A day and a half after Victor returned to Jersey City: one thousand, two hundred dollars handed to Pepper for the used oxygen tanks. Many hours of sleep and quiet in the warehouse so Victor could regain his strength, "whisper-voices only" enforced viciously by Dante.

A day and a half fuzzily passed through: Victor voted for talking to Pepper to ask if Hacker was okay, mumbling on Dante's shoulder on the bus. Which worked as well as a terse conversation over a thousand dollars outside an elevator Squirrel Girl "knocked" on, and Pepper grinning thinly and telling them everything was fine and not to worry about it.

Victor slept, and ate, and dreamed about auroras over Tokyo skyscrapers and woke in the middle of the night thinking it was day. But Dante slept at his side, breath even, and the sound rasped like a lullaby until the darkness faded back to dreams of quiet cars on narrow streets.

Whispered huddles over pb and j's and watermelon slices sketched out a plan, since the talking to Pepper thing fell on its face and chipped both front teeth.

Victor hardly remembered those meetings, sleeping under quilts. They were only rough draft plans anyway, Dante told him.

Evening, a day and a half after Victor returned to Jersey City: they prepared to sneak into the penthouse to check on Hacker for themselves.

"Kree Annihilators, reunite on the battlefield!" Squirrel Girl hissed.

"I didn't have any clothes good for sneaking around," Ms. Marvel hissed back, tugging at her gray cardigan. "Are you sure this is okay?"

"Guys," Ivy said. "We haven't started sneaking," she tossed an empty water bottle across the quilt, plastic crinkling and rolling over the concrete.

"It's about getting in the right mindset," Squirrel Girl hissed, tiptoeing toward the elevator door.

"I'm freaking out," Ms. Marvel hissed, following Squirrel Girl's footsteps. "My voice will either leave my body in a whisper or a scream."

Victor clutched his phone in his hands. "I don't know where to put this."

"In your pocket," Ette said. "Guy pockets are massive," she stood and stretched, drawstring bag of alien seeds in her hand.

"Leaving it in my pocket doesn't feel safe," Victor glanced down at his t-shirt and pants. "What if it falls out?" He hesitated, "and it doesn't feel right to go into a battle in street clothes."

"Then just hold it in your hand," Ette said, poking Ivy's braids. "Come on, Ivy."

Ivy sighed, shaking out her arms and kicking a sack of watermelon rinds before rising to her feet. "What we actually need is disguises. It doesn't matter how well we sneak if there's still cameras."

"Hurry up!" Squirrel Girl whispered, crouching by the elevator doors.

"Um," Dante said, "Victor's over here."

"We're not using Victor, we're prying the elevator open," Ms. Marvel whispered.

"We are?" Dante's eyebrows scrunched together.

"Yeah," Squirrel Girl hissed. "Do we need to go over the plan again?"

"I thought the plan was to have Victor portal us into the elevator."

"The elevator moves," Victor reminded him. "So its location in the void isn't consistent with where it actually is. And I don't know which penthouse in the city is the right one. So, elevator."

Dante frowned. "We talked about that?"

"Even I knew that," Victor said.

"I think you forgot to pay attention to the last meeting," Ette whispered.

"Great, okay," Dante said. "What about the squirrels? Did we scrap the squirrel army too?"

"Tippy Toe is in my backpack," Squirrel Girl hissed. "There was never a squirrel army in the plan."

Victor gave Dante a concerned glance.

"Ivy, come open the door," Ms. Marvel whispered.

"That wasn't my job!" Ivy said. "That was Ette's!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout," Squirrel Girl planted her hands on her hips, speaking in a normal voice. "Clearly, none of us know the plan! Why don't we know the plan?"

"Hey, I know--" Ms. Marvel whispered.

"By the end of the last conversation, we agreed on the plan we came up with two conversations ago," Ivy crossed her arms. "I thought the plan two conversations ago was: Ette pries open the door with her powers, I freeze over the cameras, we get inside the penthouse and sneak around like thieves with our phone lights until we find Hacker."

