Peter looked around at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents bustling back and forth inside the air-raid shelter, asking with curiosity, "How many people are in here total?"
"Not many, about eighty or so. Their primary reason for existing is to quickly build S.H.I.E.L.D.'s core framework back up after it collapses." As Fury spoke, he continued leading Peter forward. Peter glanced to his left and right; the walls here were lined with heavy metal plates that creaked noisily underfoot.
He could not help but ask, "Has this place been running all along? Did S.H.I.E.L.D. foresee this day right from the start?"
"No. It's only been operational since after the millennium. My predecessor—who I can now confirm was a Hydra operative, Alexander Pierce—and his predecessor, my father, Jack Fury... Oh right, he was a white man... as well as all the previous Directors of S.H.I.E.L.D., didn't even know this place existed."
Fury reached a heavy metal door, turned the valve handle to unlock it, pulled the door open, and stepped inside. He sat down in an old chair. "Aside from me, Peggy Carter is the only person who knows about this location. No one else, not even the construction workers, had any idea; a good number of them were subjected to memory wipes."
In other words, this location was a new nerve center specifically established to deal with an all-out war against Hydra. Although Peter had his doubts about whether every single person here was truly trustworthy, the facility was hardware-isolated enough to guarantee it would not be wiped out by Ultron in an instant.
Feeling somewhat hopeful, Peter asked Fury, "Do you have any way to deal with Ultron?"
"I do. We borrow Kang's time machine to travel back to the past and kill Pym before he creates Ultron. That way, we can prevent Ultron's birth entirely."
Peter found it hard to keep a straight face. That plan was literally the exact idea Wolverine came up with at the start of the Age of Ultron comic event. Calling it a bad plan was an understatement; it was completely useless and utter garbage. If they eliminated Pym before Ultron was born, then the entire chain of subsequent events that required Ultron—such as the Green Goblin AI incident, Nimrod, or even fighting Kang the Conqueror—would end in total failure. The resulting future might not be any safer than the present.
Looking at it now, if they really wanted to destroy Ultron, they would be better off killing Mephisto, who had brought Ultron to the present in the first place. Then again, if Earth-616 could completely obliterate Mephisto right now, they wouldn't give a damn about Ultron anyway.
"Anything else?"
"Nope. That's the only plan I could think of to counter Ultron. He's definitely going to destroy the other two Ultrons before Christmas Eve. Even though I don't know why, he seems extremely confident," Fury said, having clearly gathered relevant intel from other channels to arrive at the same conclusion as Peter. "And once that happens, Ultron's overall logic will become even more bulletproof. Using logic to destroy him will be even more impossible for you guys."
Peter took a deep breath.
"So you really don't have a solution at all?"
"I have one idea: trigger a complete technological regression. I know Stark has a plan to shut down the entire global network, but that won't work. You can't know if Ultron has backed himself up somewhere. If he has, the moment the network is rebooted, we'll be facing a brand-new, perhaps even stronger Ultron."
Ultron would achieve immortality alongside the internet, unless every piece of internet hardware and software on Earth was smashed to pieces, followed by building a new internet from scratch. But that sounded even more absurd—how could you guarantee the entire world would listen to you and destroy every single network-connected data storage device?
Peter sighed. Hearing all this, it really seemed like Ultron was an unsolvable problem.
"Or..."
Fury paused and looked at Peter. "The reason Ultron is so powerful is that he exists across the entire internet. That also means his computing power has a physical upper limit in Earth's environment. In theory, we could resolve this by continuously compressing the scope of his computing power."
"Pym thought of that too. Avenger Ultron will pull as much computing power as possible to resist Gospel Ultron, seizing global computing resources. When the time comes, he can mark out a safe zone of computing power. If we can find a way to constantly disrupt Ultron's calculations, we can allow Avenger Ultron to capture more computing resources."
Yet this plan had two flaws: first, how to prevent Avenger Ultron from turning on them in the future; second, how to guarantee they could continuously deplete Ultron's computing power? Ultron surely had contingency plans to deal with entities capable of interfering with his setup, including S.W.O.R.D., Thor, and Magneto.
Though Peter had no idea how Ultron planned to pull that off.
Fury paused to think for a moment, then asked Peter back, "Why not just strike that guy playing prophet while he's busy absorbing his brother? Wouldn't that be far less difficult and stressful?"
Peter was left temporarily speechbound. He pondered for a good while before realizing that was indeed true. Yet when Pym had presented the current plan, he had only mentioned the other approach.
Did Pym actually intend for Ultron to undergo one more iteration? Why?
Peter's brows furrowed as a possibility occurred to him. Pym needed a more advanced, further-evolved Ultron to execute a specific plan—a plan that was inevitably designed to counter Ultron, and very likely aimed at preventing Avenger Ultron from betraying them.
"Pym and Vision..."
"Pym's Vision?" Fury looked at Peter. "What did you figure out?"
"Pym most likely has a plan that could help us resolve this—or at least find a way to stand against Ultron. I'm just not sure if Ultron knows about it. Besides, this plan..."
Peter hesitated, looking at Fury and then around the room. Fury understood what he was worried about: "Relax, there are no listening devices here."
"Pym's plan should be to modify the remains of Jim Hammond, turning them into a host body for Avenger Ultron—essentially making Ultron into a 'person.' It requires an extra iteration so that an Ultron equipped with human-like emotions and cognitive organs can become a true ally to humanity."
Fury nodded, understanding why Spider-Man was hesitating. "But that plan isn't very humane. Hammond was a veteran superhero from the past; he shouldn't be treated like that. That's your line of thinking, right? Especially considering he was an old brother-in-arms to Captain America."
Peter nodded.
"In that case, let's change our approach. I'll give you something, Spider-Man. You take it and hand it over to Pym."
Fury did not specify exactly what the object was, explaining only what it represented: "If Pym can make use of it, then the 'Vision' he creates won't be an Ultron turned human. It will be Jim Hammond upgraded using Ultron."
"Or rather... a rebirth."