Thank you NocturnalRites for the beta. Your comments and suggestions help make this a better story.

Anyone reading Reflections and for those that sent emails asking if I'm giving up on that story because I'm updating this one more. I have a couple of chapters ready to send to Gategirl7 for the beta so hang in there, update coming very soon.

*** You could fit what I know about computers in a thimble. Please excuse any really stupid mistakes with explanations. I did my best. :-)

Chapter 16 - Paving Paths

Felicity looked back at Digg as they listened to Oliver's comm. The other men had shut their feeds off. It seemed like the Avengers were used to comms that you had to trigger to talk. Oliver's stayed on all the time. It hadn't been any trouble to link them all, but it also meant that she and Digg had heard the whole conversation between Oliver and Steve. Felicity felt for both men. She muted her side of the conversation as she turned back to John.

"How are you doing?" John asked. "That isn't a side of Steve you've seen before or I think he ever meant for you to see. It's not a side his PR people advertise." She knew Steve hadn't meant for what he said to be for her ears.

"I'm not sure," she answered honestly. "Steve's such a sweet, caring, sort of shy guy that I guess it's hard to remember that he's also a guy that has had the fate of the entire world on his shoulders more than once."

She sighed, trying to gather her thoughts. "I know what it does to Oliver when he has to take a life anymore, even one that anyone would agree deserves to be taken out of the gene pool. I guess I didn't think what being Captain America might do to Steve. She turned back to her computers for a moment and caught a line of code blipping briefly on the screen.

"Jarvis?" she hit a few keys trying to figure out what was going on. "Are you accessing the Arrow computers for any reason?"

"No, Ms. Smoak," Jarvis responded. "I am maintaining the connection you set up, but I have had no reason to need to access files there and would not do so without your permission. Is there something amiss with which I might help you?"

Felicity shook her head. She was already digging. She'd been accessing information about Bucky Barnes and the references to "The Asset" that Natasha Romanov had sent to Stark's computers. She'd left the connection to the Arrow computers open when she'd turned to talk to Digg.

"Is something wrong?" John asked.

"No," she answered quickly. She didn't want to alert anyone to her suspicions, especially when she couldn't yet put her finger on exactly what they were. John didn't say much but she could feel him hovering over her shoulder.

When she found the code she'd been looking for and started to follow it, her hands started to shake slightly. No way, she thought, this was not possible. She glanced up at John and saw that he had noticed her nervousness. She shook her head slightly, not sure how much monitoring Jarvis was actually capable of and unsure at this point how involved he might be.

John pressed a hand to her shoulder. She smiled knowing that he had her back even though he didn't know what was going on. It was nearly another hour before John was crossing the room to let Tony and Steve into the suite.

"Well Jarvis, did you play nice?" Tony asked, kicking his shoes off almost as soon as he was in the door.

"Indeed, sir," the AI answered.

"Mr. Stark," Felicity interrupted. "May I speak with you outside?" she paused thoughtfully, "Actually, I think I need to see all of you outside." Tony looked at her sharply. Something on her face must have convinced him to remain quiet.

With a heavy sigh, he put his feet back in his shoes and headed for the door. Felicity grabbed her laptop and followed, Steve and Digg bringing up the rear.

"You can call me Tony. Why am I standing in the hall rather than my comfy suite?"

"How much can Jarvis monitor conversation? Can you turn him off so that we can have a conversation unmonitored?" She didn't really want to have this conversation where they could be overheard by someone else in one of the other rooms, but mostly she didn't need it heard by Jarvis.

"I can, but I don't really…"

"She wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important, Tony," Steve cut in.

Tony looked at her like he was searching for answers in her face. At her nod, he sighed, then glanced at Steve before walking back into the suite. He typed out a few commands on his laptop, then shut it.

"There you go, unmonitored." He said, turning back to her expectantly.

Felicity sat down and placed her laptop back on the desk. She logged into her system at the foundry. After a couple of commands she brought up a section of code that she'd isolated for Tony to see.