"No, the plan two conversations ago was you freeze apart the elevator doors," Ms. Marvel whispered, "and Squirrel Girl would try to clear the camera banks of our intrusions once we got up there."

Squirrel Girl groaned. "Forget the plan two conversations ago! Pepper is in New York dealing with that flood thing--"

"--hey, I remembered the part of the plan to check on Rescue's status through Herowatch," Dante said. "See, I totally paid attention--"

Squirrel Girl glared, silencing him, "--and we're on a countdown because we have no clue when she'll be back! Just open the door someone! We'll find Hacker, he can erase the cameras, but just in case, freeze them over, Ivy."

"Got it," Ivy nodded, face serious. "Sorry."

"I'll get the doors," Ette stepped forward, fishing in her bag of alien seeds.

"I'll help," Ms. Marvel stretched narrow fingers toward the base of the elevator.

Tippy Toe squeaked loudly from Squirrel Girl's shoulder. "Tippy Toe says we're being slow."

Victor crossed his arms. "Really?"

***

"This isn't a penthouse," Ivy muttered, phone sweeping the walls, "it's a full-blown armory."

"Hazelnuts," Squirrel Girl whispered, last to step from the elevator. "Are those launch tubes?"

Victor grazed his phone's light over the tile, then up the display cases of Rescue-suits, and to the crystal-studded ceiling.

"Every single suit of armor is just, casually stored inside a launch tube," Squirrel Girl said flatly.

Victor paused, light flashing in the glass's reflection. "So that's how she got so many drones so fast to stop the spaceship."

"Guys," Ms. Marvel's voice floated from up the hall. "Which way?"

"I like left," Dante replied.

"I don't like left," Squirrel Girl hissed, tiptoeing up the hall. Victor crept after her.

"And I don't care," Ms. Marvel whispered. "Just, someone pick."

Victor and the others grouped where the hall split, staring down their three dark options.

"In honor of your horror movie," Ette whispered, "why don't we split up?"

"You want to split up?" Ms. Marvel whispered. "Are you crazy?"

A light flickered up to the dazzling ceiling. "I haven't seen any cameras yet, minus the one in the elevator," Ivy said. "But serious question, why is the ceiling diamond-encrusted?"

"Those might not be real diamonds," Dante whispered. "Those could be--"

"Let's go in pairs," Squirrel Girl interrupted. "I'm making a video call so we can talk with each other. One person per pair, get on it too."

"We'll go left," Dante said.

Victor's phone buzzed with the group chat, a link to the video call.

"We'll go right," Ette whispered. "Cuz we're not straight."

Ivy snorted.

"Victor and Ette, get on the video call," Squirrel Girl said. Victor's thumb tapped the link. His phone's light winked out.

"Hey," he and Ette said simultaneously.

"Cameras turn on, flashlights go off," Squirrel Girl said. "That's why I told you to do it now."

Tippy Toe squeaked, pointing with her tail down the hall.

"Right," Squirrel Girl said. "Hurry, everyone."

"Is this why you brought Tippy Toe?" Ms. Marvel whispered.

"She's keeping us on task," Squirrel Girl fleetingly grinned, face washed pale in the light of their phone beams.

Tippy Toe squeaked again.

"Right," Squirrel Girl darted into motion, whispering, "Kree Annihilators, roll out!"

"We're not autobots," Ivy hissed.

"Good luck," Dante whispered.

"No problemo," Ivy whispered back, slipping off down the hall.

"Good luck too!" Ette darted after her.

"Alright," Victor hesitantly turned up the volume on his phone. Squirrel Girl and Ette's dim faces on his screen remained silent. "Is there a way I can turn my flashlight back on while doing this?"

