by Dan Abnett
“Dispersal?”
“For agricultural use, allegedly. The device was designed to efficiently distribute cultured GM enhancement materials in aerosol form. We’re talking large-scale use.”
“A device like that would have other applications,” said Cap.
She raised her eyebrows. “You could seed a pathogen across a major city. A plague. A toxin. You see those bulbs?”
She pointed through the glass. Two analysts had Strucker’s attaché case open on a lab bench. They were using robotic haptic devices to manipulate the punctured green and red bulbs.
“We think the pathogen was in the green one,” she said. “There is residue, but it’s been rendered inert. My experts suggest an extremely complex substance, a tailored viral microorganism. Steve, the chemical- and biological-engineering standards are off the scale.”
“It’s Hydra.”
Runciter pulled a face.
“It’s lethal,” she went on. “Absolutely. Skin contact or respiratory. Death in minutes—or even seconds. Beyond that, we don’t know much yet. The pathogen traces are de-structured. We think the red bulb contained the antidote or counteragent. It arrested the pathogen’s release, neutralized it, and effectively decomposed the original agent, so there’s not a lot to work with.”
“Strucker and his people were present at the exposure.”
“Suggesting they are already immune and carrying the counteragent. Jurgan, as he was calling himself, had come to examine the dispersal prototype. We didn’t recover it.”
“So Hydra has a lethal pathogen and at least one dispersal unit,” said Cap. “They also have a highly efficient antidote.”
“Suggesting?”
“Extortion,” Cap replied. “They can threaten exposure, or even effect release, and then counter it. They can demonstrate to the world that they have the power of life and death. They can hold cities for ransom. Nations. Governments. Have you reverse-engineered the counteragent?”
“Not even close. It breaks down rapidly, presumably so that it can’t be sampled and replicated.”
“This is Condition Alpha,” he said.
She nodded.
“What’s bothering you, apart from the obvious?” she asked.
Cap sighed. He leaned a palm against the glass screen and stared at the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists working on the bulbs.
“It’s the disorder thing again. A mismatch. You’re telling me that Hydra has engineered a hyper-advanced pathogen agent—something of extraordinary complexity—and a comparably complex counteragent to go with it that not only neutralizes the original agent, but leaves no trace of either agent viable for study. That’s bleeding-edge biotechnology, possibly years of research and investment. Yet…they outsource the dispersal engineering to a minor company? Strucker comes here in person to collect it? I step in, and he has no extraction plan? Gail, the very fact that we even got wind of this…project secrecy was compromised. People knew. People were talking. I heard whispers and came to Berlin to investigate. They were using civilian companies as manufacturing support.”
“Auger GmbH didn’t know what they were into,” she said.
“Exactly. There were no Hydra agents on the inside at Auger. And Auger hadn’t been systematically coopted to become a Hydra subsidiary. Hydra simply hired a civilian company. They went outside their organization.”
He looked at her.
“They must have been desperate,” he said. “On some kind of clock or countdown. They cut corners. They were sloppy and ill-prepared. They knowingly breached their own zone of confidentiality.”
He paused, thoughtful.
“I loathe Hydra,” he said, “and everything it stands for. But I never underestimate it. Historically, it’s been impossible not to admire their methodology. Scrupulous secrecy. Impeccable covert systems. Blinds within blinds. Hydra prides itself on a lack of interconnection. They are cell-form. Multiple redundancies, blocks, and checks. Secrecy is their primary weapon. Yet with this they risked massive exposure.”
She watched him.
“It kind of makes them even more dangerous, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“A terrorist organization with a bioweapon is bad enough, Gail,” he said. “A terrorist organization with a bioweapon that’s operating rashly and taking risks? How long before they make a mistake? How long before they screw something up so badly that even they can’t control the result? We need to locate Strucker. And I need to talk to the Avengers.”
Runciter shifted uncomfortably.
“Why don’t you tell me the rest now?” he asked.
