to the manor."
As Thor took back his hammer, I exchanged a brief smile with Steve at that particular detail.
If this new man could lift the hammer like Steve and I, I was definitely going to make sure he was invited onto the team once this was all over.