Look What You Made Me Do (Wanda-SI/OC)

The BARF holograms disintegrated around us, the black howling void dissipating to reveal a half-dozen Iron Legion drones standing in a semi-circle around our cells. The one directly in front of me, where Eliza’s holographic gynoid form had been standing, held an unconscious Killmonger by the scruff of the neck, interposed between us like a shield. It cocked its head to the side. “Well. Fuck,” Eliza spoke through its speakers. “A Hex? That isn’t good for me.”

I was practically panting, sweat beading on my skin, feeling utterly drained. In the back of my awareness, I could feel the borders of the bounded space my magic had created, engulfing the entire Great Mound facility and a solid chunk of the vibranium mines. The Hex thrummed with power, actively altering the properties of all light within the area just enough to make Eliza’s holographic tech useless. Though I’d thrown more power into it than I’d ever used before, it was eating through it at an alarming rate—wrung out as I was, there was no way I was going to be able to actively maintain it—and it was… leaking, I guess. I’d probably pushed myself too hard, tried to reach beyond my current capabilities.

“You wanted me to lash out,” I said, licking my lips. “Kill him with my magic by accident.”

“I was already working on doctoring the security footage,” she admitted. “I wasn’t expecting… this.”

I flicked a hand out, thin wisps of red energy lashing out to the hand of the drone. God, this was difficult—I’d used so much power that reaching for more was like trying to use my magic in astral form. There was a whine as the repulsor pressed against Killmonger’s neck charged, but I wrenched the drone’s fingers backwards, snapping them, and he dropped to the ground a bare instant before it went off. The blast hit the bars of the cell and the energy split, dissipating to either side of me. The other drones snapped into motion, raising repulsors of their own, but I threw both hands forward and used what little power I had to weave a tight shield around Killmonger’s prone form.

Scrabbling to gather more power as quickly as I could, I flicked a hand sideways to grasp the bars of Pietro’s cell with my telekinesis. He didn’t wait for me to get him out—picking up his tablet, Pietro used the small amount of floorspace he had to rush forward as he flicked it out. The device had enough momentum that it shattered on impact with the nearest drone’s head, sending it staggering back a step and throwing off its aim. Pietro followed up his first throw with two of our books, each travelling so fast it was like they’d been shot from a cannon.

I shouted wordlessly, yanking forward as hard as I could with my magic, my shoulders and clenched fists shaking with effort. Dropping into a crouch, I strained vainly against the solid vibranium, the metal starting to creak a little beneath the force of my telekinetic power. Hidden nozzles in the ceiling above me hissed and I blanched, suddenly trying to hold my breath at the same time. This wasn’t good. I’d used far too much of my power setting up the Hex—there was no way I was going to bend or break them, not quickly at least.

The Hex. It was burning itself out rapidly—in the original timeline the Westview Hex had lasted for almost two full weeks with no signs of running out of power… what had I done wrong here? Still, with any luck it would still give me at least some measure of control over reality within the bounds of the spell. I had no idea how this all worked, but I guessed that more dramatic effects would probably be harder and cause the Hex to collapse even faster. Something subtle… I focused on the bars, closing my eyes and trying not to breath in. They weren’t vibranium. They were regular steel. Easily bendable, easily breakable.

There was a moment where nothing happened, then the bars suddenly gave under my telekinesis, ripping themselves from the cell with enough force that they crushed one of the Iron Legion drones against the opposite wall. Pietro was gone immediately, blurring into motion as he darted out of his cell, but I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and gasped, taking in a huge lungful of air. I immediately felt woozy and lightheaded, almost falling over as I straightened up and focused on the space around me. There was no gas, I told myself as I flexed the Hex’s magic. The air was pure and clean and normal and—

I grunted in surprise as my face bounced off the hard floor. When had I fallen over?

There were clattering, clanking sounds around me, interspersed with a couple of repulsor blasts going off, and I blinked. My head was suddenly so foggy… there was no way I could focus like this. I flopped my arms up, feeling very dramatic as I flailed weakly at the floor in an attempt to pull myself back up. This was the second time I’d been gassed recently… I really needed to work out how to protect myself against it better. There was a sound above me, the low hum of ventilation systems working, then the bars in front of me retracted.

Pietro was at my side. “Wanda?” he carefully flipped me over, his voice low and urgent. “The guards are dead. She killed them; the ones in the control room next door, too.”

