✓ | Darkness.

chapter seven

CHAPTER SEVEN: "IT'S WHAT WE DO"

"All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch." Bruce explained softly as everyone was in the lab discussing Ultron. Olive felt out of place, but Steve somehow convinced her to stay. He had also mentioned that he needed to talk to her afterwards.

"Ultron." Steve mumbled softly. He looked tired. They were all tired, after a fun night of partying that quickly turned into a fight against robots, they were exhausted.

"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha said, her arms crossed.

"He's in your files, he's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting." Rhodey said, taking a few steps forwards.

"Nuclear codes." Maria spoke up while she removed the glass from her foot that she had stepped on during the fight. Olive grimaced at the sight, knowing she would not be handling it as well as Maria was if they switched places.

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey repeated in disbelief. "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can." He finished.

"Nukes? He said he wanted us dead." Natasha frowned, her head tilting slightly.

"He didn't say 'dead', he said 'extinct'." Steve corrected. Olive hummed softly at Ultron's strange choice of words.

"He also said he killed somebody." Clint added, walking forwards to get closer to the group. Olive hated all of this. It was stressing her out too much and she was worried that if she stayed any longer that she would crack under the pressure and let all hell break loose. She wanted to go home-but she had no home to go back to. That was left behind years ago, in a series of tragic events that the Maximoff would rather block from her memory.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria thought out loud, wincing as she removed a piece of glass from her foot.

"JARVIS." Olive realized, her voice a whisper as she looked up at Tony with wide eyes. She had grown to like the AI during her time here. Ten days is a long time to get familiar with an AI, she supposed.

"Yes, there was." Tony sighed, walking forward as he flicked his phone to show a destroyed, orange ball that represented JARVIS.

"What?" Bruce mumbled, walking around the hologram. "This is insane." He said in utter disbelief.

"JARVIS was the first line of defence. He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense." Steve sighed, looking down, his arms crossed over his chest.

"No. Ultron could have assimilated JARVIS." Bruce shook his head, staring at the destroyed hologram, still in shock. "This isn't strategy. This is... rage." He finished off. It was an emotion he knew well, coming to that conclusion was easy for him.

Just then, Thor stormed in, heading straight for Tony, his hammer in one hand. He grabbed Tony by the throat and lifted him in the air, cutting of his oxygen. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Steve said in alarm, quickly getting to his feet as he walked over to the men.

"It's going around." Clint mumbled referring to the 'rage' comment.

"Come on, use your words, buddy." Tony said in a strained voice. His eyes were wide as he gripped Thor's wrist, not even bothering to try and fight the god.