Female Intuition

Asparagus and fish reheated was not only godawful, but pungent to boot. Every fan was on, every window open, and copious amounts of air freshener later the smell of reheated fish still clung to every fiber in the house. The asparagus had gone wilty and limp, so Ultron resorted to eating another peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Where's Harley?" Ashley asked all of a sudden. "I know we have screens in the windows but—"

Harley? Oh the cat.

"Oh, I let her out this morning before I left," he replied companionably. "She wanted out."

Ashley's eyes went wide. "You let her out of the house?! She's an indoor cat, Nick!"

Oops.

"Well honey, we can go look for her I suppose, but she wouldn't stop yowling so I didn't know what else to do."

An hour later they returned in defeat after covering a couple of blocks and asking whomever was outside at the time. Nobody had seen the little calico.

The rest of the week proved uneventful, aside from Harley showing up three days later and scarfing her kibble. She may not have eaten, but she also still seemed very fearful and unrelenting about Nick. Ashley tried to explain this away with the fact that animals could sense illness in people, but she knew that generally they were more accommodating and even comforting in those cases. Harley seemed downright petrified.

With the dawn of another week, Ashley tried to put all the strange inconsistencies out of her mind, especially as Nick prepared himself to start work already. It made no sense. It seemed to her that the military would want to make sure he was fit for duty and ready to return to work, and give him plenty of time to heal. That worry was mitigated by the fact that the doctors gave him a perfectly clean bill of health. Except for his blood work, but the sample had apparently been contaminated with a foreign substance.

So with trepidation still, she heard Nick get up early for PT that Monday and take his uniform with him. He said the night before that he would shower at work, which he normally never did, and no sooner was he out the door then she streamed out of bed and threw a hoodie on over her pajama pants and tank top. By the time she pulled out of the driveway, she could still see him at the end of the block preparing to turn.

Ashley tried to follow as stealthily as she could, far enough back and yet close enough to see where he went. Through town it was easy to avoid detection, and after a while she realized that he was indeed headed in the direction of the old Army depot. Since it was one way in, and a lonely highway at that, she did not want to call attention to the fact that the same car followed him all the way out of town. Trying to avoid his attention, she pulled off the road just long enough to call into the automated service for school employees and order a substitute for the day. She wanted to see just what Nick was doing out here in the middle of nowhere, because no matter how much she tried to reason away the strangeness, she still felt there was something very wrong with him and this whole situation.

Her call completed, Ashley checked the rearview to see if there were any vehicles approaching and tried to ignore the lead ball that she felt in her stomach at having to stake out her errant fiancé, at a deserted old military site of all places. For that was exactly what it was. There were no guards posted at the gatehouse, no fencing topped with concertina wire to keep out intruders. For all intents and purposes, the place looked completely abandoned. From her crouching position peeking around the corner of the guard shack, she could see Nick take his uniform out of the car and walk to one of the desolate buildings several meters away. Once he was inside, she jogged to a closer building from the one he had gone into.

It was a large underground bunker, built into the side of a small hill, with steel doors at the front giving it the look of a massive old bomb shelter. Here and there among several stacks and pallets of obviously new cardboard boxes and thick plastic tough boxes, she saw ancient ammo canisters –all empty of course—and dilapidated wooden crates. It was fully apparent that not only was Nick the only one here now, but that he had taken over a disused building for his own purposes. On a whim, Ashley whipped out her phone and started snapping shots of the warehouse full of boxes. They were all marked as Adamantium.

She didn't understand what that was, but the lead ball in her gut had grown to the size of a boulder. There was no denying now that her fiancé was up to something way bigger than she was ready to face. Who should she call though? The MPs? Regular police? FBI? Thoroughly shaken, she eased herself back through the doorway and closer to the other building. The door stood open, a brazen act in itself that belied the fact that he did not expect anyone to happen by and approach to see what someone was doing there. Ashley crept as quietly as she could to the gap created by the door hinged open from the doorway. With a secure hiding spot behind the door, she watched Nick fashioning what appeared to be a robot. And not just any robot. He was remaking the Ultron bot who had threatened the world only weeks prior.

Ashley struggled for calm as best she could, creeping away as quietly as possible. Once she passed the guard shack, she broke into a sprint and reached her car breathless – not from the exertion, but from sheer fright. He hadn't seen her, as engrossed as he was in his work. And as she sped off from the scene, one hand viced on the wheel and the other tapped buttons on her phone with shaking fingers. She was so rattled though that she had to pull off again not far down the road to finish googling the hotline she needed. With that one brief look inside the second bunker told her everything she needed to know about the first: Nick wasn't just remaking Ultron, he was building several of them. And now she knew exactly who to call as the operator answered the hotline, "Stark Industries, how may I direct your call?"