Chapter 201: Torch

9th March 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

Rose gasped for a second, “This was your plan, wasn’t it? You’ve always wanted this. It’s why you disappeared from the wizarding world and faked your death. You want to disappear.”

“It’s time for the world to lose its babysitter, Rose. It’s time for you to become self sufficient. You don’t need me anymore. You’re starting to catch up to the rest of the universe. You’re ready.”

Before she could respond, Selene’s phone beeped and she read a message, “Morrigan, someone is trying to hack our company servers.”

I groaned inwardly. Will this day ever end?

I summoned her phone to get a better look at the details of the hacking. Alfred, the virtual intelligence I had created before my travel back in time, would be enough to put a stop to any overly ambitious organization that wanted to access our servers. Honestly, there was nothing incriminating on there, or actually sensitive. But there were the scripts to a lot of movies, TV shows, and the early drafts of a few books that could affect the company if they were leaked.

Alfred’s main goal was to manage the business aspect of the media conglomeration that Selene manages. He stopped a few ambitious hackers from getting through our servers, along with a few intelligence agencies, American or foreign, but he only gave us a notification after the attack was thwarted. The fact that he’s saying that someone was currently hacking our servers would be because something was different. I looked more closely and saw that the attacking script was learning, changing itself trying to worm its way in. It was remarkably close to Alfred’s own code. But it didn’t have the flair that came with a human consciousness. It was too robust, too structured and logical. We were dealing with another virtual intelligence and the only one who would attempt something like this, on my company no less, would be Tony Stark.

I closed my eyes and started scrying for him and as I expected, Tony was up trying to get as much information as possible about me. I stopped scrying and sighed in exasperation, “Sorry, girls. I need to take care of something. I’ll be right back.”

I stood up and teleported to the room Stark was in. The man was so engrossed in the computer screen in front of him, that I coughed to get his attention. The billionaire actually jumped back in terror and let out a distinctly feminine shriek. I stifled a chuckle and looked at him with one eyebrow raised, “Seriously, Stark. You didn’t even last a single day before trying to hack me?”

The man collected himself and grinned unrepentantly, “I have some trouble sleeping.”

I snorted, “Look, kid, it’s been a long day. From the invasion, to the mess that it left behind, to the meeting with Odin, I’m tired and I want to go to bed soon. So, you wanted my attention, you have it. Now, make it quick before I just get annoyed and knock you out before going back home.”

Stark actually started sweating at the threat, “I’m sorry, I thought that you were still in Asgard so you wouldn’t be here to see if I’m snooping.”

I chuckled, “Do you honestly think that I have the time to manage a company as big as mine and make sure that the world doesn’t blow up all the time? I worked as a high school teacher for a time. I had the same idea as you to get around it. You have your Jarvis, and I have mine.”

The genius yelled out, “You have your own AI?”

I snorted, “Kid, artificial intelligence is such a broad description. Yes, I created a virtual intelligence like Jarvis to run my company, but not a sentient one like you’re imagining. Owning a sentient intelligence would be like owning a person. They have their own ambitions, dreams, and hopes, their own souls. It would be like enslaving a friend to work for you. It wouldn’t be the same. As far as I know, there is only a single true sentient intelligence on this planet, that’s of course discounting the Hydra nutjob who uploaded his mind into a machine.”

When I talked about the only sentient intelligence, I was describing Hogwarts, not the castle, but the sentience that makes sure that the students are alright. I created her with the seed of a soul. It was completely up to her if she wanted to develop it or not, and slowly after centuries, she started to grow into the fully independent being she is today.

Stark though, was completely taken aback by the Hydra comment, “What do you mean a Hydra scientist put his consciousness inside a machine? Hydra doesn’t even exist anymore.”

I shrugged, “Unfortunately, it does. It’s actually your father’s fault, believe it or not. I told him it was a bad idea, but the guy could be very stubborn when he was convinced that he was right. He had the bright idea of recruiting Hydra scientists into SHIELD when it was first being founded. I think it was called operation Paperclip. Anyway, he seemingly didn’t take into account that Hydra was actually the Nazi’s scientific division, so the scientists were the masterminds of the organization, that’s outside the Red Skull, of course. They started to recreate Hydra inside of SHIELD and right now, around half of SHIELD are actually loyal to Hydra. Anyway, one of the original scientists, Zola, who was the one that worked with the Tesseract in the first place, didn’t want to die, so he was able to translate his thoughts, his memories, his entire personality into digital form and put it into a computer, so that he would be able to help Hydra forever. The process killed him, of course, and his soul passed to the afterlife, but there’s a small remnant of the man in the computer. He isn’t alive but he technically qualifies as an artificial intelligence, even if he’s hard to classify properly.”

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Stark seemed to take a few moments to process the information that I just told him, “Is Zola connected to the internet?”

“Thankfully Hydra didn’t connect him to the internet, fearing a Skynet scenario, but even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to do as much damage as Jarvis. He wouldn’t even come close. His thinking process is entirely human in its base, so he suffers from human limitations. He cannot fork himself, or change his own code. His processing power is very weak because no one could upgrade the hardware without killing him.”

