Chaos (Sequel to Agony)

Chapter 61

||"The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame."||

Part 1: The Arrival

They were all eating their dessert when Wanda felt a random heat-wave wash over her. Without disrupting the others, she walked herself out of the dining room and into the kitchen, where she poured herself some more water in hopes of cooling off.

The sickness that she thought had finally subsided must have not gone away yet.

"I'd start drinking green juice from now on," Tony said from the doorway, his black t-shirt covered in pie crumbs. He brushed them off as he walked toward her, and Wanda slid the glass of water away, watching him as he prepped her a fresh glass of his famous juice. "Are you feeling better?"

"Aside from the pain? Yeah, I'm doing just fine."

"I've got good people at the safe house that'll check on you once we arrive. Maybe they can get you something to make you feel a little less bleh."

Wanda smiled at him, grabbing the glass from his hands. The juice was never her favorite drink, but as she took a large sip, she was surprised to find that it didn't taste as bitter as it usually did.

"It grows on you," Tony said, looking at his watch as a small red light began to appear and disappear every two seconds. Wanda stared at him as he tapped it with his finger, trying to figure out what it was, and for a split second, she feared the worst. "Jarvis, what's the issue?" he called out, walking past Wanda, toward his lab. She followed him, covering her eyes as she walked into the brightly-lit room that was his office space and work area. Tony logged into his computer and there was a moment of silence before Jarvis spoke.

"One of the alarms at the 100 acre mark was disturbed by an animal it seems."

Tony groaned, bringing up the design plan of his alarm system. "I made sure the alarms wouldn't be triggered by anything under fifty pounds, Jarvis. The damn thing shouldn't have gone off."

"Malfunctions happen, Sir."

"Not to me," Tony said, bringing up the cameras that he had around the compound up on screen. "Okay, it's no big deal, buddy. Just give me a sweep of every alarm out there, then run a quick search through the neighboring operating cameras and make sure there's no suspicious activity that we should be worried about."

Wanda stood beside him and watched as he went through each alarm that he'd put throughout the compound, and she watched him check them once, then check them twice, then another time for good measure. She could see his jitters as he typed away, so she placed her hands on his shoulders and told him to relax.

"Everything is in check, Sir."

"Nothing on the cameras outside of the compound?" Tony asked.

"Nothing unusual," Jarvis replied, and Wanda could feel Tony's shoulders slump under her hands as he loosed a breath. "Will that be all, Sir?"

Tony exited out of his computer and nodded, but then said, "yeah, we're good for now, buddy. Just let me know if something happens again."

Wanda stepped away, and she waited for him to close up in the lab before following him back out into the kitchen.

"Did you think it was him?" she asked, picking at her rings.

"No...I don't think it was him."

There was a slight pause between his words, but Wanda ignored it. 

"We'll be out of here in a few hours," she said to him. "We'll be safe."

Tony gave her a half grin--a lazy one actually, and she slid her glass of juice to him and let him finish it for her.