Chapter 209: The Prototype Form of Ultron
The moment Coulson turned and walked away, the mood on the scene shifted into something subtly off.
Natasha and Carter, both with years of field experience behind them, had sharp instincts for exactly this kind of thing. Almost in the same instant, both of them registered that there had been something unusual in the way Coulson had just left. Steve was the only one still convinced that Coulson's departure was simply grief he couldn't face head-on over Nick Fury's death.
"You've said plenty. Can you finally tell us what Nick Fury actually said to you before he was attacked?"
Steve fixed his eyes on Matthew. Under the combined weight of everyone's attention, Matthew didn't rush to answer. He simply turned his hand over and held out the USB drive Fury had left with him.
"...What's this? A flash drive?" Steve's brow furrowed.
"You know what this is?" Matthew actually looked surprised. He hadn't expected the antique standing in front of him to recognize a USB drive at all.
"...I've just fallen behind the times a little. I'm not dead."
Steve turned the drive over in his hand, studying the SHIELD logo stamped on its casing, then looked up at Natasha.
"If I remember right, this is the file you copied on that ship. The Lemurian Star."
"How did it end up back here, going the long way around?"
Natasha stared at the drive in Steve's hand and was quiet for a moment before shaking her head. "Fury just had me copy the data at the time. I never actually looked at what was on it."
"As for why it's back here now, I think it's a clue he wanted us to have."
"So what we need to do now is crack the drive open, is that it?" Carter cut in on cue. "I'll admit I'm completely lost when it comes to modern electronics. Looks like this one's on you two."
Hearing that, Natasha's gaze had already locked onto the drive.
They finished off what was left in their glasses and, rather than heading back to SHIELD, made their way straight to Stark Tower instead.
"JARVIS, I need to use the company computer."
Matthew pushed open the door to his own office inside Stark Tower and gave the instruction out loud.
Yes, he had an office in Stark Tower too. After all, he was one of Stark Industries' shareholders one way or another, and having an office of his own wasn't exactly excessive.
Not that he'd ever used it more than this once.
"Of course, sir. Would you like me to notify Mr. Stark?" JARVIS's voice came through the office speakers, even and unhurried.
"Mm, sure, let him know. If he's busy, don't worry about it." Matthew said this while leading the others inside, and gestured for Natasha to make herself at home with whatever was in the room.
Natasha took the drive, settled into the desk chair without any hesitation, and plugged it into the computer.
A flood of code neither Steve nor Carter could make sense of poured across the screen. It shifted rapidly under her fingers, jumping from one line to the next, until it finally came to rest on a single place name.
Everyone stared at the name on the screen. Carter was the first to break the silence. "...That's it? All that's on the drive is a place name?"
"No." Natasha shook her head. "Whoever encrypted this drive was extremely good at it. I could only get through the outermost layer. Whatever's underneath that, I can't crack."
"In that case... it sounds like we need to go there ourselves and see." Steve suggested, frowning.
Before he'd finished the sentence, a familiar voice drifted in from outside the window.
"No need."
Everyone turned toward the sound. Tony Stark was hovering just outside, in his white symbiote suit, giving Natasha's work at the computer a look of frank disdain.
He'd clearly seen the whole process.
"Natasha, I'll give you credit, your skills are good enough to make you a competent hacker." Tony's tone was thick with amusement. "Although at your current level, I doubt you'd be pulling in much of a commission."
Natasha: ...
"Let's see you do better, then." She pursed her lips.
"Tch. Fine, I'll do better." Before he'd even finished saying it, he was already accelerating up toward the roof.
A moment later, Tony walked in through the door, symbiote suit fully retracted, a fist-sized black metal box now in his hand.
His eyes landed on the drive still plugged into the computer. Under Natasha's gaze, he reached over, pulled it out, and plugged it into his own box instead.
"Stark, what is that?" Steve couldn't help asking.
Tony glanced at him, and though he didn't say a single word, Steve fully understood what that look meant: even if I explained it, would you actually follow along?
"...Stark. People do grow, you know."
"I'm learning how to use computers now."
"Oh. Good for you."
"So do you happen to know what a side-channel asymmetric-encryption reverse-deconstruction engine is?"
Steve had no answer for that.
"Can't answer? Guess you'll have to keep studying." Tony spread his hands.
Beside them, Matthew, having listened to that entire string of dense jargon, lowered his voice and asked, "That whatever-engine you just said — what actually is that?"
Since it was Matthew asking, Tony leaned in and answered quietly, in a voice only the two of them could hear.
"I made all of that up on the spot."
"What's actually in this box is an AI I just finished developing. I named it Ultron."
Matthew: ...
"Wait. You named it Ultron?"
"Yep. Problem with that?"
"..." Matthew shook his head. "No, I only mean you've got a real gift for names."
"Ha, right?" Tony grinned and set the black box holding Ultron down on the desk. The next second, a light on its side flared to life, and a holographic projection sprang up out of it.
[Decrypting encryption program—]
[1 percent... 5 percent...] The box's cold, level voice ticked off the percentages one after another while everyone held their breath.
Two minutes later, the words DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL finally appeared on the projection.
"There we go." Tony clapped his hands together and winked at Natasha.
Watching him look thoroughly pleased with himself, Natasha turned away without comment.
The man really could be exhausting.
Even so, she brought her attention straight back to the projection in front of them.
The display was packed with core HYDRA files, including the true purpose behind both Operation Paperclip and Project Insight.
Everyone read through the information scrolling across the projection, and the shock in their eyes gave way, one after another, to something considerably graver.