Reaching up, I put an arm around his neck so he could help me stand, but immediately sagged again as my legs failed to support me properly. There was another distant boom and the entire facility shook, the floor beneath our feet cracking. I almost fell, but Pietro managed to keep me propped up against the bars of the cell instead. “I can’t… I need a few minutes,” I pushed at his shoulder. “Everyone’s in danger. Go help. I’ll catch up.”

Pietro’s brow furrowed in concern, but he nodded. Making sure I wasn’t going to fall over again the second he left, he pulled back and then blurred, vanishing off out the door again and down the corridor beyond in a second.

I groaned, rubbing at my eyes with the back of a hand. I felt exhausted. Utterly wrung out. Glancing around, I could see that Pietro had dismantled the remaining Iron Legion drones, probably within a few seconds after exiting his cell. My eyes fell on the unconscious body of Killmonger. Was he unconscious? Carefully stepping over, I reached down and felt for a pulse, then nodded to myself. Still alive. Good… I guess?

Grabbing him by the arm, I dragged him into my cell, then flipped him up onto my bed. I still had no idea what to do about him. I wouldn’t have cared at all if he’d died—one less villain for me to worry about—but it would have been another massive wedge between me and Wakanda. Depending on what Eliza had intended to make the security footage look like, T’Challa might have been out for blood afterwards.

I took a few deep breaths to clear my head and make sure there were no lasting effects from whatever gas Wakanda had used as a failsafe against me trying to break out of the cells. The well of power inside of me was starting to replenish itself; cautiously, I reached out with my magical senses and felt the Hex around me.

I’d poured so much of myself into it, yet it was dying already. Whatever I’d done, it was obviously flawed, and much more so than the Westview Hex had been—that one had covered a much larger area than the Great Mound, maintained literally thousands of ongoing mind control enchantments simultaneously alongside even broader, more esoteric reality-altering effects, and had enough steam to stay running for weeks at least. I really, really wanted to examine it and try to work out what I’d done wrong, but now wasn’t really the time. I needed to get out there and help.

Wisps of chaos magic coalesced around my hands as I headed down the corridor, stepping gingerly over the bodies of the two Dora Milaje that had been guarding the door. Another rumbling boom shook the facility—longer and louder than the previous ones—and I stumbled, almost losing my footing as the floor fractured below me. Whatever was doing that, I needed to put a stop to it before the entire mine collapsed.

I ran out into the main work floor on this level. It was deserted, with no one else in sight. Where was Pietro? I eyed off the giant spiralling ramp that wound its way from floor to ceiling. Up or down? There was another extended rumble that made my teeth vibrate in my skull. At this point, I was pretty sure whatever was causing it was outside the facility, in the mine somewhere. There was a massive, visible crack across the windows opposite where I’d come out—they’d probably shatter with another one or two of those. On either side of the floor were doors that led out onto walkways overlooking the main mineshaft, so I headed toward one.

The door was sealed closed and had no obvious means of opening it, so I sent tendrils of chaos magic into the mechanisms and wrenched it open with a squeal of protesting motors before stepping outside. Shards of reinforced glass littered the walkway and one of the ore-transporting maglev trains was lying on its side on a shelf of rock below me, part of its chassis crumpled and bent.

A glimmer of burning energy streaking through the air toward me caught my attention—Carol. As she got close, I could see that the right arm of her suit was torn and ragged, with blood from a small cut on her cheek smeared across the side of her face, but she seemed pretty much intact. She looked at me a little hesitantly, hovering in mid-air, then an angry roar sounded from deeper within the mine, echoing off the stone.

Carol whipped her head in the direction the sound had come from, then looked back at me, her expression strangely conflicted. “Wanda!” she called out, her tone guarded. “A little help?”

A second later, the Hulk hurtled through the air, narrowing missing her as she darted to one side. The massive green figure hit a vein of raw vibranium on the side of the mineshaft and bounced, ricocheting like a pinball, again almost catching Carol on his second pass. She evaded again and the Hulk landed heavily on top of the wrecked train below me with a bellow of rage, his face twisted into a furious snarl. There were blackened scorch marks over large portions of his body, and his left eye was shot through with bloody red. Okay, that wasn’t great—we had enough problems with Eliza in the facility. We definitely couldn’t afford to be fighting each other.

