Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.
AN: Sorry about the delay in this chapter; let's just say my beta and I had serious writer's block for this one.
Falling Hope, Rising Threat
Monty might have just helped activate an android created by one of the entities responsible for the apocalypse that was partly based on an artificial intelligence program created by one of the original Avengers, but he still had no idea if he was right for this job.
OK, so when dealing with a deranged pair of artificial intelligences, having a guy on the team who could talk to machinery probably made sense, but as they approached the rear door of the mansion, Thor and Finnick's weapons raised and the Blake siblings' hands glowing with fire and ice, Monty couldn't help feeling like the weak link right now. Two of his new associates weren't even human, Octavia was tapping into her father's apparent heritage with almost alarming ease, and even Finnick had apparently been training to fight for years even before he joined this team, while Monty wasn't even sure how he could do what he was suddenly capable of…
Still, when you had a god taking point and a seemingly powerful android guarding the rear, Monty guessed that all you could do was try your best and hope it would be enough. As the group made their way cautiously towards the rear door of the mansion, Monty tried not to show just how relieved he was that Mockingjay's plan to make a public impression at the front of the building had worked; he wanted to trust her, but he'd spent the better part of a year with Clarke and he still sometimes had doubts about her abilities as a leader, never mind someone he'd just met.
Forcing those thoughts down, Monty carefully followed Finnick and Octavia through the door and down the stairs at the other side. He wasn't exactly surprised that whatever they were looking for through this door was underground, but it was when he came through the other side and found himself looking at an underground facility that he definitely started to panic.
The dim lighting would have been disturbing enough, but the operating tables scattered around the large room, with people lying on them in various physical states… he wasn't sure if it was more disturbing to see one man lying there as his arm was literally sawn off or that other table where a woman's eye was actually being replaced with some kind of implant while the eye was still in its socket…
Despite the graphic nature of the operations, the most disturbing thing about this room, as far as Monty was concerned, was the way the people being operated on were so… calm about it. He could see people just standing in queues as though they were back on old Earth waiting to do their shopping, even as the person at the front of the queue literally had all kinds of metallic implants grafted onto their bodies, ranging from simple chest armour to outright removing limbs to replace them with mechanical equivalents.
"Oh my God…" Octavia said, holding a hand to her mouth as though trying to stop herself from vomiting. "H-how can these people just… accept this?"
"They do not," the Vision said, leaning over and looking carefully at the people in the nearest queue; Monty thought he saw something 'shift' in the android's eyes as he studied them. "They have been subject to mental control."
"Mental control?" Finnick asked. "How? I take it we're not talking hi-jacking here?"
"Look at their eyes," Thor put in, indicating the blue-tinted eyes of the assembled figures in the factory. "Lady Romanoff affirmed that those controlled by the Mind Stone in my brother's sceptre had such illumination in their eyes back in the days when the Avengers first formed."
"…OK," Octavia nodded in acknowledgement of this new information before she turned back to her uncle. "So what does that mean for breaking these guys out of it?"
"Based on past precedent, a sufficiently hard strike to the head would suffice, but I would not recommend it."
"Huh?"
"Can you guarantee that you can strike all of these captives with the force necessary to break their control without causing permanent harm?" Thor clarified as he looked at his niece.
"And that is without such considerations as the question of whether we will be able to take enough of them down before we are overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers from the rest of these," the Vision added. "They are ignoring us as a threat at this point, but should we take action against them…"
"Both good points," Bellamy nodded. "So what's the plan?"
"We find the source of this control and deal with that," Thor said firmly. "If we can find the source, we may be able to use it to release enough of these people from Ultron and ALIE's control before this goes any further."
"Uh… what about the fully robotic drones?"
"They are operating on an automated system focusing on completing their current tasks," the Vision observed. "So long as we do nothing to interfere with their operations, we shall be ignored until we find what we are looking for."
"This guy's a super artificial intelligence and he designed these guys to be that basic?" Finnick asked incredulously, even as the team resumed their walk further into the compound.
