Chapter 3: Meeting Ultron
***** Please comment and review! Sorry I haven't been updating lately, I've been terribly jetlagged. A 12-hour flight from London to Hong Kong is absolutely exhausting. I hope you like this chapter! *****
My head ache. My arms are numb. The air is thick.
I can't breathe.
My eyes flutter open, attempting to adjust to the heated darkness.
What happened?
One moment, by the corridors.
Another, surrounded by stone walls.
And steel bars.
The sound of metal against metal.
The smell of dying embers and raging flames.
My hands, tightly cuffed to the wall.
My feet, chained together.
How did he...
"I see you're awake."
He walks towards me, taking careful, measured steps towards the bars I am locked behind.
He crouches to look at me.
Helpless. Confused. Dazed.
Vulnerable.
Those red eyes...
All I see is craze, ambition.
And excitement.
"What do you want from me?"
His lips curl up to form a sinister smirk, clearly amused by the affect he has on me.
"What makes you think I want anything from you?"
I don't try to struggle free.
There's no point.
He stands up, turning his back on me.
Placing his hands behind his back, he starts to walk way.
He halts, as if he changed his mind.
"Actually, you're right. There are many things I want from you."
I block his voice out of my head, looking for signs or clues that indicate my location.
No windows.
Dripping ceilings.
Echoes.
Darkness.
An underground lair.
A stock-style villain's home-base.
His red eyes are back on mine.
"No guessing, you'll soon learn to call this place home."
Home?
"You're quiet. You were quite mouthy back there in the Dove's base."
You call that mouthy?
"Are you afraid?"
Yes. Yes I am.
"Maybe it's because we don't know each other well enough."
I laugh.
"I don't intend on getting to know you any better than I already do right now."
"You make it sound. Like it's a choice."
I don't reply.
I don't know how to reply.
"How did you ..."
He cuts me off.
"How did I find you? How did I get you here?"
"It's not possible..., you couldn't have, it's.. The files..."
My mind rambles for an explanation.
"No human beside..."
He crouches down, slowly, his eyes not leaving mine.
I avoid his gaze.
He smiles, revealing his yellow-white teeth and sharp canines.
He stares for a while.
"You humans, so self centred... So, so ... Stupid."
His hands reaches in to feel my damp skin, his thumb running over my jaws.
I stumble back, attempting to kick his hands away with my tied feet.
"Oh, I apologise. How rude of me."
His smile disappears.
A challenge.
A threat.
Suddenly, a knife cuts right through his body, between his silver locks and red eyes. I watch as either sides of his lifeless corpse fall onto the floor.
My eyes grow wide.
My throat turns dry.
My hands gather a fistful of my leather jacket.
No blood.
Wires.
Circuits.
I bite the inside of my lip.
To stop myself from screaming.
To stop my head from ringing.
I watch the slow sparks of dying energy flow through the broken links of cable, disappearing at the cut ends...
Until my focus shifts towards a large, dark figure, emerging behind his remains.
Metal.
Glowing red.
My mind goes blank.
"I haven't introduced myself."
He breaks the bars, not freeing me of my chains.
"I'm Ultron. We're going to spend a lot of time together, Miss Lexis."
I find myself whispering his name under my breath.
He paces around me, imprisoned by the circular wall.
"I'm genuinely surprised that you're not trying to escape,"
He pauses in front of me.
"Humans do this thing, where... Well, they believe they are superior to everything. It's embedded in their nature. You all think, because you have intelligent minds, that, nothing can defeat you. You can overcome anything."
His gestures are dramatic. Bold.
His voice is... deep. Soothing even.
But there isn't a part of him that does scream evil.
"You don't know anything about humanity.". My voice cracks as the end of the sentence.
"I know better than you do."
He's right.
"You were born in captivity. Bred in a greenhouse environment. Raised as a weapon. You're nothing but a tool."
I look away.
Because I don't want to face such a painful realization.
Not here.
Not now.
Not ever.
I don't want to see my life that way.
He seems to have taken my reaction to his statement as a defeat.
He steps towards me, forcing me to back away, pressing my back against the stone walls.
"You're a puppet of the military. You're controlled. Monitored. Restricted."
His tone is taunting. Provoking.
He's destroying me from the inside.
And he knows that he is.
"Miss Lexis, I have a mission. I was created with a goal..."
"By who. Who created you."
"Curiosity? Fascinating. I didn't see that quality in you."
"You clearly underestimate my capacity for everything."
"I feel that I have overestimated your character."
What did he expect for to be?
He expected me to a monster.
Like him.
"It doesn't matter who I was created by."
"What's your mission then? Why are you here?"
"I'm here to save the world,"
He breaks the cuffs imprisoning my hands.
I grab hold of my right wrist, rubbing it gingerly, stoping the blood from spilling onto the floor.
"Your world."
I look up at him.
"From what."
He looks at me, as if he was surprised that I was uninformed by a huge threat that is destroying the earth.
"From you, the humans."
I start to laugh.
"How do you intend on saving us from ourselves?"
He sighs.
"Another fault in human nature."
He cuts the rusty chains around my ankles, letting them fall in a messy pile around me.
"Why does everything revolve around your existence? Why does everything rely on you? Why don't you understand that your world doesn't need you?"
It doesn't.
Nothing does.
I've accepted that fact a long time ago.
There is nothing that is dependent on our existence.
In fact, our existence depends on everything around us.
"Humans are the parasites that infest the earth. Stealing its resources, wasting its materials..."
His red glows brighter and brighter under the dim lighting.
"The concept of peace cannot survive in a world where life is destroyed for the luxury of another."
He turns around, walking towards the source of a synchronised orchestra of colliding and rubbing metal.
I don't have the usual urge to escape.
Maybe it's because I know I can't walk out of this without a fight.
A fight I won't win.
Maybe it's because I agree with his beliefs. With his mission.
Maybe it's because of the harsh realisation that I've never lived.
I've merely survived.
Maybe it's because I'm the monster he wants.
I stand.
And I walk away from my chains.
From my stone prison.
From the dove's wings that weren't made to fly.
To follow him.
Ultron.
Because I can now be free.