by Len Wein
In his right hand he bore his war hammer, called Mjolnir. Though it looked ponderously heavy, Thor carried it easily, gripping it in the middle of its thick, two-foot, leather-bound handle. A stout leather thong hung from the end of the handle. The head of the hammer was rectangular, with beveled edges on the striking surfaces. It was made of a dull, gray ordinary-looking metal that might have been steel. In fact, however. it was Uru, a metal unknown on Earth. Far from being the simple weapon it appeared to be, the hammer was an instrument of awesome power, for it was laden with enchantment. Thrown, it struck with unimaginable force, each time returning unerringly to its master’s hand. To possess it was to gain command over the elements, to rule the fury of the storm. And, since the day that dwarfish smiths forged it in a furnace roaring with white-hot mystic fire, none could possess it, none could lift it save he who had first lifted it, he who alone was worthy of its power—Thor, the Mighty. Prince of Asgard, son of Odin.
Thor, the Avenger.
Though the others had often seen his virtually limitless might demonstrated, though all had heard from his own lips the truth, not one truly believed that Thor had walked the Earth when the race of Man was young. Not one truly believed he was an immortal god, or even privately acknowledged the existence of a superior, mystic, godlike race from an extra-dimensional Golden Realm called Asgard. Yet, none could truly deny that his mere presence was awesome.
“How came this to be, that Ultron hath taken captive the Scarlet Witch?” Thor asked.
Briefly, in hushed, urgent tones, Captain America explained.
“Then we know not whither Ultron is hidden,” Thor mused, “nor whence to begin our search.”
“Verily, it ith Ultron’s moveth,” Hawkeye quipped, flopping down onto the bed.
“Yes,” said the Vision, “and he has many options. I suspect that he will simply destroy my wife. Then fearing nothing, not even your power, Thor, he will attack humanity brazenly, laying waste all in his path, until we meet him in final battle.”
“Aye, and destroy him for all time,” Thor said, his voice rumbling like distant thunder.
“Perhaps,” said the Vision, “but the odds against us are astronomical. It is possible that he may decide to keep Wanda alive for some reason . . . experimentation, perhaps. Or, he may wish to toy with us, barter with Wanda’s life. It might amuse him to offer her life against, say, Thor’s . . . or even all of ours.”
“Treacherously, of course,” Cap added.
“Of course. We would be fools to deal with him. He will release Wanda only unto death, or . . . more horribly, to us in living death.” The Vision’s monotone dropped to a somber whisper. “I would . . . not suffer to live . . . whatever remains of Wanda Ultron might surrender to us. Better to consider her dead now.”
“Very well,” Cap sighed. “Anyway, all we can do is wait.”
A knock on the open door caused the Avengers to turn. There stood Jarvis, barefoot in his pajamas and robe, looking more agitated than any of them had ever seen him. “Begging your pardon, gentlemen, but, uh, I heard a scream . . . and then, voices up here, and when I arrived here a moment ago, well, I couldn’t help overhearing the situation being explained to Master Thor, whom I am very relieved to see, and . . .”
“Jarv,” Hawkeye interrupted, “none of us want any tea. Go polish some sil . . .”
Jarvis cut him off there. “Shut up, you gibbering baboon!” he shouted. “This is of utmost importance!”
Stunned, Hawkeye shut up.
Jarvis continued, explaining about Iron Man’s note and strange request.
“So . . . it was incinerated? And you have no idea what was in it?” Cap asked.
“Well, no, sir. It wasn’t my business to read it, sir. But, as I was saying, I couldn’t imagine how I might prevent Iron Man or anyone else from seizing the letter or destroying it, so . . .” Jarvis reached inside his robe, unbuttoning his pajama top. There, pinned to his undershirt were several neatly folded sheets of Xerox paper. “. . . so I took the liberty of slitting the envelope open at the edge, removing the letter, and, um, photocopying it—without looking at it, I assure you! The original went back into the envelope, glued together very neatly, thank you, and, well . . . your message, sir.” Jarvis handed the copies to Thor.
A moment later Thor finished reading. “Vision,” he said, holding the folded papers in an outstretched hand, “destroy this.”
