2

5K 117 20
                                    

"I am on the run and go."

Steve sighed as he walked inside the Avengers tower. "Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. One has a hyper-fast metabolism, the other uses mental telepathy. He's fast, she's weird." Maria approached him as he got onto the elevator.

"What of the other girl?" He asked. He had found one file on the girl while looking in the facility, but no one had found the girl. Steve wondered if HYDRA had killed her off, if she hadn't worked like they wanted her too, then she would be killed. Maria shook her head.

"There are no records of her anywhere. No birth certificates, no medical records. She's like a ghost, lost in the system. " Steve sighed again; he knew she was enhanced, but he didn't know what powers she possessed.

"Thanks, anyway, Maria." He walked out of the elevator in search of Tony, hoping that he could set up a scanning server looking for security footage of the girl. "Tony." Steve called when he entered the lab.

"Capsicle! What can I do for you?" Tony cut off his conversation with Bruce, turning the man. He placed a photo of a young girl on the lab bench.

"Can set up a scan for her? She's one of Strucker's enhanced." Tony nodded, picking up the photo.

"She got a name?" Steve shook his head.

"There's only one file on her, saying that she failed the test and had that photo."

"What if she's dead?" He asked, passing the photo to Bruce.

"I don't think she is." Steve said before walking out of the lab, leaving it up to Bruce to convince him.

"She looks so scared." Bruce said, barely audible. "I bet Steve relates. If she had escaped the facility, then she'd be in totally new environment. Lost and confused." Tony rolled his eyes.

"JARVIS, can you set up a scan for the girl?"

"Already done, sir." Tony smirked, sometimes his AI new him better than himself.

"Now, let's get back to business." He grabbed the sceptre from where he had hidden it when Steve walked in.

•••

Together, the Avengers stood in Tony's lab. They had just been attacked by one of the Iron Legion and now they were assessing the damage.

"All our work is gone." Bruce said, looking over one of the computers, "Ultron cleared out, used the internet as an escape hatch."

"Ultron." Steve repeated the name of the destroying AI.

"He's been in everything," Natasha spoke up, leaning against a bench. "Files, surveillance. Probably know more about us than we know about each other."

"He's in your files, he's in the internet," Rhodey said. "What if he decides to access something more exciting?"

"Nuclear codes," Maria followed through on Rhodey's thought.

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey nodded in agreement. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha frowned, "He said he wanted us dead-"

"He didn't say dead." Steve interrupted, "He said extinct."

"He also said he killed somebody." Clint added.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria said.

"Yes. There was." Tony said, flashing up a hologram of a destroyed orange sphere.

"JARVIS..." Bruce whispered, "This is insane."

"JARVIS was the first line of defence." Steve said, crossing his arms over his chest. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."

"No, no. Ultron could've assimilated JARVIS." Bruce shook his head. "This isn't strategy. This is rage." Thor suddenly stormed into the room, grabbing Tony by the neck, lifting him off the ground.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Bruce tried to calm Thor down, but he went ignored by the Asgardian.

"It's going around." Clint mused.

"C'mon, use your words buddy," Tony struggled to speak through the choking grip of Thor's hands.

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark." He snarled.

"Thor!" Steve stepped in. "The Legionnaire?"

Thor dropped Tony, shoving him away. "The trail went cold about one hundred metres out, but its headed north. And it has the sceptre. Now we have to retrieve it. Again."

"The genie's out of that bottle," Natasha concluded. "Clear and present is Ultron."

"I don't understand." Helen Cho spoke up, and all eyes fell on her. "You built this program, why is it trying to kill us?" Tony began to laugh.

"Uhn-uhn," Bruce lightly hit his shoulder, telling him that now was not a good time.

"You think this is funny?" Thor's voice was filled with anger.

"No. It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so... is it so... it is it's so terrible-"Thor cut him off.

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you didn't understand,"

"No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Tony continued, as if Thor hadn't interrupted him, "It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we needed this."

"Tony, maybe this may not be the time-"

"Really?! That's it? You just roll over and show your belly every time someone snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murder-bot."

"We didn't! We weren't even close! Were we even close to an interface?" Bruce nodded slightly.

"Well you did something right." Steve said, "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different from SHIELD."

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" Tony asked, looking around the group.

"No, it's never come up." Rhodey said.

"Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it."

"Where are you going with this?" Steve growled.

"We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all day long, but that up there? That's the end game." Tony looked around at the group, "How do you plan on beating that?"

"Together." Steve said.

"We'll lose." Tony said darkly.

"Then we'll do that together, too." He looked around at the group, "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's make it a little smaller." A beep went off from one of the computers, Tony going to it immediately.

"Looks like Ultron didn't clear out everything," He said, the group crowding around the screen. "We've found your little girl, Steve." A small red dot bleeped on the screen, and to Steve, that small red dot meant hope.

Ignored {Avengers & Stranger Things}Where stories live. Discover now