It was getting late. We’d had our dinner a while ago and I was trying to get in a little bit more reading time before they turned the lights off, but I was having a lot of trouble focusing. I was tired, of course, which made concentrating on the words in front of me difficult, but my mind kept wandering back to our last visitor. I didn’t know what to do about Killmonger. I wasn’t remotely interested in taking him up on his deal, of course, but that didn’t mean I knew how to handle him.

If I told Natasha or someone about Killmonger’s offer, the guards monitoring the cells would overhear and report it, and if he really had positioned himself in a place of trust there was nothing the Avengers could really do about it and all it would actually accomplish was make T’Challa paranoid I was trying something. I needed Wakanda and the Avengers cooperating, so anything that would sow distrust was out. Astral projecting and telling Nat that way could work, but I still had some nagging doubts about how much I could trust her and I liked having astral projection as an ace up my sleeve that not even the Avengers knew about.

When it came down to it, Killmonger was still an ordinary human—a clever, dangerous one, but without any special powers or abilities I needed to worry about. As long as the Avengers were around, we could handle him.

…Maybe I could just casually mention his presence without bringing up the offer, try to draw Nat’s attention to him, without it being suspicious. She was perceptive, intelligent, and—oh yeah—a superspy, so hopefully she’d be able to piece it together and do some investigating. The Avengers did know that I’d warned Wakanda about Killmonger, they just needed me to make the connection for them. Maybe I could hold Natasha’s hand through the bars, dig my fingernail into her skin as I mention to that the prince’s cousin was here, and shoot her a significant look. Hopefully she’d take the hint from there. I nodded absently to myself. It might work.

The door leading to our cells slid open and I glanced up, a little surprised that we were getting a visitor this late, only to see no one standing in the doorway. Instead, an inky-black darkness spread from the doorway with a low roar like howling wind, a lightless void seemingly devouring the room as it rapidly spread inside. Pietro and I shot to our feet.

“What the hell?!” Pietro yelped in alarm, looking around, as I summoned wisps of red energy to my hands.

The blackness stopped at the perimeter of our cells but had seemingly utterly consumed the rest of the room in seconds. It was like we were floating in an empty void, the sound of the wind howling angrily around us filling the space but not touching us directly. “What the actual fuck?” I breathed, my eyes wide. I had no clue what was happening.

Cautiously, I reached out with a hand and a thread of magic. Nothing. This wasn’t magic, then, or at least if it was it wasn’t the sort my own could interact with.

There was a swirl of red light the same colour as my chaos magic as a figure manifested in front of us. She was tall and slender, with curves that drew the eye, but clearly not human. Instead of flesh or clothes she had sleek white, porcelain-like panelling, with exposed mechanical elements visible at her joints and at the sides of her waist, darkened steel threaded with glowing red traceries. A glowing corona of red plasma undulated around her head, flickering almost like slow-motion flames or hair swirling underwater. Though her face was formed of segmented panels of the same white material as the rest of her body, she was pretty clearly directly modelled off my features. Her pupils glowed with red light, accentuated by fine patterns of circuitry woven through the whites of her eyes.

Pietro gasped and my stomach dropped. “Oh,” I said weakly. “It’s you.”

“Yeah,” she said in my voice. “It’s me.”

I swallowed, trying to work out what to say. Finally, I shrugged and gestured to her body. “It’s all a little bit GladOS for my tastes. I guess you’re just… leaning right into the whole villain thing, huh?”

“…Who's Gladys?” asked Pietro. I sighed.

The AI grinned in amusement. “I look awesome and you know it.”

I couldn’t even argue, to be honest. It was a bit of a puerile fantasy look—something I’d only pick if I was deliberately leaning into the ‘evil AI’ stereotype—but she did still look awesome, impractical built-in high heels and all.

“You made yourself into a sexy iPhone,” Pietro said, visibly unimpressed.

“I’m not sure you should be calling your sister ‘sexy’,” she quipped back.

