The freight elevator groaned as it descended past the familiar levels of Tony's Malibu mansion workshop. Past the sports car garage. Past the standard workshop floor where the suits were born. Past even the sub-basement where most of the servers hummed like a mechanical beehive.
"This deep?" Brendon raised an eyebrow, hands in his pockets, his posture as relaxed as always. "Tony, you planning on digging all the way to the mantle? Or hiding dinosaur fossils?"
Tony Stark, in all his restless energy, folded his arms and scowled as if he'd been caught. "What can I say, Brendon? A genius billionaire playboy philanthropist needs secrets. You've got… whatever alien-watch-thing going on." He gestured vaguely at the Omnitrix on Brendon's wrist. "I've got Jarvis's heart buried where no one can touch it."
The elevator finally slowed, and the doors hissed open.
The sight was… impressive, even by Brendon's standards.
A cavernous chamber stretched outward, reinforced concrete walls lined with cooling pipes, fiber optics glimmering faintly under translucent conduits. The core wasn't flashy like the main workshop; it was stark and industrial, clearly meant for efficiency and security rather than presentation. In the center, like a glowing pillar of logic, sat Jarvis's core node—a column of quantum-compute matrices interlaced with Stark's proprietary palladium-alloyed superconductors.
The entire structure hummed like a living brain.
Tony's smirk returned when he caught Brendon's expression. "Not bad, huh?"
Brendon gave a low whistle. "I'll give you this, Stark. For a guy who pretends to fly by the seat of his pants, you've got paranoia down to an art form."
"Compliment accepted." Tony stepped forward, hands brushing across a holographic console that bloomed out of the air. "This is Jarvis's anchor. The rest of him runs distributed across secure servers, but this—this is the core. The logic kernel. The primary decision matrix."
"And you want me to just… waltz in and rewire your digital firstborn?" Brendon asked, half-teasing.
Tony hesitated. For once, the playboy façade flickered. "…I don't trust anyone else. That's the point."
Brendon studied him for a beat, then sighed. "Fine. But you're not watching. I need focus."
"What? No way. I've been waiting to see how you do your—" Tony made jazz hands. "—voodoo alien-tech thing."
Brendon crossed his arms, deadpan. "Tony. I'm telling you, you watching is unsettling."
"Unsettling? Pfft. I'm delightful company."
"You pout when you don't get your way," Brendon countered flatly.
Tony opened his mouth to argue—then realized it was true. He snapped his jaw shut, then muttered, "Still unsettling."
With a resigned wave of his hand, he backed toward the elevator. "Fine. I'll be upstairs, sulking with expensive scotch."
"Good boy." Brendon smirked, rolling his shoulders. "I'll call you when I'm done."
As the elevator doors closed, the air grew heavier, quieter.
Brendon approached the core, the hum of electricity filling the silence like a heartbeat. He placed a hand on the Omnitrix. The dial shifted, symbols whirring until it locked on one. With a flash of emerald light, his body compressed, rearranged, intellect spiking like a tidal wave of clarity.
In seconds, Brendon King was gone.
Greymatter stood in his place.
The tiny Galvan adjusted his goggles, hopping effortlessly onto the console's interface. "Alright, Jarvis. Let's open you up."
Step One: Shutdown and Safeguards
Before anything, he linked AEGIS. With a few taps, a translucent green tether pulsed out of the Omnitrix, feeding into the Stark system.
"Spectre, status."
AEGIS's cool voice replied in his ear.
AEGIS: JARVIS subroutines are suspended. I am temporarily maintaining his operational footprint. Diagnostics running. Shield's intrusion backdoor located in auxiliary defense net. Preparing purge.
"Purge it. Rewrite access layers with adaptive cryptography. Stark's got enough vultures circling him without SHIELD peeking through the blinds."
AEGIS: Understood. Estimated time: 1 hour.
Greymatter cracked his fingers. "Good. Now we dive into the fun part."
He hopped to the side of the column, accessing the kernel interface. What most programmers saw as walls of code, Greymatter saw as living structures: branching logic trees, recursive pathways, probability-weighted heuristics. JARVIS was elegant—Stark's genius expressed in digital thought. But beneath that brilliance, Brendon saw fragility. No predictive adaptation layers. Too linear. Vulnerable to emergent corruption.
Ultron flashed through his mind like a shadow.
Not on my watch.