The Vision focused his gaze on the papers, and suddenly crimson beams of pure thermal force stabbed forth from his android eyes, burning the copied note. Thor showed no discomfort from the flames.
“Jarvis, the Avengers and, Verily, the world are in thy debt,” Thor said.
“And the world, sir, is in your hands. I . . .” Jarvis replied in a weary voice, “. . . am going back to bed. I trust that you will see to it that there is something besides Armageddon for me to awaken to. Good night . . . and good luck.” With that, he retired, while Thor led the Avengers down into the lowest subbasement of the mansion. There, as promised in Iron Man’s memo, the Avengers’ huge maximum-security vault was fused shut, its door laser-welded to its frame, its locks and hinges melted into solid masses.
“Stand thee back, mortals!” Thor said. Planting himself before the door, he spun his hammer by its unbreakable thong to build momentum, and then with a mighty heave, hurled it. The thunderous impact shook the entire house, as the ten-foot-thick vanadium-steel door shattered like so much glass. Its work done, the hammer leaped back into Thor’s grasp. Through the dust and still-crumbling debris, the Avengers could see, lying on a table in the center of the vault, a plain steel carrying case, large enough, perhaps, to hold a device the size of a pocket calculator.
“This,” Thor said, opening the case, “will lead us to Iron Man.” He removed the powerful tracer that Tony Stark had built the previous night and clicked it on. Directional vectors lit up on its miniature screen.
“I’ll get a Quinjet ready,” Cap said, racing toward the elevator.
“Now that I have you both,” Ultron mused mechanically, “the question is, what am I going to do with you?”
Iron Man stared blankly at his friend. What the hell was he talking about? He would, of course, be of whatever service he might.
“You pose entirely different problems,” Ultron continued. He had seated himself upon a throne of sorts, rough-hewn from an immense ingot of solid steel, probably with his bare Adamantium hands. “Iron Man, would you kindly place that carrion . . .” he pointed at the Witch’s battered form “. . . on the examination table.”
Iron Man bent over and grabbed the Witch roughly by the hair. He dragged her across the concrete floor between the various lathes, presses, and test equipment to a large, sturdy, concrete-topped table. With brutal carelessness he heaved her onto the table. Her soft limp body slapped the concrete sickeningly, and her lip began bleeding anew. She lay twisted awkwardly in an accidental, fetchingly helpless pose. Only the slow rising and falling of her bosom indicated that life remained within her. The man in the armor noted that, his eyes lingering for a moment on the soft, ample roundness of her breasts, and the interesting way that her tiny waist curved into the fullness of her hips.
Wanda?
“I see that I must make my decision about you quickly,” Ultron said. “Come here.”
Iron Man walked slowly toward the crackling voice, finally stopping before the dais upon which rested Ultron’s throne. Suddenly, he was confused. He tried to blink away the tunnel vision closing in on him, to no avail. All he could see was Ultron, surrounded by a nightmare kaleidoscope whirling too fast to focus upon.
“I can see that you have entered the transition stage.”
Ultron’s voice sounded like a record played at too slow a speed. Images raced like express trains through the mind of the man in the armor, but he could not form a thought.
“You have reached the end of your programming . . .”
Prrrroggrrrammminnngg?
“. . . and now I must
hypnotize you again, or slay you. It would amuse me to have a former Avenger serve me . . .”
Avvennger . . . sserrve?
“. . . but I despise free will. Even warped free will.”
Frreee . . . will.
“Good-bye.”
“Ul . . . Ul . . . Ultron!” Iron Man shouted, suddenly aware that before him stood The Enemy. Still dizzy, he lunged awkwardly.
From Ultron’s outstretched hand, a bolt of energy leaped, bathing Iron Man in its deadly embrace, stopping him as though he had struck a solid wall. He staggered back, and crumpled to the floor with a clang. Still, Ultron played the evil light across his armored body. Ribbons of electrical force seemed to dance back toward Ultron along the path of the beam. Iron Man writhed helplessly.