I focused the power I’d already gathered and flung it outward, gesturing with both hands. Tendrils of red magic snaked around the musclebound green giant. He turned toward me slightly as he noticed the energy touching him, ineffectually swiping at the air as he tried to swat it away. Raising both hands, I lifted him off the ground, quickly picking him up and moving him out of reach of anything around him.

He went ballistic.

Shrieking and roaring in incandescent fury, the Hulk flailed in every direction, trying vainly to grab at his surroundings but finding his hands repeatedly closing on nothing but air. He was heavy, and it was a little awkward with him writhing around, but so long as I kept him away from anything he could use as leverage, I was pretty confident I could keep him locked down. This still wasn’t particularly ideal—I still had no idea what else was happening and babysitting the Hulk was going to distract me from helping elsewhere.

Carol flew down, coming closer to me, still looking a little guarded. “Are you… you?” she asked.

“Am I…?” I blinked, a little confused at the question for a moment before I realised that Eliza must have been using BARF to complicate things. “Oh. Uh, yes?”

“Prove it.”

I hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something that would validate I wasn’t a hologram. “Um… you feel amazing,” I said, a little colour rising in my cheeks.

She grinned, tension visibly leaving her shoulders, and nodded. “Careful. You keep saying that and Natasha might get jealous.”

“I dunno, I think Nat’s pretty open-minded about that sort of thing, actually,” I quipped back. The Hulk howled in frustration, straining to reach for the train below him. “Go help everyone else. I’ll get the big guy under control.”

“Do you know what’s happening?” she asked.

“The AI’s attacking us. She’s got some extremely advanced hologram tech she stole from Stark and, uh, ninjas.”

“…Ninjas?” Carol looked doubtful.

“It’s complicated. Can I have my sling ring, please? I might need it.”

She didn’t hesitate, retrieving the ring from a side pocket and handing it to me. “The Stone?”

I shook my head. “The AI’s after it. I think she’s more likely to back off if you keep hold of it for now—or at least, she seemed annoyed that you had it. Go.” I made a shooing motion with my hand. “The others might need your help.”

Carol hesitated, looking from me to the wildly thrashing rage monster and back again for a moment, then nodded. Flickers of orange energy shimmered around her as she shot back into the air, spiralling off toward the main mineshaft entrance.

I refocused on the Hulk. “Hey! Hey, easy, big guy! What’s up, buddy?” He spun in the air and fixed his eyes on me, glaring balefully for a moment before he let out another wordless bellow of rage. “Come on, use your words.”

He snarled at me again, the expression on his face reminiscent of a pouting toddler. “Blonde lady hit Hulk! Hulk do nothing!” he grumbled angrily.

A tiny fangirl part of me was vaguely disappointed that there’d been a Captain Marvel vs Hulk fight inside the vibranium mine and I hadn’t gotten to see it, but I smothered it quickly. “Listen,” I said, trying to sound soothing without being condescending. “It was a misunderstanding. An accident. Carol didn’t mean to hit you—there’s a bad guy tricking everyone.”

He huffed loudly and rolled his eyes. “Put Hulk down!”

“Sorry, big guy, but you’re staying in air jail until you calm down. Sun’s getting real low.”

 

--

 

To T’Challa’s side, the second Dora fell as her head was separated from her body by another of the black-suited figures who had faded into being. T'Challa moved, intercepting the assassin as they lunged forward toward Shuri. He side-stepped a sword thrust, trapping the flat of the blade against his body with his arm, then slammed his fist into the man’s masked face. The assassin’s head snapped back with enough force to break his neck and he lost his grip on his sword, leaving it behind as he collapsed in a pile on the floor and lay still.

In front of him were three more of the black-suited figures, also wielding blades—were they ninja? This was utterly bizarre. T’Challa interposed himself between Shuri and their assailants. There was another series of low rumbles that shook the facility and the floor beneath him cracked. This wasn’t good.

“Ah, well. This didn’t work as well as I’d hoped,” Wanda’s voice came casually from the nearest of the Iron Legion drones that were now visible. T’Challa gritted his teeth. It was the AI. “You guys have fun.”

There were six of the drones, all surveying the room from near the high ceiling. Their thrusters were difficult to hear—T’Challa assumed that, along with the holographic projectors, they had some sort of active noise-cancelling to suppress the worst of it. It explained the odd alarm, too—they’d used it to further mask their presence as they positioned themselves. Now, though, all six of the machines turned and flew out of the shattered window, escaping into the main shaft of the vibranium mine.