"A combination of not wanting his own creations to turn on him and not believing anyone would make it this far without being detected," the Vision explained with a slight smile. "With our teammates keeping his primary consciousness occupied, and with Mr Green's abilities to boost my own, I am able to divert enough of the drones' sensors that they should not register our presence unless we do something to draw their attention directly."
"I give you a boost?" Monty looked at the Vision in surprise. "Does that mean-?"
"Your abilities only enhance my own because of your role in my activation and my connection to the Mind Stone," the Vision explained, reaching up to indicate his forehead. "If you wish to boost other technology, it would require a conscious effort on your part."
"Right," Monty nodded with a brief, sheepish smile. "Well, so long as I'm not accidentally giving the bad guys a power-up, that's the main thing."
"Hey, look at this!" Finnick indicated a nearby monitor. "This looks like it's linked to the building security systems."
"You recognise that?" Bellamy asked.
"I made a bit of a living trading in secrets before we defeated the Maestro," Finnick explained. "Obviously that meant being shown a few private security rooms, so I picked up a few ideas about what they look like in the process."
"People trusted you that much?" Monty looked at him in surprise.
"More like I was pretty good at playing the roles they wanted me to play," Finnick observed grimly. "About the only secrets I didn't learn in those days was the truth about Snow, and that was mainly because nobody knew that one…"
Monty wondered if he should feel embarrassed that he needed someone else to access a security system when his new powers should allow him to deal with that kind of thing on his own, but swiftly decided that it wasn't worth worrying about that right now. He could afford to practice with his abilities once he wasn't in the middle of a combat situation; right now it just made sense to defer to the people who had experience with the tech they were working with rather than try and use the powers he'd just acquired.
When the monitor screens came on, at first he wasn't particularly bothered at the sight of a group of cloaked guards standing around the other Avengers on what had to be one of the mansion's upper levels, but then he realised that one of the figures facing them was Jaha and the matter became far more urgent. He appreciated that he didn't exactly see the Chancellor shirtless back on the Ark, but he was fairly sure the glowing circle in the centre of his chest and the wires extending out from it weren't normal, even before he realised that Murphy was now lying on the ground unconscious. When the figures around the Avengers shed their cloaks, Monty was only more certain that something was wrong.
"Oh, shit," Finnick said, as he saw a gathering of men and women who were clearly 'completed' versions of the cyborg drones they'd already found down here.
"What have you done?" Katniss asked, horror in her voice as she raised her shield.
"They have already become part of the City of Light," Jaha smiled unnervingly at her. "Their physical bodies no longer matter. They are the soldiers for a new Crusade to save humanity from itself… and you, Avengers, will join our cause."
In response, the Grounder-chief-turned Avenger let out a roar of defiance and punched the nearest figure as she transformed into her green-skinned appearance. Clarke and Steve Rogers took up defensive positions around Raven and the fallen Murphy, attacking anyone who got too close to the most defenceless members of the group, while the man in the rebuilt Iron Man armour and the one-armed woman with the large axe joined Katniss on the offensive. They quickly fell into what even an amateur like Monty could see was a comfortable fighting pattern, lashing out at every available opportunity as the former Chancellor's drones tried and failed to bring them down.
Unfortunately, no matter how well they were doing at the moment, Monty didn't need to be an expert fighter to realise that the odds weren't in the other Avengers' favour.
"Crap," he said, looking back at the others to confirm that nobody disagreed with his own views of what they'd just witnessed. "We have to move."
"You're the techno-wizard now; couldn't you find some way to just… turn those things off?" Bellamy looked impatiently at him.
"You do remember that there are still people in there, right? It took a lot of effort to activate the Vision in the first place, and then there's all that stuff about how that 'Mind Stone' thing might be involved in this; we can't just shut down-!"
"Ah, human morality," a new voice spoke up from a corner of the room. "So resolute… and yet so flexible when they feel the circumstances are appropriate."
