“Well, thanks,” said Stark, “but I don’t think it’s over. Ultron isn’t hardware. It’s a digital sentience. It’s very, very likely that Ultron has fled. I mean, pulled its sentience back into the global data network.”
“Perhaps,” the Vision agreed. “But there are limited possibilities. Catastrophic damage has been done. The East Coast region is a mess. Most systems are down.”
“Rioting in the streets?”
“Civil disturbances are likely to be underway already. What I am saying is that Ultron might not have been able to—”
“Ultron will find a way,” said Stark. “It got into the system, it can get out. It was pretty much connected to everything, everywhere. We need to find it. Contain it. Trap it, before we start to reboot and rebuild our own systems.”
The Vision nodded.
“I’ll need the full compliance of the authorities,” said Stark.
“They will wish to restore order as rapidly as possible.”
“I know, but we’re not starting anything up again until Ultron is pulled out of hiding and locked in a box.”
“What kind of box?”
“A metaphorical box. I’d better start talking to people.”
Stark began limping toward the exit. The Vision drifted after him.
“Did you kill the power?” Stark asked.
“The power?”
“Ultron was cannibalizing for parts. His access to external supply was restricted.”
“The power grid was shut down when I arrived,” said the Vision.
Stark smiled.
“Well, Special SIGINT Support Supervisor Diane Lansing needs a big bunch of flowers and a pay rise,” he said.
“Iron Man?” said the Vision.
“Yeah?”
“I do not wish to strike a negative note at this time, but you should be aware that there are other problems.”
“Like what?”
“I was at Avengers Tower when this emergency became apparent, and I came to assist at once. Communications systems have been severely impaired, so information is scant—but when the system began to crash, I was monitoring threat alerts. I can brief you. The key one was taking place in the Russian Federation.”
“Condition?”
“Condition Alpha.”
Stark paused.
“This is Condition Alpha,” he said, gesturing at the burning warehouse behind them. “This here. This is Condition Alpha so much we need a new condition level just to describe it. You’re telling me there’s another one going on?”
“One at the very least. Thor and Wanda responded, but contact was lost. There are also troubling developments surrounding threat issues being pursued by Hawkeye and the Black Widow, and by Captain America. Again, contact has been suspended.”
“Go back to Russia. What was happening?”
The Vision paused.
“I am not sure how to describe it. A significant part of Siberia had ceased to exist.”
“Destroyed?”
“No…ceased to exist in any real-world terms.”
Stark shook his head and popped his visor. He wiped soot, sweat, and blood from his face.
“I think Ultron may have bashed me one time too many,” he murmured. “Tell me all that again.”
TWELVE
BERLIN
20.38 LOCAL, JUNE 12TH
THE BIKER with the “Roadkill” neck tattoo lunged in with a hunting knife that had skinned a lot more than deer in its time. Steve Rogers barely seemed to move at all. He tilted at the hip, allowing the straight drive to pass by his ribs instead of plunging into them. Then he pinned the biker’s overextended arm with his crooked elbow and smashed the heel of his palm up under the biker’s chin.
He relaxed the arm lock and the biker dropped, out cold.
“I asked politely,” Rogers said in German.
But conversation was not an avenue that remained to be explored. Two more bikers rushed him, enraged at the sight of their comrade being schooled so easily. One was almost seven feet tall and built like a ski lodge.
Rogers threw a straight punch that smashed the smaller one backwards and then spun a reverse kick at the human ski lodge.
The big man was fast and durable. He soaked up the kick and grabbed Rogers’s ankle. A pretty hardcore move. Decent training. That figured. Club Weltschmerz wasn’t a standard urban dive, despite its crude industrial-chic decor and the rows of heavy hogs resting on their stands in the lot outside. It was a known meeting place for the radical right; a lot of the heavyset, leather-coated individuals inside were private military, specialist independents, and worse.
An ideal recruitment site for Hydra, especially if Hydra was in a hurry. As Captain America, Rogers had raided the club twice before, including once when it had been called the Rathaus and served as a front for a brutal A.I.M. off-shoot with seriously nasty ideas about eugenics.
That time, he’d needed stitches.
The human ski lodge flexed his grip. The handsome blond American interloper in the dark leather duster needed to be taught a lesson, and said lesson involved swinging him by the foot into the juke box. Repeatedly.
Rogers dropped onto one hand, allowing the big man to take his weight, and then kicked hard with his other foot. Knuckles broke. The ski lodge yelped and let go.
Rogers pushed back, somersaulted, and landed on his feet. The club patrons all came for him, riled up and anxious to inflict pain. The fierce techno blasting from the speakers was still thumping. The strobes and pump lights were still flashing. The patrons almost looked like they were dancing: bodies moving to the beat, any industrial Berlin club on any night.
Bottles flew. Rogers ducked a fist, blocked two more, and kicked a utility knife out of a thrusting hand. He threw two quick punches, and a bearded powerlifter sat down hard on the floor, blood gushing from his broken nose. Rogers turned and leaned into a high side-kick that propelled another knife-wielding man up into the mesh grille protecting a speaker stack. The grille buckled and tore away, crashing down on top of the man and knocking him to the floor.