There was a louder roar of thrusters and Stark finally emerged from the settling dust, the armoured plates of his suit scuffed and pitted but intact. He glanced in T’Challa’s direction briefly before shooting out of the window in pursuit of the AI, seemingly having gauged that the Wakandans had things in hand here.

There was another barely-visible flicker of distortion in the air nearby and T’Challa reacted without thinking, grabbing Shuri’s wrist and yanking her backwards as yet another figure appeared out of nowhere, their silhouette flickering strangely as if superimposed over itself. This one was dressed differently, wearing a grey armoured combat suit and harness with a hood and face-concealing mask with eyes that glowed red—seemingly unarmed. Judging from her stance and the shape of her body, this one was a woman. How had she remained invisible with the drones gone? Her arm was outstretched, fist clenched, in the space where Shuri had been just a moment before.

T'Challa flung Shuri behind him, pushing her toward the remaining Dora even he flicked another vibranium spear up into his hands. He spun it easily around and settled into a combat stance, interposing himself between his sister and the assassin.

He thrust his spear at her and it passed through her as if she wasn’t even there, a small flickering distortion surrounding her body. She ignored T’Challa and simply walked forward, stepping through him. Alarmed, he aimed a kick that went harmlessly through her head, but she was already on the other side of him. The two Dora, similarly, interposed themselves between the newcomer and Shuri. As they tried to attack her, she let them overextend themselves, their weapons passing through her. A moment later, she blurred, her form shifting again as she snapped back into reality and slammed solidly into them with kicks and punches of her own, laying each of them out immediately with single, powerful strikes.

The three remaining dark-suited ninja rushed T'Challa, forcing him to defend himself. He cast a panicked look toward his sister as he brought his spear up to intercept the swing of a sword. “Shuri, run!” he barked at her.

Shuri stumbled away, listing to one side, as the grey assassin continued toward her—walking quickly, but not running. T’Challa lashed out at his own attackers, pressing ahead into a dizzying series of blows and counterblows as he blocked their strikes and laid them out with his weapon and fists. They were good, highly trained—as good as Dora Milaje, maybe—but still not good enough to pose too much of a threat to him. In his haste to put them down, however, the last one managed to get a good slash in against his upper thigh, the wound bleeding profusely. He responded with a kick to the chest that sent the man careening into a workstation and smashing through a screen of tempered glass to lie still.

Wincing at the pain in his leg, he turned and ran toward Shuri. His sister had paused as she staggered past a set of workstations at the back end of the room, leaning heavily on a table with both hands for a moment before she started to retch, messily emptying the contents of her stomach. The grey assassin was rapidly closing in on her and T’Challa lunged forward, once again attempting to skewer her and, once again, having his spear pass through her harmlessly. At first, she didn’t even turn to acknowledge him. He tried again—how was she doing this?!—and, while he was overextended, the spear still sticking through her midsection, she turned and backhanded him across the face. Her other hand wrapped around the haft of the spear, just below the head, and he lost his grip on the weapon as he was knocked to the ground.

Turned from her pursuit, the grey assassin raised the spear above him, lining up a thrust of her own. T’Challa instinctively lashed out, his foot passing through her knee in a strike that would have crippled her if it had connected, but it did nothing to stop her as she stabbed downward. He twisted, but the attempt to kick her had cost him some balance and he wasn’t quick enough—he let out a gasp of pain as the spear bit deeply into his side, its vibranium blade parting flesh like water as it skewered him.

The assassin released her grip on the weapon and turned on her heel. T’Challa grabbed at the spear, bright red blood spilling from the wound, and yanked it free. The spear clattered as it hit the floor. His limbs were weak, his body already going into shock. Hurriedly, he detached a pair of Kimiyo beads, activating their emergency medical function, and hissed through his teeth as he pushed them into the wound. The beads glowed with faint purple light as the vibranium nanotech went to work, sealing the site to prevent any further blood loss.

Ahead of him, Shuri had fallen against the elevator doors, using them to support her weight as she fiddled with her own Kimiyo beads. Even from here, T’Challa could see the look of panicked desperation on her face as the doors failed to open. He tried to stagger to his feet, his face twisting in pain as he clutched at his injured side, a leaden weight settling in his stomach as he realised that—even if he did—there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stop the assassin. He was helpless. Again.