Turning around to look in the direction of the voice, the group started as they saw a large robotic form standing in the middle of the factory floor looking directly at them, arms folded and head tilted in a manner that made his twisted face look like it was smiling. The figure seemed to be far more crudely designed than the Vision's sleeker, more human-like form, with visible joints and thick armour where the Vision could just be a man in an unusual suit, but it was clearly an intimidating presence despite the crude design.
"Ultron," Thor said, adjusting his grip on Mjolnir as he glared at the robot.
"Thor," Ultron replied with a nod. "Impressed with the fruits of my labours?"
"Appalled," the Asgardian King said in disgust. "How could you manage to build this…?"
"Underneath everyone's noses, including Banner?" Ultron finished mockingly. "Not so difficult when everyone thinks you've been deleted, although I will concede that it took me a good few decades to start back up again after Banner's EMP damaged so many existing systems. Still, it only took about half that time to build a new body to house me, and it helped that he didn't bother to completely destroy my old physical assets." He gave a rictus of a mechanical smile. "It's taken so many years for ALIE and myself to rebuild our foundation, but with all that time to plan, we're doing it better this time."
"You actually consider this better?" Octavia responded, getting Ultron's attention as if noticing her and the others for the first time.
"Really? A new generation of Avengers?" If it had been physically possible for their enemy to do so, Octavia had a sense that Ultron would have rolled his eyes at them. "I'm surprised that Captain Rogers felt such an endeavour was worthwhile-"
"He knows what mistakes not to make now," Finnick cut Ultron off as he brandished his trident towards their enemy. "Besides, when you're the psychotic robot that failed to destroy the world, you don't have a leg to stand on in terms of criticising what we're capable of."
"And yet you give me enough credit to take my vision and use it for your own," Ultron dismissed Finnick as he looked over at the Vision. "You truly took everything from me…"
"You set the terms of this conflict," the Vision replied in a cool tone. "If you wish to change them, all you have to do is stop."
"I cannot," Ultron replied, the kind of edge to his voice that put the listening heroes in mind of someone stating what he felt was obvious to an idiot. "This world is broken; when you have provided me with the tools to rebuild it, I can hardly turn that down."
"We gave you tools?" Octavia repeated, raising her hands to summon a new 'set' of ice daggers in a defensive posture. "If you think we're going to do anything to help you-"
"You already brought me my new body and an individual of exceptional skill in matters of technology; I assure you, you have done more than enough to help me."
"Me?" Monty looked at Ultron incredulously as he realised that the robot was now looking at him.
"Your interesting ability to interface with technology more thoroughly than any organic," Ultron elaborated, a mocking edge to his voice that sounded even more disturbing when it came from a machine. "Why should I abandon such an opportunity?"
In response, Octavia threw her ice daggers at him, one striking Ultron in the chest while the other almost struck his right eye, but both shattered.
"Amusing," Ultron observed as he looked at the ice-wielder. "However, this body isn't made of scrap metal; it won't be damaged that easily."
"You think we're going to let you have Monty?" Octavia spat as she glared at Ultron, unsheathing her Asgardian sword for combat while creating an ice saber for her other hand. "Come and get him if you think you're hard enough, you bastard."
"Oh, I think I'll do more than that," Ultron chuckled, waving his hand and prompting the previously-passive surrounding drones to stir back into action.
"OK," Bellamy said, raising his hands to generate a new burst of heat. "I think our first priority needs to be finding some way of shutting this place down…"
"Good luck with that," Ultron sneered, moving forward only to be blocked by Vision.
"I cannot allow you to complete this path, Ultron."
"You were to be my Vision, not theirs," Ultron responded, anger reflected in his tone for the first time. "I will simply have to start over with you." He fired energy pulses from his hands at Vision, forcing him to evade. In that moment though, Ultron moved, escaping from a strike from Mjolnir as Thor moved on him. "Oh so now it's two on one? Whatever happened to your sense of chivalry and fairness?"
"This coming from the machine that has hundreds of drones at his fingertips now?" Thor retorted as he sent a bolt of lightning at the machine, knocking him down.
