DIVINE RETRIBUTION │barnes ²

ten

Ochre yellow exploded in her eardrums. 

She ducks instinctually as the bots fly towards her, grappling her gun and shooting in the direction of them. All around her, the adults use the nearest object as weapons of defense. She rolls under the table and towards the piano, getting up and sprinting as soon as Ultron's sidekicks stopped hovering over her general vicinity to battle Steve and Tony.

'Evgenia! Can you shut them down?' Bruce's face, stricken with strands of hair and panic turns to her.

'I can't. It doesn't work like-' Zhenya's cut off in the middle of the sentence, her head whipping around so quickly towards a mangled automaton that she's surprised she didn't give herself whiplash. 

Chert! 

Thor, his arms wrapped tightly around the neck of an android, is plummeting uncontrollably towards her.

Amateur mistake. She should never have taken her eyes off the enemy.

In a flash, she's back up on her legs, gaze locked on the target, she takes a running leap, the strength of her metal leg propelling her up towards the robot.

Metal meets metal as her knee makes contact with the torso, driving itself deep into the wires. A fading Prussian wheeze echoes in her ears as it's glowing blue light dims immediately and the mangled corpse falls to the floor. 

Slippered and booted feet hit the floor. 

She doesn't realise the fighting around her has ceased until she looks up from the ground. The Avengers stand, stiff, eyes entranced on the central figure.

Ultron takes a slow step towards them. 

'Red Sicarius.'

He takes a mocking bow.

'Ah, Sicarius, they called the Winter Soldier the fist of HYDRA, but really, that was you. You were brilliant, your powers gave you what sweet papa never had. But now you've joined the Avengers, you turned against your family, the people who raised you.'

He raises a lacerated finger to beckon her towards him.

'Join me, my child, feel the glory that you once felt. A queen on her throne.'

A queen on her throne.

She sees the smiles and the praise of her superiors. The beautiful hours and hours of dance. She remembers the sickening satisfaction of a kill. Then she hears the wine red crack of a bone, the crimson spilling out onto the rug as she stands over the body of six year old Sasha Zagitov and the pleading cries as they beg for their lives.

She'll never go back.

Never.

And although Ultron's words have made her sick to the stomach, she snarls at him bravely. 'Shut the hell up.'

'I'm sorry, I know you mean well and you just didn't make it through. You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How can humanity be saved, if it's not allowed to... evolve?' He dangles one of the dismantled androids in disgust, and the voice that comes out next is almost a hiss. 'With these? These puppets. There's only one path to peace: the Avengers' extinction.'

Mjolnir whizzes past Zhenya's ear, the weapon leaving the Asgardian's grip to bury itself in Ultron's body. The mangled body flies back into the wall, the metal shattering.

'I had strings but now I'm free. There are no strings on me.'

The blue light fades.

═══════════════════════

'All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out, he used the Internet as an escape hatch.'

It was well into the next morning. They stood in one of Tony's labs, files and laptops piled in disarray as they tried their best to track Ultron. Evgenia sits on a benchtop, her legs crossed as she observes the adults work.

Natasha looks up from her computer. 'He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other.'

'He's in your files,' Rhodey pushes off from a table, 'He's in the Internet. What if he decided to access something a little more exciting?'

'Nuclear codes,' Maria interjects.

'Look we need to make some calls, assuming we still can.'

'Nukes?' Mama is in disbelief. 'He said he wanted us dead.'

Steve shakes his head, correcting her. 'He didn't say dead, he said extinct.'

Zhenya raises her chin from the back of her knuckles. 'He also said he has kill somebody.' 

'He killed,' Maria mutters quietly, correcting her English.

'There wasn't anyone else in the building.'

'Yes there was,' says Tony, attesting. A bright orange network appears in the middle of the room, what was once a glowing fireball now has pieces of its code missing. 

JARVIS.

'JARVIS was the first line of defense.' Uncle Steve looks up from the floor. 'He would've shut Ultron down makes sense.'

'No. Ultron would've assimilated JARVIS. This isn't strategy... this is rage.'

It didn't make sense. How could a program contain emotions so human? But Evgenia can't help but recall the passion and anger in the fallen robot's voice. There was something more to this.

At the moment, thudding footsteps sound into the room. Thor's red cape billows behind and stops in front of Tony.

'Come on, use your words, buddy,' the billionaire chokes out through his decreased air supply.

'I have more than enough words to describe you Stark.

Steve marches forward, his stern words reminding Thor of his task. 'The Legionnaire.'

Still glaring at Tony, nostrils flared with contempt, the god confirms what they had all hypothesised. The Legionnaire's trail had gone cold and along with them, they had taken the scepter.

'I don't understand.' Helen speaks for the first time since the party. 'You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?'

Laughter escapes Tony.

'You think this is funny?'

'No?' The man moves away from his computer. 'It's probably not right? This is very terrible? Is it so... is it so- it's so terrible.'

There's weariness from Thor's voice as he takes an exaggerated step. 'This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand.'

'No.'

Evgenia sighs. Another argument. She picks at the polish on her fingers to distract herself from the debate.

'The Avengers were supposed to be different from SHIELD.'

'Anyone remember when I saved New York? A hostile alien army came charging through a wormhole. We're standing 300 feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but that up there... that's the, that's the endgame. How you guys planning on beating that?'

'Together.'

'We'll lose.'

'Then we do that together too.'

═══════════════════════

thanks for reading, please vote and comment!