The Last Shifter (a Loki romance)

Chapter 112

Chaos broke out in an instant. Steve kicked the table up to block the incoming bots, half of us hit the deck, and Cho ran for cover. Gunshots rang out and I traded my sword for a set of daggers. Tony and Rhodey ran for the suit room, but a bot intercepted them. It sent Rhodey through the glass and plummeting down. Without hesitation, I shifted into a small dragon and dove after him, catching him right before he hit the hangar floor. I set him down and rushed back up into the common area. Steve was piggybacking on a bot, and my return took away his concentration for a split second, enough for the bot to activate its jets and go crashing into a wall. Natasha and Clint were working on drawing fire so Bruce could get to safety. To keep everyone safe, I shifted back into Arista and plunged a dagger into the chest of the bot threatening Dr. Cho. Stark deactivated the second one, and Clint appeared with Steve's shield, which he used to shatter the last one.

"That was dramatic." The badly assembled one was still standing, "I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through. You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to...evolve? These..." He picked up the head of a fallen bot and squeezed it until the face plate popped off, "These puppets. There's only one path to peace. The Avengers' extinction." At that, I'd had had enough. I unleashed a handful of daggers on the bot, pinning it against the wall, and then Thor threw Mjolnir, shattering it.

"I had strings, but now I'm free." The light inside the bot went out, but something felt...off. Where was Jarvis? How had this....Ultron gotten into the system? AI's were supposed to be smart, shouldn't Ultron had known we would win against the bots? Why hadn't the last one been sent? Then I realized. The attack had been a smokescreen.

"The scepter!" I sprinted to the lab, with Thor hot on my heels, but by the time we got there, the scepter was long gone. I felt my heart sink.

"I'll go after it!" Thor left as quickly as we'd arrived.

Stark and Banner dragged the upper body of the main bot up to the lab, intent on analyzing it, but as soon as they opened a computer, their plan fell apart.

"All our work is gone."

"All what work?"

"Ultron cleared out. Used the Internet as an escape pad."

"How did he even get in? Isn't your security supposed to be top notch?"

"He didn't get in. We created him. There was an....well, something inside the scepter and–"

"You created him using the scepter?! No, scratch that, you studied the scepter?! I thought it was up here for storage! And you never even thought you may want to consult me, one of the greatest experts on the Infinity Stones, to find out whether or not it was a terrible idea!?"

"This is exactly why I didn't come to you! You would've said no!"

"And that's such a bad thing?"

"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance, he probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

"He's in your files, he's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

"Nuclear codes." Hill was picking broken glass out of her foot.

"The nuclear codes. Look, we need to make some calls. Assuming we still can."

"Nukes? He said he wanted us dead."

"He didn't say dead."

"He said extinct."

"He also said he killed someone."