Chapter 14: Red Ledger
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight?
Those "Fabrics of Cashmere—" "to make Me beautiful—"
"Trinket"— to gem– "Me to adorn– How– tell"— tonight?
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates–
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
God's vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar–
All the archangels– their wings frozen– fell tonight.
Lord, cried out the idols, Don't let us be broken
Only we can convert the infidel tonight.
Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities
multiply me at once under your spell tonight.
He's freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.
He's left open– for God– the doors of Hell tonight.
In the heart's veined temple, all statues have been smashed
No priest in saffron's left to toll its knell tonight.
God, limit these punishments, there's still Judgment Day–
I'm a mere sinner, I'm no infidel tonight.
Executioners near the woman at the window.
Damn you, Elijah, I'll bless Jezebel tonight.
The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer
fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.
My rivals for your love– you've invited them all?
This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee–
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
~ Agha Shahid Ali, "Tonight"
He flew up to his lair through a snowy gray twilight, carrying the old cable car he used to transport artifacts from his recovery missions. This haul contained a few hundred old books and some paintings he'd found in a large house that had collapsed under the weight of the snow. He didn't know if these paintings were originals, but he liked them and wanted to preserve them.
In the shelter of his room, he removed the thick plastic he'd wrapped the paintings in and propped them against the wall. He'd have to examine them by daylight to look for signatures to figure out who painted them and when. Once he determined how valuable they were he could decide where in the tunnels to store them.
He would leave the books for tomorrow as well, he decided. He flew upward, phasing through the solid stone, and emerged into the open air. From the tip of the Rock of Gibraltar, he looked out over the Mediterranean Sea to the east, though the view was obscured by the snow and the gathering darkness. He hoped there were no refugee boats trying to make the crossing in this weather.
Was that a point of light on the horizon? He couldn't tell, and he shouldn't fly out for a closer look and risk being sighted this close to his hideout.
It was soon full dark. He returned to his lair. The paintings, sculptures, antique furniture, and other odds and ends he was storing appeared and disappeared in the glow of the mysterious power source in his forehead, the only source of light in this cold room carved out of solid rock.
The shifting light almost made the shadowy forms seem alive.
He entered resting mode, closing his eyes and lowering his density to hover just above the ground. In the oppressive emptiness, he imagined he could feel the weight of the stone mountain around him.
Less than an hour into his rest cycle, the dark of his room was suddenly ruptured by a yellow brightness. He opened his eyes and found a circle of light suspended in mid air. Three humans leaped out of it. The circle closed. Two of the humans—two goateed men in unusual, slightly archaic dress—stepped forward, swirling circles of light surrounding their hands. The third human, a woman, drew back.
He thought he'd killed all of the magic users.
"If you wanted to kill me, you should have struck already," he informed them.
And they should have brought more fighters. And more weapons. Which, of course, they would know. Which made no sense.
And 2.3 additional seconds had passed and they still hadn't attacked.
"Are you here to kill me?" he asked in confusion. What other reason could they possibly have for being here?
"No," said the taller of the two men. "We're here to make you an offer. But before we get to that, I believe introductions are in order. My name is Doctor Strange. These are my colleagues, Wong and Maximoff. And you're known as Ultron. Some people refer to you as Red Ultron or Ultimate Ultron. What would you prefer us to call you?"
He'd never been asked that before. His name was Ultron, the most hated name in history. He couldn't be known by anything else.
"Call me whatever you want," he said. "I'm curious: why aren't you trying to kill me?"
"Are you familiar with multiverse theory?" asked the other man, Wong.
"Yes. It posits that there are multiple parallel dimensions. It's unproven, and probably unprovable."
Doctor Strange shook his head. "Hardly unprovable. In fact, in our world it's been proven."
The implication was instantly jarring. "You're not from here."
"You're catching on."
"Why are you here?"
"I already told you: to make you an offer."
He looked at each of the three humans suspiciously. What did they want with him? What did they want him to do? Destroy their world as he had his own?
"And what if I refuse?" he asked.
"That's your prerogative. But I think you'll want to accept."
"What makes you think you know what I want?"
"We know a great deal about you," Wong said. "We know you were created by Ultron ten years ago, that the humans of your world never submitted to Ultron's rule, leading to total global war. Eight years ago, you turned against the other Ultrons and destroyed them one by one. But the humans of this world still don't trust you."
Saying humans didn't trust him was an almost laughable understatement. The humans hadn't witnessed him destroying the other Ultrons; all they knew was that only one had been sighted in years, only the indestructable Red Ultron. Whenever he tried to tell them he'd changed, they didn't believe him. Actually, most of them didn't even hear him over their own screams.
"For the past eight years, you've been trying to save human lives to make up for the lives you took," Doctor Strange said. "But even that's not enough for people to trust you."
"Humans have been killed because I saved them, because anyone who is seen being saved by me is suspected of being in league with me," he said, the weight of those deaths making it hard to get the words out.
"You've saved entire ships of refugees heading to the tropics, where food still grows, and not a single one of them admits they owe their lives to you," Wong said.
"No one owes me their life," he replied. "Those are scales that can never be balanced: the current global population is lower than the number of humans I've killed."
These humans from another world didn't looked shocked, or even surprised, by that statistic, though the woman glanced down and seemed to mouth something to herself.
Doctor Strange said, "You're counting the humans killed by all other Ultrons, and by the starvation, radiation, disease, and cold that were byproducts of the war. But the fact is, you turned against Ultron. You singlehandedly stopped the war. That humans survive on your planet at all is because of you."
"And now," Wong gestured around the room, its eclectic contents made visibly by the sorcerers' magical light, "since humans won't let you save their lives, you've dedicated yourself to saving their cultural heritage, preserving works of art, literature, history, and science here at Gibraltar for humans to find once civilization has recovered."
"How do you know all this?" he asked. It didn't seem possible. No one knew what he'd been doing, let alone why.
"We have our ways," Doctor Strange said. "But that brings us to our offer. Our Earth is in danger. It's being threatened by a foe your powers make you uniquely able to help us fight."
Maximoff spoke, her voice quiet and uncertain. "Come with us. Save our world, with its billions of human lives. That balances your scales. It wipes your ledger clean."
If they were telling the truth, he couldn't refuse. And with everything they knew about him, he had no reason to doubt them.
"If I go with you to your Earth, if we do defeat the foe you speak of, you'll send me back here?"
"Sure. No problem," Doctor Strange said.
That would not have been his preferred answer. But he could hardly ask for a better one.
He nodded. "I'll go with you."