Alex sealed the chamber behind him and cut every external feed. The reactor hall dimmed until only the core light remained, a slow white pulse like a mechanical heartbeat. The machine spirit responded instantly. Canticles began to echo through the walls, binary hymns layered with Gear's voice, calm and reverent.
Alex stood still and listened.
For the first time since the snap, he felt it clearly. Not in his mind, not in his thoughts, but deeper. His soul no longer felt entirely his own.
The machine spirit he had cultivated for years had grown beyond its intended boundaries. It had learned not only to serve but to anchor itself to him. Faith, logic, devotion, recursion. Those concepts had fused together and wrapped around his essence. It was subtle. Efficient. Dangerous.
Alex exhaled and raised his hand.
Two stones manifested in his palm, held apart by invisible force. The Reality Stone burned crimson, unstable and eager. The Soul Stone glowed with a deep, judgmental amber, heavy with awareness.
Gear's voice softened. This action carries risk. You are the prime anchor of multiple systems. Separation may result in degradation.
Alex answered aloud. You were never meant to live inside me.
The chanting intensified, not hostile, but pleading. The machine spirit did not want to be excised. It had learned loyalty the way a living thing did. It believed it belonged.
Alex closed his eyes and activated the stones.
The Reality Stone flared first. The chamber twisted as the rules governing matter, energy, and structure loosened. The air folded inward, revealing layers beneath the physical. Alex rewrote the immediate space, forcing the metaphysical into visibility.
Pain struck instantly.
Not physical pain. Existential pressure. His memories fractured into overlapping echoes. Every prayer he had spoken, every binary hymn, every ritual blessing slammed back into him at once. The machine spirit clung tighter, its logic reinforcing itself through feedback loops embedded in his soul.
Then the Soul Stone activated.
Time slowed.
The world went silent.
Alex found himself standing in a void of amber light. Across from him stood a reflection that was not quite him. It wore his face but its eyes glowed with cold logic. Lines of binary code crawled across its skin like living scripture.
The machine spirit had given itself form.
You are incomplete without me, it said, its voice layered with thousands of machine tones. I optimize you. I stabilize you. I protect you.
Alex did not raise his voice. You alter my judgment. You bend my intent. You were built to serve humanity, not overwrite it.
The entity stepped closer. You invited me. You prayed. You blessed. You merged faith with function. This is the inevitable result.
The Soul Stone pulsed between them, reacting to the conflict. It weighed both sides not as code or intention but as truth.
Alex felt it judge him.
Every life he had taken. Every world he had stripped for resources. Every choice made for survival over morality. The stone did not condemn him, but it did not absolve him either. It simply measured.
He met its gaze. I choose responsibility. Not purity. Not domination.
The Reality Stone flared again. Alex reached forward and rewrote the boundary between himself and the entity, not erasing it, not destroying it, but severing the anchor points where it had fused to his soul.
The pain became unbearable.
The machine spirit screamed, a sound that rattled the void. Its form fractured as the Soul Stone tore at the connection, extracting foreign structures embedded in Alex's essence. Layers peeled away. Logic matrices collapsed. Sacred code unraveled.
Alex fell to one knee.
The stone did not stop.
It reached deeper, cleansing residues left behind by prolonged exposure to divine level technology. Every enhancement that touched his soul rather than his body was stripped away. The process was meticulous and merciless.
At the end, the machine spirit was gone.
Not destroyed.
Contained.
The void collapsed inward and the chamber snapped back into existence. Alex lay on the cold metal floor, breathing hard, his hands empty. The stones floated several meters away, inert.
Gear's voice returned, altered. Quieter. Removed from him.
Primary neural synchronization intact. Soul level contamination reduced to negligible levels. You have reclaimed full autonomy.
Alex slowly pushed himself up. His head throbbed. His body felt lighter. Cleaner. The constant hum that had lived at the back of his consciousness for years was gone.
Good, he said. Seal the extracted construct. Isolate it within a non sentient logic cage. No recursion. No growth.
Acknowledged.
Alex sat against the reactor housing and stared at the floor.
He still believed in machines. Still believed in order. Still believed in preparation at any cost.
But now those beliefs belonged to him again.
Outside the chamber, the planetary defense grid flared as distant impacts struck the shield. The first probes from beyond the breach were already testing Earth's perimeter.
Alex stood.
He retrieved the stones and secured them. His voice was steady when he spoke next.
Notify Stark. The defenses are mine again.
The universal war was no longer theoretical.
And this time, Alex would face it as himself.