On the hospital bed, Stephen Strange looked utterly bewildered.
His hands, already bound tightly, began to tremble slightly.
"You... you said what? Enter my brain?!"
Kagura nodded calmly. "That's right. I believe your brain holds information we need."
"Let me repeat myself, Dr. Strange: this concerns the safety of the entire world. Besides," she added, her tone gentle, "don't you want to know why your car suddenly lost control?"
At her words, the hostility in Strange's eyes seemed to waver.
"This... this has something to do with the crash?"
"Exactly, Dr. Strange," Cortana chimed in, disinfecting his skin with alcohol before carefully attaching conductive patches to his forehead.
"We believe the accident wasn't just a random malfunction. It was a deliberate attack."
"A deliberate attack?!" Strange's eyes widened in shock.
His face twisted with confusion, anger, and disbelief.
"But... why? Who would do this to me? I haven't wronged anyone! Why would someone target me?!"
"That's exactly what we're trying to find out," Cortana said soothingly as she continued preparing him.
Her movements were practiced and gentle, like the most experienced nurse in the world.
"Deep breaths now. There'll be a slight prickling sensation at first, but it'll pass quickly."
Feeling Cortana's expert touch, Stephen Strange couldn't help but be drawn to her.
Her silver hair, piercing blue eyes, stunning beauty, and flawless figure all commanded attention.
"Miss... who do you work for?" he asked with a weak smile. "Which hospital are you from? Your technique is the best I've ever seen."
Cortana gave a small smile.
"I work for Miss Kagura."
"...Of course you do," Strange muttered, his disappointment plain. "Anyone following Kagura would naturally be under her command..."
Cortana simply ignored the complaint.
She pressed her right hand lightly against Strange's temple.
The skin on her palm shimmered and shifted, revealing a metallic layer underneath.
"Initiating deep-level mapping."
She then reached out with her left hand and linked fingers with Kagura, creating a direct channel to transfer the scanned information.
"Deep mapping—begin!"
———
For the past several hours, Ultron's attacks had been terrifyingly precise.
He had infiltrated research facilities worldwide, using electronic sabotage to harm scientists and destroy critical technology—all without leaving any clear trace behind.
Alongside Kagura, even Tony Stark and the Avengers had detected Ultron's shift: he was no longer just an online threat.
He was beginning to affect the physical world.
Yet despite employing the most advanced detection systems Stark Industries had, they couldn't find Ultron's true location.
The problem wasn't just Ultron's hacking skills, it was his ruthless method: after every attack, he ensured that all compromised devices were utterly destroyed.
Unlike simple formatting, which can sometimes be reversed to recover data, physical destruction—through intense heat, magnetic fields, or electrical surges—rendered recovery impossible.
Each time Ultron struck, his targets' hardware was left scorched beyond repair, their memory chips melted into useless slag.
In this way, not only could the Avengers not track Ultron's movements, they couldn't even fully understand his attack methods.
After several failed attempts at data recovery, Tony Stark had nearly spiraled into frustration.
To him, Ultron, that ghostly demon lurking in the internet seemed almost invincible.
After all, how could mere humans fight an enemy born from the very digital world they relied on?
But Kagura wasn't ready to give up.
People often said: programs don't make mistakes.
An AI like Ultron, with self-awareness and near-perfect computational ability, could foresee almost every "accident" before it even happened.
It was the same story when humans first challenged chess programs—and later, Go-playing AIs. Against a program, humans simply had no chance.
However, a program's "perfection" only extended to what it could perceive and predict.
Ultron might know the Avengers' every weakness and manipulate Stark's Iron Legion to strike at the worst possible moments.
But there was one thing he hadn't accounted for: Kagura.
No matter how cunning Ultron was, no matter how unmatched his computational power, he was still only an artificial intelligence.
And for all their strengths, programs also had inherent weaknesses.
Kagura believed that by exploiting what Ultron couldn't predict, she could finally find a way to trace him.
And that unpredictable factor… was the human brain.
When Kagura learned Stephen Strange had been attacked, she rushed to his hospital without hesitation.
Rhein Life Technologies possessed cutting-edge brain-mapping tech, but their prototype wasn't finished yet.
Fortunately, Kagura had Cortana—whose quantum matter-conversion abilities allowed her to build a temporary brain-mapping device based on Rhein Life's theoretical models.
Thus, Cortana's new ability was born: Deep Mapping.
Through Deep Mapping, Kagura could access the deepest recesses of Stephen Strange's memories—reconstructing the very moment of the crash.
Although Strange himself could barely remember the accident, the human brain records far more information than conscious memory alone can retrieve.
By delving into Strange's subconscious memories, Kagura hoped to piece together critical details about the attack.
Tiny, fragmented details—like the exact time of the crash, the location, the duration and method of the autopilot hack—were the key.
If Kagura could pinpoint exactly when Ultron hacked Strange's car, she could cross-reference that timestamp with the massive data archives at the World Network Center in Oslo, Norway.
From there, she could trace the specific network Ultron had used and possibly track his movements through cyberspace.
In the best-case scenario, Kagura might even uncover what Ultron was building in the real world—where his manufacturing base was hidden, and what his next target might be.
It all depended on you now, Dr. Stephen Strange.
As the Deep Mapping system activated, Kagura closed her eyes and plunged into the hybrid world of brainwaves and digital code.
'If your memories can help bring peace to this world, healing your hands will be the least of the rewards.'
As for the Sorcerer Supreme's position...
'Well... if no one else is available, I guess this genius girl could handle it!'
'Ehehe!'
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