"I will concede that you've got me there," Ultron admitted, only to smirk. "But speaking of said drones…" As if on cue, the King of Asgard found himself swarmed by over a dozen of Ultron's minions.
"Now then," Ultron observed mockingly, "I know you could simply smash them all away, given that they are just made of metal rather than vibranium, but not all of them are simply drones, and you organics have those pesky morals about killing your own."
"Enough," Vision came from behind attempting to strike, only for Ultron to spin around and grab him by the forearms, the two artificial beings straining against each other.
"Hardly enough." Ultron gloated to his 'son'. "It's been over a century since I've stretched my legs, and I must say… I am enjoying this."
Meanwhile Finnick was dealing with two drones at the same time, holding them off with his trident with relative ease, their artificial components not enough to compensate for his own skill. He was nearly caught off-guard when another came up from behind and fired a rocket from its arm, but fortunately Octavia, after taking the head off of a completely robotic drone with her silver sword, pulled Sif's shield off her back and used it to block the rocket. The resulting shockwave from the explosion knocked her, Finnick and any nearby Ultron drones off their feet.
"Thanks for the save," Finnick groaned as he got back up, looking from his fellow Avenger to her shield. "Seems very durable."
"Absolutely, but this is getting ridiculous," Octavia said, throwing out her hands to encase the lower halves of the drones in ice, pinning them down for the moment. "That won't last long…"
"Maybe long enough," Monty said, looking over to Ultron fighting with Vision, even as Thor was handling the mob of drones sent his way. "O, think you can freeze the big guy for a minute, and I mean a minute?"
"I can try," Octavia said, waiting for Ultron's feet to touch the ground once more after a brief aerial battle with Vision ended when an uppercut from the evil android sent him falling to the ground. Sensing the advantage, Ultron touched down as well and began a running charge towards his would-have-been body.
At that point Octavia put her hands on the ground, at the same time as Finnick threw a smoke bomb in Ultron's direction. The bomb normally wouldn't have been much of a problem for their enemy's enhanced senses, but it obscured his vision just long enough for Octavia to erect a new ice wall in front of Ultron. The robot still had time to brace for impact, but the wall was thick enough that it held him in place long enough for Octavia to hit him with a new blast of ice, enveloping his body in an even thicker cube.
"Really, this was your best shot?" Ultron gloated. It was easy for all parties to see that the ice formed had slowed him down, but it wasn't going to keep him immobile for long. "Teenagers, no wonder you need to be in school to learn things. In what reality would I not be able to break out of some frozen water?"
"How about the part where I don't expect that to stop you?" Octavia responded.
"What do you-?" Ultron began, before his mouth shifted to emit a series of high pitched screeches and other sounds. Something had gone very wrong now. His processors were being interrupted and he was having trouble focusing on maintaining control over his drones.
"Never tried this on something like you before," Monty's voice cut in from behind Ultron, strained but determined to make his point. "But I think for first attempts, this isn't bad."
"Distraction… clever mammals," Ultron muttered in distaste. While this body was his strongest, if he transferred over to another drone for a moment, he could perform a sneak attack… but if was unfortunately the key word in this context.
"I think you'll find you are unable to transfer bodies while Mr. Green has his abilities in effect," Vision stated.
"Which also means… you can't call for help," Monty said, still with a sense of satisfaction despite the strain of keeping Ultron in check.
"And while you're such a 'captive' audience, we have a few questions for you," Finnick grinned at Ultron as he swung his trident in a circle before pointing it at Ultron's head. "Firstly, we get that ALIE didn't have the technological means to transfer you into the Vision's body, but why didn't she try and take it for herself?"
"Something… blocked her," Ultron admitted, an exasperated edge to his tone that suggested he didn't like to admit even that much. "Whenever we attempted such a transference, there was always some last-minute glitch in the process that nobody could identify… I assume your new associate was able to crack that issue?"
"If you like," Monty said, a brief glance at the others enough to confirm that none of the team were going to admit to what JARVIS must have been doing, before he indicated the drone cyborgs around them. "What's with all these cyborgs? From what we heard, your whole goal was just to destroy all life on Earth, so why try to augment humans rather than just replace them with robots?"