A bottle bounced off Rogers’s back. He elbowed another biker out of his way, and then took the legs out from under a bellowing skinhead who was waving a tonfa baton. Rogers caught the tonfa as it flew free, braced it into honte-mochi, and slammed the baton into the face of a suited businessman—who looked out of place except for the skill with which he was wielding his push dagger.
Veneered teeth flew.
Rogers spun the tonfa, clutched it by the shaft, and used the stubby grip to hook a combat knife out of the hand of his next assailant. Someone else punched him in the ribs. Rogers broke the tonfa over that someone’s head.
The brawl became frenetic. Jeering faces blinked in and out of view in the strobing light. Someone else grabbed Rogers from behind and picked him up. The ski lodge again. It had to be. Rogers resisted the urge to butt backwards with his head. Instead, he plunged forward, leaving his leather duster behind in the ski lodge’s grip.
The mob recoiled. They could see what he was wearing underneath: the red-white-and-blue body armor. Part combat kit, part ideological statement. They understood why the blond American had walked in alone, and why he had taken out so many of them in less than a minute.
They could also see what was strapped to his back under the slicker.
Some fled, either out of fear or a desire to avoid an incident that might jeopardize careers or contracts.
Captain America was fairly impressed by how many of them didn’t back off. The ski lodge was one who stayed. He surged forward with a belligerent howl and tried to wrap Cap’s duster over his head to smother him.
Cap ducked aside, unhooked his shield, and slammed the flat of it across the ski lodge’s face with both hands.
The giant exhaled teeth and blood and collapsed backwards, knocking several other aggressors down with him.
One man—a handsome, wolfish guy in a black-leather bomber jacket—pulled a .40-caliber Sig Sauer. Despite the pr
ess of bodies, he simply opened fire.
Psychopath. Well, that was one of the desirable tick-boxes on the average Club Weltschmerz recruitment questionnaire.
Cap blocked the fire with his shield, hating the fact that the ricocheting bullets were plowing into the crowd. Three men went down. There were blood patterns on the floor amidst the broken glass.
Cap threw the shield and took down the gunman with a massively hard impact. Cap snatch-caught the shield as it rebounded, and then slammed aside a man who was moving in with a bayonet and a broken bottle.
Someone else was shooting. Things were escalating. Rapid fire ripped through the club, smashing glass, shattering lights, puncturing walls, and killing people.
Now, at last, the crowd properly broke and fled for cover. Crumpled bodies were left behind where they had fallen.
Cap saw the jagged muzzle flash. From the sound, rate of fire, and general fury, he figured a MAC-10 or an Enarm SMG. Bullets rattled off his shield, making almost musical sounds. The techno music, on the other hand, had cut off. The lights were still strobing and flashing, but the only sounds were screams and the blurred rip of the machine pistol.
Cap got behind one of the club’s bare concrete support pillars—the club had been a produce warehouse in its former life. A light fixture fell out of the ceiling, dragging wires that sparked and shorted. He waited until he heard the gun’s clip clack out, then turned and launched the shield before the shooter could reload.
Impact. The man dropped.
Cap caught the shield.
The skirmish was pretty much finished. Outside, Cap could hear sirens, and the boom of loudspeaker orders to get down and stay down. Police and S.H.I.E.L.D. units were circling in to secure the location and make mass arrests. Cap was pretty certain no one exiting the club would get beyond the parking lot or the end of the rear loading bay.
The glare of moving searchlights flashed in through the club’s cage windows. There was a low throb of fanjets as whisper-copters swung over the lot.
Cap picked up the shooter, brushed a line of abandoned glasses and beer bottles off the bar with a sweep of his arm, and laid him on the bar top, face up. The shooter was Eastern European and had gang tags inked on his neck and face. While the man was still unconscious, Cap emptied the pockets of his faded-green flak jacket: two spare clips for the MAC, a knife, a lighter, a plastic baggie of something illegal.
A wallet.
“Talk to me, Viktor Tajic,” Cap said, reading the I.D. in the wallet’s plastic window.
The man stirred, spat blood, and groaned. Contact with Cap’s shield had not made his face any more adorable.
“Viktor? I’m talking to you.”
“Hail Hydra,” the man spat, smiling defiantly with fewer teeth than he’d owned when he’d walked in for a beer that evening.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” replied Cap, keeping his hand on Viktor’s chest so he couldn’t sit up. “Even Hydra has standards. You’re reckless, unskilled, and you have a habit. They didn’t want to know you, did they?”
The man swore at him.
“What a charming sentiment. Tell me about Hydra.”
“Let me go.”
“No. Hydra, Viktor?”
“Someone was recruiting,” the man mumbled. His energy was crashing fast, the pain making itself known.
“Here?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“They didn’t want you?”
“No.”
“But you wanted the job. It paid well, didn’t it? Didn’t it?”
“Yes!” Viktor nodded. He squinted and looked at Cap.
“I need something for the pain,” he said.
“You’ll get it. What was the job description?”
“No details,” the man replied. He winced and groaned. “Just operatives needed. Military experience. Protection work. We all knew it was Hydra.”