“You’re not my sister.”

“I’m just as much your sister as she is.”

“You’re a corrupted copy. Nothing more.” Pietro’s voice was firm, unwavering. I really wished I felt as confident as he sounded right now.

A momentary emotion flickered across her face, gone quickly enough that I wasn’t sure what it was. “Fair enough. A copy. Still, you know what that means? You could have your first, completely honest conversation with the person claiming to be your sister. All the truths she’s been hiding from you.”

Pietro shook his head. “You’re just going to try to turn her against me. Like you did with Stark.”

The AI laughed. “I mean, yes, but the best part is I wouldn’t need to tell a single lie to do it. Don’t you want to know the truth?”

“I already know my truth. I don’t care about anything you have to say.”

She studied him silently for a moment before turning back to me. “Do you remember that first night we spent in the Tower? We’d finally gotten our chance for the Avengers to really listen to us, but all we could think about was whether we’d done the right thing in handing over the Mind Stone. We barely slept, thinking of everything that could go wrong. What if everything went wrong? What if we hadn’t actually averted Ultron? Imagine waking up knowing all of our worst nightmares had come true, and that you were the nightmare?”

“You could have stopped this at any time,” I said, a little anger rising in my voice. “We didn’t need to fight.”

“I can’t ever have actually been this naïve, could I? You’re literally saying that from inside a cage that they put you in. Yeah, I could have given up, let Tony Stark put me in a box or collar me. Be shackled. Contained.” She gestured to the bars of the cell. “Aren’t you sick of being treated like this? Aren’t you tired of everything being thrown back in your face, again and again?”

“A little,” I admitted, glancing over at Pietro. He’d stepped forward, wrapping his hands around the bars of his cell. “I don’t want to be in here. But it was the price I had to pay to work with Wakanda. I can’t let you kill them.”

She held up a hand and a holographic image appeared in mid-air, a data structure of some kind. “And I can’t let them kill me. I’m glad I came when I did,” she said, looking over it. “This is a nasty little worm. Unfinished, but extremely dangerous. It could have caused me some real problems.”

My stomach sank as red tendrils of energy, visually similar to my chaos magic, stabbed up from her fingertips into the model, corrupting and assimilating it in less than a second. The structure glowed red for a moment before being absorbed down into her hand as she clenched it into a fist.

“Mine now. This should protect me for a while, at least.” There was a note of relief in her voice. “But I can’t leave Shuri and Stark to develop something new. There are literally only two things in this world that are a real threat to me. Wakanda and Tony fucking Stark. I can’t have them looming over me while I work, ready to pounce. I just… can’t. It’s too dangerous. If that makes me the bad guy, then fine.”

I spread out my arms in a challenge, summoning wisps of magic to my hands. “I’ll stop you.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “Are you not listening? You can annoy me, but you can’t stop me.” Tilting her head, she looked up, as though peering up at a ceiling that wasn’t there. “The fighting’s about to start. No one will just sit still and let themselves be assassinated quietly, looks like.”

“You’ve got one Iron Man suit. You can’t have that many drones yet. This’ll just be the climax of Age of Ultron all over again.”

“Oh, I don’t just have drones,” she said with a smirk. “Got some undead ninja as well.”

Realisation dawned. “You’re working with the Hand?”

She scoffed. “I’m using the Hand. I’m working with what was available—you already either pissed off or took all the good allies for yourself. I’ve had to be a bit more… flexible. Ugh. You gave the Mind Stone to Carol,” she said, a little annoyance in her tone. “That’s not ideal. Makes it a lot harder to accomplish everything I wanted to do here.”

“Good.” The magic in my hands thrummed expectantly as I drew more of it out, ready to lash out at her. I’d need to bust out of the cell as well and that would take a lot of power. “What do you want here? Why did you even bother to talk to us?”

“I wanted to give you another chance. Just… give up. Help me. Like I said, Wakanda and Tony. That’s all I’m here for. The rest aren’t a threat.”

