"Our desire," I said, raising a glass to the table, "is the whole of the earth."

The table raised their glasses with me, every head of Hydra was there. Few of them understood how close we had come to desolation with Malyshka. To them, mostly old people with old ideas, an AI was an interesting phenomena. But a world in which Malyshka was god empress, for good or ill, would've been a world where we and our power was no more.

We had gathered to celebrate Pierce's retirement. "To the man who led us to this moment, who has put into our hands the power, prestige, and the weaponry we need to achieve our desire, a toast to Alexander Pierce!"

The table all took a drink. Garrett was here, Pierce's new replacement as Secretary of SWORD. We hadn't managed to get me placed as Director, as nice as that would've been, and I'd rejected Ward out of hand – Too young. So instead, the position went to an old friend – Arnold Jacobs, my very first upload. I had installed a variety of controls on his body, none of which had come up yet, but which would prove useful to me in the event that I needed to have a finger on the trigger.

"I know we've all had to be patient for a long time," I said after the drink. "I know I am asking you to be patient a little longer. I know that is frustrating. But we are moving into the final phases of our plans. Within the year, I have good reason to hope that Hydra will have control, legal or practical, in Brazil, India, Argentina, Chile, and Pakistan. With that base, we'll have a comfortable staging area for the coming general war."

"Why not act at the end of the year?" the Baroness said, "Why are we continually fighting for a future invasion that may never come?"

The problem with having subordinates who control your fate is that you have to actually treat them with respect. "I understand the desire," I said. "I am impatient too. But we cannot afford to reassemble the remaining militaries of the world in the amount of time we have till Thanos gets here."

"Why are you so certain that Thanos will get here at all?"

"I am certain," I said, "because I have a supernaturally acute brain and the will to carry out my plans, Baroness. I know what he seeks, I know he must come here, and I want us to be ready for him."

"What if he doesn't come in 2018, what if he comes in 2024? Won't it be better for us to have gone ahead of him?"

"Odin and I spoke on the matter and I am quite confident he will get here by March of 2019."

"And if he is not?"

"Then we'll enact the global merger at that point and take what comes."

---

"It's just such a pity that intelligent people aren't going to be able to get an education in computing if that's their interest," Radcliffe said as we hooked up the Particle Infusion Chamber. "Shouldn't we be maximizing that output? Our digital worlds are already more expansive than our physical one, whole new frontiers, completely under our control. All reward, no risk."

"Well," I said, grabbing the containment box and shifting it into place. "It helps me direct education away from AI and believe me, I dealt with the one in Moscow. It was a mess." We'd taken to an IQ testing and if someone's IQ reached into the 'not really testable' range, which was substantially earlier than a Stark or me level subject, and IQ tests were variable, we'd lock them out of computer programming and engineering. Stark level intellects generally were not a problem for me, I'd have been happy to have one solving agriculture or spaceships, but I didn't want to deal with Rogue AI 2.0. Especially because the possibility of them being worse than Malyshka was pretty strong, to be honest.

"So, what're we pumping into this guy?"

"Vibranium," I said. It was actually treated vibranium. In its unaltered state, vibranium is fiercely difficult to deal with – It's basically an explosive in its untreated state. It doesn't explode itself, of course, but it sends out force waves if you press on it too hard. Very unpleasant for my miners to discover, we'd actually lost a couple drones when we found out. But, with a few months of chemical testing and treatment as well as notes from the thirties, I had managed to resolve vibranium to roughly the state of Cap's shield. Then I had figured out, through another few months of treatment, how to null state it so that it could be transported at high speeds and now we were testing it to see if it would still be possible to administer Extremis while also using that function.

"How'd you get Wakanda to spit it up?" At this point, the knowledge of Wakanda's vibranium excess was not a secret, but there wasn't much to be done – Wakanda had air and ground superiority on a man to man level, so unless people wanted to occupy it with millions of their domestic troops, they could forget about it.