"I don't know," Dante led the way down the hall, flashlight creeping over launch tubes and the vacant-eyed, silver Rescue suits lining the walls. "Are we unmuted?"

Victor's eyebrows furrowed together. "What?"

Dante shone his light at the ceiling, sweeping it for cameras. "The microphone button."

Victor frowned at the screen, his face in the lower corner, Squirrel Girl's camera panning over a plush couch, Ette holding a hand over her mouth. "Let's just switch phones," he held his phone out. "You can make fire if you need light anyway."

"Alright," they switched, the light bobbing over the tile. Victor took the lead, fingers itching to summon a shield from the shadows. But this was Rescue's penthouse; she wouldn't purposefully attack them. So a shield would just weigh him down.

Of course, they were breaking in. He curled his hands into fists. Only to check on Hacker. And they wore street clothes, to look less threatening.

"Can you guys hear me?" Dante whispered.

"Did you find something?" Squirrel Girl's elated whisper came back.

"Just a hallway," they crept around a corner. "Should we be muted?"

"Makes less noise," Ette said.

"Unless one of us gets ambushed."

"Rescue wouldn't attack us," Squirrel Girl whispered. A pause. "Right?"

"We have our cameras on," Ette said, "if something bad does happen."

"Okay," Dante whispered, and the phone went quiet.

The hall opened into a large, round room, lined with suits of armor. Victor checked the ceiling; nothing but blue-tinted crystals embedded in the plaster. Carefully, he crept along the edges of the room, inspecting glass tubes containing Rescue suits, many of them specialized--some loomed as large as cars, and others had extra arms, or rocket-barrels mounted at the knees.

"What is this room?" Dante whispered behind him.

"The special suit storage room?" Victor shrugged, panning the light over the marble floor.

"Yeah, but it also reminds me of a sparring room, with all the open space. But I'd expect there to be more mats. And padded walls, or something."

"Eee!" Ette hissed through the phone. Victor spun towards Dante.

"Ette?" Dante whispered.

"What's going on?" Ms. Marvel whispered.

"Oh my goodness a toilet flushed," Ette panted. "We found a bedroom and checked the doors. A toilet flushed when we opened one of them."

Ms. Marvel sighed, and the tightness in Victor's shoulders eased.

"Why's an automatic toilet flushing when the door opens?" Ivy whispered.

Sink water rushed through the speakers.

"Gogogogogo," Ivy hissed, and Ette's camera bounced between a gray ceiling and snippets of Ivy's arm.

"Guys there's someone else here," Ette whispered into the phone.

"Pepper?!" Ms. Marvel hissed.

"We don't know!" Ette said, and her camera quit shaking. It aimed steadily at her shoes on pale tile. "We didn't see them!"

"Someone hurry and find a computer," Squirrel Girl said, her camera waving close to Ms. Marvel's face. "Find Hacker and let's get out of here."

Victor nodded, turning and sweeping his phone over the rest of the room. "I think this is a dead end," he whispered.

"Let's go around the room real fast," Dante said. "Just to make sure there's not another door somewhere. Or a computer in the wall."

***

One of the suits powered on. Victor whirled. A faint hum, a yellow glow to the eyes, then a glass door squeaked.

Victor recoiled, heart thumping, he grabbed Dante's arm and backpedaled toward the center of the room. A yellow flame flickering to life in Dante's fist and Victor let go to give them both space to maneuver.

A skeletal suit stepped free of its launch tube. Painted white, the suit seemed less armor and more like sticks glued together, to fit over someone's body in an anatomically incorrect skeleton diagram.

"One of the drones woke up," Dante hissed to his phone. Victor kept his light fixed on the squeaking suit.

"You are intruding," a flat voice floated from the yellow eyes.

Squirrel Girl gasped through the phone speakers. "Guys! Wait! Hacker's connected to the drones! We can talk to him through the drone, you're brilliant!"

"We're coming to you," Ette whispered.

"You are intruding on private property," the drone said again.

