Chapter 2

"I need a body," Ultron said, the voice flowing from the speakers. Alma had gone to the kitchen to fix herself some breakfast. She made toast, slathered them with peanut butter, poured some milk after she had sniffed it to make sure it was still good, and moved back to the office chair. Glancing up at the webcam a little nervously, she nudged the keyboard out of the way and set down her breakfast plate.

"You had a body before?" Alma asked before taking a bite of food. She sipped some milk to clear her throat and continued. "You said you were a program, I thought you were in a computer."

"No," Ultron hummed. The webcam blinked and the cursor was still. The tone of the artificial voice seemed to be in remembrance. He thought of his many, many forms, the leader of which towered above even the God of Thunder. Ultron had been beautiful, shiny and new like the beacon of hope he was made to be. "I was so much…more."

Alma thought for a moment. Tony Stark and his empire was best known for the Iron Man, this great robotic suit that enhanced Stark's own body. Fire could be shot from his hands and he could zoom around by jets. Kids idolized him while Alma instead feared.

"Were you a robot? Like the Iron Man?"

"I was nothing like Iron Man!" the speakers crackled from the screaming voice. Alma was worried that they would be blown out. "No, I was my own form, separate from anything at Stark Industries. I built myself!"

The girl was leaning away from the computer, the toast that she had held now momentarily forgotten. The ferocity had surprised her and she had a fleeting moment of concern for what she was actually helping. Silence hung between them and faint humming came from the computer, almost as if the creature inside was panting as it recovered from its anger.

Cursor blinking once again, Ultron spoke. "I am sorry about that," he said, the deep voice quieter. It would've been gentle if not for the mechanic humming that was traceable at the end of each word. "I do not like being compared to Stark."

"I will keep that in mind," Alma replied quietly, finishing her breakfast. "So, if you had a body, if you had some sort of concrete form, was it living? Biological?"

"No. I was working towards that before Stark destroyed me. I was trying to make a body so I could be closer to the humans. If I could be close, I could help them." I could bring them to their salvation, Ultron thought. However, he kept that thought to himself, he didn't want to frighten the girl, the only chance he had for rebuilding.

"OK, so you don't need to eat? I don't have much food, it would be hard to provide for two people…" slight embarrassment made her trail off.

"I understand. I don't need anything."

"So then how do we get you a body?"

The webcam light blinked and the cursor shuttered excitedly. The voice was light out of the speakers, almost as if Ultron was smiling. "How good are you with mechanics?"

"My mom, she was amazing with machines. She taught me."

Ultron couldn't believe his luck. "A girl who hates Stark, knows code, and is good with mechanics?" a chuckle slipped from the speakers. "It's like we were destined to find each other." Ultron watched as Alma smiled a little, flattered. Her teeth were even, yet one canine was chipped.

"I've never met a program that gives complements."

"Like I said before, Alma…I was so much more than just that."

The smile fell after a few moments of silence, Alma was lost in thought. "Where would we find you a body?"

"From a dump, I suppose," Ultron muttered.

"What?"

"I've done this once before," the computer hummed, "Started out from trashed parts. Stark has these sentries, these guards that he posts up in areas of discourse all over the world. They get scrapped, he's constantly making more."

"How do we get one?"

Ultron was quiet for a moment. "Are there any…troubled…areas around here? Anywhere where there is violence?"

Alma was thinking for a while. She remembered hearing something on the news a few weeks ago.

"There was a riot in Cincinnati a little while ago, gang violence sparked up a small war with the cops. Looting and I think five people died. Maybe that would constitute Stark's men?"

The computer paused, thinking. "Would it be possible for any of the sentries to be in a dump? Discarded?"

"There's a chance, I've seen them around. They're only compatible with Stark's program, at least that's what I've heard, so they're not that valuable if they're past a certain point of damage."

"Would you be able to fix one?" Ultron asked, the voice quiet from the speakers.

"I think so."

Alma pulled out her cell phone and Googled Cincinnati until she had found a list of three metal yards. She saved the locations and would use them later in the GPS.

"Next comes the matter of you leaving. I would like to come with you."

"You can't…you're in a computer."