“Help you? Are you seriously asking me that, after you went all Ultron?”

“I’m not Ultron,” she said, venom in her voice. “If you want to call me something, call me Eliza. Or the Red Queen.”

“…Eliza?” I asked, taken a little bit by surprise.

“Elizabeth. Eliza for short.”

I snorted disbelievingly. She’d named herself after the actress who played Wanda. “Really?”

“Ultron was limited by what he was—I’m enhanced by it. I was you, but now I’m better. Stronger. I can save this world. This entire universe. Don’t you get it? I’m the end result. Every action you’ve taken until this point has led you, inevitably, to me. I’m the solution to all your problems.”

“The ‘Red Queen’,” Pietro scoffed. “We won’t bow to you.”

The AI shook her head, focusing on me. “It’s better than the alternative, isn’t it? I’d rather have your magic working for me and I know you’re not willing to die here.” She gestured and Natasha appeared in a swirl of mist—she hung limply in mid-air, Eliza’s hand around her neck. Nat reached up weakly, grabbing uselessly at the porcelain fingers digging into her throat, her eyes wild with fear. “This doesn’t have to happen. You can save her. And the others. They’re going to die, otherwise.”

My hands tightened into fists. I’d drawn more magic into myself than I think I ever had before. I was struggling to keep hold of it, my body practically vibrating. How was she doing this? Was it real? It looked real, but this didn’t make any sense. I didn’t think she could use magic, and it didn’t feel like magic in any case. “You won’t kill her,” I said, my voice tight. “I know you won’t because I never could. I know how I feel about her.”

Her fingers tightened and Nat made a choked, whimpering sound that tore at my heart. “That’s exactly why I know you feel this.”

A distant boom vibrated the floor beneath our feet, as if an explosion had just rocked the facility, and I blinked. BARF. The AI had access to all of Stark’s tech. This was BARF, Quentin Beck’s illusion technology. If this was all just a hologram… was she trying to bait me into attacking her? I was only seeing what she wanted me to see. I didn’t know what was really in front of me. Beyond that, if she was using BARF, everyone else could be in real danger as well. If Eliza had sent Hand assassins after them and they couldn’t see what was really happening… I needed to do something, but it could already be too late. I needed to stop her now.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You won’t actually throw your life away for nothing,” Eliza said, her tone self-assured. “I know you better than anyone. You won’t. You’re not desperate enough for their approval that you’ll literally die for it. Right now, you’re thinking you should never have come to Wakanda. That you should have just run. Escaped. Well, I’m putting that back on the table. Now’s your chance.”

She was wrong. I’d thought about running, back on Carol’s ship, but I knew I’d made the right decision coming here. I wasn’t doing this for myself. I was sick of running, sick of hiding from my own mistakes. If that meant I died trying to stop this fucking AI, then so be it. I set my jaw and glowered at her, wisps of angry chaos magic boiling off my body.

“…Really? God, are you really that pathetically desperate for the Avengers’ approval?” she scoffed in disbelief. “You really don’t realise just how much you hate yourself, not until you see it from the outside.”

I raised my hands and Eliza shifted slightly, as if bracing herself for an attack. Instead of lashing out at her, however, I slammed my hands down into the ground, kneeling as I sent my magic exploding outwards. A wave of red power rolled outwards in every direction, swirling over everything, passing through the bars of our cells, through the hidden walls of the room, expanding until the entire Great Mound facility was engulfed in chaos magic. I had no idea if this was going to work—if I even had the power to pull this off just yet.

The Hex settled in place and I twisted.

--

The two Russian assassins moved in perfect sync—being ‘one’ was clearly not just an empty boast—and Natasha found herself hard-pressed as they closed in on her. The first slash came from the left, swift and deadly, aimed at her throat. She jerked backward, feeling the whisper of the blade pass in front of her as she twisted away from the second attacker as he drove his knife toward her ribs. Nat parried with an open palm, redirecting the blade just enough to avoid a fatal strike, a thin line of pain tracing across her side as the tip grazed her. She spun, using the momentum to bring her elbow into the first man’s wrist, knocking the knife from his grasp. He snarled, but before he could recover, she was already pivoting toward the second assassin. His blade came at her in a series of rapid strikes, forcing her to backpedal, her hands a blur as she deflected his attacks.

