[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 281 - Ghost
The masked woman holstered her strangely shaped gun. Her cold voice carried through the mask, laced with mockery.
"You think all we wanted was the measly vibranium Klaue had on hand? Ultron's appetite is far greater than you imagine."
Before the words finished landing, her silhouette dissolved into the shadows and was gone.
BOOM!
Tony dropped hard onto the deck.
He swept a look around, his voice urgent and raw beneath the faceplate. "Ultron's destroyed, but it was a trap. Its target was Helen Cho all along. We fell for it."
The words were barely out when his eyes landed on Thor, motionless on the ground. His expression shifted instantly. "Thor!"
All three rushed forward. Steve got an arm under Thor and checked for breathing, then let out a slow exhale. "He's alive. Just unconscious."
Avengers Tower.
They came back with an unconscious Thor to find the place wrecked.
The labs and common areas that had been running like clockwork were now a disaster zone. Equipment lay overturned in every direction. Shattered glass and twisted metal were scattered across the floor.
Helen Cho was gone.
Natasha, Hawkeye, Rhodey, all of them were down, sprawled across the floor, out cold.
Ultron had gotten what it came for.
"Damn it." Tony bit the words off and immediately pulled up the tower's security feed.
The footage flickered.
Shortly after they'd left, a woman wrapped entirely in purple magical fire walked straight through Avengers Tower's front defenses. She didn't slow down for a single one of them. Barriers built to withstand missile strikes tore apart in front of her like wet paper.
She moved through the building like it was empty. Dropped every Avenger who'd stayed behind without breaking stride. Then walked out calmly with Helen Cho.
The conference room went very quiet as the footage played.
"Thor's fine," Tony said, his voice coming out hoarser than he intended. "Vitals look okay. But he wasn't knocked out by physical force, whatever hit him went straight for his mind. Some kind of ability that bypassed everything else and just... switched him off."
One by one, Thor and the others came around.
They traded information fast.
"That gun." Thor was rubbing the back of his skull, which was still throbbing. His expression was a knot of anger and wounded pride. "It wasn't impact I felt. It was a wave of something that made the world spin, and then nothing."
"Magic." Tony's face was tight. "That gun is a magical artifact, I'd put money on it. That's the only thing that could put Thor down instantly while he had no reason to be on guard. And that purple-robed woman who took Dr. Cho, she doesn't look like a conventional witch, not like little Hermione, but she's definitely operating on the magic side. That gun was probably hers."
"Damn sorcerers!" Thor slammed his fist into the table with enough force to crack it. "I hate their underhanded tricks! Fight fair if you're going to fight!"
He'd spent his whole life meeting enemies head-on. Sorcery made all of that useless, and it made him furious in a way he couldn't do anything with.
"As for the masked woman." Tony pulled up another file. A photo filled the screen, white mask, specialized uniform. "Unless I'm wrong, that's HYDRA's Ava Starr. Codename: Ghost."
That clicked for everyone.
When Pierce's death had unlocked the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, there had been a file on Ava Starr. She could phase her body, walk through solid matter, pass through energy fields. A serious problem in a fight.
But she'd been running a HYDRA splinter cell since then, operating at a distance, rarely getting her hands dirty and almost never using her powers. They simply hadn't recognized her.
Steve's expression went dark and stayed there. "Ultron and HYDRA are working together."
"And that's not the worst of it," Tony said. The exhaustion in his voice was real. "They've got magic on their side now too. This just got a lot more complicated."
Magic. The word settled over the room like a weight.
The Avengers had faced alien invasions. They'd dismantled HYDRA plots. But the things that had genuinely made them feel helpless, afraid even, almost always traced back to magic. The Dark Elves and their Aether. The Ministry of Magic's alchemical warship. And now a ghost who could phase through anything and a purple-robed sorceress who had walked through every defense the tower had. Each encounter had left them scrambling and beaten.
"Isn't Ghost a little too broken?" Thor's voice had taken on the particular grievance of someone who's been made to look foolish and cannot let it go. "Immune to everything, phasing through attacks, precision takedowns, how are you supposed to fight that? Her only real weakness was low damage output, and they just patched that too. At this rate, even the Hulk could get dropped in the first ten seconds."
He was getting angrier as he talked, which had everything to do with the fact that a woman nobody had ever heard of had shot him unconscious in front of his teammates. It was the single most humiliating thing to happen to him since he could remember.
"The purple-robed witch worries me more than Ghost does," Tony said quietly. A shadow of concern moved through his eyes.
Steve sat through all of it in silence, brow furrowed, turning something over.
He kept coming back to Ava's parting line.
There was something about the way she'd said it. Too deliberate. Like she was leaving them a direction.
Was HYDRA pointing them somewhere on purpose?
Steve caught himself thinking it and shook his head. That made no sense.
Still. "Tony — do you know where else there's vibranium?"
Tony looked at him for a moment, then pulled up the data interface. "FRIDAY, trace every known source of Ulysses Klaue's vibranium."
"Analyzing, sir." FRIDAY's voice was measured and calm. A beat later, a map of Africa expanded across the screens, with one region pulsing red.
Every thread led to Wakanda.
"Wakanda." Tony said it quietly, then looked sharply at Steve. "You're saying Wakanda has vibranium and Ultron's heading there next."
Steve nodded.
Tony's brow creased. "The vibranium from Klaue — plus what we pulled off his ship — that should already be enough for Ultron to build itself a new body. What does it need more for?"
Banner thought it through. "Its main objective should be using Dr. Cho's Cradle technology to grow a perfect biomechanical body and house the Mind Stone inside it. For that, it doesn't need more vibranium than it already has."
That question dropped into the middle of the room and stayed there.
Ultron's logic was never easy to follow. Add HYDRA and an unknown magical faction into the equation, and its actual endgame became nearly impossible to read.
---
Have you all seen Thunderbolts yet?*
I'm sorry. Watching the Mimic Master show up for two minutes, get phase-through headshot, looted, and cremated in one seamless combo absolutely finished me.
You are the real Ghost.
Also, Ghost scrambling on hands and knees to grab that arm before bolting, that image will live in my head rent-free forever.
➤ Next: Wakanda Is Doomed!