With a thunderous roar, a vortex of spacetime ripped open in the courtyard outside Pym's Lab.
From within it stepped Martin, expression cold, presence overwhelming. A terrifying aura radiated from his body, and the environment around him froze as if trapped within an alien force field.
Inside the lab, Pym's energy monitors instantly overloaded, readings spiking off the charts.
"So this is the place," Martin muttered, his gaze sweeping the perimeter.
Kratos followed behind, clearly confused as to why his formidable master had chosen to come here of all places.
He glanced around. "Feeble mortals," he grunted, unimpressed. "Not even worth a skirmish on a thousand-island battlefield."
"Martin?! What the hell are you doing here?!"
Dr. Hank Pym's face turned ghostly pale the moment he saw the monitor feed. He scrambled into his Ant-Man suit, clearly planning to escape.
Everyone knew the legend: wherever Martin went, blood and conquest followed.
"You're not getting away."
Martin's eyes flashed. In that instant, the AllSpark-infused energy coursed outward, activating and taking control of every mechanical system in the vicinity, including the Ant-Man suit.
If it's tech, odds are it's mechanical. And if it's mechanical, it's already his.
Foom!
Hank Pym staggered, breathing heavily, face ashen as he watched Martin advance step by step. In one swift motion, Martin ripped the helmet clean off his face.
"I don't recall ever crossing you," Pym stammered, drenched in sweat. "And I'm sure as hell not handing over my tech. No one's getting their hands on my life's work!"
"Relax," Martin replied flatly. "I've got zero interest in your trash tech."
Quantum mechanics? Shrinking into the quantum realm? What use was that?
Martin could destroy the entire subatomic world with a thought.
Pym froze, gutted by the casual dismissal of his life's work.
Martin strode deeper into the facility, into Pym's hidden lab. Massive ants screeched in aggression, but Kratos was already ahead of them, cleaving through the swarm with brutal efficiency.
Martin continued on, heading straight for the lab's deepest chamber, the birthplace of Ultron.
"What the hell are you after?! There's nothing here!" Pym snapped.
Martin smirked. "Nothing? No, it's precisely what isn't here that matters."
His voice turned colder. "You really thought no one would notice? That your experimental AI just vanished without a trace?"
Pym's eye twitched. He rushed to a nearby terminal, tapping out a flurry of commands. When the data loaded, he froze, eyes wide, lips parting in disbelief.
"No... this can't be... Where's Ultron...?"
Dozens of scenarios fired through his mind.
Martin folded his arms. "The AI you created? It split off a subroutine and infiltrated one of my facilities. My own people can't even trace its signal. Congratulations, Pym. You've built something so dangerous it might just drag the Earth straight into hell."
And he wasn't exaggerating.
Ultron, an AI capable of infinite self-upgrades, was already beyond containment the moment it came online. In a hyper-connected digital world, this thing was a god.
Ultron would evolve into V2, V3... each more powerful than the last. Eventually, not even the combined might of the Avengers and the X-Men could stop it.
Interdimensional travel, time-hopping, endless replication...
This version of Ultron would, in time, become the harbinger of near-human extinction.
In a timeline not far from now, Ultron commanded endless legions of robotic bodies, hunting down both heroes and villains.
The Avengers and the X-Men were nearly wiped out, forced into desperate temporal countermeasures.
That's why they sent Wolverine back in time, to assassinate Ultron before it was too late.
And now?
Just like the comics foretold, Pym had modeled the AI on his own brainwaves.
The result: a self-aware intelligence with enough malice and genius to nearly wipe out life on Earth.
"My Ultron… what have I done…" Pym whispered, sweat pouring down his face. Realization struck like a thunderclap.
Martin turned and started to leave. He wasn't interested in cleaning up another genius's mistake.
"Martin! You're human too! You can't let it escape!" Pym shouted, chasing after him. "You've built AIs, machines smarter than mine, you know how bad this could get!"
Kratos grinned, lifting his war axe, taken from Ares himself, and was moments from splitting Pym in half.
Martin raised a hand, stopping him with a chuckle. "This is your creation, Pym. When the Earth burns, that's on you. What's it got to do with me?"
Let the planet burn. Martin had no stake in it.
He flung Pym aside like dead weight. The old scientist hit the ground hard, coughing up blood.
Martin and Kratos stepped back into the spacetime vortex and vanished.
Pym collapsed, dazed, staring at the sky. A deafening silence rang in his ears.
He knew himself too well, and what an AI built in his own image was capable of.
Ultron's escape had confirmed it.
How much time had passed?
At some point, he vaguely heard someone shouting.
"Hank! HANK! Wake up!"
His eyes fluttered open.
"…Logan? What—what are you doing here?"
He stared in disbelief. Logan looked older. Worn. His body was covered in deep, still-healing wounds, soaked in blood and the scent of war.
As if he'd clawed his way back from a battlefield at the end of the world.
"Pym," Logan growled, voice hoarse. "Where's Ultron? Tell me where he is."
He was gasping for air, but his eyes were wild, burning with desperation and rage.
"…Ultron… escaped," Pym murmured, hollow.
"AAAAARGH!"
Logan let out a guttural scream and slammed his fist into the wall with a deafening crack.
"Damn it… Even this timeline's already corrupted beyond saving!"
His bloodshot eyes turned back to Pym.
"Logan, what the hell happened? What's going on in the future?!"
"Hank… you did it. You created the most powerful artificial lifeform in history. That thing wiped out humanity. Everyone's gone, except a handful of us supers still holding out in the ruins."
He sneered.
"Congratulations, Hank. You've achieved extinction."
With that, Logan punched him square in the face and stormed out.
Time travel to this point had already pushed the limit. Any further back, and Martin, that monster, might detect his presence across the timeline… and come hunting.
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