In the middle of the night, in a darkened and quiet part of Sokovia, Wanda and Pietro entered a church. They had been summoned there, but they did not know who had summoned them. A lone figure sat near the altar, cloaked and hooded, looking away from them.

“Talk,” Wanda said. “And if you are wasting our time...”

“Did you know,” the hooded figure said, “this church is in the exact center of the city? The elders decreed it, so that everyone would be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief.” The figure started to turn toward them and spoke directly to Wanda. “You’re wondering why you can’t look inside my head.”

“Sometimes it’s hard,” she said. “But sooner or later, every man shows himself.”

“I’m sure they do,” the figure said. It stood, letting the cloak fall away and revealing the new body Ultron had constructed for himself. Eight feet tall, gleaming silver, with a demonic face that clashed with the warm tones of his voice.

“Strucker,” Pietro said after a moment. “You look like Strucker’s robotics, but they didn’t work.”

“Not for him,” Ultron said. “Strucker had the engine, but not the spark.” He looked back to Wanda. “You knew that. It’s why you let Stark take the scepter.”

“I didn’t expect...” Wanda wasn’t sure what to say. She gestured at Ultron, taking in the imposing robot body, the intelligence, everything. It was quite a bit different from what she had thought might happen. “But I saw Stark’s fear. I knew it would control him. Make him...​-self-​-destruct.”

Ultron spread his arms, as if to say: Yes. Here I am, as evidence of that.

“Everyone creates the thing they dread,” he said. “Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create smaller people...​ah...​children. Lost the word there. Children. Designed to supplant them. To help them...​end.”

“Is that why you’ve come? To end the Avengers?” Wanda asked.

“I’ve come to save the world,” Ultron said. “But also— Yeah.”

He led them back to Strucker’s fortress, down into the chamber where Wanda had allowed Stark to take the scepter a few days before. Now everything was different. The space was brilliantly lit and filled with robots that looked just like Ultron, some working on mechanical equipment and others tearing out a wall to reveal a much larger cave beyond it. “We’ll move out right away. This is a start, but there’s something we need to begin the real work,” he said.

Wanda and Pietro looked around, stunned and unsettled. “All of these -are—”

Ultron interrupted Wanda. “Me. I have what the Avengers never will—harmony. They’re discordant. Disconnected. Stark’s already got them turning on one another, and when Wanda gets inside the rest of their heads...”

“Everybody’s plan is not to kill them,” Pietro said sarcastically.

“We don’t need martyrs,” Ultron said. “People don’t know the Avengers are the problem. The Avengers don’t know. You need patience. Need to see the big picture.”

“I don’t see the big picture,” Pietro said angrily. “I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it every day.”

“You lost your parents in the bombings. I’ve read the records.”

“The records are not the picture.”

“-Pietro—” Wanda tried to calm him down.

“No. Please,” Ultron said gently, encouraging him.

“We’re ten years old,” Pietro began, his gaze growing a little distant as the memory overtook him. “Having dinner. The first shell hits two floors below, makes a hole in the floor, big, our parents go in...​gone. The building’s coming apart. I grab Wanda, roll under the bed. The second shell hits right next to us, but it doesn’t go off. Just sits in the rubble three feet from our faces. On the side of the shell is painted one word.”

“Stark,” Wanda said.

“We’re trapped for two days,” Pietro went on before Wanda cut back in.

“Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think, ‘This will set it off.’ We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us.”

“We know what they are,” Pietro finished.

Ultron looked at them almost as if he was proud of their courage and determination. “I wondered why only you two survived Strucker’s experiments. Now I don’t. We will make it right. Pietro, you’ll have your kill, but first...” He focused on Wanda. “You can tear them apart from the inside.” DjZKFwXc51yTEjzVSf+DZn7EbFTdnu25hxUiNtKtL6rd7VWn12IofETfRFdKiHDu