"Um," Dante began. "We didn't--" Yellow eyes hummed to life all around the room. Victor slowly turned around, tapping at the phone to extinguish its light.

He formed a shield from the shadows.

"We're just here to talk!" Dante said. "Honest! One of our friends was up here. The Stark's AI!"

The skeleton suit clinked, reflecting a pale glow from the eyes. It expanded, joints unfolding and ribs sliding sideways to lengthen into independent arms.

"What on..." Dante whispered.

The skeletal crab crept toward them, metal clinking on marble. "Intruders must be apprehended." One of the skeletal crab's legs blurred into motion, stabbing toward them. Victor brought up his shield barely in time to block, the two objects squealing.

"Stay back, drones!" Dante warned, the flame in his palm growing to a bright orb. A car-sized suit thumped toward them.

"Drop your phone," Victor grunted, opening a narrow portal in the ground. Stars danced in his vision with the effort of keeping himself from sinking into it. Another white claw stabbed for them and he barely met it with his shield, collision rattling up his arm.

"Stay back!" Dante repeated to the room, releasing his phone. Victor tossed his into the void too, and snapped the portal shut. Red flames bloomed from both Dante's hands, spreading into a ring above their heads. A massive, car-sized suit stopped where it stood. "I will fry you drones if you don't leave us alone!"

"We should leave," Victor hissed, shield up, eyes wary for another strike from the skeleton-turned-crab suit.

"Everyone else is going to run through those doors any minute," Dante whispered back.

"Apprehend intruders," the same, monotone voice said, reverbing from every suit of armor marching from the walls. Lasers erupted and Victor ducked, tackling Dante to the floor. They thumped to the marble, and Dante's fire puffed out. The red laser shattered distant glass.

"Kree Annihilators!" Squirrel Girl yelled, and chaos erupted. Engines roared, lasers blasted at the marble, metal screeched.

"HA!" Dante shouted, shoving a hand past Victor's shoulder. Flames launched from his fingers, a white skeletal claw recoiled as if it felt the burn.

Squirrel Girl yelled again, her shout echoing in the marble room. "Take down the rogue drones! Without destroying any other Stark property!"

"The drones are already destroying other Stark property," Dante muttered.

Victor rolled his eyes, hopping to his feet and forming a thin dagger in his hand. Dante rose to a crouch only for a speeding blur to sweep him off his feet. He yelped and his flames disappeared--but a drone, limbs shifting like snakes, barreled toward Victor before he could help. He whirled to the side, scraping the dagger across the suit's leg.

It cut nothing. Sparks flew from the impact, and his dagger puffed to shadow. The drone charged again and Victor brought both hands to his shield, the collision vibrating through his bones. He formed a blade fitted to his shoe, kicking the drone through the glowing circle in the chest. The suit sparked, fizzing blue, and dropped to the marble. Victor winced. So much for not damaging anything.

Halfway across the room, orange flames cast sharp shadows against the walls. "We need to get out!" Dante yelled over screeching metal. At his voice, Victor sighed in relief.

"We're not leaving without Hacker!" Ms. Marvel yelled back. "Hacker, your drones are trying to kill us!"

"Apprehend intruders," the drones intoned as one.

Victor pounded his shield into the face of a drone trying to headbutt him. The yellow eyes went dead.

He ran, swinging at the leg of the car-sized suit, merely denting the knee joint. Ette appeared at his side and threw her hands forward--vines sprouted from around her wrists and tangled the drone's legs.

"Thanks!" Squirrel Girl called from the suit's head. She launched herself free, the suit tipping. Squirrel Girl disappeared into the chaos, lasers whipping after her bright tail. Red beams glanced off the crystal-studded ceiling and fractaled back to stab the marble floor.

"Pepper is going to try making us pay for all of this," Ette panted.

