[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 282 - Wakanda Is Doomed!

"Ultron wants that much vibranium. Maybe... it's building a robot army."

Steve stared at the Wakandan marker on the screen, brow furrowed tight.

He thought back to the Chitauri Army. That crushing weight of sheer numbers. He hadn't forgotten it.

Tony scoffed, fingers swiping through the air to pull up more data streams.

"Guessing gets us nowhere, Cap. Whatever it's planning, we need to see Wakanda for ourselves. But before that —"

He looked around at everyone, gaze lingering for a moment on Thor's still-pale face.

"We heal up first. Ultron, that ghost, and the purple-robed witch — none of them are pushovers. We go in at full strength, rescue Helen Cho, and get the Mind Stone back."

The weeks that followed were surprisingly quiet.

Ultron seemed to vanish from the face of the Earth. No movement. No signals. Nothing.

That calm before the storm only made everyone more uneasy.

They trained harder. Repaired their gear. Ran through intelligence reports until they had every scrap memorized. Whatever was coming, they'd be ready for it.

Finally, with everyone back at peak condition, the Quinjet lifted off again.

Destination: Wakanda.

The jet punched through the cloud layer. Below, a dense rainforest stretched in every direction, lush and unbroken, and hidden beneath it, a nation sealed off from the rest of the world.

An energy shield covered the land, almost invisible to the naked eye.

"Parlor trick." Tony sounded genuinely surprised that this small country had energy-barrier technology. He snorted, and the jet fired a specialized pulse. The invisible shield rippled like disturbed water, and a gap opened, just wide enough to fly through.

Passing through it, Wakanda opened up before them.

Everyone stared.

Futuristic architecture woven smoothly into tribal design. Maglev trains floating silently above gleaming tracks. A civilization operating at a level of advancement that made the outside world look primitive by comparison.

"Okay. Wow." Tony let out a low whistle. "These guys are actually close to my level."

Then the wonder curdled into something else.

The city was empty. Streets that should have been full of people held only squads of cold robots marching in mechanical formation. No voices. No movement. Just the soft mechanical rhythm of metal feet on stone.

The silence pressed down like a weight.

"Something's wrong." Steve's expression went hard. "This place has been occupied."

"Welcome to my kingdom, Avengers."

A cold, metallic voice rang down from the sky.

Everyone's heads snapped up.

Hovering in the air above them was a figure in deep crimson, semi-biological, half machine and half something that looked disturbingly like flesh, its humanoid lines too smooth, too deliberate. At the center of its forehead, a gem pulsed with a soft yellow glow.

The Mind Stone.

"Ultron." Tony said it through his teeth.

"So it actually pulled it off." Dr. Banner's voice was quiet and bitter.

Ultron descended slowly, its scarlet electronic eyes sweeping across the group with something like contempt.

"I told you I would bring peace. And you will be the last witnesses of the old era."

"This peace of yours," Steve said, keeping his voice level. "Is it built on tearing the world apart?"

Ultron didn't even glance at him. "Oh, righteous Captain America. Save those speeches for the ignorant masses."

Thor answered by hurling Mjolnir straight at its head.

Ultron's body flickered, and the hammer passed clean through it. In the same instant, burning lasers fired from its forehead and forced Steve back before he could close the distance.

Its body shifted between states without warning. One moment it was solid, dense, eating cannon fire without flinching. The next it went translucent, every physical blow passing through it like smoke.

Flight. Crushing strength. Energy beams.

The abilities it was displaying blew past every estimate they'd made.

The Avengers were being pushed back.

Ultron drifted upward, letting out a sharp, grating laugh.

"You thought I needed all that vibranium just to build a few obedient toys? No, no. My vision is considerably larger than that."

It spread its arms wide, as if it were embracing the entire world.

"I'm going to use that vibranium to build a city in the sky. And then I'm going to let it fall, and scrub this filthy world clean. A true rebirth."

The ground lurched beneath their feet.

Then the whole city began to move.

Not just a building. Not a district. The entirety of Wakanda, driven by vibranium engines buried deep underground, began to rise, slowly, enormously, with the inevitable momentum of something that couldn't be stopped.

"It's going to drop the entire country like a meteor!" Tony's voice cracked with horror.

"Where are the people?" Steve roared, fighting off robots on two sides at once.

"In the dungeons. Ultron planned to make them the first witnesses of its new world." A familiar voice. "I already let them out."

Ava stepped into place at Steve's side, silent as a ghost.

Everyone looked where she was looking.

Not far off, the entrance to a massive underground prison gaped open. Wakandans were streaming out in floods, crashing almost immediately into the robot perimeter guards and fighting their way through with everything they had.

In the chaos, a few panicked screams cut above the noise:

"Wakanda is finished!"

"I see security!"

"Whiter than me! So much whiter than me!"

Through the crowd, one figure stood out, a black panther-shaped suit of armor moving with terrifying speed. Claws flashing. One robot torn apart, then another, then another.

Steve looked at Ava. A suspicion he'd been sitting on finally crystallized.

"You leaked the information deliberately. You led us here to stop Ultron."

Ultron had noticed her too. Something that looked like actual fury moved across its artificial face.

"Traitor. You dare betray me!"

"Betray?" Ava's laugh was cold. "I never served you. Not really."

Ultron swallowed the anger and smiled.

"Doesn't matter. The vibranium array is already active. You can't stop it. When this city reaches the designated altitude, that's the end of human civilization."

"Then why help us at all?" Steve turned to Ava. "Isn't HYDRA trying to —"

"HYDRA wants to rule the world," she cut him off, her tone flat and final. "Build a new order. Not burn everything down. The moment I found out what this lunatic actually intended, we stopped being on the same side."

She glanced at the rising city and her voice went urgent.

"Don't let Ultron reach the main control console's array core. If this city drops from that height, it's over, for us, for everyone in the blast radius, for however many millions it hits on the way down."

The words were barely out of her mouth before the robot army surged toward the console in a solid mass.

"Hold the console!"

Steve's shield swept out in a spinning arc, slamming robots aside in bursts, keeping the wave from reaching it. The Avengers fell into position behind him, backs to the console, forming a circle that shrank with every push.

Above them, Wakanda kept rising. 10,000 meters. The air thinned. Movements that had felt natural at ground level now felt slow, labored, like moving through water.

The Avengers locked in. No retreat. No fallback position.

Full defensive mode, hold the line, or lose the world.

➤ Next: Bring on the Brazilian Babes!