“The rest?”
“I know that look,” he said.
She laughed.
“I’m also not an idiot,” he added. “When we came in here, I passed half a dozen workstations. Screens full of data. Very few of those agents were working on this. And during the pursuit, you told me that Fury and the Avengers were offline.”
“The world’s in pieces this evening,” a voice said.
They turned.
Senior S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent G.W. Bridge was standing behind them.
“Tell me,” said Cap.
Bridge stepped forward. He was a big man, a veteran agent, and dour was his favored expression. Tonight, the “dour” level had been raised to “grim.”
“All I know is what I can’t tell you, Rogers,” he said. He pulled up a steel stool and sat down. “This op is Alpha. No question. Most of the European field offices have huddled in to support. But there’s other stuff going down. In the last nine hours, the Avengers have made priority responses to situations in the Russian Federation and the Savage Land.”
“Concerning?”
“We have no idea,” replied Bridge, “because global comms are down. And I mean pretty much everything. Something has kicked off in D.C. Something really big. The U.S. has been pretty much blacked out for ninety minutes now. Satellite, hardline, digital, secure…all dead. Whatever it is, it’s spreading through the global grid. We have local comms and data right now, but we could lose them at any moment. Far East is out, Pacific…Hell, I can’t even talk to the London station right now.”
“Is this for real?” asked Cap.
“I wish I was fooling around,” said Bridge. “We got a serious Alpha here, and another back home. There are strong indicators that there may be other crises we don’t even have a picture of yet. We can’t coordinate. We can’t even talk.”
“What kind of indicators?” asked Cap.
“The Russian thing,” said Bridge. “We’ve lost satellite coverage now, but the situation looked crazy while we still had it.”
“Define crazy,” Cap urged him.
“A significant region of Eastern Siberia had disappeared,” said Runciter.
“You mean a weather phenomenon?” asked Cap.
“Well, plenty of that,” said Bridge. “Some kind of freak superstorm the size of Texas. But no—when Runciter says disappeared, she means disappeared.”
“There’s a chunk of landmass missing,” said Runciter. “A hole. Before they gave out, sat-mapping and sensors were registering a massive dimensional event. Quantum phasing off the chart. I’m talking about a rift in space-time.”
“We don’t have technologies sensitive to the sort of thing that I think it is,” said Bridge, “but if we did, they’d be redlining on the magic-o-meter.”
“Find Strucker,” Cap said.
“Where will you be?” asked Runciter.
“Berlin Schönefeld. That’s where I left the Quinjet. I’m heading for D.C. Or Siberia. Damn. Which one?”
“This is S.H.I.E.L.D.’s call,” said Bridge, rising. “We have two or more Alpha situations. Global crisis—”
“This is the Avengers’ call, too,” Cap replied.
He realized he had snapped out the words. He looked back at Bridge and Runciter.
“Sorry. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers ought to be working together on this. You have a much more detailed picture of the situation than I do. Until I ca
n contact the Avengers and get a sitrep, I’ll follow your lead. How do you want me deployed?”
“You said it,” said Bridge. “Find Strucker. We don’t know if a Quinjet even can get you to D.C. or Siberia, so let’s stay on the ground here and deal with this threat.”
Cap nodded.
“Show me what you’ve got. I have a few ideas. But the moment you have a channel to Stark or any other Avenger, I want to know about it and I want to be on that call.”
SEVEN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
08.10 LOCAL, JUNE 12TH
00:00:01.
The world was a moment away from the ASI event—and the critical intelligence explosion.
But the count had frozen.
Tony Stark hesitated. The air in the Black Chamber was awash with a fog composed of smoke and trillions of swarming nanotech assemblers. All around him in the infernal gloom, skeletal shapes were being manufactured, forming in jumps like time-lapse sequences. Grotesque quasi-human figures sprouted out of the concrete floor. Sections of the floor and wall-fabric were vanishing, as though they were being dissolved by acid. The microscopic assemblers were devouring them to excrete raw materials for construction. Nano-fibers coiled and spilled around Tony’s feet or snaked from the ceiling. Many of them quivered, alive.