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"I didn't, we've had the Plutonian looking for it for ages," I said. "I'm hopeful it forms the basis of a permanent improvement to the Fireflies. Near invulnerability to non-sonic attacks, hyper-regeneration and fire damage, and the perfect health state of the Super Soldier Serum, rolled into one perfected human form. The next stage of human evolution, something that will elevate us into the sphere of Asgardians." Honestly, it should put us above the Asgardians, since Thor hadn't instantly headcapped Cap in the first Avengers movie.

"Impressive," Radcliffe said, "When is this stuff going public?"

I made a face, "The governments of the world live in fear that their citizens won't be subjects of their violence." I did too, at this point, but there was no point telling Radcliffe that. Ultimately, in the medium term, I was going to have to get over it – Equip police with sonic weapons like Okoyae's staff, accept that humanity was now largely immune to violence. But I was going to take over the world first, then give people super-powers. Priorities.

"I understand using government money to fund your own interests," Radcliffe said, checking over a screen that managed the Particle Infusion Chamber, "but why haven't you focused more on shielding?"

"We've got some of the basics up," I said, giving the casket like metal container a few more visuals checks. "Some individual ships have basics for intercept with meteors, stuff like that. But the energy supply for a full city is genuinely wild, basically an arc reactor unto itself."

"Can't you cut it down?"

I grimaced and turned away from the machine, "I'm trying, obviously I'm trying, but dense energy supplies is a pretty core part of the problem."

"You could ask Stark for his help," Radcliffe said, "All good here, looks like the system thinks it should work perfectly."

"Tony's good for it," I admitted, "But his company's construction is stretched to the limit without a lot more funds. And given that the previous alien invaders have simply appeared within city limits…"

"The governments of Earth don't want to dole out billions more for no added benefits."

"Right." I thumbed at the door, "I'll go get Alexander."

Alexander Mason was a low-level Hydra agent who we'd promoted from agent to new Firefly in the post-Fury exodus. It helped that I put my thumb on the scale after having embarrassed in front of his peers a few years ago. We all need to maintain positive relations with subordinates. But he had the benefit of not yet having received an administration of Extremis, which made him an ideal candidate. He was a tall guy, having received his Super Soldier Serum, with the standard adonis muscles. The same-y-ness of the serum didn't manage to override his actual fashion sense, which many of our supersoldiers lacked. We were in a really samey place with our supersoldiers. Needed more women recruits, in my opinion.

"Alright Alexander, this is probably going to hurt, so buck up and deal with it."

"Yes sir," Alexander said reverently. My position as chief head was not public knowledge, but that I had navigated us to full control of SWORD and the global security apparatus was, so people had their suspicions.

He stepped into the machine and Radcliffe and I listened to him scream as the process started going.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Radcliffe asked.

"Look, I've done a lot of these procedures, rewriting cells hurts like nothing else apparently. If he goes quiet, I'll turn it off." If the machine took proper effect, Alexander would absorb the qualities and attributes of the metal we were infusing him with - Vibranium, the most versatile metal on earth. I wondered if it would create a normal looking skin or if it would look like vibranium.

He never did, it took about five minutes for the full effect to finish off and then the machine to split open. An exhausted, almost heaving Alexander - no visual difference - fell forward out of the machine, hitting the ground with a thunk and a wave of blue force burst out from him. That was promising.

I ran forward and checked his pulse, to feel the rapid pounding of his heartbeat inside his neck. "Alexander, are you awake?"

"All-" he winced and rolled over pushing himself off the ground and into a cross legged position. "All good, sir."

"Alright kid, we'll finish testing tomorrow, rest for now."

The next day we discovered that we could null the vibranium's protection through the application of the appropriate sound waves and the day after that we discovered he was still compatible with the Extremis serum.

I don't want to say that I had single-handedly outdone millennia of Terran evolution, but I had brought it together quite well.