"You have a virus and that requires that I shut down Jarvis so you can tell me this?" Tony sounded tired and irritated.

"That virus came from your system, Mr. Stark, Tony," she corrected herself. She glanced up at Oliver. The worry was plain on his face. He'd never really seen her unsure around computers and it seemed to be making him nervous. It's not computers or the company making me uneasy, she wanted to say. It's what I found.

Felicity's mind was still reeling. "And it is nothing like I've ever seen. I've seen and written some pretty complex code, but this is so foreign its almost like it wasn't created by anyone on Earth, but it had to be because there it is." She pointed to a few lines. "See here, it was working its way into the Lair's computers. If I hadn't caught it by luck at the point I did, it would have morphed into a line of code running so close to my own that I would never have seen it."

"That's ridiculous. Jarvis would have cleared anything that made it past my firewalls but nothing can make it past them. This conversation is a waste of time."

Felicity didn't try to suppress the eye roll. Everything she'd heard about Tony Stark's ego seemed to be true at this point. With a heavy sigh, she tried again. "Your AI didn't find it because it can mimic existing code so well that it would be hard for even the most advanced protection to find. Once I knew what I was looking for I started looking at your system in depth. It is running in a very subtle way right along your AI. When I start tracing it, the trail leads to a file you have listed as 'Ultron'."

Felicity looked at Tony expectantly, but when he didn't say anything she went on. "I assumed that file is where this virus started but when I look in there I see ideas, pieces of code that look very much like yours. I see code that is obviously someone else's you've worked with, but nothing that looks like it has been implemented. This thing has invaded your system and tried to invade mine, but I'm not sure how or why this thing has gotten loose or how it seems to be evolving on its own, past its programming."

Tony spun on her so quickly that Oliver stepped forward ready to get between them if necessary. "You dug into my files?" Tony demanded.

"That's what you got out of what I just told you!" Felicity snapped. Did he not get how serious this was or the fact that somehow he or someone with access to his computers had created a virus that seemed to be almost self aware?

Trying to keep calm and get the other genius in the room on the same thought train she was on, Felicity backed up and answered his question. "Not at first," she clarified. "I was looking at the information that Agent Romanov sent to you. You gave me access to that," she reminded him. "I connected into my system and started checking to see if I could get anything else off of the audio. My system glitched. My system does not have glitches. I started digging and when I found it and traced it, I kept digging. I figured you'd want to know."

"Good job, Felicity," Steve told her before turning on Stark. "Do you know what Ultron is, Tony?" Steve demanded.

"It's nothing, just an idea Bruce and I were working on. We saved some files there, some we might have downloaded after the Battle of New York."

"Felicity," Oliver cut in, "what about the file has you so spooked? Put it in English for us please."

She smiled at him. He and Digg had lined up to step between her and Tony. She wasn't scared of him, but Tony Stark was a very intense man. Oliver was reading that as a threat. Steve turned to Tony as Stark was about to interrupt again.

"Stop trying to avoid the subject and let her answer, Tony," Steve instructed, the command evident in his voice. "Since you don't seem to be volunteering anything." The dirty look Stark sent over his shoulder at Steve was gone when he turned back to her. She had his undivided attention.

"This program I found, that traces back to the Ultron file," she paused, not sure how to say what she saw in terms anyone but Tony Stark would understand. "It is something like I've never seen before. Computers have a language. Even when you create something that looks completely new and different, it's still built with the same basic language." She looked at the faces around her. They didn't seem to be getting the significance so she tried again.

"Its like the English language, Spanish, French, they're all related because the root is all the same. You recognize them as language even if you can't speak them. That's simplified but you get the idea. What I'm seeing isn't written in anything I've ever seen. It is like…" she searched for words. "It's like reading alien language. It's like a line of completely alien code jumped out and started reading the computer instead of the computer reading it, and it's getting smarter and smarter as it goes."

"What is going on, Tony? Please don't tell me you played with any of the Chitauri tech we recovered let alone decided to introduce it to you computer systems." Steve's voice had a note of irritation in it. Stark ignored the question and stepped toward Felicity, causing Oliver to straighten his stance between them. She didn't like the look in his eyes.

