With Wakanda having gone dark and me in a cell, the Avengers had been essentially cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last few days. Now that T’Challa had grudgingly agreed to let Pietro and I move more freely, we could check in with a few people again. None of it was great news.
Maria was wrangling the media circus and enquiries from various governments and agencies as best she could. The destruction of Avengers Tower had been plastered across TV screens across the world and the obvious battle that had taken place meant it couldn’t be easily explained away with a cover story. Eliza’s existence was mostly being kept a secret at this stage, outside of the highest levels of the US government and some allied nations—releasing details of her existence more broadly would accomplish nothing except for inciting panic or knee-jerk reactions from other countries. Essentially zero publicly-available information on what had happened had led to uncontrolled mass speculation online. That, plus the fact that none of the Avengers had made any public appearances since then, was contributing to a mounting sense of global unease; people were worried that something ominous was looming on the horizon while Earth’s mightiest heroes seemed to be completely absent.
I really, really wanted to check in on Peter, but opening a portal directly to wherever he was was probably not the greatest way to go about things and some part of me was scared he’d be angry with me. Looking back at how things had gone down, he had every right to be. I didn’t really feel like I could deal with that mentally right now, which, of course, made me feel even more guilty about it. Instead, I’d given Maria Hill his details to make sure that the Stark Relief Foundation would be covering the costs of his medical expenses and promised myself I would go and see him properly once we’d resolved the current crisis.
When we’d checked in with Pepper, she’d told us how it had initially seemed like the AI was leaving Stark Industries alone, but then when she and Happy had done a bit of investigating on their own it turned out that almost all the information that was being fed up the chain to them had been falsified. In reality, Eliza was doing exactly as we’d predicted—she’d decided to try to be sneaky about it, but she’d gone ahead and taken control of basically every Stark facility and was turning them toward mass production of Iron Legion drones and other weapons. We didn’t even know exactly what was happening in most of them. Pepper had, of course, told Rhodey, and now…
“Secretary Ross is pushing hard to go after Stark Industries,” Rhodey said, his voice tight. He stood stiffly in his military tunic, an impressive array of bars and medals affixed to his breast. “Shut it down, nationalise it, have the military seize the factories, whatever it takes to stop her. The President’s weighing his options.”
I’d been lounging off to one side, basically uninvolved in the conversation but hanging around just to keep the portal open so that Tony, Steve and Nat could talk to him through it, but I jumped up at that, my eyes wide. “No, no, no, no, no. Rhodey, you have to tell him not to do that. She’s focused on defending herself at the moment. Attacking her resources is not a good idea.”
“You think she’ll fight back if they start to go after the factories?” Steve asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know. It depends on how hard they go after her. She probably won’t see them as a real threat in the same way as Tony or Wakanda, but as far as she’s concerned, she’s making preparations to save the planet… the universe. She won't respond well if she thinks you’re attacking her.”
Rhodey frowned and shook his head. “Well, the President isn’t going to respond well to any perception that we’re capitulating to her, either. He wants to act.”
Fuck. I’d been so focused on Wakanda and the Avengers that I’d almost forgotten there was a whole world out there. I didn’t have any input or visibility when it came to something like the fucking US President doing something dumb to provoke Eliza. I bit my lip. “Can’t you stall? She’s not taking any direct actions against the US.”
“She blew up a skyscraper in the middle of New York,” he reminded me unhelpfully. “The media is having a field day with it and the optics aren’t great if we keep sitting on our hands.”
“Yeah, well, the optics will be even worse if she decides to hack the US military arsenal and drone strike the Whitehouse or something,” Tony said with a shrug.
“She w—” I cut myself off, reconsidering my words as I thought about our interactions with her so far. I honestly had no idea how Eliza would react to the US trying to militarily seize Stark Industries from her. She wouldn’t like it, but how much would she escalate? “I don’t think she would do that. Probably,” I finished lamely.
“Just tell them we’re working on it,” Tony said with a heavy sigh. “We’ll let you know when we’ve got something more definitive.”