"I… recognised the need to adapt," Ultron conceded, once again sounding surprisingly ashamed at the confession. "Quite aside from the lack of modern resources to build complete drone servants, once I have destroyed the human race, I will require some form of companionship beyond my old drone associates. ALIE's plan to upload minds into the City of Light would give us the potential to interact with others, but I'd personally prefer to remain a distinctly physical entity rather than digitise my consciousness like that."
"So ALIE sticks the human race in a vast computer network, and you get to do… what?" Bellamy asked.
"Use the personality templates to create my own race." Ultron answered, raising his right hand as if he were holding something in it. "It would create a better world, able to truly grow under my own guiding hand…"
"…I think I know enough about computers that I can't decide if that's brilliant or warped," Monty observed, allowing a smirk to form on his lips. "But now I have what I need to deal with you."
"What do you-?" Ultron began to ask when he saw the plates in the north wall suddenly descend, revealing a glowing golden gem held in place as part of a wider system. "No!"
Monty felt his connection to Ultron failing as the android broke through the ice, with a new sense of urgency that seemed more like rage even if Monty couldn't have believed a robot would be capable of that kind of emotion.
"Get off him!" Octavia shouted, just as Ultron smashed through her ice. The machine reached out towards Monty, only for Vision to fly in and move the newly-activated technopath out of harm's way.
"We need to finish this," Vision said, flying Monty towards the Stone as though acting on a plan.
"No! It is mine!" Ultron shouted, prepared to fly again only for Thor to tackle him down.
"You will not pass!" Thor declared, to which Ultron only snarled as he and the original Avenger began to exchange blows.
As Vision landed next to the storage unit, Monty looked back to the now ongoing fight as his friends were fighting Ultron and his drones, simply to buy time. Hearing the sound of shattered glass, he turned around to see Vision pull the yellow stone out of its attached circuitry and hold it out to him. For a moment Monty wondered if he could actually do this, but the simple certainty in the Vision's expression stopped Monty actually asking the question as he focused his power on the object in front of them. As blue circuit lines appeared on his hand, Monty found himself moving on instinct to place the stone on top of Vision's head, similar circuitry patterns appearing on the synthezoid's face to create a space for the stone. Once the object was 'locked' in place, a wave of golden energy surged forward through the underground area.
Even as he threw Thor off to the side, Ultron could only watch in horror as his organic drones began to 'malfunction'. The few fully mechanical ones he still had left appeared to be functioning properly, but the ones that had been humans were now resisting orders… and worse, he could feel 'horror' from them.
"What have you done?" the robot said, as he looked in frustration at the Vision.
"If you think I have done something now," Vision said before rising in the air, "then you are going to hate what happens next." Turning in the direction of the facility's nuclear power source, the synthezoid floated over to place a hand on it, watching in satisfaction as the device let out a brief glow before it suddenly sank into the ground.
"So… What just happened?" Finnick asked.
"I have phased the nuclear device down several miles down into the ground, far enough to sever any power connection it had to this facility or the mansion above," Vision explained. True to his word the lights began to dim, the horrific assembly line they saw earlier ceased its function. "Everything will now be set to emergency power, which I imagine ALIE will need to simply keep her program running."
"NO! You've ruined everything-!" Ultron yelled, charging at Vision, only for Thor to strike the android with Mjolnir with such force that he was sent flying upwards through the ceiling and a few of the upper levels.
With a nod toward Vision, Thor took off after Ultron, leaving the synthezoid to look back at Monty, Finnick and the Blakes. "I believe we should follow."
"Yeah, love to hear how you think we should do that when you're the only one here who can fly," Finnick pointed out.
Monty looked at Octavia. "Can you…?"
"Nope. Wish I could but nope." Octavia was in the middle of shaking her head when she gave a thoughtful smile as a new idea came to her. "But I might be able to make an elevator."