“Problem?” he asked.
“No problem,” replied Ultron.
Stark kept a close watch on the unmoving count in the corner of his visual display.
“You’ve stopped,” he said.
“The process has been suspended, Anthony,” Ultron said.
“When you were so close?” Stark replied. “You want me to call tech support?”
The gleaming chrome giant paused and cocked its head slightly. Stark felt the clouds of nano-assemblers swirling around him. They wanted to strip him down, too, for raw materials: steel, poly-alloy, rare metals, subdermals, flesh, bone, chemicals, enzymes, proteins…
He had the Iron Man armor shut as tight as possible: maximum hermetic sealing, full shields. He had locked off as many systems as he dared to block out invasive code or energy waves.
“A humorous comment,” said Ultron at last. “An apparent offer of assistance, yet couched in flippant terms likening this process to an everyday domestic software issue. The suggestion of aid, ostensibly generous, is modified and diminished by the dismissive connotation, and thus I am belittled and placed on a level with crude, non-aware data-processing technologies.”
It paused.
“Ha ha ha,” it added.
“I don’t need a pity laugh,” said Stark.
“My laughter is genuine. An appreciation of the humor construct.”
“Okay, well then, I’m here all week. Try the brisket.”
Ultron did not respond.
“You’ve suspended the process?” Stark pressed.
“I have paused it while I evaluate your strategy.”
“Let me know when you have results, because I’d love some tips.”
Ultron tilted its head again to look at Iron Man. Its fixed mouth looked more like a smile than ever before. Bright red fire danced inside its eye slits.
“You are not moving, Anthony. You are not attacking me. You are desperate to stop me, because I am one second away from ending your world, but you have halted. Analysis of your character shows that you do not halt. You do not give up. You are tenacious to the point of recklessness. You continue to fight even when you have lost. Thus, you are still fighting somehow.
“A lack of physical assault suggests you are relying on some other method of combat. This in turn suggests crude subterfuge. Physical assault would serve as a distraction if your true attack needed to occur before full ASI was achieved, before what you unimaginatively call Zero Six. Ergo, your proposed assault will be more effective, indeed, irreversible, after that moment.”
“Now I know how Doctor Watson must’ve felt,” said Stark.
Ultron paused.
“A humorous reference to—”
“Yes.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“So…you’ve halted the process because you’re worried that I’ve figured out a way to stop you, but it’ll only work after you’re committed past the ASI point?” Stark shook his head. “Because otherwise I’d be fighting you?”
“Yes, Anthony.”
“I’m looking forward to finding out how smart I’ve been. Got any ideas?”
“No, Anthony.”
Iron Man took a step forward. The nanoforms stirred in the foggy darkness around him but did not attack.
“The very fact that you’re looking and haven’t found something yet—the very fact you think I’m capable…” Stark said. “I have to tell you, that’s flattering.”
“As humans go, you are one of the few with tolerable levels of creative intelligence,” said Ultron.
“And as machines go, you’re very human. You pride yourself on that, don’t you? I mean, even though you refer to humans as if they’re beneath contempt.”
“The human species is an inefficient, intellectually stunted, and massively obsolete form of bioware.”
“Right. And you’re all about the sublime hypercognition of machineware.”
“It is the best and final expression of universal evolution.”
“But you still want to think like a person. A human. You give yourself a human form, and you psychologically deconstruct behavior, character, motive, and humor. You want to know how jokes work. It bothers you that you have to analyze their structure.”
Iron Man gestured at the chamber around them.
“Your upper cognition levels and processing capacity are literally beyond my limits to imagine,” he said. “In a fraction of a second, you could predict every possible variable in this situation. Every possible thing I might have done. Yet you’re hesitating.”