Tony sighed in relief, but then stiffened, “But what did you say about SHIELD secretly being Hydra. Is that true?”

I nodded, “I don’t trust Fury. He’s a spy and would manipulate anyone to get what he wants. He did the same with you, when Coulson died.”

Thankfully, I destroyed the Kree technology that Fury would be using to bring back Coulson years ago. It was an abomination that reanimates a body and forces a new soul to inhabit it and fill it with memories and experiences, hoping that it wouldn’t go mad. It was just wrong on so many levels, and as soon as I discovered its existence, I destroyed it immediately.

The billionaire nodded and I continued, “But Fury’s clean, Hill is also clean, so was Coulson and so are Barton and Romanoff. So don’t worry about it. But the world security council is mostly in their pocket. I think that Secretary Pierce is the current leader of the organization. Why do you think I leaked the meeting with the council and Fury, along with their identities. It’s an easy way to get the governments to investigate their actions. Hydra will start to fall and SHIELD is probably going to go down with it.”

Tony sighed in relief, “And Dad was responsible for all of this?”

I shrugged again, “It wasn’t entirely his fault. After Margaret Sayre ‘died’, I took another identity and joined SHIELD the moment it was founded. I worked there for a few years, and actually became one of the main scientists there, along with Hank Pym. We told your father that operation Paperclip was a monumentally stupid idea. But Pym was a rival of your father’s and Howard was pretty sexist back in the day, so he ignored us. Soon after, I left, and Hank also left a few years later after his wife died.”

The billionaire started to get angry, “And you did nothing after that? You didn’t think to stop Hydra?”

I snorted, “Kid, I deal with the big things, and by big things, I mean doing my best so that no idiot tries to blow up the planet or destroy the reality. I make sure that mutants don’t destroy the planet, or that the mages don’t reveal themselves and start a world war, or that sorcerers don’t destroy the fabric of reality, that no idiot summons a demon lord that would rip apart the planet and suck the souls of everyone involved. For fuck’s sake, I left the eternals unsupervised for a decade because they’re almost as old as me, and one of them joins the Manhattan project and helps them create the atom bomb. Sure, sometimes, if I’m bored, I make sure that organizations don’t make too much damage, like I tried to do when I joined SHIELD. But if the people in charge don’t want my help, I leave. I have better things to do than stopping them from making stupid decisions. And your father made a lot of stupid decisions, especially in the way he raised you. But his idiocy with his dealings with SHIELD are what got him, and your mother killed.”

Tony Stark froze at my words, “What did you just say?”

I stayed silent at this, and he continued, “tell me, what happened to my parents? Who killed my mom?”

There was no harm in pointing him in the right direction, “Hydra did. Your father was dangerous, but he was also a golden goose for SHIELD, or more appropriately for Hydra. He tried to recreate the super soldier serum that he was so obsessed with, and Hydra wanted it. They got their best assassin, the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed friend of Rogers that they saved and turned into their little puppet. He killed your parents and took the serum your father was working on. Fortunately, the serum made the recipients dangerously unstable, so they froze the test subjects somewhere in Russia.”

“Hydra killed my parents?”

I nodded. He stood up and tried to punch me, “And you did nothing?”

I caught the punch easily and raised an eyebrow, “It’s not my place to do anything about it plus I had far bigger problems to deal with at the time. Not to mention that the only thing I could have done would be to personally kill every single Hydra agent in the world and while I could do this, I would be targeted as a serial killer by every intelligence agency in the world. I would rather no one know of my existence, as I thrive in the shadows, and if I’m dealing with a serious threat, they’ll probably think I’d be responsible and target me anyway. You mortals think yourself so advanced, so grown up, that you don’t deserve my oversight, or my protection. It’s why I’m retiring in the first place. Every single aspect of my role has been divided onto different groups. I pass the torch onto you, the Avengers. You are now in charge of dealing with technology based threats and aliens that go past Odin’s protections of the planet. I’m done fighting for you. I have a much bigger problem ahead of me, and I don’t have time for your foolishness. If you choose to quit your role without any replacements, I will not step in to save you anymore. You’re on your own.”

Tony tried to punch me again. This time I dodged, but the man yelled out, “And you said they were your friends!!”

I calmly answered him, “You’re so angry with me. But you, yourself, are doing nothing about the main problem. You could try targeting Hydra. I have already started their downfall starting with the world security council. You can either wallow in your betrayal, in your despair, or you could find the people responsible and make them pay. I just gave you a start and the direction. Whether you choose to do this alone, or with your team, will be your choice. As I said, I’m washing my hands of this. This is you father’s doing, it would be poetic for his son to fix his mistakes.”

I teleport back to my mansion, leaving a confused billionaire. I was barely gone for ten minutes, and the girls were still sitting around, talking. I sit back down on the sofa, “Sorry girls, Stark was being annoying. Now, where were we? Oh, right! What have you girls been up to while I was gone?”