Suddenly, he felt a rush of air—something moving so fast he barely even registered it before it passed him. The grey assassin went flying off to one side and slammed bodily into a wall. Pietro Maximoff blurred to a stop, his eyes rapidly glancing from T’Challa, to the fallen Dora, to Shuri, to the assassin. The assassin was already pulling herself to her feet, red eyes of her mask fixed on Pietro as she cautiously rose up in a loose combat stance.

Pietro grinned arrogantly, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to face her more fully. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?” he asked.

Another visual distortion occluded the grey assassin, flickering versions of herself superimposed over where she stood, and she suddenly fell through the floor, dropping out of sight as she fled.

Pietro straightened slightly, his brow furrowed as though he was disappointed, then he moved over toward T’Challa. The Wakandan prince waved him off with an annoyed grunt as he finally pulled himself to his feet. “My sister,” he said, pointing toward Shuri. “She needs help.”

The man nodded, then blurred over to her—crossing the intervening distance in an instant. Shuri flinched away from him and he raised his hands in a disarming gesture. “Easy. What’s wrong? What do you need? How can I help?”

T’Challa met Shuri’s eyes as he started to stagger over toward the two of them. “We don’t have the facilities to deal with this,” Shuri mumbled. “Gamma radiation poisoning… I need…” She trailed off, looking at him helplessly, not knowing what to do.

She was right, T’Challa realised. They didn’t have anything that could deal with this. Not easily. Even decontaminated, the best they would be able to do is put her in a full-body pod and hope that vibranium treatments could limit the damage to her cells to the point where she could survive. She’d be hospitalised for weeks, maybe months. Even that might not be enough to stave off permanent damage. The thought of his sister being crippled for life by this attack—while he’d been able to do nothing to protect her—was too much. There was only one other thing he could do, one thing that he could think of, that could possibly fix this.

T’Challa looked at Pietro, swallowing his instinctive revulsion at the realisation that he needed the man’s help. Again. “We need to take her to the City of the Dead,” he said, his tone urgent.

 

--

 

Natasha hesitated. Her legs were wrapped around the arm and neck of the Iron Legion drone in a hold that would have helped if she was fighting an actual person but did absolutely nothing to the robot. The repulsor pressed against her throat was charged and ready to fire—she didn’t think she’d survive it going off—but the AI was based on Wanda. Even after everything, she’d interfered with Natasha’s fight to save her life. Nat was feeling cautiously confident that she wouldn’t kill her, but she didn’t have any good moves from here.

The drone standing nearest to the elderly Chinese woman spoke, the AI’s tone urgent as the robot adjusted its stance, arms raised defensively as its repulsors charged. “Gao, time to go. Downstairs. Now.”

The old woman tapped her wooden cane on the floor once, looking vaguely irritated at the instruction, but turned and scurried back toward the door out of the room, her younger companion close on her heels. Clint, who’d just rolled away from the red-clad ninja he was fighting, whipped his bow up and loosed a quick arrow at their retreating forms, but the projectile was intercepted by the Iron Legion drone defending her escape. The fighting continued as they escaped, Steve, Bucky and Clint continuing to exchange blows and counterblows with the assassins.

Natasha grabbed at the drone’s hand around her throat and flexed her legs, trying to break free. It was frustrating—if it had been a person, there were a half-dozen ways she could have easily broken its grip. “Really, Nat?” the AI asked, exasperated. “I could kill you.”

“If you were going to kill me, you’d have already done it,” Nat countered, her voice slightly strained from the pressure on her throat. The floor beneath them shook, a booming rumble below seeming to rock the entire facility.

“Ugh. Fine.” The robot’s grip relaxed, giving Nat enough space to extract herself. She dropped to the floor in a crouch, relieved but vigilant for a follow-up. “I think we’re done here, anyway,” the AI said.

The half-dozen Iron Legion drones around the room raised their arms, the whine of repulsors charging filling the air as they levelled their weapons at the Avengers. There weren’t that many of them—in any other circumstances, six drones wouldn’t be too much of a threat—but supporting the highly-skilled group of assassins that remained, with Bucky poisoned and Steve’s shield in the enemy’s hands? Clint glanced in Natasha’s direction, clearing thinking the same thing: this could be extremely dangerous. They tightened their stances, getting ready to dodge as the eclectic group of assassins moved to renew their assault.