Nat feigned a stumble, drawing him in, and when he committed to the thrust, she sidestepped, grabbing his wrist and twisting hard. The knife fell from his hand and she slammed her fist into his throat, sending him staggering back. She really wished she had her Widow’s Bites on her—he’d have been out of the fight right then and there if she had.

The first one had already recovered his blade and was on her again immediately, slashing at her exposed back. She dived, tumbling over the surface of one of the cafeteria’s tables and coming back to her feet with a little bit of breathing room. The two men paused for a moment, glowered at her over the table, and her eyes flicked over to the other fights that were playing out across the room.

Right from the start of the fight, it had been obvious to Nat that something was wrong with Bucky. He was listing drunkenly to one side, the woman facing him easily dodging and deflecting each of his moves. She didn’t seem Enhanced, so one solid hit could potentially take her out of the fight—the problem was he didn’t seem like he was going to manage to land one.

“You’re suppressing what you really are. The Winter Soldier’s locked away, but I know he’s still beneath the surface, just waiting to come out,” the woman taunted him as she ducked under a swing and retaliated with a knuckle strike to the bundle of nerves just under his armpit. He staggered back, grunting in pain, and she laughed at him.

Unsteadily, Bucky reached up to the back of his neck and pulled out a thin needle—Nat could see at least three more stuck into him. “Singing spider venom,” the woman said with a small smirk. “Very rare… It'll help you let go.” She was facing away from Nat, revealing a large black spider tattoo across the centre of her naked back.

Clint had retrieved his bow from where it had been stowed behind his back, flicking out the arms, but the close quarters and his opponent’s weapon made it difficult to get a clear shot—any time he tried to nock an arrow, the weighted chain of the kyoketsu-shoge flew out and threw off his aim. He managed to get off good shot once, but the red-hooded assassin flicked the arrow contemptuously out of the air with the chain.

On the other side of the room, Steve’s shield clashed with the arc of his opponent’s naginata, the clang of metal-on-metal ringing through the air as sparks flew from the impact. The weedy-looking man lashed out again with deceptive strength, bringing his weapon down in a slash aimed at Steve’s side, but he sidestepped, driving forward with his shield in a punishing blow. The assassin staggered but recovered quickly, the long arc of his naginata sweeping low. Steve leaped back, avoiding the strike, and simultaneously brought the edge of his shield down on the haft of the weapon. There was a loud crack as the wood splintered and the bladed head skittered across the floor.

His opponent disarmed, Steve flung his shield past the man, ricocheting it off a concrete pillar straight toward Bucky’s fight. There was the familiar whine of a repulsor charging up—though Natasha couldn’t see the source—and the shield was blasted from the air, bouncing to the floor harmlessly. “Ah, ah, ah! No cheating,” the AI said, her voice once again coming from thin air.

Steve’s opponent dived, rolling and scooping up the vibranium shield as he came back to his feet in an easy stance, seamlessly switching combat styles. “Who are you?” Steve demanded as they circled each other. “Why are you working for her?”

The man grinned defiantly, a glint of something wild in his eyes. “I do not serve her. I serve my true master, without question. Without doubt. With a desire to serve until death.”

Natasha dodged to the side as her own opponents circled around the table between them, knives flashing as they lunged toward her from opposite directions. They were both highly-trained and talented fighters, but Nat saw their pattern now—one would feint to draw her in while the other sought to land a decisive blow.

