Chapter 8
High in his tower, Tony Stark watched his city choke on its own fever. Even from here, through the thick glass, the wail of sirens carried—an anxious soundtrack to the evening. New York had always been a city on the edge, but right now, it was plummeting into the abyss.
"Sir, according to the transit authority, the first units of the National Guard will enter the city within three hours," came Jarvis's voice from hidden speakers.
Tony downed his whiskey in one gulp. "Jarvis, activate the 'Lunatics' protocol. Full power."
"It will be done, sir."
On one of the screens, a news broadcast showed his own face—footage from a press conference. "I am your shield," Tony declared smugly from the screen. The image cut to a reporter standing in front of a blazing barricade. "And where is that shield when the city needs it most?" the journalist asked rhetorically.
The barb hit its mark. The responsibility he had been running from for so long had finally caught up. Maybe he should run for president? The thought was tempting. He could be for the U.S. what Victor von Doom was for Latveria. At least, he believed he could do just as good a job.
"Jarvis, what about Senator Stern? Any progress?"
"After updating my analytical algorithms, little has changed, sir. But it has become evident that an intellect of a higher order is behind him."
Stark paced the room. "Someone managed to create an ascending AI? I don't buy it. That requires a completely different approach to cognitive architecture, one based not on algorithms, but on the capacity for abstract self-learning." He stopped. "But what if it wasn't created? What if someone transferred their consciousness into the network? Jarvis, search my father's archives. Keywords: 'digital immortality,' 'consciousness transfer.'"
The pause stretched for several seconds. "There are no such projects in the database, sir."
"What do you mean, 'no'? I distinctly remember reading..." Tony trailed off, putting the pieces together. "I see. Someone got to the files and covered their tracks. But I saw that report as a kid, in my father's study. Prep the Memory Chair."
The name was stupid, but accurate.
"It is ready, sir."
In the workshop, a contraption of metal and wires awaited him, looking more like a futuristic dentist's tool than a chair. Its origin, of course, was far from noble. The idea was born from a whiskey-fueled argument with Rhodey about compiling an objective top-10 list of his past conquests. Memory, Tony had argued, was an unreliable narrator, distorted by emotions and expensive champagne. Science, however, required facts. So, under the ridiculously pretentious codename "Project Aphrodite," he spent three days building a device capable of bypassing emotional filters and extracting pure sensory memories. Pepper, upon discovering the file, had silently fed it to the shredder without a word. Thus, the grand project was quietly renamed the much more respectable "Memory Chair."
He sat down and fastened the smooth, sensor-studded headband to his temples. The machine would deliver a calibrated electrical pulse, forcing his neurons to focus on the desired memory fragment. It felt like a light tingle.
The procedure finished. Tony tore the headband off. The memory was as clear as it had been forty years ago. "The project supervisor was Arnim Zola... So, HYDRA is still alive?"
---
Twelve stacks of crisp bills weighed down my pockets. It was a dizzying sum, even if it was handed over for a saved life, for an act one might consider righteous. But who were these Hardys, to just hand out that much cash? An unanswered question, one I'd need to figure out.
My path led past a looted electronics store. A gaping hole where the display window had been—like an invitation. An opportunity like this didn't come often. The thought of how to publish my future investigations without leaving a trace had been nagging me. My knowledge of network security was limited to a basic understanding of VPNs. That clearly wasn't enough. To start, I needed a "clean" laptop, one that couldn't be traced back to me.
I stepped inside through the crumbling shards of glass. The shelves were empty. Looters had already taken everything of value. Only trash was left: torn boxes, tangled wires, and a few of the cheapest, weakest laptops that they hadn't bothered to take. Well, it would do for typing.
I grabbed one and its charger. The cash register was pried open and empty, which wasn't surprising. I put a stack of cash inside. Ten thousand. Call it a donation, or payment for the goods. I hoped another robber wouldn't find it, but the chances were slim, as the store looked completely picked clean.
Phase one was complete. Now I needed to find a secluded place to work. Definitely not Mateo's apartment. Some rooftop with access to free city Wi-Fi—that's what I needed.
My thoughts were interrupted by a growing sound. At first, I thought it was a heavy transport plane. But the sound splintered, multiplied, and the sky above the city was suddenly dotted with hundreds of fiery points, falling fast.
All across New York, landing in the hottest spots of the street clashes, robots descended. And every single one, in a mechanical, inflectionless voice, began to broadcast the same message: "Attention. Stark Industries security protocol has been activated. National Guard units are entering the city. Unlike these autonomous units, the military will not be using containment measures. They are authorized to use lethal force. I repeat, lethal force. For your own safety, return to your homes immediately."
From the crowd, a glass bottle flew at the nearest robot. It shattered against its chassis, not even leaving a scratch. The robot didn't react, just dispassionately repeated the phrase.
A nimble drone hovered at a low altitude above each machine. Its camera locked onto the man who had thrown the bottle. There was a quiet hissing sound, and something black was fired into the man's leg. The sticky substance, upon touching the fabric of his jeans, began to expand rapidly, turning into a dense, heavy foam. The man stumbled, and a second later, his leg was glued fast to the asphalt.
