109 Extremis 2.0

The quinjet soared through thick cloud cover above the rolling outskirts of mainland China. Below, nestled between ageing industrial blocks and tree-lined roads, lay a sprawling and dilapidated residential compound with faded red rooftops, laundry fluttering like surrender flags from rusted balconies. But the Avengers weren’t fooled by the modest exterior.

Inside the quinjet, the mood was taut. Steve adjusted the straps on his suit, Tony was fine-tuning his HUD, and Bruce sat quietly with his fingers steepled. Harry leaned against a bulkhead while  Natasha and Clint were suited up in full tactical gear, reviewing aerial scans from JARVIS on a holo-display between them.

Over the comms, Nick Fury’s voice crackled into the cabin. “The Chinese government doesn’t want us to be here. According to them, that housing complex is home to retired mid-level PLA officers and their families. If you go loud in there, it’ll be a diplomatic nightmare. There are already murmurs in the U.N. about oversight from Wakanda’s complaint against us. If China thinks we’re operating without clearance inside their borders, they’re not going to back down quietly.”

“Nick,” Steve said listening to Fury’s frustrations, “are you absolutely sure this place is Hydra?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Yes,” Fury finally replied. Just one word, but in that gravelly, no-nonsense tone that meant there was no room for doubt.

Steve nodded to himself, then looked to the others. “We know Hydra’s embedded in governments around the world,” he said. “Not just the weak ones, but the powerful ones—the ones that make the rules. If we stop every time a politician cries sovereignty or plausible deniability, then Hydra wins without even raising a weapon.”

Fury came back on the comms. “You’ll be walking into a hornet’s nest, Rogers. Politically and literally. I’ll back your move, but I’ll need ammunition on the diplomatic front.”

Tony was already on it. “Already ahead of you, Cyclops.”

He tapped a final command into his smartphone. “JARVIS, send Director Fury the full dossier on Chinese Hydra operatives including everything we pulled from the Zola Archive, cross-referenced with recent intelligence intercepts and SHIELD’s own recon logs. I am sure that we can provide the paper trail regarding Hydra using the housing complex as a front.”

“I think that we will be able to find enough physical evidence that this is a Hydra base once we take it down,” Bruce muttered under his breath.

“By the time we’re done here, Fury will have enough material to go toe-to-toe with the Chinese government and win the argument with PowerPoint.”

“Transmission received,” JARVIS confirmed. “Compiling metadata. Highlighting shell corporations, hidden R&D hubs, and known Hydra sympathisers operating within the Ministry of Science and Technology. Estimated time until summary report: thirty-eight seconds.”

Fury did not respond as the comms died down. The Avengers glanced toward the windows as the quinjet began its descent.

Clint and Natasha slipped out of the quinjet first, onto the weathered rooftop of one of the tallest apartment blocks. From up here, they had full visibility of the inner courtyard and sightlines on every other building in the compound. Neither of them wanted a repeat of the Hammer Industries ambush, where the team had been boxed in like fish in a barrel.

Below, the Quinjet lowered into the courtyard, and when the Avengers filed out, they found it devoid of life. Rusted metal slides stood like skeletal remains of a forgotten era. A cracked seesaw groaned softly in the wind.

Surrounding them, dilapidated apartment blocks loomed like sentinels. Brutalist in design, the buildings bore the unmistakable fingerprints of mid-20th-century Communist architecture—soulless, blocky, grey. The kind of concrete that absorbed both sunlight and hope. Uniform, utilitarian, and utterly lifeless.

“Welcome to the ghost of Mao’s dream,” Tony muttered, scanning the surroundings from behind his helmet.

“Looks more like a set piece from a dystopian film,” Bruce added, squinting at the cracked balconies, shattered windows, and creeping vines that had begun to claim the walls.

The quinjet’s engines roared one final time before lifting back into the sky, shrinking into the clouds and leaving the team behind. As the dust settled, so did the tension.

“This place is dead,” Steve said grimly, stepping onto the cracked concrete.

“Or it's pretending to be,” Natasha whispered over comms from her rooftop vantage point.

Without warning, dozens—no, hundreds-of red laser dots blinked into existence, dancing across the cracked concrete, up the walls, and then zeroing in on the Avengers like a swarm of digital fireflies.

“Snipers!” Steve shouted, immediately stepping in front of Harry, shield raised.

Thor’s hammer spun into his hand as lightning started to sparkle around him. Bruce instinctively hunched over, his breathing already deepening.