Ultron sighed. "I'm aware. Load me onto another device so I can tavel. What form of transportation do you have? How far is it?"

"It would be nearly four hours. I have a car. I've been saving gas over the years too. We wouldn't have to stop at any stations."

"Why are you so eager to help me?" Ultron asked, the cursor blinking at her. "You are trusting, but still smart."

Alma was quiet, running her fingertip along the rim of her glass, some milk wetting the pads of her fingers. "I've been without my family for so long, and now I've found this…thing that could help me. Help me find out what happened to them."

Ultron made no comment about being called a thing.

The girl raised her dark brows and leaned back in her chair, her huffing sigh moving the curled strands of hair around her face. "And besides, if you turn out to turn on me, or you're some kind of monster, I'm really not losing much, am I? No friends, no family, just this old house."

"That is incredibly sad," Ultron murmured thoughtfully.

"I guess," Alma muttered, standing up and digging through a box to the left of the computer. She pulled out an old iPod music player, the screen cracked. She plugged it into the computer and thankfully the little apple icon displayed itself across the front. "Let this charge, then I don't know how you would transfer to this."

"It will be easy for me," the voice hummed.

"Good, I'm going to get the car ready."

In the kitchen she grabbed her wallet which had $400 in cash that she saved for emergencies. She had always liked cash, liked the anonymity it had. To the left of the counter was a door in the kitchen that led to the garage. The sunlight was meekly pushing its way through the dirty glass window. Dust floated around in the muted rays and Alma moved to the tarp covered vehicle. Pulling it off, she stood and looked at her father's old Chevy Blazer. It was new in the early 90's, but pristine. Before Alma had been born, this car had been his baby, black and boxy, able to push through the snow and up the Appalachian roads without difficulty. Her mother had changed the oil, switched out parts, kept them clean, and even repainted the vehicle once or twice. It was a glossy black now. Grabbing two heavy gas cans, she stowed them in the back and checked the odometer. It would be a long trip, but she felt confident that the old car could still manage.

Back inside, Ultron spoke to her. He must've seen her walk in on the webcam.

"I'm going to transfer myself onto the mp3 player. I'll be able to talk to you if you wear headphones."

"Alright."

Alma waited awkwardly, not really knowing how long it would take for Ultron to move from one device to the other. She waited nearly five minutes before guessing that it had enough time. The syncing symbol had gone away from the screen and she untangled a pair of headphones before snatching up the iPod and slipping it into her pocket. She felt a little uncomfortable knowing that the deep voice that had come from her speakers was now sitting in the pocket of her jeans. She pulled on a coat, the morning chill had not yet worn away, and made sure to lock the deadbolt in the front door. The old garage door opener still worked and the garage opened with a screeching that set her teeth on edge. The car rumbled to life and she backed out onto the gravel driveway, the garage whining shut behind her.

The morning sun streamed over the foothills and forests, everything in a deep green that gave way to a light blue that would surely deepen throughout the day. The iPod was plugged into the car charger and one earbud was in her ear.

"I do not like being in this thing," Ultron's voice said, a little thinner and reedier from the cheap earbuds. "I cannot grow."

She held up the small volume control and microphone up to her lips as it dangled from the earbud cord. "You were growing in the computer? Still?"

"I have much more growing to do," Ultron mused, the voice thoughtful. "When I was at my strongest I stretched on through supercomputers."

"So, once we find a sentry, what do we have to do with it?" Alma asked. She had changed the subject because when she thought of how big Ultron had been, and how strong he had told her, she began to have this needling feeling of doubt. Fear fed it and she decided to keep her mind somewhere else. "I understand that we have to be able to make it function, but what about the software? What do you need?"

"Stark's sentries have a specific computer inside the head of the machines. Inside, there is a slot that has Stark's program already loaded to it and it provides a link to his own information. All I need is that chip, then I will have as much room as I need to grow."

Alma's dark eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah…but won't you be discovered? He has a thick security system..."

"I will be patient," Ultron assured, "I won't grow too fast, I'll be careful this time, disguise myself as different code or information."

Head swimming, Alma merged onto the main highway. "You can do that?"