Another drone detected someone in the crowd bleeding. The robot immediately moved forward, gently parting the people. A short spray of clear liquid onto the wound, and the blood clotted almost instantly. Having rendered aid, the machine returned to its position and repeated the memorized phrase.
Looked like it was time to wrap up this excursion. With the appearance of these mechanical peacekeepers, the street chaos would soon be over.
--
Returning to my room through the window had already become a familiar routine, but tonight, something was wrong. The sash was closed tighter than I had left it. That meant one thing: someone had been here. The only question was who—Mateo or a stranger?
Invisible, I glided silently through the room, then slipped out into the hallway. My hearing caught the muffled mumble of the TV. Mateo was awake. His figure was silhouetted against the screen. He sat, unmoving, even though it was well past midnight. He must have looked in my room, seen the empty bed and the unlocked window, and was now waiting for my return.
Returning to my room, I deliberately made a few loud movements—the creak of the bed. I had to let him know I was back. The door swung open without a knock. "Where were you?" Mateo's voice was hoarse and tired. "Out for a run," I tossed back curtly. He snorted, entering the room. "At two in the morning? Look at you. You don't smell like sweat, you smell like the street. If you're going to lie, at least be creative."
"Why all the questions?" I sat up on the bed. "Doesn't my life fall under rule number one? As long as it doesn't involve you, you're not supposed to care." Mateo was silent for a moment, his gaze sliding over my face. "Kid, a hundred bucks isn't worth this. Especially not now." A hundred bucks? Ah, I get it. He'd decided his nephew had become a protestor-for-hire, waving a red or green rag for cash.
"I'm flattered by your concern, but you're nothing to me. Same as I am to you. And what's the point of coming up with a good lie when I can just say nothing?" Mateo's face tensed. "Incorrigible brat. You'd rather stay silent than just answer?" He shook his head. "Fine, do what you want. Just know, guys like you don't live long." He left, pulling the door shut firmly behind him. His words, however, remained in the room. Of course, he had no idea what I was really doing at night. But his line, thrown out based on a false assumption, had hit the bullseye. This really could get me killed.
Although, I had a persistent feeling that this world as a whole didn't have long left. Too much had happened in too short a time, and there was no end in sight.
---
In the underground bunker beneath Fisk's mansion. Across from him sat guests whose appearance would have surprised anyone. Charles Xavier, a man in an elegant blazer, sat in his chair with a deceptively relaxed air. Next to him, straight as a rod, was his eternal opponent, Magneto, president of the newly-formed mutant nation. "If I understand the nature of your visit correctly," Fisk began, his voice betraying no surprise, "you are offering me protection."
"We are offering an alliance, Mr. Fisk," Xavier gently corrected him. "And not just protection. We are prepared to provide several gifted individuals for your 'Guardians of New York' initiative. To show the city that mutants can be a support, not a threat." Fisk slowly steepled his fingers. "A very tempting offer. But everything has a price. What will it cost me?"
"We don't want your money," Magneto interjected. "We want full, legally-enshrined integration of mutants into society. You will become mayor, and your first act will be to introduce a civil rights bill for the gifted to the City Council. And you will see that it is passed."
"We will need to discuss the exact wording, the plans..." Xavier began.
"Wait," Fisk interrupted. His gaze settled on the professor. "Before we continue, answer one question. Are the rumors of your telepathic abilities true?" Xavier's face tensed for an instant. "Yes." Fisk gave a barely perceptible nod, and the shadow of a smile flickered on his lips. "In that case, there is no need to hide anything."
The movement was unexpected and swift for a man of his build. He snatched a large-caliber pistol from under the desk and, without aiming, fired into his own shadow. A body in black ninja gear, distorting, tumbled out of the shadow and onto the concrete floor. As if on cue, two more figures slipped from the shadows of Bullseye and Magneto. Realizing they'd been exposed, they attacked—short daggers lashing out for the throats of everyone present. But their targets were not the kind to be caught off guard.
The air around the attackers distorted, and they froze just inches from their victims, paralyzed by Xavier's invisible telekinetic force. In the same instant, a small metal ball, flicked from Magneto's fingers, pierced the air. It shot through the first ninja's head with incredible speed and stopped just in front of the face of the second, who had been left for interrogation. Fisk lowered his pistol, a thin wisp of smoke still curling from the barrel. "Now, gentlemen, that we are rid of the eavesdroppers, we can talk... for real."
---
But they had less time for a real conversation than they thought. High above New York, invisible to all radar, flew a HYDRA jet. In its cargo bay rested eight sealed, sarcophagus-like pods. Inside: eight super-soldiers. Infiltrating Fisk's base unnoticed was impossible. HYDRA's response was symmetrical—instead of a covert op, they chose a deafening, direct assault. How to find Fisk's exact location in his web of safehouses? The Hand's agents, their supposed allies, had eagerly provided that information. Betrayal was a double-edged sword in this shadow war.
