"What is this place?"
The question ca from one of the four won Drex Valen had managed to save during his desperate escape from Abraxas.
Esdeath.
Tifa.
Lyra Yan.
And Clare.
The others hadn't been as fortunate.
Abraxas had caught up too quickly, leaving Drex with no choice but to prioritize the few he could save.
Now the five of them stood beneath a gray sky, surveying a world that looked utterly dead.
The landscape stretched endlessly before them like a graveyard.
Ruined cities dotted the horizon.
Collapsed highways disappeared into dust.
Scars of war covered every continent.
"There are traces of explosive residue everywhere," Esdeath said after a mont. "A lot of it."
As Kryptonians, their enhanced senses allowed them to perceive details far beyond normal human limits.
"It feels like an active war zone," Tifa added.
Drex swept his gaze across the planet.
Then he shook his head.
"So this isn't the main universe."
His voice carried a note of disappointnt.
Unfortunately, tearing open another black hole and jumping to a different reality wasn't sothing he could do repeatedly without consequence.
His battle with Abraxas had already pushed him hard enough.
And even if he could continue hopping between universes, the Marvel Multiverse contained an almost unimaginable number of realities.
Finding the main universe would be like searching for a single grain of sand on an infinite beach.
"Maybe by the ti I find it," Drex said dryly, "Reed Richards and Doctor Strange will have already gotten their hands on the Ultimate Nullifier and rebooted the Multiverse."
The possibility wasn't entirely absurd.
If anyone could co up with a solution to Abraxas, it would be those two.
The barren Earth offered few clues, so Drex and the others extended their senses across the globe.
Within monts, they found sothing.
"Incoming," Clare said.
All five of them looked toward the sa direction.
A dark cloud was approaching.
No.
Not a cloud.
Machines.
Thousands upon thousands of flying machines surged across the sky.
"They look like Stark drones," Tifa observed.
"Or Iron Man armor."
The resemblance was undeniable.
Drex, however, imdiately recognized them.
"Not Stark."
His eyes narrowed.
"Ultron."
Before the machines could get close, he extended his control over electromagnetic forces.
The drones had obviously undergone extensive anti-magnetic treatnt.
Against an ordinary mutant, that might have mattered.
Against Drex, it was aningless.
Trying to resist his magnetic control was like trying to stop a hurricane with an umbrella.
The entire swarm froze midair.
Then shattered.
Millions of tallic fragnts burst apart and scattered across the wasteland.
The battle lasted less than a second.
"That confirms it."
Drex watched the debris rain from the sky.
"This is Ultimate Ultron's universe."
"The Avengers lost."
"Humanity was exterminated."
"And Ultron took over the world."
At least, that was his best guess.
There were probably multiple Ultron-dominated realities out there, but this one fit the profile.
The Ultimate Ultron of this universe was an absolute nightmare.
He possessed countless bodies spread across the planet.
Every model differed slightly in appearance and capabilities, yet they all shared a terrifying foundation.
Each unit possessed imnse physical strength.
Hypersonic flight capabilities exceeding Mach 30.
Advanced self-repair systems capable of restoring damaged components faster than most supercomputers could process data.
Their combat prediction software could analyze external variables with astonishing precision.
Many carried ion cannons powerful enough to threaten even the Hulk.
Others possessed specialized technologies capable of rendering targets unconscious, implanting hypnotic suggestions, or rewriting portions of a victim's mind.
The robots could absorb electromagnetic radiation and convert it into usable energy.
Most importantly, their bodies were constructed from Adamantium.
Durable.
Intelligent.
Self-replicating.
And effectively immortal.
Even if one body was destroyed, countless backups remained.
Ultron had hidden reserves throughout the solar system.
Venus alone contained enormous stockpiles.
"So what now?" Clare asked with her usual calm smile.
"The Avengers are still alive."
Drex folded his arms.
"They're hiding underground sowhere."
Then he shrugged.
"But that's not our concern."