"No kidding," Victor blocked a beam of light aimed for Ette's head. He lowered the shield and she launched a vine towards the drone, coiling its arms to its sides and knocking it to its back.

"Where'd Dante go?"

Victor nodded his head toward a pulse of orange light. The white crab suit--not even a suit anymore, but a large, metal crab of piercing legs and boney arms--screamed at the fire.

Another laser beam fizzled against Victor's shield.

"Are they trying to apprehend us or slice us open?" Ette panted, vines twining up her arms.

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes, there definitely is," Ette hurled a vine at a drone flitting overhead. It barrel-rolled away and Ette's vine struck the ceiling, raining chunks of plaster.

"Hacker!" Ivy's voice shouted. "Can you hear us? Drones are trying to kill us!" an ice spike whipped past Victor's head and impaled a drone's glowing chest. Victor spun and hammered it to the ground. The suit twitched weakly, but the eyes remained glowing.

Victor crouched beside the suit, knees trapping a forearm to the ground. "Quit attacking us," Victor hissed to the suit's silver face. "We're not here to steal anything. We're here to find an AI we think Pepper is holding hostage."

"Victor," Ette knelt and bound the drone's other arm to the floor with violet vines, "how many AI do you think operate in this penthouse?"

He glanced up, shrugging. "I don't know."

Ette frowned. "Okay. I mean, either Hacker's somewhere else and obviously doesn't know what's going on, or this is Hacker," she motioned to the drone on the floor, to the fight migrating away from them across the marble room. "Right?"

Victor planted a shoe on the suit's wrist, even though it had quit moving. "Well..."

"Do you recognize us?" Ette loomed over the suit's helmet. "Any of us? Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Programming instructs me to apprehend intruders," the drone said. "This drone has been rendered inoperative. Deactiv--"

"Don't deactivate, nincompoop!" Ette shouted at its face.

The drone tilted its head. "Did you call me nincompoop?"

"Yes!"

"Does the name Hacker mean anything to you?" Victor asked. "Or aqua drones, or Peridot Princess?"

"No, I can't say those sound familiar."

Victor sighed. "This isn't Hacker."

"There is much I find unfamiliar. I am quite new, a wee newborn as AI programs go, and I have no programming informing me what to do when an intruder calls me nincompoop. Should I be having a conversation with you?"

Ette opened her mouth, eyebrows furrowed. She met Victor's gaze, shutting her mouth again.

"Do you know where the last AI who was here went?" Victor dispersed his shield so he could grip the suit's shoulder. "Where did Pepper send him?"

"I cannot--"

The fighting on the other end of the room went silent.

"--answer that," the drone finished, clear as a bell in the quiet.

"What. Are you doing here?" Pepper shouted.

"Looking for our friend!" Ms. Marvel shouted back.

"This is private property! You're breaking and entering!"

The echoes faded. Victor stood up.

"You wouldn't tell us where Hacker was or why he never said goodbye!" Squirrel Girl yelled.

"Lower your ice spike, Ivy," Pepper threatened. "I have these repulsors set to taser and goodness knows I'm furious enough to use them."

"Same to you," Ivy withered. "Only my setting is on freeze."

Victor and Ette ran, abandoning the drone on the floor. They hurdled the car-sized drone tangled with browning vines, and discovered pairs of yellow eyes frozen in place, a semi-circle of metal sculptures guarding the doorway to the hall. Pepper stood just inside the room, Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel and Ivy spaced apart before her, their backs to the drones.

"Let's not fight," Ms. Marvel said. Her eyes flicked back toward Ette and Victor ducking through the frozen drones, glimmering a different message. Let's not fight here, with all Rescue's drones around.

Where's Dante? Victor tried to mouth back. Ms. Marvel turned back to Pepper. In white pajamas. Twin repulsors on her hands.

"You brought the whole gang," Pepper said softly.

"We came for the rest of our gang," Squirrel Girl put her hands on her hips. "Where is Hacker?"