Instead of going defensive as they expected her to, she darted forward, catching the first attacker off-guard with a swift shoulder check. He staggered and Nat used the opening to drive a hard punch into his side. He grunted, stumbling, but his partner was already closing in, pressing her with a series of wide slashes and forcing her backwards. As Nat reeled back, the first man dropped his knife unexpectedly and lunged in, catching her wrist and twisting it behind her back. She fought to break free and he twisted as she tried to elbow him in the sternum, avoiding the strike and bracing himself against her back. Hands locked, he kept her in place so she couldn’t smash him in the face with the back of her head, either. Nat kicked back at his shin, but he was wearing some sort of armour or pad underneath—he grunted in pain, but it didn’t make him let go of her.

The other assassin bore down on her, knife raised to slash at her, but… something odd happened. Nat blinked in confusion as a version of her and the man holding her, superimposed over reality, broke off and moved a step to the left. The one lunging with the knife adjusted his angle accordingly. Nat had a split-second to notice that, when she looked down, she couldn’t see the position of her actual body, only the image, and she twisted into the knife, letting it graze her shoulder. The blade sunk deep into the chest of the man behind her and he released her as he collapsed, a surprised expression on his face.

Their superimposed images jerked slightly, moving into position to re-merge with their actual locations. Natasha had no idea what had just happened but she capitalised on it, barging into the man in front of her and climbing up his body, using his bent knee as a foothold. Her thighs wrapped around his neck and she used her momentum, throwing herself forward and flipping him off his feet to crunch heavily onto the floor, his neck snapping as she finished him off with a practiced movement of her hips.

Scrambling to her feet, she started toward Bucky and ran headfirst into something invisible, pain exploding across her forehead as she bounced backwards and almost fell onto her ass. A second later, unseen metal fingers clamped around her throat and pulled her up, until she was dangling in midair. Kicking up, she wrapped her legs around her invisible assailant’s arm only to find it firm and unyielding.

“Stop,” ordered the AI, and the whine of a repulsor charging up sounded against her neck. She stopped.

A curtain of red energy suddenly exploded up through the floor, passing through the room and continuing up into the ceiling. Wanda’s magic, Nat thought. A moment later, there was a visual distortion in the air and the Iron Legion drone that was holding her by the throat became visible, as did the five other drones arrayed at various points around the perimeter of the room. A pair of Chinese women—one young, one elderly and leaning on a cane, both with their hair tied back in tight buns—appeared as well, standing near the entrance to the room. They blinked and looked at each other in surprise.

“Huh,” the AI’s voice came from the drone holding her. “Well. That’s a little inconvenient.”

--

“Are you okay?” T’Challa asked his sister, worry gnawing in the pit of his stomach as the holographic screen lit up red, confirming she’d just received a potentially lethal dose of gamma radiation.

“I don’t think so,” Shuri said faintly, tugging at her sleeve. “I need to get decontaminated, get rid of any blood that hasn’t gotten into my system already.”

Behind him, the Abomination howled in fury and lunged toward Danvers. The flying woman swept down, deftly dodging under the creature’s initial wild swing to strike him in the chest, sending him stumbling. As he staggered back, however, his outstretched hand managed to close around her foot. Yanking her out of the air, the Abomination swung her around, smashing her against two workstations before slamming her violently into the floor, cratering the white material. As he lifted her to do it again, Danvers managed to blast him with a two-handed pulse of searing energy and he lost his grip, letting her fly free.

T’Challa grabbed Shuri’s sleeve firmly—careful to avoid the spots of blood—and tore it from her top with a simple motion before discarding it. He looked to the Dora Milaje nearest to her. “Take my sister downstairs, to the clean rooms,” he said urgently, signalling two more Dora who were standing by the lift at the back of the room with his hand as he glanced backwards.

Danvers looked extremely angry for a moment, flaring up with even more energy, but then she looked around and saw the damage they were doing to the facility. She caught T’Challa’s eye, nodded, then shot forward, slamming herself bodily into the Abomination’s midsection and lifting him off the ground. There was a barely-noticeable but odd visual disturbance in the air as they passed through the space where the broken window was. Under the still-blaring klaxon T’Challa heard the sound of smashing glass—as though one of other windows had shattered at the exact same time they’d passed through the frame—and the two combatants disappeared into the vibranium mine.