A faint grin appeared on his face.
"Black Queen."
The air shimred.
Fundantal particles assembled themselves into an enormous technological structure.
The World Tree.
Every component had been perfectly reconstructed.
Every byte of information preserved.
The colossal server complex materialized in monts.
Then Black Queen appeared.
She looked exactly as confident as Drex rembered.
"Can you infiltrate Ultimate Ultron's systems?"
Black Queen smirked.
"Easily."
Her answer contained all the arrogance of soone who already knew the outco.
Drex wasn't worried.
After all, he had granted her Magneto's X-Gene.
That mutation had transford her into sothing far beyond a conventional artificial intelligence.
The World Tree's core had effectively beco a new kind of living server.
A techno-organic supercomputer.
Sowhere else on the planet, Ultimate Ultron was preparing to dispatch additional forces to investigate the destruction of his drone army.
Then alarms exploded throughout his network.
Soone was hacking him.
Initially, he assud the surviving Avengers had finally launched another desperate attack.
The assumption didn't last long.
The intruder was far too powerful.
His firewalls collapsed instantly.
His counterasures failed.
His defenses disintegrated.
Ultimate Ultron found himself completely overwheld.
Within monts, his entire network had been absorbed.
His databases.
His backup systems.
His hidden facilities.
Everything beca part of Black Queen.
A short while later, she returned with her report.
"Drex."
"I found sothing interesting."
She projected several streams of data.
"Ultron split off a portion of his consciousness and uploaded it into a spacecraft."
"The vessel has already left the solar system."
"I can't determine its current location."
Drex wasn't particularly concerned.
"What was he planning?"
Black Queen crossed her arms.
"Expansion."
"He intended to spread the Ultron program across the entire universe."
She paused.
"The spacecraft contains a secondary intelligence."
"A second Ultimate Ultron."
Drex dismissed the information with a wave.
"Ignore it."
At the mont, a rogue Ultron copy wasn't important.
Abraxas was.
Everything else ca second.
Instead, Drex gave Black Queen a different order.
Take control of every Ultron unit on Earth.
Including Ultimate Ultron himself.
Then begin rebuilding the planet.
Finding the main Marvel universe remained his highest priority, but searching the Multiverse required resources.
An endless army of Adamantium robots was a useful asset.
Drex still had no idea how Ultimate Ultron had acquired the formula for Adamantium.
Whatever the source, the robots were remarkably durable.
Of course, if Ultron had discovered Wakanda's Vibranium reserves, things could have been even worse.
An Adamantium shell combined with a Vibranium core would have produced truly terrifying war machines.
Under Black Queen's direction, the reconstruction effort began imdiately.
Entire cities rose from ruin.
Roads repaired themselves.
Industrial infrastructure returned to operation.
Environntal damage disappeared at a speed that bordered on the absurd.
Comic-book science operated according to its own rules.
Unfortunately, restoring the dead wasn't nearly as easy.
The world remained silent.
No human voices.
No animal calls.
No signs of life.
Only machines.
Lyra Yan looked around and sighed.
"This place is boring."
She kicked a piece of rubble.
"There's nobody here."
She wasn't wrong.
The silence was oppressive.
The only sounds ca from the distant movents of reconstruction drones.
chanical servos.
Heartbeats.
Breathing.
For Kryptonians, whose senses amplified everything, the emptiness felt even more pronounced.
Drex gazed across the lifeless Earth.
Then a small smile appeared on his face.
"I disagree."
The won looked at him.
"Oh?" Esdeath asked.
Drex spread his arms toward the empty planet.
"I think it's interesting."
"Why?" Tifa asked.
"Because right now..."
His smile widened.
"This entire world is basically ours."
The statent wasn't entirely a joke.
With his abilities, restoring life to the planet wasn't impossible.
He could extract biological information preserved within Earth's history.
Every species.
Every ecosystem.
Every evolutionary blueprint.
And once he had that information...
He could recreate them all.
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