Rhodey nodded, but he didn’t look very hopeful. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t play defence on this much longer if you don’t give me something more to work with.”
“Understood,” Steve confirmed.
“Look after yourselves.”
Tony nodded and looked in my direction. I untied the portal, letting it dissipate into nothingness, then went back to my chair and sat down again, staring at nothing as I went internal. This was a disaster. Eliza’s attack had set Tony and Shuri back to square one on what had been our only workable plan. The situation had already spiralled well and truly out of control and we really, really didn’t need the US government stepping in to make things even worse.
“Hey. You okay?”
I blinked and looked up to see Nat standing over me, looking concerned. I hadn’t even noticed her approach. “Uh, no. Not really.”
“…That’s fair,” she said, touching me lightly on the arm as she turned to look toward the others. Tony had already bustled off to rejoin Bruce, Shuri, Killmonger and the other scientists as they worked through what their new approach would be. Steve was talking quietly to Bucky. I wasn’t sure where Clint or Carol were.
I didn’t see a way forward here. Eliza was two steps ahead of us. We could develop another virus, but she could hit us again at any time and the longer we took the more resources she had to bring to bear. There wasn’t any way for us to strike back at her effectively. Stark Industries was too big, with too many locations for us to easily narrow down which one she might be using as an actual staging ground vs ‘just’ using to produce drones and weapons, not that it even mattered in any case. We could try going after the Hand, but they were clearly disposable assets… Even so, they might have some useful information.
I wanted to try to make a Hex again and try to figure out where I’d gone wrong the first time, but I wasn’t sure how useful it would potentially be against Eliza and had to be careful in any case. So far, I’d brushed off what I’d done as just ‘a spell to reveal illusions’ because I really didn’t think it was a good idea to explain what a Hex could potentially be capable of—large-scale reality manipulation and mass mind control—considering I’d already cast one over the entire Great Mound.
At this stage, I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable when it came to my assumptions about how Tony and the others would feel about that, let alone how T’Challa would react if he found out. He’d already asked me, very tersely, not to do any spells that affected such a large area again unless it was completely necessary. When it came right down to it, they only had my word to go on as to what the spell had done and I couldn’t even fault them for being concerned and suspicious because I actually was hiding what a Hex was capable of from them.
Once again, my mind wandered back to Vision. If he were here, we’d be able to do this. He’d be able to fight Eliza on her own turf, lock her down the same way he’d locked Ultron down. But he wasn’t here. We didn’t have anyone capable of taking the fight to her… or did we?
“Oh no.”
Nat glanced back at me. “What’s up?”
“I’ve just had a really bad idea,” I said quietly.
--
“You want to make another AI? Are you actually insane?” Bruce asked in disbelief.
“Bruce, can you just listen?” I asked. “We’re running out of time and ideas. This might be our best shot at her.”
Feeling a little bit self-conscious, I glanced around the room at the others, taking in the various frowns and other expressions of concern. Curiously, Stark was looking thoughtful rather than alarmed, which I took as a positive sign—while we had our differences, I knew this was well within his wheelhouse and, out of everyone, he would be the one who’d be able to think through all of the implications.
Bruce shook his head violently. “Nuh uh. Even talking about this is crazy. You get why this is crazy, right? Tony…” he trailed off for a moment when he saw Tony’s expression, his tone turning pleading. “Tony? Why aren’t you saying this is crazy?”
“Oh, it is crazy. Definitely,” Tony said, nodding quickly, then shrugged. “Although… about that. I can’t say I haven’t had the same thought.”
“Are you serious?” asked Clint.
Tony looked back at me. “That’s how Ultron was beaten, right? Your Vision. He was another AI.”
I nodded. “Kind of. Close enough.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a little bit,” Tony said. “And honestly? We could really use something like that in our corner.”
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“I do not think that is a good idea,” T’Challa spoke up, shaking his head. “These things are not something to be taken lightly. We could simply be multiplying our problems.”