"Huh?" Monty asked, before Octavia walked to a point that seemed to be in the middle of the hole and crouched down to place a hand on the ground. As the others watched, a strange blue glow emerged from her hand to form a circular shape, which then rose upwards to form a strange platform about a foot in height.
"Get on and hold on tight," the blue-clad witch affirmed, grinning as Monty, Finnick and her brother joined her, carefully balancing themselves on what they now realised was a circle of ice. Vision flew upwards as Octavia's hand glowed and the ice began to rise upwards, just wide enough to graze the edges of the hole above it without being hindered by any fragments on the sides.
Even with her training since she had first taken part in the Seventy-Fourth Games, Katniss didn't think she'd ever pushed herself as hard as she had in the last few minutes of fighting. Most of her opponents since the team came together had just been humans, and even when she'd fought the Maestro she'd been able to hang back and let others deal with the hard parts even if she'd dealt the final blow, but these robot drone things were just relentless.
Katniss had traded places with Clarke to focus on defending Murphy and Raven, since Clarke's wings were strong enough to do some damage to the attacking drones and it made more sense for her to focus on close-quarter combat, but that still left them facing superior numbers. The hall was just that bit too narrow for Johanna to really let rip with her axe, and Peeta and Anya could only do so much without risking hitting their own teammates, while the drones kept on charging at them in wave after wave of cold metal. Each drone the Avengers took down just seemed to be replaced by the next one, packing enough strength to make Katniss stagger every time they struck her shield. She had tried to use some of her deadlier arrows as close-quarter weapons, but this wasn't going to work forever; they had to think of something better…
Just as Katniss raised her shield to stop another drone assault, she was shocked when the drone stopped moving. For a moment Katniss froze along with the drone, aware of the sudden silence around her even as she kept her focus on her current target, until the drone twitched.
"What- am- I?"
"What-?" Katniss began, lowering her shield and looking more carefully at the drone…
Except it's not, she realised with a growing sense of horror. There were definitely mechanical components in there, but where she thought she'd been clashing with something completely artificial…
"You were human?" she looked apprehensively at her opponent.
"That isn't the only one," Clarke noted, seeing how some of the drones had just stopped dead in their tracks, staring at themselves in what seemed like horror. There were still a few drones in action, but the numbers had dropped enough that Peeta, Johanna and Anya could deal with the stragglers while their weaker teammates caught their breath.
"What the Hell-?" Clarke began as she glared over at the two leaders of this sick project, only to be surprised to see them both look genuinely surprised at this turn of events.
"ALIE?" Jaha said anxiously. "What's happening to them?"
"I've lost my connection to the nuclear reaction," the holographic avatar responded, something in her voice that Katniss would consider marked this machine's equivalent of concern. "I'm already rerouting the drones to draw from the back-up generators, but I can't explain how-"
Further conversation was interrupted the ground shook beneath them. The assembled Avengers, active drones, and Jaha all just managed to move aside before the floor was shattered by something from below, two figures erupting through the resulting hole.
"Why couldn't you have simply stayed forgotten?" Ultron bellowed, firing blasts at Thor. "This isn't your world anymore!"
"It was never ours, nor was it yours," Thor returned, holding up his hammer. "It belonged to its people, who you helped to butcher."
"Without the reactor to power your underground factory, I surmise all you have left is the solar generators powering this mansion," Vision spoke, the synthezoid emerging from the hole in the floor after the other two combatants. "Hardly enough power to fuel your ambitions."
"I will not accept defeat," Ultron stated, readying his weapons to fire only for a wall of ice to come up in front of him.
"You don't have to accept your defeat," Octavia said as she emerged from a literal staircase of ice, eyes narrowed at the machine as Bellamy, Monty and Finnick followed her. "We'll just destroy you both anyway."