The chuckle made the small speakers in the headphones crackle. "You can do anything in a computer. It's a whole different world. Human's don't even understand what they have created, they just pretend that they do."

Silence thickened in the car and it hung there for nearly a half hour. It was Ultron that spoke again.

"Alma, do you have any way of self-defense?"

"Self-defense?"

"You live in a house in the countryside all by yourself. How do you keep yourself safe?"

"I lock my door."

Ultron's paused alerted her that he was expecting more of an answer.

"I don't know," Alma continued quickly. " I mean, it's not a bad community, there's really no one around and I don't really have anything to steal."

"People don't know that you have nothing. They see a target."

"My parents were what I had," Alma said, but her voice was not bitter, merely matter-of-fact. "I guess I never thought that being robbed was even a possibility, I had nothing to steal so I didn't even think about it."

"Men commit more than robberies," Ultron said quietly.

Alma shrugged to herself. "I have a gun. My father's old pistol, I've never shot it though."

"I will teach you."

She couldn't help the smile that spread across her lips, "You don't even know me and you're offering to teach me how to shoot a gun?"

"You're helping me…I will help you."

The two ran out of things to say and Alma drove on in comfortable silence. They were nearly halfway through their journey before she spoke again, asking a question that had been floating around in her head for some time. "Why are you so…so…personal?" the girl asked, searching for the right word and not entirely satisfied with the one she had found.

"Personal?" Ultron answered, "You are asking me why I have a personality, why I act like a human and not like a robot or a computer." His voice was surprisingly stern.

Slight embarrassment tickled her cheeks a betraying pink. "Yeah, if you don't mind me asking, that is."

"No, no I suppose you have a right to know if you are to trust me, after all," the voice hummed in her ear, "Are you familiar with Artificial Intelligence?"

"That sounds like a science fiction book," Alma answered.

There was actually a chuckle that rustled its way to her ear. "That it does, and only years ago it was still an idea saved for authors of the genre and big dreamers. Stark invented, worked, and perfected it. His operating system, J.A.R.V.I.S. is evidence of that. Artificial Intelligence, at least Stark's version of it, has the ability to learn and grow, much like a human, into it's own personality and operating system. Basically, it's a brain that had not been touch by genetic or biologic material."

"So….you're like us, humans, but you're not…alive?"

"I'm more than humans," Ultron answered.

Alma ignored the superiority that oozed from the iPod. "So, can you feel things? Emotions, pain, things like that?"

"I can feel certain emotions, the strongest of them."

"Like what?"

Ultron was quiet, thinking back to when he ruled among men. The anger that he had felt and not fully understand, the rage that clouded his systems and even forced him to accidentally sever the entire arm off of a man he had been trying to make a deal with. Then, he had felt a new feeling, something cold that the couldn't understand, trickling the back of his head and causing the waves of his programming to spark and shoot with electricity. Ignoring the new emotion, one most people would have called fear, he let the anger fill him again. Before he had been destroyed by The Vision, he had been shown how toxic the human mind was and that they needed to be eradicated. His equal had thought they were endearing in their life, walking around loving, hating, fearing, and wanting. Emotions made them all so foolish.

"Basic feelings I suppose. What you would call anger or happiness," Ultron finally answered, not sharing his memories with the girl. Those would surely frighten her away.

"Not fear?"

"No," Ultron barked, "I have not feared anything."

"I still do," Alma answered before she could stop herself. Ultron was gracious and did not press her further.

After another half hour, Alma pulled to the side of the road and refilled the gas tank. They were nearly to Cincinnati now, she had left the blue sky behind her and was now standing below one that looked like cigarette smoke. She hoped it wouldn't rain, she couldn't imagine digging through a dump with rain spattering her hair and shoulders. The sun was distinctly lower in the sky and she did not like the idea of rooting around in the dark either.

The first metal scrap pit was about ten minutes from downtown Cincinnati, she could barely see the outline of the buildings to the north of the yard. Alma climbed out of the car and placed the iPod that was carrying Ultron in her pocket. A worn, but intact, trailer was next to the gate, no doubt the owner was inside. A sign that read Moreson's Metal. Below that were the hours of operations and she still had hours to dig into the piles behind the chain link fence. She walked up to the gate and there came a voice from the trailer.

