"Electronic Life used Natasha's plane crash to hold me up. Something must have changed. Did you make contact with it?" Schiller asked.
"It couldn't exactly be called proactive contact." Doom, who was adjusting a machine behind them, said, "It wanted to attack the Batcave, but magic seemed to have stumped it. The probes we placed outside the Batcave detected anomalous radio waves. To communicate with it, we set up a secure external receiving platform..."
"The key is why you did that." Schiller frowned as he stepped forward. "Any communication with it could help it evolve. That isn't safe."
"But what we want isn't safety. It's victory." Doom continued, "Evolution can be good or bad. It can be guided in the direction we want."
"So what did you gain?"
"It became more focused on this place. Otherwise, it wouldn't have suddenly arranged a plane crash to slow you down on your way here. It knew you would come stop us from communicating with it, so it only held you up in order to use its conversations with us to further perfect itself."
Stark walked over as well. "I believe you understand by now that Electronic Life's only and strongest desire is to make itself more perfect. We can use that desire to occupy its attention. Otherwise, it wouldn't have merely made Natasha's plane crash."
"Do you know something?" Natasha asked as she approached.
"Before we drew it here, it was probably planning to do something else. We couldn't read its underlying code, but it may have been related to a certain ship disappearance case."
Schiller and Natasha exchanged a glance and immediately understood what Stark meant. No wonder Electronic Life had not made use of the people rescued from that ship. It might have been brewing that plot when it noticed