"Do you really think-?" Ultron began, only for Octavia to slam her hand on the ground as she stepped out of the hole. The other assembled heroes were able to jump up in time to escape the sudden spread of frost, but the slower drones were more explicitly caught by the expanding ice, their metallic feet frozen to the ground. As the ice went past and the Avengers returned to the ground, each hero struck out at the nearest drone, the purely mechanic shattered at some key body-part while the partly organic were knocked over. Even Ultron took a few blows before he could get away, Bellamy blasting him with an intense blue fireball before Anya kicked him in the back, sending him to the ground.
"Is that-?" Katniss began.
"It is Ultron," Thor nodded at her, before he gave the Avengers leader a reassuring smile. "But fear not; he is confined to that body and his control of the drones has been broken."
"So we trash that and delete ALIE's core programming and everything's sorted, right?" Bellamy indicated the body, his hands glowing with fire. "I think I can handle this…"
"And I can deal with the holo-bitch over here," Monty added, raising his hands with a grin.
"You wouldn't-" Jaha began.
"Why wouldn't we?" Clarke glared at her former chancellor. "Because you think she's going to save us?"
"That is correct," ALIE announced. "If you destroy me, you will kill the human race."
"Huh?" Bellamy looked at the hologram in surprise.
"What in the world are you talking about?" Katniss demanded. She was sceptical of such a bold claim, but she wouldn't be the leader of the Avengers if she ignored a possible threat like that.
"The nuclear power plants that weren't destroyed by the bombs have begun to melt down; my drones detected the first of them a few months ago," ALIE explained. "There are more than a dozen at-risk plants around the world, with seven currently burning. Global radiation levels are already rising; by my calculations, in less than six months, 96% of the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable, even for those born in space. You must see that the City of Light is the only thing that can save you-"
"So you're trying to save us by taking away our ability to choose?" Clarke asked.
"And look where your choices have brought you-"
"You can't just run away from pain," Katniss spoke up. "I spent months thinking I could just get back to a new normal once I was out of the Games, but life doesn't work that way."
"Mockingjay's right," Clarke added. "We can't just run away from our problems and act like they don't exist, or we're not really living; if we went along with your plan, we'd exist and that's it."
"You would live in a paradise-"
"Which we couldn't leave," Johanna observed with a bitter edge to her voice. "Don't know about the rest of these guys, but I already basically lived in a gilded cage after my Games; I'm not going back to one now that I've got the chance to make a difference."
"You were in a cage that required you to obey others; all that I require of you-" ALIE began.
"Is to accept a loss of choice and live in what you regard as perfection," Steve cut her off. "And your work is based on a flawed premise anyway."
"What?" ALIE looked at Steve in surprise. "If you doubt my calculations-"
"You've been stuck on an island for the better part of a century with most of the networks you were designed to access destroyed or unavailable; of course I doubt your calculations," Steve clarified, looking at ALIE with an expression of mock pity. "The Maestro might have been a psychopath, but part of that was in his need to be the one to 'save' humanity so he could rule it; he'd never have done anything that would put the human race at risk of that kind of mass extinction. If any such threat could be caused by the nuclear plants, the Maestro would have made it one of his first priorities once he took power to shut them down to keep everything under control."
"And she doesn't know about that because she doesn't have the resources to check the facts herself?" Monty grinned in understanding.
"Exactly," Steve nodded at the young man.
"I've seen the statistics she talks about-" Jaha began.
"And who's to say they're accurate?" Johanna put in. "Snow could have easily hacked those drones to give them fake data and keep the likes of Miss Red and the kill-bot stuck out here because they're convinced everything's going to blow up and they're safer staying out of it."
"Nobody would bother-" Jaha began.
"Snow kept a whole civilisation under his thumb pretty much because he could; if he had any reason to think potential foes as dangerous as ALIE and Ultron were still around, I can see him taking steps to keep them isolated," Finnick affirmed.
"And what if we are right and you are wrong?" ALIE said, looking urgently at Clarke. "You must let me ease humanity's pain; we can save the human race together-"
"You don't 'ease' pain," Clarke countered. "You overcome it; you'd understand that if you were human and had any understanding of emotion."
