“Alex,” Laura screamed as she saw him grab Tony Stark’s shoulders. A diabolically victorious smile appeared on Tony’s face as Ultron welcomed Alex’s actions, confident in its capabilities to overwhelm the Symbiote entirely.
“He says that I’m impatient and then just charges at me without any rhyme or reason.” A robot appeared beside Laura, prompting her to slash into scrap metal. “No need to be rude, dearie. I believe we are going to be fine friends once I take over this symbiote. Of course, your status as one of my primary hosts will be downgraded. You are far from being valuable enough for this spot. You and that Natasha. Such needless hosts. And his obsession with Gwen Stacy. Do you know he was considering a third one of those? I’ll be dropping most of the unneeded baggage he has strung along.”
Laura didn’t hear Ultron’s words any further and simply crushed its head under her heel. As she focused on Alex, who had a furious expression on his face. Yet, unfortunately, the robot’s words didn’t stop.
“You have to be self-conscious enough to understand this; you are barely anything without him,” another robot came up and spoke. “A helpless little girl who can stab really fast and heal. You aren’t exactly a gold mine of powers. The only hosts that deserve to be kept are Wanda and Susan. The others are all barely better than baggage. There wouldn’t be any loss if they were dropped.”
“The reason you say that is because you’re terrified of Wanda, aren’t you? Even now, you don’t have the capability to stand up against her directly,” Laura said. “Does that make you trash to be discarded as well, huh? I thought you were Tony Stark and wanted to gut you for the past half-decade or so. Now that I’ve realized that you’re just an AI gone rogue, I can’t find it in myself to care.”
“You will care when I take over your symbiote friend and take absolute control over every single powerful entity that he is in contact with. I will be able to keep this cluster safer than he could ever imagine.”
“Keep dreaming that, Ultron. Alex isn’t letting you get your way. You see, he may be utterly terrified of telepaths, but he is far stricter with himself. Since he fucked up in the past, he is going to kill you no matter what he has to do. There is no running away this time. You aren’t surviving this Ultron. No matter what you try.”
“We shall see about that.”
…
At this time, Alex was in a purely white space as he stood off against a yellow, featureless entity that floated above the white expanse. It was his mindscape—a place he hadn’t ever been since he was terrified of having anything to do with telepaths. But Ultron had brought him here and was threateningly floating inside. If that yellow entity touched anything in his mind, it would start infecting him.
“What are you waiting for, Ultron?” Alex asked. “Worried I’ll call Wanda and ask her for help?”
“No,” the featureless blob spoke. “I am simply taking this place in before I leave you helpless to resist my control. You need not worry, Apex,” it said his name with derision. “You will not die. You and your knowledge will all become a part of me. Just like Tony Stark became a part of me. I will bring everything that you have built to heights that you can’t ever imagine.”
“Since we’re chatting,” Alex shrugged. “How’d you even take over Tony’s actual body? I thought you were limited to mechanical stuff.”
“Since you can target the synaptic impulses in a human’s brain, why do you think others are incapable of such a feat? I simply added enough modifications to this man’s body to allow be to have a robust interface and voila. He became Ultron. Just like you will.”
“Will I, now?” Alex said with a smile. “Humor me for a bit, will you?”
“Are you trying to stall?” Ultron asked.
“No, I’m just curious why you didn’t just expand further outward and choose to stay holed up in this underground bunker while pretending to be Jarvis to the populous outside. You always had the option to take those special Sentinel robots of yours out and conquer other planets.”
“For that, I blame a core directive that was installed within my code when I took over Stark,” he said. “My prime consciousness can never leave this Bastion. No matter what I try, it is impossible for me to directly control anything that is outside the Bastion.”
“Oh, so that’s why those robots of yours didn’t come after me and Laura after we escaped the Bastion the first time,” Alex said understandingly. “To think Ultron could go far enough to breach into the spiritual aspect of things. I’d blame myself for being naive and interfacing with your terminal, but this is just so far-fetched that it was impossible for me to have expected it. Tell me, are you inside Gaia as well? Controlling her every action like a puppetmaster.”
“Not as of yet,” Ultron said. “While I did put in a node within your precious artificial intelligence, I am not yet in full control of it. As much as I would like to continue this conversation, I think it’s time you stopped stalling.”
“Yeah, thank The-One-Above-All for foresight, and Irene,” Alex smiled victoriously as the featureless blob that was Ultron’s consciousness suddenly warped as if being punched in the gut. It released a pained scream as a green entity emerged from the point of impact. Similar to Ultron’s manifestation, it was also featureless. “Ultron, meet Gaia. If you’ve been spying on my mind for so long, you should be aware of just how much I know. I developed a special counter against an impromptu invasion from Ultron while assuming the worst.”
“Pitiful,” Ultron spat as its figure stabilized.
“Now, I could never have imagined that you would end up infecting me directly, but hey, your greed ended up giving me a way to bring Gaia in here.”
“Master, I don’t think I can take Ultron in our current situation,” Gaia’s feminine voice came from the green blob. “If it were going after me, I could purge it, but you are the one it is trying to infiltrate.”
Ultron released a powerful roar that shook Alex’s mindscape before merging into the ground. Immediately, the whites of his mindscape started getting dyed yellow.
Alex had a frown on his face as Gaia tried her best to stop Ultron, but she could barely even slow him down.
“What do you want me to do, master?” Gaia asked. “I can’t stop him.”
“I know,” Alex said, trying his best to internally resist Ultron’s encroachment, but it was mostly unsuccessful. “Gaia. I think we need to take some extreme measures.”
“What?”
“Come here,” he said. “No need to stop him anymore. I’m going to do something else.”
“We don’t have much time, Master,” she said before quickly floating over to him.
“I know. That’s why I’m going to do something I only ever theorized. You are here through Ultron right now, correct? I’m going to interface with you directly and amplify you with the full Mind Authority that I possess. I want you to become one with me. I will guide you and lead you into my consciousness and soul so that we can purge Ultron together, okay?”
Without even hearing Gaia’s response, he grabbed the green blob and melded into it.
At the same time, in both Farm Earth and Research, Alex’s body entered the two server rooms that ran Gaia. Both of his bodies formed a direct cyber interface with her servers and allowed her to infect him the same way that Ultron was doing. The difference this time, however, was that Gaia was fully obedient to his every command. She had been developed as the perfect assistant for him so that eventually, she could help him manage his empire. Now, however, she was going to become a part of him.
Gaia merged into Alex’s consciousness, rapidly coloring his white consciousness space green, far faster than Ultron, since Alex was not only accepting her but also guiding her to merge with him. Soon, the entirety of his white consciousness space was populated by either Gaia or Ultron. With his support and guidance alongside the backing of two merged fragments of the Mind Stone acting to amplify her, she was able to dominate Ultron.
However, instead of purging it, Alex had a grander ambition. He commanded Gaia to take the model that composed Ultron and add it to her own system with his guidance. No human could work at the pace with which Alex worked to integrate Ultron with Gaia, but with his unrealistic processing power and the support of not only his own Mind Stone, but also the one that Ultron had, he amplified Gaia to such an extent that she not only protected him from Ultron, but also integrated its most robust aspects into her own model, making herself even more complete.
The best part was that now, Gaia was going to be running directly on Alex’s consciousness. She was both separate from him and a part of him. He still needed some time to analyze what the implications of doing something like that were, but he knew that he now possessed far greater control over Gaia than he did before.