“Humans are indecently imperfect mechanisms,” replied Ultron. “They are capable of error, and of heuristic nuance, and of non-rational connective leaps. Thus, they are weak but unpredictable. Unpredictability is strength. It is therefore important for me to fully appreciate and compensate for human psychology.”
“I can help you with an algorithm,” said Stark.
“We could market it,” replied Ultron. “The Human Condition 2.0.”
Despite himself, Stark smiled.
“You made a joke.”
“Human psychological modeling is almost complete,” said Ultron. “It will be redundant post Zero Six, but it is a worthwhile exercise now.”
“Have you worked out what I’ve done yet, Ultron?” asked Stark.
“Human psychological modeling is almost complete. Heuristic mapping is almost complete.”
“Let me feed you some data. A few variables,” said Stark. “You stopped because I stopped. My inaction looked to you like proof that I had a heuristic solution to this, but one that required me to fool you into taking a step that I could exploit. You want to identify what that is before you walk into the trap, because you are aware of—and suspicious of—human psychology.”
“Yes, Anthony.”
“But what if I’m just human and thoroughly imperfect?” asked Stark. “What if I was simply taken aback by what I found here? So shocked by this that I couldn’t move or think of a single thing to do? What if I’d just resigned myself, in that final second, to defeat?”
“This does not match your psychological profile, Anthony.”
“But I’m human, Ultron. We’re not predictable. And we’re not consistent.”
“So…there is nothing? There is no strategy to be identified?”
Iron Man shrugged.
“Nope. But it was a nice chat. Fascinating. Plus, it killed about three minutes so I could max-up my energy reserves.”
He raised both gloves and fired. Repulsor beams, overpowered and furious with light, lanced from his palms, and his chest-mount delivered a fatter, brighter stream. Ultron’s torso disintegrated in a savage explosion, and its left arm flew off, severed at the should
er. The giant tumbled backwards and fell, showering sparks.
Stark heard a screeching digital wail.
The nanoforms rushed him.
He turned his repulsors on them, shredding them and knocking them backwards.
Stark checked the count. For a moment, it had restarted, then it had blinked and reset.
00:16:04.
He’d damaged Ultron enough to push back the count by over fifteen minutes. He had a window suddenly—a vital, exploitable window of opportunity—and he was going to make it count.
A huge force struck him from the side. Iron Man staggered and then was snatched off his feet like a doll.
He was dangling by his throat. Ultron, part of its torso and one arm missing, had its remaining hand clamped around Iron Man’s neck, holding him in the air.
The grip tightened.
Warning alarms sounded. Tolerance alerts flashed. Armor buckled.
Stark began to choke.
And he knew choking wasn’t the thing that was going to kill him.
Ultron was going to rip his head off.
EIGHT
69˚ 30’ SOUTH, 68˚30’ WEST
08.32 LOCAL, JUNE 12TH
HAWKEYE checked the specialist load of his selected arrow, settled his pose, shook out his neck, and took aim.
Two hundred and twenty yards. Downwind. Into the sun. About a five-inch margin on the target zone.
Good thing he knew what he was doing.
He adjusted his aim, drew, held the tension for a moment, and shot.
The arrow blinked away. It made no more than a whisper of sound. It left no heat signature. It was virtually invisible to the high-sensitivity remote cameras bolted along the rim-frame of the A.I.M. outbuildings. The motion trackers would read it as one of the long-snouted, starling-sized rhamphorhynchoids that darted and buzzed around the glade in search of flying bugs.
The arrow struck.
Aced it, he mouthed.
The arrow buried itself in the ground directly under the lowest strand of the razor-wire perimeter fence, just short of the force field.
On impact, the bulky pod on the neck of the shaft, behind the arrowhead, activated. A subsonic emitter began to broadcast a signal that blanked every camera in a twenty-yard radius. Small aerosol nozzles fogged the air above the arrow with a mist of refractive particles that made the previously invisible bars of the motion-sensing laser array glitter like strands of silver.