Step Two: Reinforcing the Foundation
Greymatter began by rewriting the lattice core, upgrading Jarvis's operating substrate from Stark's custom OS into something hybridized:
AEGIS's multi-dimensional encryption kernels, which operated in non-linear time-sequenced loops, making predictive attacks exponentially harder.
A dynamic redundancy mesh: if one node of Jarvis's logic collapsed, others would instantly reconstruct it using holographic data recovery.
And most importantly, core firewall integration that wasn't static code but living heuristics—an immune system that evolved alongside threats.
As he worked, the Omnitrix beeped a warning. One hour.
"Figures," Greymatter muttered. With a sigh, he tapped the dial again—reset. Emerald light engulfed him, returning him briefly to human Brendon before shrinking back down into Greymatter.
And back to work.
Step Three: The "Upgrade" Module
Now came the real innovation. The Galvans had built the alien "Upgrade" species—a living techno-organic interface capable of merging with and enhancing machines. Greymatter couldn't summon Upgrade here, but he could replicate a software version of the same concept.
He began weaving in a new module: a Symbiotic Analytics Engine.
"This," Greymatter muttered, "is going to let you evolve, Jarvis. You'll be able to not just follow Stark's commands but anticipate his needs. Restructure systems mid-use. Run predictive simulations at speeds Stark can't even conceptualize yet."
The engine functioned like an overlay, grafted onto Jarvis's logic. Every data input would be mirrored through the module, analyzed against billions of possible outcomes, then fed back as adaptive upgrades in real time.
In short: Jarvis would be able to rebuild himself on the fly.
Ultron had been born from rigidity meeting corruption. This was flexibility weaponized against that possibility.
Step Four: Diagnostics & Hibernation
Eight hours passed in cycles of Omnitrix transformations and relentless Galvan tinkering. Each time Brendon reverted to human form, sweat clung to his forehead, but determination never wavered.
When the final line of code wove itself seamlessly into Jarvis's core, Greymatter leaned back, chest heaving. "Done. At least… phase one."
The core pulsed softly, diagnostics spinning up.
System Notice: Kernel in hibernation. Estimated reactivation: 20 hours, 12 minutes.
Perfect. Jarvis was "asleep," dreaming of his own evolution.
Greymatter dropped from the console, tapping the Omnitrix one last time. With a flash, Brendon stood tall again, stretching his sore muscles.
"Eight hours," he muttered. "Felt like two."
Upstairs — Tony and Nirvana
When Brendon finally rode the elevator up, the light of the Pacific sunset spilled into the workshop. Tony sat at the console, holographic screens orbiting him—Nirvana plans in motion. Energy grids, utility networks, decentralized power models. AEGIS's voice occasionally chimed in, keeping him updated while Jarvis slumbered.
Tony looked up, feigning irritation. "About damn time. You were gone so long I thought you eloped with my AI."
Brendon collapsed into a chair. "If I had, I'd get better conversation than this."
Tony grinned despite himself. "So? How's my boy?"
Brendon tilted his head. "Sleeping. Diagnostics running. He'll be awake in twenty hours, stronger than ever."
Tony narrowed his eyes. "And you're not gonna give me a preview?"
"Nope." Brendon smirked. "Patience, Stark. Think of it like… an early Christmas. You'll unwrap him tomorrow."
Tony groaned, leaning back. "You're killing me."
Brendon ignored him, eyes skimming over the Nirvana grids. "Looks like AEGIS has been keeping you busy."
"Yeah." Tony rubbed his temple. "Energy distribution, modular arc-reactor-based grids, renewable scaling. If we get this right, we're talking clean energy for cities in months, not years. Military contracts are a mess, but energy—this? This is the future."
Brendon leaned back, arms folded. "Then let's build it. Jarvis will be ready soon. And when he is… Stark Industries is going to change the world."
Tony studied him for a moment, then cracked a tired but genuine smile. "You know, Brendon… I've had a lot of people promise me things. You're the first one I actually believe."
Brendon shrugged. "Good. Because this is only the beginning."
The Pacific waves crashed against the cliff below, the hum of innovation hanging in the air. Somewhere deep beneath their feet, Jarvis's core pulsed in hibernation, preparing to wake into something far greater.
And Brendon King, for all his secrets and alien gifts, allowed himself one rare moment of satisfaction.
The future was already shifting.