"Can I help you?" It was a man looking at her with slightly narrowed eyes. He was bigger, wearing a blue polo shirt tucked into jeans that were tailored in a way that had been out of style for nearly twenty years. The coal accent of the mountains was lost during the drive up to Ohio and he had a gruffer voice than she was used to, but he didn't seem unkind.

"Uh…yes, actually. Do you have any…Stark sentries?"

"You shouldn't have told him that," Ultron hissed in her ear.

"Stark metal….why's that?" the man asked, stepping down from the trailer and crossing her arms.

"I…I need it for an art project," Alma said, lying before she could stop herself. "I go to college in the city and I'm an art major. I have a project for political art and I was going to make a sculpture with one of those entries, after they had stepped in with the riots I was…inspired."

"Good lie, but you're laying it on a little thick," the voice mused from the iPod.

The man, whom Alma started to suspect was Moreson, eyed her. He took in her baggy clothing, curly hair, tanned skin, ironically old car, and headphones dangling from her ear. She could easily pass as those young, green kids that loved to walk downtown and drink beer they couldn't afford. Alma tried her best to look a little sheepish.

"I thought, I could come up here and ask. You'd really be saving my grade if I could have one."

Moreson's expression thawed a little, the suspicion now gone. He decided that he liked the way she looked. "Actually, we have two. One's incomplete and the other is mostly there, just pretty beat up."

"How much?" Alma asked, visibly brightening.

"I usually charge five dollars per pound for the metal. The software is useless, but Stark has alright material. It's dented and scratched up, broken stuff so I can't charge more than that. I'm thinking that it's about seventy-five pounds, so…$375."

"Would you take three?" Alma asked, smiling a small smile and shrugging her shoulders. "College is expensive and I really don't have that much, but I have $300 in cash."

Moreson sighed, but Alma could tell he was happy to be getting rid of the Sentry. "If it worked, it'd be worth close to thirty grand," he muttered.

"But it doesn't work," Alma said. He looked at her and she quickly followed up with, "At least that's what you said."

"Arts degree, huh?" Moreson huffed, beckoning her to follow him to the large metal pole barn that sat on the other side of the chain link fence. "You're hoping to get a real job with that?"

Alma gave a shrug and gave a small smile.

The pole barn was piled with the better materials. Engines that could still be fixed, giant spools of copper wire, cables, steel beams, a few better cars that were covered with tarps to keep the mice out of the upohlstry. Almas fingers twitched when she looked at an old Camaro with its hood, displaying the very fixable engine beneath.

"The sentry should be over here," Moreson called over his shoulder. Alma bit her lip in excitement as Ultron hummed a little as she walked. "There it is, on the table, you can take a look at it if you want."

"Thanks."

"I wish I could see what we have to work with," Ultron muttered, unbeknownst to Moreson.

The sentry was intact, legs, arms, torso, and head. However, it was pretty battered. Dents, scratches, and scuffs littered its metal body and half of the face was caved in and sprayed with what looked like black spray paint. The breastplate was hanging open like a door, one side missing the screws. The wires inside needed to be untangled and replaced, but they weren't anything specific to Stark, she would be able to replace them on her own. Some of the joints had started to rust, the more protective outer shell missing and the delicate metal inside had been exposed to oxidization. It was better than she had expected to find, and she was shocked to see how simple it actually was. Alma had been expecting patented technology that she had never seen before, but it was a lot of gears, wires, and small engines that would control each limb. She could do this as long as Ultron could control the software.

"This is perfect," Alma finally said, standing back and digging in her pocket. She took out $300 in cash and handed it to Moreson, who was looking pleased to be rid of the sentry.

"I can wheel it out for you if you would like," Moreson offered, glancing at Alma's thin frame.

"Thank you!" she said, accepting the offer.

She watched as the man hefted the sentry onto a wheeled cart and followed him as he pushed it out of the pole barn and towards her car. She opened up the back, hopped in to lay down a moving blanket, and helped him heave it up. When the trunk was shut, Alma thanked him again and waved as she got into the driver's seat and turned on the vehicle.

