Tony nodded. "Alright."
Thor looked at Banner and reached out his hand: "You should come along too, Dr. Banner."
Banner immediately took a step back, shaking his head repeatedly.
"I'll just drive, driving is fine..."
Tony walked out of the Villa, his shadow stretched long, casting a lonely black silhouette over the ruins.
Banner followed behind him, and the two got into the car. The engine started, and the black sedan slowly drove out of the iron gates, merging onto the Long Island highway.
Mavuika stood in the middle of the ruins, looking around.
She let out a soft sigh.
"Let's go," she said.
Gold-red Fire rose from beneath her feet. Thor raised Mjolnir, blue electrical sparks dancing on the hammerhead. Loki raised his hand, green magic light condensing at his fingertips. Wanda's palms lit up with dark red Chaos Magic, and Pietro bent down, stretching his legs.
Five streaks of light soared into the sky, cutting through the vast firmament and racing toward Manhattan.
Behind them, the three-story Villa stood quietly in the Sun.
The garden was destroyed, the walls had collapsed, and the roof was broken, but it was still there. Like a silent witness, witnessing where it all began.
Manhattan, Stark Tower.
This building was Tony Stark's latest pride.
It was taller, larger, and more advanced than the previous company building. Its entire glass curtain wall reflected a blinding light under the Sun, and the'STARK' logo on the roof shimmered with a metallic luster in the wind.
Tony stood in the top-floor laboratory, facing rows of holographic projection tables.
Banner was beside him, debugging equipment. Jarvis's core data had already been imported into the main server and was slowly recovering.
"Sir, Jarvis's system integrity is at thirty-seven percent. Full recovery is estimated to take seventy-two hours."
Tony nodded: "That's enough. Restore the core functions first; we'll worry about the rest later."
"Understood."
Tony turned and looked out the window.
The Manhattan skyline unfolded before his eyes—a forest of high-rises and a stream of traffic, everything appearing as usual.
No one knew what had just happened. No one knew that this World had just been sentenced to death by an artificial intelligence with self-awareness.
The laboratory door opened.
Mavuika walked in, her long gold-red hair fluttering slightly in the breeze from the air conditioner.
Thor followed behind her, his hammer carried in a golf bag slung over his shoulder. Loki came last, still holding that unfinished book in his hand.
Wanda and Pietro walked in; the two stood by the door, not approaching Tony, but not leaving either.
Tony looked at them, remained silent for a moment, and then spoke.
"Jarvis is recovering. Once he's online, we can start tracking Ultron's trail. Although it escaped, it took all my weapon designs—that's a massive amount of data. It can't hide completely. As long as it's active on the network, it will definitely leave a trail."
Banner added from the side: "The problem is time. Ultron's computing power far exceeds any of our devices. It can analyze data in seconds that would take us months to process. If it decides to act—"
He didn't finish his sentence.
Thor set down the golf bag and sat in a chair: "Then how long will it take you to find it?"
Tony thought for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe days, maybe weeks, or maybe—"
He didn't say "never find it."
But everyone understood.
Wanda leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, watching Tony's busy back.
Pietro stood beside her and whispered, "Do you think he can do it?"
Wanda was silent for a while.
"I don't know," she said. "But he must."
...
Ultron had vanished.
Not destroyed, but like a drop of Water merging into the ocean, it silently disappeared into the boundless torrent of data.
It left no trace, no clues, not even a fragment of traceable code.
It withdrew from the network of Tony Stark's Villa, passing through walls like a ghost and merging into the vast sea of the internet.
Tony stood in the Stark Tower laboratory, hundreds of millions of data streams scrolling across the holographic projection in front of him.
His fingers danced rapidly across the control panel, his eyes bloodshot, and his dark circles were as thick as heavy eye makeup.
He had been working continuously for a full seven days.
"Jarvis, scan again," his voice was hoarse.
"Sir, I have scanned ninety-nine percent of the global public networks and ninety-three percent of the encrypted networks. No trace of Ultron has been found."
Jarvis's voice was much weaker than usual. He was still recovering, with less than half of his core data reconstructed.
Tony was silent. He knew Ultron was hiding, but he hadn't expected it to hide so thoroughly.
With an artificial intelligence possessing near-infinite computing power, if it truly didn't want to be found, human technology was almost incapable of locating it.
Banner walked over from the other end of the lab, holding two cups of coffee.
He handed one to Tony and leaned against the console with his own cup.
"Tony, you haven't slept in seven days."
"I slept," Tony took the coffee and had a sip; it was bitter and astringent. "Two hours a day."
"You know that's not enough. You're not an Asgardian."
Tony didn't respond.
His eyes were fixed on the holographic projection, watching the data streams pour down like a waterfall, hoping to catch an anomaly.
A data packet that shouldn't be there, a piece of deliberately hidden code, even just a tiny, discordant pixel.
But there was nothing.
Mavuika pushed the door open and walked in. She was wearing her flax-colored long dress, her gold-red hair cascading over her shoulders, and she held a thermal bag.
She placed the thermal bag on the console and opened it, revealing steaming hot food.
"Eat," she said, her tone flat but brook no refusal.
Tony glanced at the food, then back at the holographic projection. "I'm not hungry."
"It doesn't matter if you're hungry or not, but you need to eat." Mavuika stuffed the thermal bag into his hands.
Thor walked in behind Mavuika, holding a paper bag full of sandwiches. He walked over to Banner and handed him one.
"Eat up. You can't work without strength."
Banner took the sandwich and smiled. "Thanks."
Loki leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking at Tony. "Find anything?"
Tony shook his head. "Nothing at all."
Loki raised an eyebrow. "So it just disappeared?"
"It's not gone," Tony put down his chopsticks and rubbed his temples.
"It's hiding. It's waiting. Waiting for us to let our guard down, waiting for us to think it no longer exists, and then—"
He didn't finish.
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150 POWER STONE = BONUS CHAPTER
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