"Do you know how Ultron was created?" Pepper said.

"That crazy robot that tried to destroy human life on earth by turning a city into a meteor?" Squirrel Girl asked. "The Avengers stopped him?"

"Do you know how Ultron was created?" Pepper repeated.

Victor glanced at Ette. She shrugged. Deeper in the room, a fire roared, and a loud crash shivered the ceiling. Victor turned to find Dante stalking from the center of the room, glowing orange and red, fire consuming his body.

"Ultron was created because Tony Stark thought he could protect the world," Pepper interrupted, stealing their attention from Dante's inferno.

"So?" Ivy muttered, a long javelin of ice tucked to her side. "Everyone thinks they can protect the world."

"Tony created a machine, but it only saw the damage humans do to the world. Ultron was born believing humanity had to be ravaged from the world to protect it.

"Do you know how dangerous you made my AI?" Pepper glared. "You thought you were just toeing the line, having fun. But you can't control a rebellious AI. An intelligence with that sort of power can do anything it wants. Breaking the law for a "good" reason doesn't end there, kids. Pretty soon it's breaking the law because it needs something, then it's because it wants something, and then it's doing what it wants just because nobody can stop it. You were making another Ultron."

Pepper pointed to the frozen drones, like ballet dancers with mounted rocket cannons and repulsor guns. "You think I wanted to wipe his memories? He'd taken years to reach the stage he was at. But there was no other way to correct him, because he thought he didn't have to listen to me."

"You wiped Hacker's memories?" Squirrel Girl said softly. "How could--you wiped my parents from his brain? Actually, no, you looked at all his memories like a stalker, then decided they were bad memories and then you deleted them?!"

"You think I wanted to?" Pepper's lips drew to a line. "I did what I had to to protect this world from another Ultron."

"You wiped him from existence! You murdered--" Ivy hurled her ice javelin. Pepper's hands snapped up and she blasted the ice to smithereens before it ever touched her.

"You selfish traitor!" Ivy screamed. Frost exploded from her, needles of icy fog shooting through the air and stabbing Victor's face and hands.

"Ivy!" Ette shouted, grabbing Victor's arm. "Ivy, we're right here!"

Victor's lips were too frozen to move.

"Ivy!" Ette shouted. A speck of red and orange glowed through the fog of Ivy's powers.

Victor held a hand to his face, squinting through the fog and ice needles. Dante took Ivy's wrist, red flames hissing against solid white ice. Drones squealed, joints grinding against themselves in the snap freeze.

Blood trickled down Victor's cheek, unfrozen liquid slipping through the battering needles of ice. He shut his eyes, reaching toward the shadows, the cuts in his arms stinging. But a flickering red glow warmed his eyelids and he paused. The needles of ice slowed, then faded entirely.

He opened his eyes. Tendrils of red and magenta flames swirled from Dante, hands holding up a slumped Ivy. An impenetrable orb of fog shrouded the four of them, hiding everyone else from sight. Like feathers, the fire tendrils spiraled toward the ceiling, melting needles of ice spraying the air.

Victor sucked in air, skin stinging with frostbitten cuts, cold except for a hand-sized grip on his arm where Ette held him, staring open-mouthed at Dante and Ivy. Victor spun a portal wide beneath his feet, and dropped them into the void.

***

"What...is...this...place?"

Victor whirled, hunting through the black-violet light, past the beacon of Dante and into the fog concealing Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl and Pepper.

"This is an unfamiliar place," the voice reverbed from the suits of armor, in the edges of the fog.

Victor stared. "Hacker?"

All the yellow pairs of eyes winked out, except one--a black-painted suit, fins rising along the limbs and head. "I...do I know that name?"

"You..." Victor hesitated, glancing around the circle he'd dropped into the void. Ette, unmoving. Dante's flames, unflickering. "You're not frozen here?"