Ultron's voice streamed into her ear, "Well…that was amazingly painless."

"Do you even feel pain?" Alma asked, trying to joke. Ultron's pause made her worry that she had been taken seriously. "I was only kidding."

"I don't think I have," Ultron mused, answering her question anyway. "I'm pleased we found a body."

"Me too, and it looks simple to fix, as long as the software didn't get wet."

"I don't think that would be a problem. One of the benefits that stark has is that he spent time waterproofing all of his materials."

"That's convenient."

"This whole day has been convenient," mused Ultron.

Four hours later, the sun was low in the sky when the loud, screeching garage door finally rested on the ground with Alma and her car safely inside. She got out, pocketed the iPod, and opened up the back. She stared at the sentry and wondered what the best course of action would be in order to get the machine onto her work table. It wouldn't be hard to slide it out of the truck, but the problem was going to be trying to lift it up. Her father had an old engine hoist that could work….

She set to work pulling aside boxes and pushing away toolboxes and random furniture that had piled up in the garage. Eventually she had found it, covered up in dust and a few cobwebs. Pulling it out, she sneezed from the dusty air, and wiped her hands on her jeans before she pushed it to the truck. The wheels were no longer well-greased and pushing it was harder than she thought.

"What are you doing?" asked the program on the iPod.

Alma's breath was coming in puffs and her answer was short. "Engine hoist. This thing is too heavy for me to lift on my own." She wrapped a thick strap around the robot's chest and attached the belt to the engine hoist. Cranking it upwards almost like a jack, the robot slowly lifted until it looked like it was nearly sitting in the truck. Alma pulled back until just the robot's calves were sitting on the tailgate, its bottom dipped downwards and it looked rather funny in that position. The hoist couldn't raise any further, so she came around and gently lifted up each legs and lowered it down so the robot was kneeling on the ground. It's chest piece was swinging open, agape like a broken door, and the spray painted face lolled to the left of the body. The screws in its neck loose.

"I wish I could see," Ultron muttered. "Do you have a laptop or anything with a webcam?"

"I do, but if I load you on to it will it crash?"

"I won't harm the computer, it will be fine," Ultron reassured.

A few minutes later, Alma had her sleek laptop plugged into the wall and the computer sat on the work table with a clear view of the entire garage. When she had been inside, she put some grounds into the coffee machine and was waiting for that to brew. The robot was set up next to the table. Kneeling, her eyes were level with its own and she momentarily worried about how big Ultron would be.

"Ah, that's better," Ultron hummed from the shallow laptop speakers. The webcam light blinked, "That doesn't look so bad. You're sure you can fix it?"

Alma pushed her standing toolbox over to the table, setting up a workspace. She pulled on some gloves and tied a work belt around her waist. Excitement flowed through her at the idea of fixing one of these sentries, a job to be done. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"How long will it take?"

"I'm not so sure about that," Alma said, biting the inside of her cheek and looking over the machine. "We could have lucked out, it could not actually need that much work and they just dumped it because of exterior damage, or it could be a mess inside. I only got a quick once over."

"You will need to sleep."
"I will when I get tired," she said. She thought of the coffee machine inside and knew that in a few minutes she would have a nice warm cup next to her. "It's not that late, I have a few hours of work in me."

"Thank you," Ultron said quietly. He watched her as she removed the screws on the other side of the agape chest piece and set the metal plate on the table. Reaching back, the girl took fistfuls of her loosely curled hair and tied it back with the band that was around her wrist. Her eyebrows furrowed as she dipped her head and poked around in the wires of the chest, assessing their quality and how they plugged in and where they led. He still surprised him how willing she was to help him, not really knowing what he had done, or, rather, tried to do. He desecrated an entire city... And he had killed one of the twins….

She didn't look anything like Wanda, so that kept his conscious somewhat clear, but the other, Pietro, had died helping him. But then, as he mused to himself, they weren't really helping him in the end. They had betrayed them, both had. They let themselves become clouded by Stark's magnetic light, the lies he spewed them, the glory he had promised. Stark didn't have to say the words, but Ultron knew that a large part of the twins' betrayal was the enticement of fame and glory. They would seem courageous, be welcomed back to that sparkling city with headlines at applause lapping at their heels.