Harry waved his hand in anticipation of the onslaught of bullets. A shimmering, translucent dome erupted outward, wrapping around the group in a bubble of yellow light. The laser dots flared as they hit the barrier, but none pierced it.

“Fantastic,” Tony muttered as he stepped beside Steve, scanning the rooftops through his HUD. “They’re really going for the dramatic entrance this time. When will they learn that bullets and bravado don’t work on us?” he added with a sigh, raising his repulsors. “Seriously, it’s getting embarrassing.”

“Welcome to my humble abode, Avengers,” Maya Hansen’s voice purred through the compound’s old intercom system. It was smooth, amused, and just a little too delighted. “I do hope you like what I’ve done with the place. Very postmodern apocalyptic chic, don’t you think?”

Tony tilted his head as his eyebrows rose inside the Iron Man helmet. “Maya?” he called out. “Please don’t tell me you joined Hydra. I thought we agreed AIM was your supervillain phase.”

“Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony,” she cooed, dragging out his name like a lover remembering a long-lost flame. “You broke my heart when you handed me over to SHIELD. Not even a thank-you card. Come on, atleast the first time you left me a good luck card”

“You were going to kidnap Pepper to blackmail me to finish your formula.”

“Details,” she sighed dramatically. “Honestly, you could’ve just funded my research like a gentleman. But no, you ghosted me. While Hydra on the other hand was desperate for me to join them. They’ve been very generous patrons. Along with my Extremis work, I've even been given access to work on the new generation of super soldier serum. Top shelf stuff. Every scientist's dream.”

“You know,” Tony quipped, “for someone that brilliant, you seem to have forgotten about Harry’s abilities. You saw the shield, right? Big, glowy, very not-bullet-friendly?”

“Oh Tony,” Maya replied with a velvet smirk in her voice, “you think this is about bullets? I counted on the shield. I wanted Harry to huddle you all up like a cosy little gift box. That dome makes it so much easier to trap you all in one place. You’re welcome, by the way.”

A slow low rumble drummed through the cracked concrete of the courtyard. And a figure stepped out from a shadowed doorway. He was a middle-aged man in civilian clothes but his eyes glowing faintly amber. However, he wasn’t the only one. Doors and windows creaked open as bodies leapt through them. Thousands of figures began pouring out of the surrounding apartment blocks like hornets from a disturbed nest.

They looked almost ordinary at first glance; men and women in tattered clothes, some in old PLA uniforms, others in civilian attire. But beneath their skin, bright golden veins pulsed, the Extremis glow flickering like molten fire trying to burst free from within. Their expressions were hollow, obedient, and unblinking like puppets instead of human.

Quickly, the Avengers were completely surrounded.

“Okay,” Tony muttered, scanning the scene. “That’s a lot of lava lamps with anger issues.”

“I haven’t perfected the Extremis formula or the super soldier serum just yet,” Maya’s voice purred through the loudspeakers, “but the Chinese labour laws make ‘volunteer acquisition’ much easier than in the West. I love how ethics are such an… elastic concept, don’t you think?”

She gave a mock sigh. “Oh, and I did dabble in a few Super Soldier prototypes. Still tweaking the melting-point problem. Sadly, I wasn’t able to create examples to test you on, but I think the Extremis soldiers will be enough for now.”

On the rooftop, Clint’s voice crackled through the comms, laced with irritation. “I told you we might run into Extremis supers. But noooo. ‘That’s too complicated, Barton,’ you said. Now look where we are; middle of the world's angriest glowstick parade.”

“Have they surrounded you too?” Harry asked, as his eyes scanned the encroaching ring of soldiers.

“Negative,” Natasha assured him. “They’re not aware of our position yet. Seems all eyes are on the courtyard.”

“Good,” Harry muttered. “Stay that way. You’ll be our edge.”

 “And what makes you think we won’t just hop back on our jet and leave this charming little death trap behind?” Tony called out.

Maya’s laugh echoed through the compound, distorted slightly through the speaker system; somehow making it feel even more sinister.

“Oh, you could, Tony,” she purred. “But we both know you won’t. Not when there’s a Hydra cell buried beneath your boots. Not when you know the full scope of what I have achieved here or what I can do here. You’re the Avengers. You don’t walk away; not when all that is between you and me are my new and improved Extremis soldiers.”

The yellow-glowing Extremis soldiers tightened their formation, inching forward like a wave of fire given legs.

“You want answers?” Maya continued. “You want data, leads, the next piece of your righteous puzzle? Then you’ll have to earn it. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.”

From behind him, Harry muttered, “She’s not wrong, though.”

