Later, the team gathered around the battered torso of Ultron, where Tony had set it up on a lab table. Everyone was quiet and subdued. Thor had disappeared, hunting the fourth legionnaire. Tony worked at a terminal display trying to figure out what Ultron had done and how he could get his systems running again.

“All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out,” Bruce said. “Used the Internet as an escape hatch.”

“Ultron,” Steve repeated. He was just getting up to speed on what Tony had done.

“He’s been in everything,” Natasha said. “Files, surveillance...​he probably knows more about us than we know about each other.”

“That explains why he likes us so well,” Clint said sarcastically. All of them had things in their files they weren’t proud of.

Rhodey cut through the ­self-​­pity in the room. “He’s in your files, he’s in the ­Internet—​­what if he wants to access something more exciting?”

“Nuclear codes,” Maria Hill said.

“We need to make some calls, assuming we can.”

“Nukes?” Natasha said. “He said he wanted us dead, but...”

“He didn’t say dead,” Steve said. “He said ‘extinct.’”

“He also said he killed somebody,” Clint said.

Hill picked up on Clint’s idea. “But there wasn’t anyone else in the building.”

“Yes, there was,” Tony said. He brought up Jarvis’s matrix...​or what was left of it. The clean, symmetrical lines were shattered, sparking, glitching in and out of patterns.

“This is insane,” Bruce said.

“Jarvis was our first line of defense,” Steve said. “He would have shut Ultron down. It makes no sense.”

“No, Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis.” Bruce stood looking at Jarvis’s remains. “This isn’t strategy. This is rage.”

Thor exploded into the room at that moment, wearing his full armor. He surged across the lab, plowing into Tony and driving him through standing banks of equipment until Tony slammed up against the wall.

“It’s going around,” Clint observed, picking up on Bruce’s comment about rage.

“Use your words, buddy,” Tony gasped.

“I’ve more than enough words to describe you, Stark,” Thor growled.

“Thor!” Steve said. They didn’t have time to fight among themselves. “The legionnaire?”

Thor dropped Tony and turned to Steve. “The trail went cold about a hundred miles out, but it’s headed north. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it.” He looked back at Tony. “Again.”

“Yeah, but the genie’s out of that bottle,” Natasha said. “The clear and present danger is Ultron.”

Dr. Cho had remained silent at a terminal of her own, watching the tense interaction among the Avengers. “I don’t understand,” she said now. “You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?”

Tony collapsed into a chair and started laughing. He could see the rest of the team didn’t appreciate it, especially Thor, but he couldn’t help himself. “You think this is funny?” Thor asked. He was about three seconds, Tony guessed, from dropping Mjolnir on Tony’s head.

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “It’s probably not, right? It’s very terrible.”

Thor was about to lose his temper. “And it could have been avoided if you hadn’­t—”

Tony cut him off as he stood. “No. Wrong. There are a million scenarios that could have played out, but if you think any of them involves our getting out of a fight, then I withdraw my answer and say yes. This is very, very funny.”

“This might not be the time,” Bruce began, but Tony kept going.

“Really?” he said, turning on Bruce. “That’s it? You just roll over and show your belly every time somebody snarls?”

“Only when I create a ­murder-​­bot,” Bruce said.

“We didn’t,” Tony said. “We weren’t even close to an interface.”

“Well, you did something right,” Steve said. “Did it right here.” He paused. “The Avengers were supposed to be different from S.H.I.E.L.D.”

It was true. They had prided themselves on doing things right, on not doing the kinds of dirty work S.H.I.E.L.D. sometimes thought it had to.

“Does anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole and saved New York?” Tony asked the group.

Rhodey rolled his eyes. “Wow, no, it’s never come up.”

“A portal opened,” Tony went on. “To another galaxy. To a hostile alien army, and we are standing three hundred feet below it. Whatever happens on Earth, that up there is the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?”

“Together,” Steve said.

Tony paused just for a moment. “We’ll lose.”

Steve stuck to his guns. “Then we’ll do that together, too.” He looked at the group and spoke to all of them. “Thor’s right. Ultron’s calling us out. I’d like to find him before he’s ready for us. It’s a big world, guys. Let’s start making it smaller.”

So the hunt for Ultron began. JxI6mnJRA3ARVx2OESg8h63e7V+LFcuOtJV2JPzWUJAZu9QsOWsr6MoGHT9oMR46