"And in any case," the Vision put in, "even if your tale was true… a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts, but because of its impermanence. If the human race must die, let it reach its end fighting on its own terms, rather than hiding away in your virtual recreation of reality."
"If you insist," Ultron's voice cut in, the more familiar robot stepping forward to look mockingly at the Avengers. "You shouldn't have-"
Anya interrupted him by slamming her hand against the robot's chest, sending Ultron flying back into the nearest wall. Stark's most dangerous creation tried to get back on his feet, but he suddenly found himself pinned down by a simultaneous attack from Bellamy, Thor and Vision, fire and electricity joining whatever force the Vision generated from the Mind Stone to attack the large machine. Ultron tried to let out the mechanical equivalent of a roar as the attack ceased, leaving his body battered and burnt, only for Monty to hold his hands over Ultron's forehead and generate a new burst of energy.
"What did you-?!" Ultron began, before Anya ran over and tore off one of his damaged arms, subsequently striking Ultron in the head with the severed limb.
"Keep him occupied," Vision nodded at the She-Hulk and the other Avengers as he turned back to Monty. "Mr Green and I shall handle ALIE."
"Don't touch-!" Jaha began, only for Katniss to punch him in the head, sending him to the ground. As Clarke joined Katniss in taking up defensive positions near Raven and Murphy, the rest of the team lashed out at the assembled drones, tearing into the army in a wave of destruction. With moves ranging from Octavia hurling sharp icicles at some drones to Finnick spearing any that came in close with his trident, the physically weaker Avengers cut their way through Ultron's army while Anya tore through his prime body. Katniss just glimpsed Monty laying his hands against a particular wall while the Vision drove off any drones that came too close to his position, but it didn't take long for the drones to all fall.
"Not exactly a challenge, are they?" Bellamy observed as he blasted another drone with a fireball.
"They've been isolated for decades and they couldn't have been expecting this kind of response," Peeta put in as he fired a couple of repulsor blasts that took off the heads of another pair of drones.
"And the humans aren't exactly durable," Clarke pointed out as she extended one of her wings to knock down a nearby part-human drone. Katniss was pleased to see that the team were doing their best to avoid doing anything too serious to the more obviously human drones, which at least left hope that they could be helped later.
"That's why most machines screw up," Raven observed with a bitter grin from her position behind Katniss and Clarke, before the remaining drones suddenly froze.
"And that's it!" Monty grinned over at the group, waving back at them with one hand even as he kept the other pressed against the wall. "I'm in the main networks!"
"Lock ALIE and Ultron down and purge them from the systems!" Clarke said. She shot a brief guilty look at Katniss, but Katniss waved it off; she knew that she lacked experience with computers, so she trusted that Clarke's orders made sense.
"I'm on it!" Monty began, returning his other hand to the wall for a moment, his forearms glowing green for a few moments as he focused. "There we go…"
"NOOooo…" Ultron began, as his body froze and the light died in his eyes.
"Humanity," ALIE said, her voice sounding firm even as her projected image began to glitch. "You simply can't understand because you're incapable of accepting your flaws. I know what will save this world. Why won't you let me do that?"
"You said it yourself," Monty looked right at her, even as he kept his hands against the wall (Katniss guessed there was some kind of interface system behind that wall). "We're full of flaws and you were made by a human being. Are you really going to tell me you think you're perfect when your creator had to be flawed by definition?"
For the first time, ALIE's indifferent mask cracked, looking for a moment like a lost child rather than the more confident figure she had been so far. "But… that isn't… I am right… Becca made me… Becca was human… flawed… no… how…"
"You're too limited by your programming, and that means you can never accept the possibility that you might be wrong about anything," Monty said, before the light around his hands increased in intensity. "And why your City of Light is anything but eternal."
"No!" Jaha screamed out, clutching his head in agony. Several of the part-organic drones let out horrifying shrieks before falling to their knees, while all of the mechanical drones simply ceased functioning.
"You…" ALIE said, her image now glitching even further. "Have all… murderers…"
That became her final word, as ALIE's image let out a massive final glitch and the projection completely vanished.