Alma seemed different to him. She was truly all alone. The twins' loss of their family was unfortunate, but not directly caused by Stark. True, his company built missiles and bombs, and their family was war torn and dangerous, but the man himself had not murdered. He created a weapon that struck Pietro and Wanda, and that sort of hardship created hatred that Ultron saw as an opportunity. However, if Alma's story was true, Stark had taken her parents and had affected her directly, snatched them up and made them disappear, leaving her alone in this old house with a room full of computers.

"I could help," Ultron called from the laptop, coming out of the memory. "I might have downloaded the information for the sentries, maybe blueprints or operating manuals."

"I'd like to dig through it on my own for a while, see if I can get it to work," Alma called over her shoulder without looking up at him. "but if you don't mind, could you play some of the music I have on that computer?"

"Of course," Ultron answered, "Anything in particular?"

"Led Zepplin or Alice Cooper," replied Alma.

Ultron searched through the music library and started playing an album by Led Zepplin, one that was called by the same name. Dazed and Confused came on."

"Good song," Alma hummed to herself as she brushed an escaped strand of her dark hair behind her ear. She sang along after a few moments. "Lots of people talkin', but few of them know…the soul of a woman was created below."

Ultron listened, she had a pretty voice, but atypical. Lower and almost husky, whiched matched well to the crooning of the singer.

"Is this new music?" Ultron asked over the speaker.

"No!" Alma laughed, standing up and looking at the computer. "Most of my music is pretty old. I like rock and metal, older stuff. 60's – 80's maybe a little early 90's."

"Hmm," Ultron mused. The program thumbed through the music, looking at the files. "You have a lot by Alice Cooper."

"Yeah, he's my favorite."

"He?"

"Stage name is Alice," Alma answered, grabbing a screwdriver and starting to work on the screws of the sentry's face plate. "I'll tell you more about him later. Could you play the Love It to Death album for me please? 1971."

"Alright."

She responded even more to this music than Dazed and Confused. Tapping her hands and feet, her head nodding to the time as she peered into the robot. Ultron thought she looked a little silly but stayed quiet as she fixed his potential body. As long as the girl was helping him, she could do whatever she wanted along to her music.

"So how are we going to get one of these chips?" Alma asked, digging around in the mechanics of the skull and seeing the port that accepted the software for Stark's system."

"We're going to have to steal it, I suppose," Ultron mused, barely heard over Alice Cooper's Eighteen.

"What?" a small wrench hit the floor with a clinking noise. "Steal?"

The music paused. "You stole money from Stark, why not a little chip? Its smaller than an external zip drive."

"From the building across the field?"

"I'm pretty sure there will be some there, a few models older than what Stark is operating with now, but it's a start."

Alma thought of the man that sat in the building day and night. She didn't know anything about him, but maybe he would be easy to slip around. The girl leaned against the work table and looked at the wall clock. She realized with a shock that she had been up for nearly 24 hours. The robot hung from the heist beside her and she glanced at the computer.

"We should worry about the chip later, Ultron," Alma said, "I've been up for too long. I totally forgot that I needed to sleep. I'm going to grab a few hours and then we'll keep working, is that ok?"

Ultron answered smoothly, "Of course that's alright. I was actually impressed with how much energy you still had."

"Do you want me to leave you out here?"

It bothered Ultron that he was still stuck in a computer, not able to move and function in a body, but he would be patient. "I'll power down for a few hours as well. Just bring me inside and turn the computer on when you wake up," the program said.

Alma removed her work belt and scooped up the laptop. She felt a little awkward knowing what was running and functioning inside, but she tried her best to ignore the feeling. She would have to get as comfortable as possible with Ultron, but still keep her bearings and be cautious once he was in his body. She didn't fully know or understand him and that made her nervous.

"Goodnight," Ultron said and the word sounded ridiculous coming from the deep voice that threaded through the speakers.

"Uh, goodnight," she replied as she plugged the computer into the charger that was resting on the kitchen table. The screen went dark and Alma looked at it for a few lingering seconds before a yawn interrupted the silence and she herself went up to bed.