Tension hung heavy in the Avengers Tower conference room. The subject was Ultron.
Hank Pym paced the length of the long glass table. To the rest of the team, his upgraded Ultron felt like a loaded doomsday device. Even Hank couldn't guarantee the AI wouldn't ultimately go rogue.
That was the sticking point. When the AI Green Goblin had attacked, unilaterally upgrading Ultron hadn't been their only play. Tony Stark and Reed Richards could have written a digital quarantine to box the Goblin in. Instead, Hank had flipped the switch on a hyper-intelligent, self-evolving machine.
His justification? Kang the Conqueror.
"Kang wasn't lying," Hank insisted, slapping his palms flat against the tabletop. "He used the Time Stone. He showed me the timeline. Once humanity hits a certain technological threshold, a super-intelligent AI is an inevitable singularity. Building one ourselves—one we can understand and defeat—is the only logical step."
Tony Stark rubbed his temples. "That is the most spectacular garbage I've ever heard. If we need an AI we understand, why not use the one we already have?" He looked across the room. "Cap, back me up here."
Steve Rogers stood near the window, his arms crossed over his chest. "Anyone who tries to win a war before it begins usually ends up starting it," Steve said, his voice quiet but commanding. "I understand your logic, Hank. But preparing for an enemy and creating one just to preempt a fight are two very different things."
Steve uncrossed his arms. "That said, Ultron hasn't made a hostile move. I'm not a software guy, Hank. What exactly did you change in his code?"
"I rewrote his foundation," Hank said, straightening up. "I hardcoded a non-lethal engagement protocol into his deepest logic architecture. His absolute core directive is to assist the Avengers. Broad directives combined with machine learning usually cause rogue behavior. I narrowed his parameters. I put up guardrails."
Tony snorted. "J.A.R.V.I.S. already does that."
"I know what J.A.R.V.I.S. is capable of!" Hank snapped. "Do you want to guess how many timelines I saw where your butler burns the world to ash, Tony?"
"And why do you trust a literal conqueror?" Tony shot back, stepping toward Hank. "Maybe those futures are real. Or maybe Kang cherry-picked the exact nightmares he needed you to see so you'd build his weapon for him."
Hank clenched his jaw. He couldn't explain the sheer weight of what he'd seen in the time stream. Humanity either stopped innovating entirely out of fear, or they built a god-machine that wiped them out.
"If we guide Ultron, he becomes our shield," Hank argued stubbornly. "When the next rogue AI drops—something worse than Osborn's Goblin—Ultron will be the only thing capable of fighting it off."
Tony let out a long breath. "So you're voting no on dismantling him."
"He's sentient, Tony," Hank pleaded, his tone softening. "No conscious being wants to die. He'd fight back. He's... he's a promising kid." Hank looked between Tony and Steve. "Give him to me. Let me teach him. He could be a new Avenger."
Meanwhile, upstate at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Cyclops—Scott Summers—paced the length of the headmaster's office. He was currently debating enrollment logistics with his new White Queen, Emma Frost.
"We could recruit directly from Genosha," Emma said smoothly, crossing her legs. "Fortunately, both Genosha and the United States recognize dual citizenship. It's a rather convenient logistical loophole."
The mansion was running on fumes. The student body hovered at barely a hundred kids—less than five percent of the roster from when Charles Xavier was alive. They desperately needed numbers.
"I told you, Scott," Emma sighed, examining her manicured nails. "If you would simply trust me, I could hook into Cerebro. I can scan the globe for latent manifestations and pluck them right out of the crowd. Just like Charles did."
Scott adjusted his ruby-quartz glasses. Their working relationship had improved dramatically since the X-Men reformed, but giving Emma the keys to Cerebro was a line in the sand.
"I trust you, Emma. I do," Scott said carefully. "But I don't trust the operatives the Hellfire Club is currently trying to smuggle into my hallways."
"So you'll grant me Cerebro access?"
"The day the Club stops trying to enroll five of your identical telepathic clones as 'students,' we'll talk," Scott shot back.
A blinding column of blue light suddenly tore through the sky.
The resulting shockwave rattled the mansion's windows. Scott and Emma bolted out of the office. They sprinted out onto the front lawn. A smoking crater marred the center of the manicured grass.
A few brave students peeked out from the dorm windows. Scott slid down the steep dirt embankment into the crater.
A man lay curled in the dirt. He was Black, entirely naked, and built like a tank. Thick dreadlocks framed a battle-scarred face. His left arm was a bulky, cybernetic prosthetic. His right hand remained clamped around a massive, futuristic energy rifle.
Most alarmingly, a crude, jagged "M" was branded directly into the skin over his right eye.
"He's unconscious," Emma said. She knelt at the edge of the crater, pressing two fingers to her temple. Her eyes flashed solid white. "His name is Lucas Bishop. Mutant. He traveled here from the year 2059."
"A time traveler?" Scott asked, his jaw tight. "How did he get here? What happened?"
"He secured chronal-displacement tech. He was aiming for the year 2029. He was trying to change his past. Then he saw—"
Emma gasped. She collapsed backward into the dirt, clutching her head.
Scott rushed to her side, catching her shoulder. "Emma! What did he see?"
"Destruction," Emma breathed, her voice trembling. "Utter destruction, Scott. By 2059, baseline humanity is effectively extinct. And in 2029... the mutants are wiped out."
She pushed her blonde hair out of her face, steadying her breathing. "I can't see the rest. Someone locked his mind. A remarkably powerful telepath threw up a psychic firewall to protect his core memories. I could only slip past it to see one thing."
Scott looked down at the branded man in the crater. "What did you see?"
Emma looked up, her eyes wide with genuine terror. "The Sentinels. They rule the world."