"Tony!" Steve snapped when Stark took another step in her direction.

"What, now she's allowed to rummage around in my systems," Tony snapped. "A system I freely gave you access to because I trusted…"

"You don't trust anyone, Stark," Oliver pointed out. "That's something you've said in interviews over and over. You gave Felicity access to just enough of the system to help us and now you're bent out of shape because she got past your security and found something you didn't want her to. Apparently something you didn't even want your team to know about."

"Enough," John jumped in. "Felicity wouldn't snoop in someone's system without a damn good reason. Maybe you could stop trying to deflect this away from you and answer some questions." Tony's face showed his anger. Felicity didn't need pissing matches right now, she needed Stark to pay attention to what she had found and stop trying to cover his own ass.

"Thank you!" Felicity was grateful for John's intercession. "What I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Stark is that somehow there is code rewriting itself outside of your original programing. It is as close to autonomous and self aware as I've ever seen. What its doing shouldn't even be possible. Right now it doesn't matter how you got it there, it's there and it's looking for a way on the internet! It's looking for a way to escape." That got everyone's attention including Tony's.

"Right now, it is running alongside your programs, but you're right, your firewalls are pretty impressive and they keep Stark Tech completely isolated from outside threats. The reverse of that is that this program can't get out. As soon as I connected in, it went right for my system and started to look for holes in my firewalls as well." She could see on his face that he'd finally stopped thinking of ways out of whatever it was he'd done and was focused on what she was saying.

"That's not possible." Tony stepped behind her and started reading over her shoulder. "Besides this is a project that is years off from being autonomous and it was never designed to be that autonomous anyway," Tony murmured more to himself than to anyone else. She stood up to give him better access. He sat down at her computer and started to page through the code she'd isolated. Then he opened his own computer and started it up in such a way that it didn't access Jarvis. After about 5 minutes he turned back to Felicity but didn't say anything right away.

"Tony," Steve inquired. "What's going on?"

"You're good," he told her. "Damn, you're good. Rogers, this one's a keeper. I think your girlfriend may have just saved me from a terrible mistake, maybe saved us all." Felicity wasn't sure if she should be flattered with his praise or irritated that she'd gone from brilliant to 'your girlfriend'. Tony stood up. "Felicity, I've got a lot of work to do then I'm going to convince you to come work for me." She felt Oliver tense at her side.

"I have a job at Queen Consolidated. I'm not leaving it, but thank you."

He just nodded absently clearly not convinced. She didn't think he was listening anymore.

"Do you need anything from us, Tony," Steve asked.

"Nope, Spangles, I'm good." He said without lifting his eyes from the computer screen where he was steadily typing. "Little bugger," he muttered before remembering he had an audience. "You guys know the way out. I'll let you know how things are in the morning."

"Keep me informed, Tony," Steve told him. "After you're done we need to have a discussion about where that came from."

"Talk, yes, tomorrow," Tony was absently saying. He was obviously deep into his computer as they walked out the door.

"Do I need to be worried?" Steve was addressing Felicity as they walked into the hall.

"No," she answered. "Now that Mr. Stark knows the code is there, he should be able to isolate it like I did in my system. We got lucky."

"Are you OK, Oliver?" Steve asked as they reached the end of the hall where the elevators were.

Felicity watched her boss nod before he pulled up his hood. "I'm going to go catch up with Roy and Sara, see if they need any help." he said, turning to the stairwell that led to the roof and disappearing.

Steve stared at him for a moment. "Thank you," he said. Oliver nodded and was gone.

"I need to step into the room and change," Steve reached for a door behind him. "I came here in street clothes." Felicity was confused. They'd walked down the hall away from Tony's rooms.

"What room?" she asked.

"Tony doesn't like to be on the same floor as anyone else. He reserved the whole floor. I just took the first room I came to and changed." Steve explained.

"How about Felicity and I go down and get the car," Digg suggested. "Meet us downstairs and I'll give you a ride back home."