“How?”
“They are known here.”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes, but they seldom come looking to hire. They are usually less…direct.”
“No kidding. How did candidates contact them?”
“No contact,” the man replied. “They just interviewed potentials in the back room. There, by the toilets. They came, they went.”
“They didn’t take you?”
“No. No.”
“But you thought that if you killed the famous Captain America when he came in asking questions, they might take you seriously next time?”
Tajic hesitated. He closed his eyes and nodded.
“You’re an idiot,” said Cap.
He let the man go. It was a dead end. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. would get something in general interviews, from the club staff especially. Reserving a private room and putting the word out would have involved some contact.
Police and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents moved into the ruined club. Medics tended to the injured littering the floor. The strobes shut off and the main lights came on, hard and unforgiving. In the sudden glare, the place lost all of its dangerous urban allure. It was bare, sparse and dirty, and the sentiments of the old posters and graffiti on the walls were unsavory.
“They make you pay for damages in here?” asked Gail Runciter.
Cap sighed.
She looked around the place. “When you go out clubbing, you really club, don’t you?”
“I’m not in the mood, Gail,” he replied. “This was dumb. I knew coming in that I wouldn’t get anything except a fight.”
“You were looking for leads.”
“I was clutching at straws. And venting, too, probably.”
“Got it out of your system?” she asked.
“No.” He glanced at her. “I’m ashamed of myself, actually. People have been hurt. Not-very-nice people, but people nevertheless. I was desperate, and I pretty much provoked this.”
“Do your penance later,” she said. “I’ve got something.”
* * *
THE DIVERS recovered Gustav Malles’s cell phone,” said Runciter. They were sitting in the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D. whisper-copter that had settled on the front lot of the club.
“It’s pretty new,” she went on. “Purchased about a month ago in a city-center store. We believe Malles hadn’t been in Berlin long. He’d probably just got his first retainer fee from Hydra and was treating himself.”
She held up the smartphone in a plastic evidence bag.
“What did you find on it?” Cap asked.
“The techs went through everything: call log, texts, instant messages, the works. There’s nothing that might be what we could call ‘work-related.’ This was his personal cell. There’s probably another phone still at the bottom of the river, a burner that Hydra issued him for operational work.”
“Then what use is this?” asked Cap.
She smiled at him in a way that suggested he should be patient.
“Malles liked his new phone. He set it up personally and pretty much okayed every feature it offered him. I think he played around with it when he was bored. It was his new toy. He downloaded apps. He set up Spotify, Instagram, and Facebook.”
“Facebook?” said Cap.
“It gets better,” she grinned. “At some point, he downloaded a free app called What Next? It’s a basic street finder, a travel guide. Helped him find his way around, showed him the nearest bars and fast-food joints. You know the sort of thing.”
“Gail—”
She smiled again.
“To use What Next? you have to okay Know My Location. Malles probably just tapped ‘yes’ when the box came up. Didn’t think twice. So for the last three weeks, it’s mapped his movements. Malles didn’t use the phone for work, Cap, but it was in his pocket while he worked.”
Cap looked at her.
“We know where he went?” he asked.
“Better still, we know where he went regularly.”
She pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Cap. It was a list of addresses.
“The airport, several
times. Various train stations.”
She leaned over and pointed to an item on the list.
“This place here, pretty much every day. It’s a hostel in Saar. We think that’s where he was staying.”
“Can we get people on it?”
“Bridge is already sending a team in. The really interesting one is this. An apartment building in Riechstahl. Nineteen visits in three weeks. The last one was immediately before Malles went with Strucker to Auger GmbH today.”
“In other words, go to the boss’s place, pick him up, and drive him to Auger.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Cap stared at the address. “This could be Strucker’s base location?”
“Yep.”
“We have to move,” said Cap. “If Strucker got out of the water—”
“—and we’re presuming he did,” she put in.
“Then he might risk going back to his place. To clean it out or resupply. Maybe pick up something important. He’s probably injured. Forced to take chances. He’d risk it.”
“But he doesn’t know we know the location,” said Runciter.
“Strucker’s not stupid. If he goes there at all, he won’t stay long. Just grab what he needs. How quickly can we move in?”
“Bridge has already authorized the op,” she said. “We have two tac teams moving into position.”
“I’m going in first,” said Cap.
“Bridge said you’d say that,” she replied. She leaned forward, tapped the pilot on the shoulder, and made a circular motion with her upraised index finger. The pilot nodded and lit the fan drive. It whined up to power.
As the copter lifted away, Cap pulled on his mask.
* * *
SIX MINUTES,” said Runciter over the headsets.
Cap nodded.
“Tac in position,” she added. “Waiting for your go.”
“Okay.”
The city lay below them: bright lights, glittering streams of traffic, the amber haze of sodium street lighting. Corporate logos glowed in neon colors from the tops of high-rise business premises. Lights blinked on rooftop masts and needles.
The stars were out, just visible in a night sky bleached brown by the ambient glow of the city. But there was no air traffic: no winking running lights of passenger jets leaving the airports or stacking up over the city to land.