Steve tightened the straps on his shield, eyes scanning the advancing Extremis. “Drop the shield in three,” he said calmly.

“Decapitation it is, then,” Natasha added dryly.

Bruce exhaled slowly, letting the last vestige of restraint slip away as his body surged, bones cracking and skin stretching until Hulk stood in his place, fists slamming together with an earth-shaking boom.

Thor gave a wicked grin as lightning arced around Mjölnir. “Finally,” he muttered, “a proper fight.”

Tony’s HUD flickered into combat mode as red highlights danced across enemy signatures.

Harry stepped forward, his fingers curling around the hilt of his Asgardian Blade whose runes shimmered with raw magic.

The Extremis soldiers started to draw their weapons, consisting of makeshift swords, nailed bats, knives, spears, anything that they could get their hands on. Hydra may be a global terrorist organisation, but their lack of funding was now showing due to the inadequate weapons supplied to their soldiers.

Steve nodded. “Three… two… one.”

The shimmering dome dissolved in an instant, and like coiled springs, the Avengers burst in every direction. Hulk launched into the nearest cluster of Extremis soldiers with a roar, sending bodies flying like ragdolls. Thor hurled Mjölnir in a wave, lightning exploding outward in a shockwave that lit the compound in blinding white.

Tony rocketed skyward, repulsors blazing as he began aerial strafing runs. Below, Steve became a blur of shield throws and brutal takedowns, while Harry’s blade moved like liquid fire, carving through flesh.

Thor hurled Mjölnir with a war cry, the hammer crashing into the nearest Extremis soldier like a comet. The impact sent molten limbs flying as the soldier’s regenerative core destabilised. A geyser of heat and light burst into the sky, briefly painting the crumbling apartment walls in molten hues.

Steve was already sprinting. His shield caught the first Extremis soldier square in the chest, the force launching them backwards into a concrete pillar with enough velocity to crack the structure. Steve didn’t wait, however, as he followed the shield, caught it mid-rebound, and used it to uppercut another attacker trying to flank him. The soldier’s jaw unhinged unnaturally as Steve flipped him over his shoulder and slammed him into the pavement, creating a spiderweb of fractures in the stone.

To his right, Tony rocketed skyward in a burst of repulsor fire. “JARVIS, full thermal scan. Prioritize targets with active regeneration. And give me saturation protocols, high heat, concentrated bursts.”

“Confirmed, sir.”

The HUD lit up with glowing yellow silhouettes. Extremis soldiers surged from every alley, doorway, and shattered balcony like ants from a kicked nest. Tony responded with repulsor blasts from his palms, shoulder-mounted micro-missiles, and a chest beam that vaporised three soldiers in a blinding line of fire. Those who regenerated too quickly were marked in his targeting system for follow-up.

Below him, Hulk leapt into the horde like a wrecking ball wrapped in green fury. He grabbed two Extremis soldiers mid-sprint and smashed their heads together with a crack that echoed through the complex. One tried to reform, but Hulk roared and slammed a wall of concrete on top of them like a fly swatter.

“Puny fire-zombies!” Hulk bellowed gleefully, spinning on the spot and backhanding a glowing attacker into the wall, caving it in with a thunderous crunch.

Harry moved like liquid lightning, slipping between Extremis soldiers with a dancer’s grace. With his blade he beheaded anyone that fell into his range. They blew up instantly but a protego around them ensured that the blasts remained contained.

Two Extremis soldiers lunged at him from opposite directions. “Confringo!” Harry shouted.

The explosion tossed both of them into the air, limbs flailing, molten skin reforming even before they hit the ground. But before they could rise again, Thor’s lightning lanced through them from above, turning their cores into slag.

On the other side of the courtyard, Hulk roared.

He barreled through the thick of the horde like a living avalanche and jumped into the air before dropping into their midst like a meteor. A shockwave blew dust into the air as he tore through them, arms swinging like wrecking balls. Limbs flew. Fire burst. Screams echoed off the concrete walls. Thor hurled his hammer into the last remaining attacker, the crack of impact echoing through the courtyard like thunder. The Extremis soldier flew half a block away and didn’t get back up.

For a moment, there was silence. The Avengers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their breathing heavy from the unrelenting wave of Extremis soldiers. The courtyard was a cratered war zone. Limbs and bodies lay scattered across the concrete like discarded mannequins.

As the Avengers scanned the battlefield, they saw one of the fallen soldiers whose torso had split clean in half jerked upright. Bones cracked back into place, molten tendrils of Extremis reknitting organs, sinew, and muscle like a living forge. Flesh sizzled as it regrew. Fingers flexed. The glow under his skin intensified as if the pain only made him stronger.