"So... SHIELD's been infiltrated by HYDRA from the inside this whole time?!"
"And Project Insight was never actually about neutralizing threats before they could emerge. It was designed to identify everyone who might someday threaten HYDRA's rule, then wipe them all out at once using the helicarriers, and take over the world completely?!"
Steve's eyes went wide the instant the true purpose registered, his face full of shock.
He and Carter were among the very few who'd known about Project Insight at all, which was exactly why, on learning its actual purpose, he was more shaken than anyone else in the room.
"Wait-"
"It looks like there's a list here too. Of the people they currently think Insight should prioritize eliminating."
Natasha raised a hand and pointed at the personnel list beneath the projection.
Everyone's eyes followed her hand to the list, and the first thing that caught their attention was the name Matthew Lawrence, alongside a prominent photo.
[Matthew Lawrence (Threat level: extreme! Growth rate: extremely fast! Recommend priority elimination!)]
Matthew: "..."
He pulled his eyes away from his own name and kept scanning down the list.
[Tony Stark (Threat level: moderate.)]
[Bruce Banner (Threat level: high! Recommend priority elimination!)]
[Stephen Strange (Threat level: high! Recommend priority elimination!)]
[Peter Parker (Threat level: high...)]
[Steve Rogers...]
Name after name kept scrolling past, and Steve and the others felt a chill settle in as they read.
"These are all people HYDRA's planning to clear out?" Steve murmured.
"That's a lot of names." Tony picked up the thread, then immediately pivoted. "Although, why am I only rated a moderate threat? Does HYDRA think I'm that weak?"
"Mm... could be." Natasha pursed her lips.
"Everyone, I don't think arguing about who's stronger is the point right now."
"The point is figuring out how to stop HYDRA's Project Insight and make sure their plan to take over the world dies before it gets anywhere." Carter steered the conversation back on track.
"So what exactly should we do, Carter?" Steve looked at her.
But before Carter could answer, the image on the projection lurched abruptly, and a bright red warning notice flashed up without warning.
[Warning! Warning! The decryption program was carrying a hidden tracking function! The other party has locked onto our coordinates through it...]
Everyone stared at the sudden alert on the projection, surprise flickering across every face.
At almost the same instant, Natasha felt her phone buzz in her pocket and pulled it out immediately.
Catching sight of the "incoming missile" emergency alert on the screen, she looked up at the group. "Everyone, I have some bad news."
"Let's hear the good news first."
"There isn't any good news."
"There's only bad news right now."
"The bad news is that a missile is heading straight for our current location, and it's expected to arrive in about ten seconds."
"As for who launched it..."
"It's our very good friend, SHIELD." Natasha managed a thin, bitter smile. "Looks like the mole inside SHIELD couldn't wait any longer to try to take us out."
"They're even willing to use a weapon of mass destruction like a missile, inside a city."
Hearing this, Tony Stark's eyes went wide.
"You're sure they're actually firing a missile? At this exact location?!"
He wasn't worried about getting blown up. He genuinely could not understand why the other side had decided, without so much as a word of warning, to just blow up his own building.
Couldn't they at least pick somewhere else to bomb?!
Where Tony was only mourning his real estate, everyone else was genuinely panicking.
They were currently on the top floor of Stark Tower. Even if they skipped the elevator and jumped straight down, it would take a good while to hit the ground, nowhere near fast enough to get clear of the blast radius.
"Stark, when you were building this tower, did you do any work on missile defense?" Natasha looked at Tony.
Tony pulled a face. "Sorry, technically I didn't build this tower. My father, Howard Stark, picked the site and had it built. I just renovated what was already here."
"And when you renovated, did you add anything useful?" Steve pressed, anxious.
"No." As Tony spoke, the symbiote armor swept over his entire body in an instant.
"Ohh boy. We're done for."
Even as the words were still coming out of everyone's mouths, a missile had already dropped out of the clouds and, in the space of a breath, closed in directly above Stark Tower.
Just as the thought this is it flooded through everyone at once, Matthew, off to the side, slowly raised his hand.
The next instant, the missile, still falling straight down, froze dead in midair, then wrenched itself around at an impossible angle and shot straight up toward space.
The move stopped Tony cold, right as he'd been about to call in the Iron Legion to shield everyone.
He looked at Matthew, something helpless crossing his face. "I keep forgetting this guy's still around."
"With him standing here, forget missiles. Even a nuke probably couldn't do much to us."
The missile plunged back into the cloud layer and accelerated on toward space.
Under everyone's watch, the streaking missile eventually bloomed into a brilliant firework.
Watching it slowly fade, Steve looked over at Matthew, who was calmly lowering his hand, as if he'd just done something entirely unremarkable.
This guy really is absurdly strong.
He'd had his doubts before, about whether Matthew could actually shrug off a nuclear strike. A nuke was humanity's most powerful weapon, after all. But now...
He believed it.
Steve slowly came back from the shock.
Beside him, Natasha was staring hard at her phone, her expression grave, when something seemed to occur to her. "Captain. Aside from Nick Fury, there should only be one other person inside SHIELD with missile-launch authorization."
The reminder made something click for Steve too.
"That's right. Aside from Fury, there's exactly one other person in SHIELD right now with launch authorization."
"Alexander Pierce?!" Steve and Carter said it at the same time.
"There's no one else it could be." Natasha's voice was grim.
"So he's the mole inside SHIELD?" Tony cut in.
Natasha turned to him and shook her head firmly. "No. He's only one of them."
"Everything we've just learned already made it clear there's no way it's only one person."
"He's just the biggest one."
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