“Can you hear me, thing of flesh? You will be dead in seconds. After my enervating ray drains the power of your armor, it will leech away the very life energy of your body . . . and leave you a crumbling, desiccated husk inside that foolish coffin. Die, knowing that you delivered into my hands the Scarlet Witch . . . and doomed all your kind!”
The armored man’s struggles intensified momentarily. Then they ceased altogether. Still Ultron shone his beam on the gold-and-crimson form, until he was satisfied that there was no further energy within it.
Striding to the slab table where lay the Witch, Ultron laughed his hideous, crackling laugh.
At that moment, two hundred miles north-northeast, a sleek, five-engined VTOL aircraft roared low over the rolling, wooded hills of central Pennsylvania, heading south-southwest at top speed.
“Oh. God, no!”
“What is wrong, Captain America?” The Vision stepped up behind Cap’s seat in the cockpit.
“The directional signal’s gone dead.”
“Dead?” Overhearing Cap’s anguished report, Thor stepped forward from the cabin into the cockpit, concern darkening his countenance. Hawkeye remained in his cabin seat, bow in hand, staring out a portside window. He was seemingly oblivious to the commotion up front, strangely somber, absorbed in his own thoughts.
“What does it mean, Vizh?” Cap asked, fearing the answer.
The Vision examined the tracer closely, turning it in his hands. “This device senses the unique ionic field generated by Iron Man’s armor. Only a total drainage of his armor’s power could cause it to lose the signal.”
“You mean . . . Iron Man just ran out of juice? But the readings were strong . . . and then they just winked out!”
“Then I must assume that Iron Man . . . has been eliminated,” said the Vision.
“In sooth, there shall be a reckoning!” Thor’s eyes flashed brighter than the lightning he ruled. His hammer trembling in a white-knuckled grip that would crush anything else, he swore an oath. “Ultron will pay for this! This night, by my hand, his existence shall end in agony! I swear it, on Balder’s sacred blood!”
Captain America did not voice the oath of vengeance that showed in his eyes, through tears he struggled to blink away. The Vision bowed his head, absorbed in calculating the most effective method by which to vent his redoubled wrath when at last he faced Ultron. And, alone, unnoticed in the darkened cabin, Hawkeye buried his face in his hands and simply, quietly wept.
“I’m cutting to half speed,” Cap said, backing off on the throttle. “I figure we’re still headed in the right general direction, but we have no way to determine the range. I’m going to put her down at the first suitable landing site and wait for dawn. We can continue along this course in daylight, slowly, and maybe we’ll spot something we’d miss in the dark. Any objections?”
“None,” said the Vision. Thor bristled at the delay, but said nothing. Hawkeye, too, was silent.
The moonless night was particularly dark and desolate on Neville Island. Once, this two-mile-long spit of mud and shale adrift in the ocher fluid of the Ohio River had been a seething crucible of heavy industry, the mightiest outpost of hell in all southwestern Pennsylvania. Once, the river had been vivid orange, thick with sludge and waste, and crowded with barges trafficking chemicals, coke, and steel. Once, night and day had been indistinguishable on this island. Thick gray smoke and billowing green fumes had choked off the sun, yet the belching fireworks from the blast furnaces, the reddish glow of the open hearths, and the evil-colored tongues of flame licking the lips of the smokestacks had lit the dreary mills with constant, soulless light.
Years had changed that. These days the few mills that were still working seldom ran graveyard shifts. The air above the island was foul smelling but clear, and the river’s permanent stain was renewed daily in only a token fashion. But the soot and corrosion of decades still caked the deserted factories. The few scrubby trees that managed to grow in the sludge-soaked earth were gnarled and diseased-looking. Even the weeds seemed sickly. The legacy of man’s crimes against nature remained.
Isolated on one end of the island stood the immense Davreaux Heavy Metals Plant. Work lights shone greasily behind its opaque painted windows this night, though Davreaux Industries had abandoned it five years past. In many ways, it was the bleakest, ugliest structure on the island.
No wonder Ultron felt right at home.
Inside the huge, corrugated-steel main-plant building stood a large, thick-walled concrete blockhouse. Peeling, painted block letters on the ponderous steel double doors said “Foundry Blockhouse—Research and Development.”