All around them, the scene repeated.

A severed arm slithered back to its host, fusing like melted wax. A limb that had caved in under Hulk’s punch reformed with a sickening pop as the man gasped back to life. Broken spines twisted back into alignment. A soldier with no lower jaw screamed as a new one pushed itself out of bubbling skin.

More soldiers stumbled upright, groaning with inhuman rage. Their numbers had thinned, but those that remained came back with new fire in their eyes, as if their pain had evolved them.

Harry said, scanning the sky. “We might need some back-up.”

Tony didn’t argue. “JARVIS. Deploy the Iron Legion. Full perimeter coverage.”

“Affirmative. Units en route. ETA: 90 seconds,” JARVIS replied calmly, as if the world wasn’t falling apart.

The Avengers locked eyes.

“Back in formation,” Steve ordered, hoisting his shield. “We hold until the reinforcements get here.”

Without another word, the team broke out again, charging toward the regenerating swarm.

Thor hurled Mjölnir with a scream of thunder, sending a reborn Extremis soldier flying into the side of a crumbling apartment block. Hulk leapt from a makeshift perch, landing like an earthquake onto a trio of glowing assailants. Tony fired a concentrated blast at a crawling soldier’s core, watching it finally combust under constant pressure. Harry conjured flaming chains from thin air, wrapping them around two newly revived soldiers and yanking them off their feet with a crack of magic.

Above the battlefield, the sky shimmered with blue fire as the Iron Legion descended in tight formation. Dozens of gleaming metal sentinels shot through the sky in synchronised repulsor bursts. They hovered like guardian angels made of steel

Clint Barton stood at the apex of the apartment rooftop, as he scanned the chaos below. “Alright, JARVIS,” he said, locking eyes on the central courtyard. “Let’s put these toys to work.”

“Ready to receive combat guidance, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replied smoothly in his earpiece.

“Excellent. I want units Alpha-One through Alpha-Six to form a halo perimeter—fifty feet above ground, 360° sweep. Prioritise headshots with repulsors.”

“Confirmed. Executing halo formation.”

The Legion moved in unison. Six units circled the courtyard, arms lowering like executioner’s axes. Then, a synchronized barrage of repulsor beams sliced down in pillars of searing light, punching holes through the skulls of Extremis soldiers mid-charge. Heads exploded in showers of fire and bone, leaving no time for regeneration.

He surveyed and began calling out targets. “Unit Bravo-Two, eight o’clock. Take the shot.”

FWUMM. A single precision blast lanced through the air, dropping the soldiers instantly.

“Charlie group, strafe the west wall, flamethrowers at knee level. Make ‘em crawl.”

Jets of fire erupted as another trio of Legionnaires swooped low, igniting the legs of a charging line of soldiers. They collapsed, writhing, their regeneration slow and agonizing under the continuous flame. The Avengers capitalized on the chaos as Harry weaved through the inferno to decapitate the soldiers.

Clint continued. “JARVIS, I want you recording every piece of my targeting vectors, engagement timing, the Legion’s delay curves between my callouts and their response.”

“Understood, Agent Barton. All coordination and combat telemetry will be archived for Ultron development.”

“Good. Ultron’s going to need to think like a soldier, not just a strategist. He needs to learn how to see the battlefield the way I do.”

Overhead, Legion units split into sub-groups, responding to Clint’s real-time commands like chess pieces. He directed two units to provide air cover for Thor, one to flank Hulk as he tackled a building full of entrenched combatants, and another to provide Tony with alternating fire so he could recharge his arc reactor.

As the sky burned blue with Iron Legion repulsors and the courtyard echoed with the roars of Hulk and the thunderclaps of Mjolnir, Natasha Romanoff became a ghost.

She stepped away from the rooftop edge as she whispered into her comm, “JARVIS, I need a full schematic of the complex. Thermal and structural.”

“Uploading now, Agent Romanoff,” JARVIS replied.

A detailed 3D schematic was uploaded on her tactical phone. Heat signatures flickered in and out. She studied the design to find where Maya could be hiding. Shortlisting a few locations that Maya may be located, Natasha put the phone away and reached into her utility pouch and pulled out a small, folded square of impossibly fine fabric. The Cloak of Invisibility shimmered faintly in her hands, like moonlight caught in water. She draped it over her shoulders, and in an instant, her body vanished.