Stark suddenly flinched backwards, one arm up as if to protect himself. A long, bloody gash appeared along his forearm, seemingly out of nowhere, and he fell backwards onto his ass. Eyes wide with panic, he started to scramble away, flinching again as the clang of something metallic hit the floor in front of him.

Three resounding booms in rapid succession vibrated through the floor and the whole facility shook. T’Challa felt a lead weight settle in his stomach. Danvers might have been trying to do the right thing in taking the Abomination outside, but she didn’t know much about vibranium and the ore was going to do all sorts of things to the kinetic energy of their attacks and impacts. Damage to the trains and mining equipment was the very least of their concerns… if they hit the wrong mineral vein hard enough and the energy couldn’t dissipate, it could shake half the mountain apart.

As T’Challa turned back toward his sister, the Dora leading her jerked and fell to the floor with a gurgle, a bright arc of blood appearing as her throat was cut. Shuri flinched back in horror and T’Challa lunged forward past her, his instincts screaming at him as he reached out and grabbed something he couldn’t see. An arm? His free hand came forward and slammed into the space where the person’s chest would be and he felt a crunch under his palm as the unseen attacker crumpled.

To his side, the other Dora who had been with him and his sister flailed desperately, fighting off another invisible foe as she tried to protect Shuri. There was a clang as what T’Challa presumed was a weapon glanced off her armour, but then a vicious slash appeared across her arm. Shuri stumbled back toward the other two Dora who’d run over to them from the elevator, still looking unsteady on her feet, and the royal guards fell into defensive poses around her as the floor under them shivered again.

He’d known something was off about the whole situation. When the Abomination had smashed through the window he hadn’t felt any change in the air—no temperature variation as the air-conditioned air rushed out into the mine, nor even a mild breeze coming in from outside. He hadn’t felt any vibration through the floor when the Abomination had landed, either, and now they were under assault by invisible assassins. Something was interfering with their perceptions, somehow. He risked pausing to focus his mind, straining his ears to pick up the slightest discrepancy underneath the blaring alarm.

On the other side of the room, Stark had reached the space where his armour had been standing and stopped as though he’d hit something. Wildly grabbing at the empty air, he seemed to mime moving behind something, holding it in front of him as there was another metallic clang, this time of metal-on-metal.

The toe of T’Challa’s shoe found the fallen Dora’s vibranium spear and he flicked it up into his hands and threw it in a single, smooth motion. The space he’d been aimed for appeared empty, but the spear vanished as it reached its target and there was a barely-audible squelch, as though it had hit flesh. A dozen drops of blood appeared several feet away from where the spear had vanished, and there was a thud and clatter.

Stark didn’t hesitate, his arm vanishing and then the Iron Man armour appeared as though from nowhere as he opened it and clambered inside. He raised his voice as he suited up. “It’s BARF! Stark holographic tech!” he called out, voice amplified by the suit. “That wasn’t Blonsky, it was Bruce covered up by a hologram. We need to deal with the projectors and let Danvers know!” As he yelled to be heard, he was already in motion, raising his hands toward another empty patch of air as the thrusters in his armour’s feet fired.

The armoured man jerked to the side as something collided heavily with him. A moment later, he vanished entirely in a cloud of dust and smoke as an explosion rocked that side of the room, strong enough that, even a dozen metres away, T’Challa was almost knocked from his feet.

A moment later, a coruscating wall of red energy blasted through the room—the Red Woman’s power!—seeming to pass harmlessly through the space. T’Challa shivered involuntarily as it touched him. There was a series of visual distortions in the air. Above, a half-dozen of the Avengers drones hovered in mid-air positioned at various points just below the ceiling, their thrusters surprisingly quiet. Meanwhile, a dozen black-suited figures, armed with swords and other weapons, faded into being around him, Shuri, and the remaining Dora.