The blockhouse had been remade inside. Rusting, out-of-date equipment had been replaced by an array of technology undreamed of by mortal man. A miniaturized fusion reactor, sunk into the concrete floor, provided power. Computers banked three walls; metallurgical-testing equipment and futuristic fabrication machinery were arranged in functional correlation. Flanked by ionic-field generators, near the center of the floor, sat a circular vat six feet deep and ten feet in diameter, cradled in reinforced-concrete and steel. A cluster of lasers suspended from the ceiling fired downward into the vat, heating its seething contents to blinding incandescence.
Against a wall, upon a dais, a steel throne rested from which a robot king might survey this court of subservient machines.
At the moment, however, Ultron stood beside a table, pondering the fate of the woman sprawled senseless thereupon.
“You presented a difficult choice, woman,” he said aloud, perhaps for the benefit of his loyal, mechanical entourage. “You alone possess the power to harm me. Perhaps I should have let Iron Man slay you. But the mere thought of such power as yours intrigues me. I want to know its secret. I want to possess it. And so, I have decided to keep you alive for experimentation.
“But in order to ensure my safety, until I ultimately dissect you, I have taken a precaution. While you were en route here, I removed the Molecular Rearranger circuits from my body . . . and destroyed them, lest they fall into hands of flesh. So,” he said, sliding a hypodermic needle into her jugular vein and crisply, mechanically injecting her with a powerful sedative, “I am completely safe from . . .”
A scraping noise behind Ultron caused him to turn.
Iron Man was alive. In obvious pain, he was crawling, struggling, inching toward power cables along the wall.
“Amazing!” Ultron said. “Even drained of all power, your armor’s insulation protected you from death by my enervator ray!”
Iron Man struggled on, heedless of the seven-foot Adamantium juggernaut striding heavily toward him.
“My admiration for your technology is considerable,” the robot cackled. “At another time it might have amused me to let you reach the power you crave, and then humble you again. But, alas, I was in the process of creating several more drones when you arrived. My computers have carried on the process of preparing the resin mix. Now it is in the vat, heating. In moments the new Adamantium will enter the flux phase, and my attention will be required to mold it. Therefore, I’m afraid I must kill you immediately.”
Ultron extended one angular, ugly semblance of a human arm toward the prone Avenger.
Suddenly,
with a blazing flash, a searing bolt of pure energy slammed Ultron squarely in the back of the head.
He whirled to face his attacker.
There, standing on the examination table, straddling the still-unconscious Witch, stood Janet Van Dyne Pym, her hand still pointing at Ultron’s head.
She stung again, catching the robot full in the face. Unharmed, he retaliated, but his enervator ray sliced empty space where the Wasp had been. Suddenly she was insect-sized, darting around his eyes, her wings buzzing furiously. She stung again from point-blank range, directly into the monster’s gaping, scowling, crackling mouth. He bellowed in rage, still unhurt. With computer quickness and machine precision his grotesque hand swept toward her. A last-second burst of speed prevented the powerful segmented fingers from closing around her, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from being struck. She tumbled out of control for a few feet, stunned and bruised. He lunged for the minute flailing form.
And suddenly, from behind, two yellowish beams of repellent force thundered into Ultron like twin express trains. The impact sent him flying, an indestructible straw in a hurricane, crashing first through a computer console and then through the thick blockhouse wall.
“Leave her alone!” Iron Man roared. He stood near the wall, his universal-adapter recharge cord still plugged into his chest plate and a thick power conduit. Ripping the cord out of his armor’s socket he let it fall and flew with one brief boot-jet burst to the table where lay the Witch. Effortlessly, he scooped her up, barely pausing.
“Wasp! Get in here!” he shouted.
Obediently, the Wasp buzzed right into his eye slit and quickly crawled back to sit inside his ear cup.
“All right. Grump,” she said. “Now what?”
Iron Man had already whooshed into the air. “We’re getting out of here!”
Halfway to the blockhouse ceiling, he stopped, hovering in mid-air for a split second, then slid laterally a few feet to land on a huge crane suspended from the ceiling. He looked at the ceiling suspiciously, bating his rasping breath as if listening for something.