She slipped down a rusted stairwell, bypassing broken doors and crumbling walls. When she came across a pair of Extremis guards that were rushing to the courtyard, she stopped her movements completely. They too stopped for a moment, sniffing the air.

Natasha held her breath as one soldier took a cautious step forward… then shrugged and moved on.

Once they were gone, Natasha continued her search throughout the building to find where Maya was holed up in.

After a thorough search of the facility, she was finally able to find the room. Natasha pressed herself to the wall, tapped the edge of her cloak twice, and a shimmering seam appeared in the air as the fabric retracted just enough to free her face and one arm. She activated the interface on her phone and fed a silent override command to the security lock. JARVIS took care of the rest. The door slid open without a sound.

She entered like smoke.

Maya sat at a desk layered with hard drives, monitors, and fluid samples. Her back was turned to the door, unaware of the invisible assassin now sharing her space.

The Cloak of Invisibility sliding off her like a curtain unveiling judgment. Maya turned, sensing that someone was behind her. Her eyes widened, but her hands went nowhere near a weapon. “How did you get here?” she asked, stunned.

Natasha didn’t blink. She raised her pistol and pointed it at Maya’s face. “Magic,” she said flatly.

One shot. Clean. Precise.

The round struck Maya right between the eyes. Her head snapped back, and she crumpled over her table, the light in her eyes gone before her body hit the floor.

Then she turned to the monitors, eyes narrowing. The real work had just begun.

Natasha moved quickly, her gloves tapping softly across the keyboard as she accessed Maya’s terminal. She plugged in her phone so that JARVIS could access the computer.

“JARVIS, I’m in. Begin upload,” she whispered.

“Receiving the data now, Agent Romanoff,” JARVIS replied in her earpiece as lines of code scrolled rapidly on the monitor.

“Delete everything on-site,” she ordered.

“Understood. Initiating data purge. Searching for external backups…”

The terminal flickered for a moment as JARVIS scoured connected networks. Then:

“One duplicate remains. Local server. Hidden node in Sokovia. Likely a Hydra fallback site.”

Natasha arched a brow, memorising the coordinates as JARVIS projected them into her tactical HUD.

“Got it. Add it to the Hydra sweep list. We’ll deal with it later.”

“Yes, Agent Romanoff.”

With the upload completed. The files were erased from the local drive. And once Natasha was done, he took out some miniature explosives from her utility belt, and after reaching a safe distance, she detonated them, leaving nothing of the room to be salvageable.

By the time Natasha made an appearance in the courtyard, the final Extremis soldier dropped with a heavy, sizzling thud as Hulk smashed him into the concrete. Smoke hissed from the scorched crater where the last of the regenerating limbs had finally failed to reform.

Tony landed in the courtyard with his armour scorched and dented while steam hissed from his shoulder vents.

"That's the last one," he confirmed, scanning the area with HUD overlays confirming zero hostiles.

Steve gave a slow nod as he lowered his shield. "Everyone still breathing?"

Thor spun Mjölnir before resting it against his shoulder. “A glorious battle. These fire-blooded foes knew how to fall.”

Across the courtyard, Harry stood in the centre as faint runes danced across the crumbling walls and cracked pavement. Cracks ran up the decayed apartment blocks around them, walls bowed and windows shattered. Entire floors tilted at impossible angles. Yet none had collapsed. Not yet.

Harry’s eyes glowed faintly. They had only stayed standing because of him.

“Maya’s gone,” she said simply, approaching the team.

“Files?” Tony asked.

“Gone,” she replied, tossing him the phone.

Natasha glanced up at the disintegrating buildings still miraculously holding form around them.

“How long can you keep this place upright?” she asked Harry.

He looked up at the towering shells. “You want me to fix it?” Harry asked.

“No, let it collapse on itself.” Natasha replied.

With no further ceremony, the team stepped back toward the centre, where the Quinjet began its descent, hovering above the courtyard, ramp already lowering. Harry cast a few calming charms on the Hulk causing him to shift back into Bruce. And after the last Avenger stepped aboard, Harry let go of his magic.

The containment runes flashed violently and then vanished. Immediately, concrete groaned. Beams screamed. Then the entire complex collapsed in on itself with a thunderous roar, walls folding inward like paper, roofs pancaking down, dust and debris exploding into the sky as centuries of rot and corruption were swallowed by their own weight.

A single plume of gray smoke curled upward, rising behind the ascending Quinjet like a gravestone.

The Iron Legion flanked the jet, rising in formation as they guarded the battered but victorious team.

The team watched as the wreckage shrink below as they headed back to Avengers Tower.