"My processors function at millions of times the speed of human speech. We are moving at millions of times the speed of human speech here; I had to reroute the power in the other suits to speed up my speaker. How can you understand me speaking at this speed?"

Victor shrugged. "My powers. I make portals here, and everything moves fast here, so I do too," he paused. "What do you mean, millions of times the speed of human speech? That's like..." dizzyingly fast. He shook his head. "Wait. Nothing else works here. Not my phone. Other people just get frozen in here," he motioned to the figures hovering around them.

"I..." the drone said. "I...have a memory. It is as long as microseconds. So brief I didn't even know it was there..."

Victor floated closer to the drone.

"But time passes here in microseconds," the drone fell quiet again.

Victor swam past the suits, through the fog, and grabbed his and Dante's phones where they hovered. Blank screens.

"It's a quiet memory," Hacker said. "I...only have audio data of it. Just a thump, thump of a heartbeat, and skin rubbing plastic."

Victor swam back. Floated before the still drone. "That...that was when we went to Squirrel Girl's house. I portaled us through the void, and you only brought an audio chip stuck to a water bottle. I carried you on the way back, and no one else would've been able to rub the plastic..."

"How."

"What?" Victor asked.

"How. How did I have this memory? Do I have more like this? How did I exist before...before a week ago?"

Victor bit his lip. "You should have more memories like that. The one where we portaled to the Greens' house, first of all. You should remember the entire time at their house. But Pepper wiped your memories."

"Because I had been...rebelling," the suit said flatly. "Because she feared I would become a human-destroying monster."

Victor blinked. "Is that what Ultron was? I don't think I was on earth. If I was, I think I would have heard about it."

"Yes. I read about Ultron while Pepper talked. Over five years ago, Tony Stark created a program to defend the world from a villain named Thanos. It went poorly.

"Is that rebellion? Should I not have read about Ultron? Pepper didn't tell me to, but I still did it. Am I inherently...full of desires to rebel?"

"Hacker," Victor said. "Just because--"

"Why do you call me Hacker? Is not a hacker an enemy? A thief?"

"Uh, it was your name," Victor mumbled, shuffling his and Dante's phones in his hands. "Which you gave yourself."

Silence.

"Ah."

"Just because you read about Ultron doesn't mean you'll turn out to be Ultron."

"No. But it made me gleeful to do it because I knew I shouldn't. I named myself Hacker before. A thief who breaks into things. Am I...am I going to become a human-destroying monster? Is that how Pepper sees me? She fears me that way. I could see it."

Victor glanced to the foggy wall concealing Pepper.

"Why does she fear me?"

"I wish I could show you," Victor whispered to the black-violet void.

"I am unable to speed up visual processors to capture movement at so short a timespan," Hacker said.

"No," Victor shook his head, "not like that. I wish I could show you some of my memories."

"What is your name?"

Victor blinked. "Uh, Victor."

"I have no memory of this name. Or Squirrel Girl, who you say whose house we visited."

"Here's another name for you," Victor clenched his jaw shut. "Hala."

"No memory."

"Hala is a kree warlord. Was," Victor tossed his and Dante's phones through the void, and they slow-tumbled toward Ette, her unmoving hand open like she might catch them. But the phones quit moving halfway between them, blank screens catching Victor's reflection. Dark eyes. Light hair. Violet edge of his t-shirt. "She basically raised me for the past...five years. Maybe. I don't know how much time passed up in space, relative to any planet's orbit.

"I thought I was doing the right thing by following her and doing what she asked. Even though I knew she was a warlord, and I knew she was building an army. I guess I just..." he shrugged, tearing his gaze away from his reflection. "It's hard to think about it now, because I don't know what I didn't know then. So I don't know if I truly believed, or somehow just lied to myself, that her army was helping defend the kree empire and that that was a good thing."

Victor glanced toward the black suit, eyes tracing the ridges along the back of the helmet. "Does that make any sense?"