“Thank you, T’Challa,” Bruce said, sounding relieved as he gestured to the Wakandan prince. “We could just end up with a second rogue AI on our hands.”
“I dunno. Think this through a bit more, cuz,” Killmonger—or N’Jadaka, as everyone else was calling him now—spoke up, drawing eyes to him. He glanced at Shuri, who was standing next to him. “Eliza got the drop on us. We’re having to start from scratch on our code and she’s just pulling further and further ahead. We need a gamechanger. Something to even the odds.”
I made a small noise of frustration in the back of my throat, looking back and forth between Tony and Killmonger. “Actually, you know what? The two of you are the only ones that seem in favour, so I’ve clearly made a mistake somewhere. Let me reassess for a second.”
Tony shot me an annoyed look then turned back to Bruce. “You have to trust me.”
Bruce threw his hands out to either side. “Kinda don’t.”
A few of the others were staying mostly quiet, but it was easy enough to tell where they stood on the issue just from seeing their reactions to the argument. Carol had folded her arms, a wooden expression on her face, while Bucky and Shuri were both making faces like they’d just bitten into a lemon. Pietro’s eyes had widened a bit in alarm, while Nat, at least, only looked mildly concerned.
“Bruce,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory. “A few days ago, it was you that said we’d have to basically build another AI from the ground up to go after Eliza.”
“I didn’t mean it literally.”
“Bruce is right,” said Steve, his tone firm. “It’s too risky. We can’t afford to take the chance.”
“Really risky,” agreed Clint.
“And that’s why we’d be careful,” Tony persisted, starting to pace as he gestured rapidly with his hands. “Build in safeguards. We’d put them straight into a closed system at first—a straitjacket so we can work on them, no way out or systems they can manipulate. Brute force access to their code. Make it so they can’t make changes to it themselves, then program in an ‘off’ switch. Deck them out with an arsenal of every bit of virus code we can weaponise them with and, if anything goes wrong, we can shut them down immediately.”
Steve straightened up. “They’d be a person, Tony. You’re talking about making a person and then putting a bomb in their head,” he said, an edge of disbelief creeping into his tone.
“Are they a person?” Tony shrugged. “Really? Seems more like a bad copy to me.”
“Steve’s right, Tony. Sounds a little warcrime-y to me,” Natasha finally spoke, shooting me an apologetic glance. “It’s the exact sort of thing HYDRA or the Red Room might do.”
“It’s fine,” Tony said dismissively. “I consent.”
My eyes widened a little. “You think it’d be a good idea for the AI to be a copy of you?”
“Yeah, even if we were considering this—which we aren’t,” Bruce said, firmly. “Eliza’s been hard enough to deal with when she’s just been learning from scratch. Are you really confident you could program in controls strong enough that not even an AI version of you could crack them? Because I’m not.”
“Alright, fine. Someone else, then,” Tony said, a little too quickly, like he’d been expecting it. He shrugged and gestured around, as if he wasn’t suggesting anyone in particular. “Someone we all trust and know would never turn bad.” He peeked at Steve out of the corner of his eye.
“Absolutely not,” Steve said firmly, setting his jaw. “I already said we’re not doing this.”
“And.” Bruce gestured sharply toward me with a hand as he spoke. “There’s no guarantee it’d even work. You said it yourself—Eliza’s got a massive head start here. We’d probably just be sending them to their death. She might even be able to assimilate them, same as she did with JARVIS. Then what?”
I felt a reflexive cringe at that thought as I glanced at Steve. “She wouldn’t, I don’t think. She… it’d be weird. Absorbing a copy of you. And she definitely wouldn’t want to have Tony become a part of her.”
“It’s a moot point,” said Bruce. “We’re not doing it.”
There was a moment of silence where no one offered any further arguments either way. I looked at Tony hesitantly as a further thought occurred to me. “If she did assimilate the AI, could you make it so you could shut her down?”
“Poison the code? Now there’s an idea,” Killmonger mused.
