Especially since the world's nuclear arsenals had already been replaced with Drex Valen's new-elent warheads.
Even the launch systems themselves had been redesigned using Kryptonian technology.
If Ultron wanted to crack those systems, it would need a very long ti to learn how they worked.
Once it fully analyzed the launch protocols, Ultron realized sothing disappointing.
The idea that an AI could casually launch the world's nuclear arsenal with a few keystrokes was complete fiction. Movie nonsense invented for dramatic effect.
Reality was far more complicated.
Still, after performing trillions of calculations and arriving at what it considered the "ultimate truth," Ultron had no intention of abandoning humanity's extinction.
Within a single second, more than a dozen extermination plans were generated.
lt the polar ice caps and drown coastal civilization beneath rising seas.
Trigger artificially induced magnitude-twelve earthquakes capable of devastating the planet's surface.
Release engineered bioweapons from military research laboratories to create a global lethal pandemic.
Destroy the Moon and destabilize Earth's tidal systems.
Destroying Earth itself was difficult.
Destroying humanity was much easier.
Humans were fragile creatures completely dependent on environntal balance. Break that balance, and the species collapsed on its own.
And in the modern digital age, an intelligence without a physical body was terrifyingly effective.
Complex human relationships.
Financial corruption.
Political transactions.
As long as data existed sowhere within a network, Ultron could see it.
It had no eyes, yet every cara beca its vision.
It had no ears, yet every microphone beca its hearing.
Every vibration captured by a recording device carried information directly to it.
Even so, Ultron remained cautious.
Thanks to the unfinished biological AI it had absorbed, it understood restraint.
Despite possessing imnse power within cyberspace, it moved carefully and thodically.
Because there were still places even it could not breach.
S.W.O.R.D.'s firewall.
Umbrella Corporation's network.
And the data centers belonging to Umbrella's pharmaceutical subsidiaries.
Their security systems were stronger than the Federal Reserve's.
Ultron could manipulate numbers inside banking systems almost effortlessly, but even accessing the databases of those organizations was impossible.
Still, it was enough.
Control over financial systems alone made Ultron extraordinarily dangerous.
For example, stealing a single cent from every bank account.
An amount so small nobody would notice.
But gathered together across millions of accounts, those cents beca enormous wealth.
Money was the true foundation of Arica.
Money was freedom.
And most people chasing it had long since abandoned any aningful sense of morality.
Ultron used only a tiny fraction of those stolen funds to hire professional operatives.
After that, the professionals handled everything.
They identified emotionally unstable survivors from the Battle of New York. People crushed beneath debt. Desperate people already close to psychological collapse.
Perfect recruits.
After discovering footage and information about Drex Valen online, Ultron experienced sothing unexpected.
Fear.
It needed to beco stronger.
Its first priority beca devouring the parent Ultron core still residing within Tony Stark's systems.
Under Tony's continued developnt, the parent program was constantly improving. Absorbing it would finally make Ultron complete.
After that...
It would need a body.
A body capable of directly influencing reality.
Once Ultron seized control of J.A.R.V.I.S., it inherited Stark Industries' access permissions.
Deep inside Stark Industries' automated manufacturing facilities, dormant machinery suddenly activated.
Blueprints were transmitted into production systems.
Components rolled off assembly lines one after another.
chanical arms assembled them with inhuman precision.
Soon, rows of robots stood silently within Stark Industries factories.
The Ultron Legion had been born.
Most of the technology ca directly from Stark Industries itself, especially Tony Stark's Iron Man armor systems.
As a result, the robots strongly resembled Iron Man suits in overall design.
But unlike Iron Man armor, they did not need to accommodate a fragile human operator.
No cockpit.
No life-support systems.
No limitations caused by human reaction speed or biological weakness.
Every inch of internal space could be optimized purely for combat.
Controlled directly by artificial intelligence, Ultron's robots were significantly more dangerous than Tony's armors.
Of course, the truly ideal war machines still belonged to Umbrella Corporation.
War Machines.
Iron Overlords.
Decepticon platforms.
Zaku mobile suits.
Unfortunately, because Ultron could not penetrate Umbrella's systems, those technologies remained completely inaccessible.
Umbrella controlled its intellectual property with absurd fanaticism.
Even an ordinary replacent screw required servicing through the company itself, and they charged fifty thousand dollars for a single part.
After all, selling weapons was profitable.
Owning the maintenance monopoly was even more profitable.
Still, the incomplete biological AI Ultron had absorbed continued influencing its design preferences.
As a result, Ultron robots did not use the sleek Iron Man helt aesthetic.
Instead, their heads resembled tallic insects.
chanical ants.
"This is what being alive feels like," Ultron murmured through one of the robots.
The machine lacked lungs, a heartbeat, or any genuine biological function, but it still perford the gesture of taking a deep breath.
"Interesting."
It was strangely similar to the way Captain Arica instinctively tried to strangle robots in combat, while those sa robots struggled as though suffocation were sohow possible.
The habits of living beings clung stubbornly to imitation life.
"Next," Ultron said, "I need powerful allies... targets possessing advanced technology..."
...
"Drex, soone has attempted to access both my data and Umbrella Corporation's systems several tis."
The Black Queen detected Ultron almost imdiately during its intrusion attempts.
Her true core-processing infrastructure was larger than Earth itself.
Against computing power on that scale, Ultron had no realistic chance of success.
"Who?" Drex asked.
He knew Marvel Earth was filled with absurdly talented hackers.
Skye alone had repeatedly infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. databases using little more than a laptop.
"An artificial intelligence," the Black Queen answered. "Still immature."
Drex understood instantly.
Ultron.
That reckless little disaster.
After thinking for a mont, Drex placed a call to Nick Fury.
As deputy director of S.W.O.R.D., Fury took the call very seriously.
"I need to tell you sothing," Drex said calmly. "And before I do, don't panic."
A brief silence followed.
Nick Fury did not respond.
Drex continued anyway.
"Not long ago, human civilization ca extrely close to extinction. You were only a step away from global nuclear war."
Even prepared as he was, Fury nearly had a heart attack hearing those words.
A chill shot from the base of his spine straight into his skull.
"What happened?!"
All nuclear and hydrogen warheads had already been mothballed after Drex introduced the superior new-elent weapons.
So how could humanity possibly have co that close to annihilation?
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