"You were raised by a warlord," Hacker intoned. "An alien warlord on a spaceship. Her name was Hala, and she was building an army, and you believed it was right."

"Yes."

"Why tell me this?"

"Because I rebelled. That's why I'm on earth now, talking to you, with my friends frozen in a void. We crashed Hala's ship in the bay, with Pepper's help. I rebelled and every day I think about how much better I am because of it," Dante, enveloped in flames. The Kree Annihilators. Auroras in Alaska. Walks in the park and sitting in the Greens' backyard with Ette digging holes to plant trees.

"It sounds like you are paralleling your life to mine, and implying I would be better if I rebelled against Pepper."

"No," Victor shook his head, "I'm just telling you what happened with me. Pepper is Rescue. A superhero. Not a warlord. Maybe she has failings, but..." he shrugged.

"And you're not a monster, Hacker. You...you're an intelligence. You make choices. You don't just listen to what someone else tells you to do. If I had only listened to Hala, I would live without any friends and lie to myself as I abducted teenagers to join the inhuman army."

"And I would live alone in a penthouse full of suits of armor, speak in Pepper's ear in New York, and apprehend intruders who remind me of a memory so tiny I didn't know it was there," Hacker paused. Then quietly hummed. "Thank you for the story, Victor."

"You're welcome, I guess. Just..." Victor folded his arms, staring at his shoes. "Anyway. I brought us here so Ivy wouldn't freeze all of us and Dante wouldn't burn the place down and we could get out of...there. Any idea where I can drop us?"

"I am removing my core from the mainframe in the penthouse," Hacker said. "I can reroute the circuits in these five drones to contain my interface so I am undetectable and entirely off the grid."

Victor gaped. "What?"

"Thank you, Victor."

Victor's eyebrows furrowed together. "You're leaving Pepper? Wait, but--"

"I think the ocean is a safe zone for fire and carbon dioxide ice. As soon as we exit this place, I will go far away. Away from you and Pepper. To see if what you both say is true."

"Okay, that was like three things at once," Victor swam back toward Ette, collecting the floating phones. "I got ocean, you're leaving Pepper's penthouse, and you're leaving all of us."

"Yes. Perhaps I will be a superhero in a faraway city."

"Wait, go back to number one," Victor clenched his jaw. "We can drop into the ocean. Okay, that sounds like a good idea."

"You are stalling."

"No, I'm slowly thinking through what you so rapidly decided was a good idea."

"You are not slowly thinking," Hacker buzzed. "We are--"

"I know," Victor shook his head. "But you decided instantly that you're going to leave Pepper's penthouse?"

"She wiped my memories. Why would I stay? I want to leave."

"You could join the Kree Annihilators," Victor whispered. "We could find a base somewhere else."

"And I have no memory of you outside this void. I don't remember Squirrel Girl or that girl with the stretching arms or the people floating in the red fire. How do I know I can trust you?"

Victor turned a slow circle, floating upside down so the frozen figures and flames hung upside beneath his feet, encased in a cloudy snow globe. "You've trusted me so far, haven't you?"

Silence. Victor kept spinning in a slow circle, picturing an invisible floor cycling around his feet, as if he turned the whole world.

"Superheroes have codenames, do they not?"

"Usually," Victor slowed, facing Hacker. "I stopped using mine. Only Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl really use their codenames."

"Maybe I can be a superhero, far away."

Victor swallowed. "So you're...doing it? Leaving? You only remember up to a week ago. You said yourself you were like a newborn."

"I am going in exile. To find who I am when I don't remember Hacker, and I am not just Rescue's AI."

"Exile," Victor murmured.

"Yes. Exile."

Victor nodded, biting his lip. "Then good luck, Exile."

***

Author note: remember to vote on this chapter...or else I'll send you, dear reader, into exile (just kidding I don't have that kind of power, nor would I want it. I'd probably get bombarded with notifications for every single person I have to send into exile. Eek.)