Just as Norman Osborn surrendered his consciousness to the immersion pod across town, Emma Frost shattered the illusion in Avengers Tower. She severed her telepathic link with Barton Hamilton's mind. The revelation spilled out: the Green Goblin wasn't just a biological parasite; it was a digital virus. And the AI Goblin knew it had been exposed.
The digital phantom abandoned its quiet infiltration. It decided to burn the board down.
The heroes didn't get a second to process the horror. The lights in the penthouse lounge flickered and died. A sickening electronic screech echoed through the air vents. The Green Goblin AI surged through the Tower's mainframe. It quarantined the local sub-routines. It choked JARVIS out of the network before Tony Stark's resident AI could even trigger a lockdown protocol.
Hidden panels slid open across the walls, floor, and ceiling of the living quarters. Micro-missile pods, laser-targeting arrays, and heavy rotary cannons descended from the plaster. They swiveled. They locked onto the three Avengers and two X-Men in the room.
"You hid heavy weaponry in the living room?!" Steve Rogers roared.
He lunged. He grabbed the unarmored Tony Stark by the collar. He hurled the billionaire behind a reinforced leather sofa. Steve dropped to one knee and raised his vibranium shield. A storm of high-caliber rounds tore the room apart.
"I have to prepare for dimensional intruders!" Tony yelled over the deafening gunfire. "What if someone teleports into the kitchen?"
Hank Pym didn't bother arguing. He tapped his belt regulator and shrank down to the size of a dust mite. He darted under a laser sweep that incinerated the coffee table. "Tony!" Hank yelled, his miniature voice barely audible. "Can we force a manual override for JARVIS?"
Tony kept his head down as a micro-missile detonated against Steve's shield. "No! If I initialize a reboot sequence, the Goblin AI will trace the backdoor! It owns the entire building's network!"
"Alright, geniuses! I'm a little out of my depth on the computer science!" Scott Summers shouted.
He knelt behind Emma Frost, her skin already shifted into a flawless, impenetrable diamond shell. Bullets sparked and ricocheted off her back. Scott stepped out of cover. He tapped the side of his combat visor. A blinding, wide-beam optic blast erupted from the quartz lenses. The crimson energy swept the ceiling, melting three rotary cannons into glowing slag. Scott dropped back behind Emma. "Tell me how we shoot a computer!"
Hank hit his belt regulator, snapping back to full size beside Tony. He wiped sweat from his brow. "The Goblin AI is a localized neural map! It's a top-down artificial intelligence layered with human neuroplasticity. It thinks like a psychopath, but it calculates at a quantum speed. It outpaces JARVIS. It outpaces anything! It lived inside Oscorp' database for months without triggering a single security flag."
"Meaning?" Steve asked, bracing his shield as another volley hit the drywall.
"Meaning we can't beat it in a fistfight!" Hank yelled.
Tony cursed, pulling wiring from a damaged panel. "Most people with the tech to map a brain don't do it! Richards and I have ethics protocols! We understand the singularity risks! Osborn just jammed his psychosis into a server rack to save his own skin!"
I appreciate the compliment, Stark.
The synthesized, mocking voice of the Green Goblin dropped from the overhead speakers.
If I truly wanted a spectacle, I could brute-force the nuclear launch codes for three major superpowers right now. I could end the world. But where is the fun in ruling a cinder block?
Steve rose slightly from his crouch. "What do you want?"
A compromise! The AI purred. We pretend none of this happened. You keep playing dress-up. Barton Hamilton takes the fall. I remain safely dead in the public eye. And occasionally, I surface to slaughter a few dozen peasants for sport. We all win.
Steve tightened his grip on his shield. He didn't blink. "You're daydreaming."
A pity, the Goblin AI sighed. Then hear my final declaration, Captain. An Ultimatum. Destroy me, or be destroyed.
Through the panoramic windows, several glowing pinpricks crested the Manhattan skyline. External tracking missiles. Scott stepped out of cover. He fired a continuous crimson beam, detonating two of the projectiles over the East River.
"Tony!" Steve barked. "Options!"
Tony was already crawling across the floorboards. He pried open a maintenance hatch. "Looking for the manual override!" He jammed his arm into the sub-flooring. He seized a thick bundle of optic cables and yanked hard.
Sparks showered the floor. The emergency klaxons wailed. Thick, interlocking vibranium-laced blast shutters slammed down over the panoramic windows. The room plunged into darkness, followed immediately by the red glow of the backup generators.
Outside, the remaining missiles slammed into the blast shutters. The Tower shuddered, but the armor held.
Tony stood up, dusting his hands. "Ever since I started modeling threat assessments for a rogue AI scenario, I knew we needed an analog failsafe. When the internet turns hostile, you cut the cord."
Emma Frost's skin rippled, the diamond shell fading back into flesh. She smoothed a stray bullet casing off her pristine white coat. "Your brilliant masterstroke is pulling the plug, Mr. Stark?"
Tony ignored her. He heaved a massive, lead-lined case out from the floor cavity. He popped the latches. The sleek, silver-and-red plating of the Silver Centurion armor caught the emergency lights.
Tony cracked open the back of the helmet and slotted a physical microchip into the motherboard. "Closed-loop system. Local area network only. It relies entirely on onboard processing. Zero external internet connectivity. The comms run through a localized radio frequency powered by the Tower's isolated backup Arc Reactor." He tossed several sleek earpieces to the group. "Put these on."
The silver armor clamped around Tony's body, sealing with a pneumatic hiss. "I'm flying to the Baxter Building. We need Reed Richards to help crack the architecture. Summers, get to Westchester. Bring McCoy. We need every big brain on the planet right now."
Hank clipped his earpiece in. "Thank god Janet and Bruce are off-site. We have to fight fire with fire. JARVIS doesn't have the brute-force processing capability to counter this thing. The only way to win is to build an artificial intelligence capable of matching the Goblin's aggression..."
"No, Hank," Tony snapped, his faceplate sliding down. "We are not rushing an Ultron deployment. Cap, you need to secure Norman Osborn. If that AI downloads back into his biological brain, you put him down."
"What about S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Thunderbolts?" Steve asked.
"The Goblin owns the network. They won't receive the distress beacon," Tony said. His boot thrusters ignited, hovering an inch off the floor. "I'll grab Bruce. Hank, secure a clean server rack. Prep a localized reboot for JARVIS."
Tony blasted out through an emergency chute. Steve, Scott, and Emma scrambled for the stairwells.
Hank Pym stood alone in the dim, red glow of the ruined penthouse. He let out a long sigh and turned toward the server access port.
A sudden rush of displaced air whipped across the room. Ozone and static electricity burned Hank's nostrils. He spun around.
A man in purple-and-green chronal armor stood amidst the rubble. Hank had only seen that face in the temporal footage.
"Kang?!" Hank gasped, reaching for his Pym-particle belt.
"Mr. Pym. I am here to offer counsel," Kang said. His voice echoed with a strange, metallic resonance. He smiled, raising a gauntleted hand. "You may resist, of course. But understand that no weapon in this primitive century can scratch me."
Hank froze, his hand hovering over his belt.
"I came to deliver a simple truth," Kang continued. "The only way your Avengers will survive the Goblin King... is to build Ultron."
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