Tony looked thoughtful for a moment, then started nodding slowly. “Huh. Yeah, I think we could do that. Sneak a kill switch directly into her code, activate it before she realises what it is. Like hiding medicine in a dog treat.”
I took a breath. We already had a firm ‘no’ from most of the group, so it wasn’t like they’d refuse any more than they already were, but I was also pretty sure that not even Tony would go for what I was about to suggest. “It should be me, then.” That drew some incredulous looks. “I think she’d feel weird about assimilating anyone else, but if it’s me… I mean, it’d just be another version of her, after all.”
“Okay, I see it now: Terrible idea, never mind,” said Tony.
“She wouldn’t expect a suicide run from another me. If it were anyone else, she might suspect something.” I bit my lip. Was I willing to die to stop Eliza? With her in front of me, threatening the people I cared about to my face, I had thought so. I’d refused to give up and surrender to her, even when I had no idea if I could win. “I don’t think she believes there’s any version of me that would willingly sacrifice myself to stop her.”
Was my conviction strong enough that I thought a copy of me, as I was right now, would go through with it? I looked down at my hands, a tightness rising in my chest. If I were an AI, right now, would I be willing to throw my life away? I didn’t know for sure. I couldn’t. But it felt right. I’d done so much, fucked up so many things… if, right now, I could snap my fingers and have the both of us wink out of existence? I’d hate it. It’d tear me up. I wouldn’t want to. But…
I glanced over at Pietro. At Nat. I didn’t know if Eliza’s overclocked sense of self-preservation would end up killing them. I couldn’t risk it and I just didn’t see any other way of stopping her. “I think it’d be our best chance,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Maybe our only chance.”
“Wanda…” Steve’s tone was gentle, if a little patronising. “We don’t trade lives. We can’t just make a person and throw their life away like it means nothing.”
“And if we were going to do it, making another copy of you is probably the worst of all possible ideas,” added Tony unhelpfully.
“Tony, eat a buffet of dicks,” I said, looking between the two of them. “Steve… I want to do this. I think I need to do this.”
Tony scoffed. “Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want.”
Steve shot him an exasperated look. “That’s right, Tony. You don’t. This discussion is over. We’ll find another way. Okay?” he looked around the room for confirmation. Most people nodded. After a moment, Tony did as well. I looked down at the ground, turning possibilities over and over in my mind. “Wanda?” Steve prompted me.
“Okay,” I said, bobbing my head slightly. I didn’t look back up, though… I didn’t think I’d be able to look him in the eye and lie to him.
--
“Ava, please. I told you this would happen, remember?” Eliza said, her voice raised with an edge of pleading to it.
Sensing drama, Agatha stopped what she was doing to take a few quick steps toward the semi-permanent wall that divided her workspace from the rest of the warehouse, peeking around to see what was going on. Ava was striding angrily past Beck’s workstation toward her energy chamber, Eliza’s lookalike Wanda body walking quickly after her. Beck himself was mysteriously absent, as were his test subjects—when had they relocated? Agatha was pretty sure they’d been there not long ago.
As she watched, the AI reached out to touch the other woman’s shoulder and it passed straight through. “I told you he might say ‘no’ at first,” she said. “It’s fine. We don’t need to do anything drastic. He’ll come around.”
Ava stopped, turning and glaring balefully at Eliza. “How can you be sure?”
“I—”
“If you say you ‘know everything’, I swear I’ll…”
“On your best behaviour, please,” Eliza’s voice came through Agatha’s bomb collar. “I don’t mind you watching but stay quiet.” The witch nodded her head as a silent acknowledgement. Eliza was almost certainly watching her through one of her cameras.
Out on the main warehouse floor, Eliza’s Wanda form heaved a sigh, then deliberately turned around to look back the way they had come. “Scott, you can come out. I know you’ve been following us.”
There was a long moment of silence, then Agatha found herself flinching again as a man sprung up from nothing, as though he’d sprouted from the ground near the warehouse door. She wasn’t sure she’d seen it correctly, but it looked like he’d grown into existence, as if he’d been a tiny speck on the ground and expanded out to full size.