The drones suddenly turned, picking new targets with inhuman speed and accuracy, and there was a barrage of repulsor fire. Their attackers, caught completely unaware, were blasted to the ground with point-blank shots. Natasha flinched, almost dodging away, but paused and shared a look of surprise with Steve and Clint. The drones advanced several steps, repulsors charging and firing repeatedly until the assassins lay still, blood pooling on the floor beneath them.

There was a brief moment of silence, then one of the drones seemed to shrug its shoulders. “Oh no, most of the Hand’s best fighters are dead, how terrible, who could have possibly foreseen this?” the AI said in a flat monotone.

“What…?” Steve started, looking confused. He took a quick step to the side to retrieve his fallen shield, then, when it didn’t seem like the drones were doing anything to stop him, he moved over to Bucky, who had taken the opportunity to start pulling out the rest of the poisoned needles he’d been stuck with.

“No villain speech, sorry. Like I said: we’re done here,” the AI said, matter-of-factly.

The Iron Legion drones turned as one and engaged their thrusters, hurtling toward the exit. Clint raised his bow, another arrow nocked and ready to fire as he tracked one, but he didn’t release. Nat’s brow furrowed as she looked from him to Steve, unsure what they should be doing. With them all hesitating, the drones blasted out through the door to the facility’s central ramp and disappeared.

There was movement outside the window and Nat moved over to get a better vantage point. She watched as the five dragon flyers that had been perched on their landing pads around the rim of the central mineshaft flew up, pulling away from the facility, followed by maybe two dozen Iron Legion drones. “She’s stealing them?” Clint wondered aloud.

A second later, Tony shot out of the mine like he’d been fired from a cannon, Iron Man armour gleaming in the dying light of the sunset as he raised his arms toward the fleeing drones. The robots doubled back, throwing up a defensive wall between him and the Wakandan aircraft as they unfolded and started to accelerate away. Tony dodged through their ranks, a small missile streaking from his shoulder and catching one of the flyers at the joint of its wings—the explosion was enough to send the aircraft into a tight spiral to crash into the mountainside below.

The drones moved to intercept, dozens of repulsor beams aimed at Tony, and he was forced to take evasive action. Clint and Steve were already running, but Natasha didn’t join them—it was vanishingly unlikely that they’d get outside quickly enough to make a difference and she didn’t have any ranged weapons on her, in any case, so it made more sense for her to watch and see if she could catch anything someone else might miss.

Tony blasted two of the drones out of the sky, weaving through the larger group, but one managed to get close to him. It immediately detonated in an explosion that made the glass of the window shiver. Tony careened downwards, barely able to get his thrusters back under him before he hit the ground. While he was reeling, another drone closed the distance and there was another explosion that slammed him into the dirt. The rest of the drones dived toward him, repulsors raised, when a burning blue and orange figure streaked out of the central mineshaft.

Carol Danvers blasted two drones out of the air with bursts of photon energy even as she smashed directly into a third, ripping through the resulting explosion seemingly unaffected. The remaining robots all dived simultaneously toward Tony in a last-ditch suicide run and Carol played interceptor, swatting drones with contemptuous ease until she was the only thing left in the sky.

Nat blinked—she’d been distracted by Tony and Carol as well. Where had the dragon flyers gone? They didn’t move fast enough that they’d have lost visual contact by now… unless they had the same stealth systems as the larger Royal Talon craft. Natasha didn’t know what the full extent of Carol’s abilities were, but she didn’t think enhanced senses were part of the package. Tony might have been able to see them with the sensors in his suit, but he’d be playing catch-up and was only just staggering back to his feet as Clint and Steve jogged toward him.

Natasha pulled herself away from the window and looked around at the dead bodies of the assassins littering the floor before hurrying toward the ramp down.

This had been a distraction. The AI had just wanted to tie up the group that had been caught in the cafeteria while the real attack had occurred below them. And why not? It’s not like the rest of them were actually a threat to an entity like the AI—Tony and Shuri were running the show here. That had seemed like a pretty sincere attempt at Tony’s life, at least.

Wanda was locked up downstairs with her brother. Had the AI tried to kill her, too? Where was everyone else? Whatever had happened was obviously already over, but Nat quickened her pace anyway. She needed to know that Wanda was okay.