Echoes of the Machine
"O…wen"
Owen lay on what felt like the very sun itself; his body burned from the inside out. The pain pierced him with such intensity that he had screamed until he begged for death; the sensation was tearing him apart from within.
"O…Wen"
His blood boiled and turned to vapor inside his veins, yet his body refused to break; it was as if a divine punishment of sacred fire was consuming every fiber of his being. His skin and flesh looked charred, with a strange glow; golden and reddish veins traced across his body like living embers.
"OWEN!"
Owen's eyes snapped open, his body drenched in sweat, a strangled scream still caught in his throat. A sharp pain throbbed in his right hand; he could feel the veins pulsing as if they were still burning. Disoriented by the splitting headache that followed, he looked around. Wanda stood beside his bed, her expression slightly worried.
"Owen, are you alright?" she asked, her voice tinged with concern. The bed was soaked; even the sheets were drenched with sweat.
Before answering, Owen glanced down at his right arm, at the glove covering his hand.
"I'm fine. Just a nightmare," he said, forcing a casual smile. His body still remembered the recent agony, but he endured it with a hint of composure.
Wanda studied him for a moment, clearly doubting that answer.
"Did Tony find anything?" Owen asked, changing the subject; he knew the genius had probably spent the night searching for whatever they were chasing—and had surely dragged Banner along with him.
"Yes, more or less. That's why I came to get you," she replied.
"Alright. I'll take a quick shower and head over," Owen said, but Wanda didn't move; she seemed to hesitate before leaving. Owen smirked mischievously.
"Or do you want to shower with me?" he teased in a low voice.
Wanda blushed instantly. "N-no, Pietro's waiting for me," she stammered, quickly turning around and leaving the room.
Owen chuckled softly at her reaction. "So, if he weren't waiting, would you have joined me?" he murmured.
Once Wanda was gone, Owen rolled up the sleeve of the shirt he had fallen asleep in the night before. There it was—the black glove, reaching up to his elbow; a piece Tony had made with materials and cooling tech designed to ease the pain caused by the Dark Phoenix's lingering energy. But now, the glove was scorched. The marks of his scars stood out against the charred surface, as if the wounds themselves had burned through the fabric.
Owen removed the heavy glove, only to find the scars glowing faintly red, as though freshly made. His regeneration rate, while not extreme, was higher than Captain America's; those wounds should have already healed. Instead, they remained raw, as if they had begun burning all over again.
He sighed and headed for the shower.
…
Meanwhile, Wanda, who had hurried out of Owen's room, entered the living room with a furrowed brow.
"What's wrong?" Pietro asked.
Wanda didn't answer; she was lost in thought. What unsettled her was seeing Owen writhing in his sleep—it hadn't seemed like an ordinary nightmare. She had tried to use her powers to sense his mind, but Owen's mental resistance, which he'd said kept growing over time, had reached a level even she couldn't breach. For his mind to be that sealed off meant one of two things: either Owen had been consciously strengthening his mental barriers, or something—or someone—had been persistently trying to invade his mind.
Wanda was so absorbed in this thought that she didn't notice Pietro until he appeared right in front of her, waving a hand in front of her face. She didn't even react.
With his usual mischievous grin, Pietro vanished in a blur and reappeared almost instantly, holding a black marker and looking far too amused.
"If you even think about it, I'll hang you upside down from the roof," Wanda warned, her gaze cold and sharp.
"Think about what?" Pietro replied, the marker disappearing from his hand faster than she could blink, as he put on an innocent smile.
Wanda stared at him for a moment longer, still suspicious.
…
Owen entered the lab, his hair slightly damp and a new glove covering his right arm. Everyone else was already there, waiting for him.
"Well, look who decided to wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Tony quipped, flashing a teasing grin as he turned toward him.
Banner, sitting in front of several screens, looked up with deep dark circles under his eyes and gave a weak wave of acknowledgment.
Nicolas was sitting in a corner, engrossed in a phone game against Pietro; from the frustrated look on his face, it was clear the speedster was winning—as always.
Steve Rogers stood calmly with his arms crossed, greeting Owen with a brief nod. Sam stood beside him, silent as usual.
Noticing Owen's glance toward them, Tony spoke first.
"They got here early this morning. I guess the shiny new Avengers base, full of freshly restored S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, wasn't enough for your little investigation, huh?" he said with his signature sarcasm.
And he was right; Steve, as the team's leader, had integrated the few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who had passed the background and loyalty checks. However, Owen didn't think it wise to trust them so easily. He knew that even without direct mind control, any of them could end up like the Winter Soldier—with implanted memories and false programming. That was why Tony preferred to rely on his Iron Legion… although Owen had suggested deactivating it for a while to avoid complications.
In its place, part of the army under General Nathaniel's command would be deployed to VITAE, something the soldiers welcomed with enthusiasm; after all, VITAE was regarded as an elite operations group—the special forces of the special forces—serving under a decorated general.
"If there's something that could threaten the world, we need to know about it," Steve said calmly, already used to Tony's biting remarks. "After all, we were all targeted during that speech."
Since Bucky Barnes—the Winter Soldier—had become Steve's assistant, the atmosphere between the Captain and Tony had changed. There was constant tension, an invisible wall between them, like a bomb waiting to go off.
Owen, however, had far too many worries on his mind to get involved in the emotional drama of those two idiots.
"Just say it already," he said, frowning slightly.
At that moment, Wanda entered the lab carrying several drinks, handing them out to everyone. Owen took his with a faint nod of thanks. Banner downed his energy drink in one gulp, with the desperation of someone who genuinely needed it. Pietro and Nicolas, without taking their eyes off their game, reached out blindly and grabbed random glasses.
"Well," Tony began, "we spent the whole night reprogramming a new AI to help us out. Without JARVIS, we're, let's say, twenty or thirty percent less efficient, so that was the priority."
"Fifty," Banner corrected with a tired voice, but Tony ignored him with a smug grin.
"By the way, say hello to Friday," Tony said, pointing at a screen.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," greeted a female voice through the speakers. "I've tracked several points of unusual movement matching the same signature found on the visitor A's phone. I was able to create a map of the locations she frequented and recover some additional data." The voice sounded professional and confident.
"Good work," Owen said in a calmer tone.
"Thank you," Tony replied proudly.
"I was talking to Friday," Owen clarified, giving him a look that made it perfectly clear how useless he could be without his AIs.
"Thank you, Mr. Owen Colt," the AI replied politely.
"So," Owen continued, "do you have any lead on the origin?"
Tony nodded, his expression turning serious.
"Yeah. Remember the news about Darren Cross? Officially, he died—or was killed. After that, the companies associated with Cross Technologies—formerly PymTech—tried to grab everything they could. The government had to intervene to keep their tech from falling into the wrong hands."
Owen nodded silently. Just hearing the name "Pym" was enough to give him an idea of where this was heading.
"Well," Tony went on, "it seems that one of PymTech's servers had a hidden failsafe. When some genius tried to connect it to the Internet to access the files, an internal virus activated and transferred most of the data to an unknown destination. Most likely, it was programmed to return to its creator. And among those files… there was something called ULTRON."
Tony ended the sentence with a grave expression. The air in the lab grew tense, as if the name alone was enough to set off every alarm.