✓ | escaped [ ➀ ]

[ chapter sixteen ]

Andi's head hurt. The last thing she remembered was Natasha getting the cradle into the jet and then... then Ultron had grabbed her. She'd flown out of the plane, hit her head on one of the doors on the way out and she passed out. Now... where was she now?

Her eyes fluttered open, and she tried to ignore the dull throbbing that seemed persistent on the right side of her head.

"I wasn't sure you'd wake up," Ultron's voice came, and Andi turned her head to the front to see him standing there, hunched over another robot he was tinkering with. "I hoped you would. I wanted to show you something."

Slowly bringing herself to sit up, Andi looked around the dimly lit area. She'd been laying on the rock floor, and it was a sensation that was all too familiar. When she looked around, she realised why, even if lots of things had changed. These were the cells of Strucker's facility. She was back where she first started out. Only now, a lot more technology filled the place. Ultron's technology.

"It's remarkable, you know," Ultron was saying, still not looking at her. "I've seen the way you effortlessly tear apart metal with a simple hand gesture. Yet, despite that destruction, you have the capability to create life." He finally looked to her and gestured to the floor around her. Glancing down, she realised that grass had sprouted around her, vines curling up from having broken through the rock hard floor, simple to curl around her legs, as if intending to cover her body in a cocoon of sorts.

"Persephone, correct?" Ultron asked, standing straight and staring at her. "That was the codename that Strucker gave you. Because of what you were capable of. You hear and see the dead. You help nature survive, but not only that, you control all aspects of Earth. Including metal."

Andi didn't say anything in response. She was just flashing back to all the times she'd been told similar things by Strucker. How he had explained what new ability she gained each time he tested her. Slowly she became enhanced, but the voices became worse. She realised, however, that since the Avengers stepped into her life, she hadn't experienced the voices. She'd been too focused on other things.

"Yes," Ultron nodded. "You'll be useful for me."

Andi sat up a little more, inching backward whilst staring at Ultron but he just continued to speak. "I think a lot about meteors. The purity in them," he explained, continuing to work on the robot. "Boom! The end. That's how they work, isn't it? The world made clean for the new man to rebuild."

Ultron stopped working on the robot to begin walking toward Andi. She craned her neck back to see him, but continued to inch backward slowly, still crawling on the ground.

"I was meant to be new," Ultron continued. "I was meant to be beautiful. The world would have looked to the sky and seen hope, seen mercy. Instead, they'll look up in horror because of your precious Avengers."

Andi was now backed up against a wall, and to the side, there was another opening. She couldn't see into it but maybe it was a hallway, maybe she could try to run, do something.