The bay doors opened over the designated coordinates, and the eight pods, one after another, detached from the plane, hurtling toward the earth. Gusts of wind knocked them off course, but short bursts from correcting thrusters immediately fired, stabilizing their descent. The estate's anti-aircraft guns opened fire. Surface-to-air missiles streaked toward the falling pods, but the explosions only licked harmlessly at their glowing-hot hulls. With a deafening crash, the eight sarcophagi punched through the mansion's roof. For a moment, all was quiet—the inertia of the fall was spent. And then, simultaneously, massive drills on each pod roared to life. They began to chew through the building's structure, heading directly for Fisk's location.
The drills burst through the bunker's ceiling, right over the negotiating table. The pods dropped through the breaches and landed in the room. Their hatches hissed open. In that very moment, as the soldiers took their first step onto the bunker floor, the fragile alliance between Fisk and the mutants had already failed.
Xavier reached out with his mind to the uninvited guests but hit a solid wall—a complex mental barrier, woven from an alien discipline he did not recognize. Given time, he could have found a breach, unraveled this foreign pattern, but in the thunder of an assault, he had no opportunity for such a delicate hack. He couldn't read them, couldn't control them. Magneto, on the other hand, did not hesitate. The instant the soldiers stepped from their pods, the metal in their armor and cybernetic implants responded to his command. All eight figures were ripped from the floor, left to hang helplessly in the air.
Even in this position, obeying their programmed orders, the soldiers tried to aim their weapons at Fisk. But before they could pull the triggers, their rifles were twisted into clumps of useless metal. Throughout all this, Fisk had not moved. He just watched the scene, a strange, satisfied smile playing on his face, as if he were enjoying the show put on by his new bodyguards. Deprived of the ability to move or shoot, seeing no other options, the soldiers moved to the final phase. Red indicators flashed on their armor. Magneto instantly tried to use his power to stop the detonators, but his mastery of metal was useless—the explosive mechanisms had been prudently made from ceramics and polymers.
Xavier, realizing this, reacted with incredible power. He threw both hands forward, and a wave of telekinetic force enveloped each soldier in a dense cocoon. He succeeded. All eight explosions—fireballs, chemical sprays, and shrapnel swarms—harmlessly imploded, smothered by the impenetrable barrier. For a moment, it seemed disaster had been averted. But it was only an illusion. HYDRA's plan had accounted for this outcome. From the moment the soldiers had stepped out of their pods, one of them had already begun to release a modified, odorless, colorless bioweapon into the air.
Telekinesis could stop shrapnel, but not the microscopic particles that everyone in the room had been inhaling for the last thirty seconds. Everyone in the bunker had been infected from the start. And the main target of this raid, Wilson Fisk, was at the very epicenter of this invisible attack.
---
The Ancient One released the projection of the future, and the image of the bunker shattered into a myriad of emerald sparks. She had seen what would happen next. The mutants, deprived of their hope for peaceful integration, would go to war against the government, not knowing that HYDRA was behind it. HYDRA, in turn, would use the chaos to build its strength. Until now, the Ancient One herself had been weakening them, preventing them from growing too strong and secretly spiriting away new mutants from under their recruiters' noses. But now, HYDRA would begin conducting monstrous experiments, forcibly awakening the X-gene in thousands of people to turn them into cannon fodder. In this war, in this version of the future, HYDRA won, and the world was plunged into tyranny. The Sorcerer Supreme slowly opened her eyes.
"And this path, too, leads to defeat," she exhaled into the silence. The Ancient One opened a can of ice-cold Pepsi with a quiet hiss. Most of the future's branches looked hopeless.
The Ancient One's gaze was fixed on the window. She had reviewed the timeline where she managed to protect Fisk. In that future, he became what he aspired to be—the shadow king. His own "Heroes for Hire," built on pragmatism and control, entered a prolonged cold war with Tony Stark's global initiative, his version of corporate defenders. For a time, there was order, but this order always led to the same finale. Earth, having become too strong and self-assured, provoked Victor von Doom. In the resulting, inevitable conflict with Latveria, the planet was reduced to a scorched cinder, from which the genius in the iron mask simply teleported away.
If Fisk was not protected, he dies. That branch split into dozens of others, but they all led either to a world where The Hand, taking advantage of the chaos after his death, summoned a powerful demon who created one of the forty-nine branches of Hell on Earth... or to the gray, suffocating order of HYDRA, which had conquered the world. The attempt to wrangle Fisk, pushing him into an alliance with the mutants, had also failed, for now. It was a promising combination, but HYDRA had been one step ahead.
S.H.I.E.L.D.? A useless organization, rotten from the inside. In one timeline, she made direct contact and gave Fury all the information. He was assassinated the next day. In a second, she carefully leaked him tips, but the director was too slow. While he was gathering evidence and checking facts, the world had time to burn. An alliance with the mutants was, in itself, a good idea, but first, HYDRA had to be dealt with. Pulled out by the roots.
Her thoughts flowed smoothly, discarding the losing options. What if she used him? That boy, Diego. The Ancient One had deliberately hidden him from HYDRA's all-seeing eyes, protecting him as a resource for the Galactus problem. But... perhaps she could arrange a meeting for him. With another product of this sick world—with Zebediah. "Yes. That option is worth considering." She brought the can to her lips and took a sip, as if sealing her decision.