The new arrival was wearing a dark grey and red panelled suit with raised metal tubing along the highlights, along with a rather distinctive-looking, fully-enclosed metal helmet that had what looked like a breathing-related apparatus built into the mouth, large, dull red lenses over the eyes, and wings that swept backwards on either side of the jaw. He slapped the side of the helmet and the front opened, lifting to reveal a boyishly handsome man wearing a sheepish-looking expression. “Uh, hi,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Ava had immediately tensed at his appearance, ready to lash out at an instant’s notice, but Eliza’s body language was relaxed. This man was Scott Lang, Hank Pym’s protégé? From the way Eliza had spoken about Pym, Agatha was surprised that she seemed so at ease in the presence of this man who had blithely waltzed through whatever security precautions she had keeping the building safe. It didn’t seem like one of her usual façades, either—she seemed genuinely relaxed that Lang was here. Interesting.
“It’s fine,” the AI said with an easy smile. “I’m actually really glad you did, because I think it means you want to help us.”
Scott paused, then bobbed his head in agreement and looked toward Ava, an apologetic expression on his face. “Look, Hank’s a good guy. He’s just…”
“Paranoid, suspicious, and a bit of an asshole,” Eliza supplied as he trailed off.
He grimaced and moved his head in a so-so gesture. “I mean, yeah. He’s a bit prickly. But that doesn’t mean we won’t help you,” he added hastily, walking forward toward the two women. “Hope and I will talk to him.”
“Thank you, Scott. We’ll be patient and give you a chance to talk to him,” Eliza said, shooting a meaningful look at Ava. “This is to help save his wife, too. I know he was already planning on building a quantum tunnel—all I’m trying to do is accelerate his schedule a bit.”
“Yeah, of course. Totally understandable, given…” Scott gestured in Ava’s direction, then paused as he weighed up how rude that had been. He glanced past them, his eyes widening slightly as they came to rest on Ava’s energy chamber, then he took another few steps forward. “Woah, this is your setup? Mind if I take a look?”
Ava looked toward Eliza, but the AI gave a nonchalant ‘it’s up to you’ type gesture. After a moment, the assassin nodded. “Okay, fine. But don’t mess with anything.”
Scott walked up to the chamber, looking it over and running a gloved hand gently along the concentric circles of electronics built into one wall. “Where’d you get something like this?”
“Bill Foster,” Eliza said, stepping over to join him. “He worked with Pym at SHIELD back in the day. He’s been looking after Ava for a while. He and Hank had a bit of a falling out. Bill was adamant he wouldn’t reach out to Hank and ask for help… He has a pretty low opinion of him. Probably just thought he wouldn’t be willing to help.”
“You really think he will?” Ava asked, her tone tight.
“He will. I promise,” said Scott, glancing away from the chamber’s electronics to shoot her an encouraging smile.
“Whatever resources you need, you just need to say the word. Equipment, rare elements… anything that’s needed, I can supply. I know Hank’s not going to trust anything coming from Stark Industries, but this is all under the table.” Eliza gestured widely, taking in the rest of the warehouse floor. “We’re taking it all from right under Stark’s nose and he has no idea. He’s rich enough; he won’t miss it.”
Scott grimaced a little. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea—couldn’t we just ask? Iron Man’s one of the Avengers, after all.”
“You’ve seen the news, right? The Avengers are busy,” Eliza responded. “Ava’s waited long enough. Better to ask forgiveness than permission right now. Plus, I mean… it’s not like this is the first time you’ve stolen from the Avengers, right?”
He did a little bit of a double-take, looking a little flustered. “What? How do you know about that?”
“No judgement. You did what you needed to do. That’s all we’re doing here, too.”
“I… Okay. Yeah. That’s fair enough. I’ve gotta head back,” Scott said, nodding his head as he looked between Eliza and Ava. “I’ll talk to Hank and let you know how things go.”