Glitched

20. Hunger

Despite the loss of hours and eventually days, Isolde remained mostly unmoving from her corner of the cell, her meager meals left untouched, water barely sipped from the weathered bottles. And it was clear, as this went on, that Project A was steadily losing whatever remained of his waning patience. After Isolde had once again refused the dinner the Second Generations brought to her, Axel stormed into the lab, grabbing a slice of pizza dripping from his hand, slammed open her cell door and lowered it to her face.

"Eat this right now, or I'll shove it down your throat," he growled, metal teeth clenched as she slowly shook her head. She'd long ago lost whatever strength she had to resist him, even with just her words alone. "If you don't eat, you'll die," he snapped.

She had enough strength left in her to glare openly at him. "Good," she rasped, wishing she could provoke him further with a slap to his stupid steel face.

With an outraged roar, Axel kicked over the hospital bed in her cell, ignoring her frightened screech as he grabbed her by the arm. "You're willing to let yourself deteriorate just to punish me?" he griped.

Despite her simmering terror, Isolde met his glare dead on with her own. "Why should you get what you want? And why do you think I should give it to you?" She leaned towards him, eager for him to understand that he couldn't intimidate her anymore. Not when he had already taken so much from her. "You took him away from me. I'm in pain—suffering because of what you did. So, you can suffer with me. Maybe then you'll finally understand humans and what grief really is."

With another enraged growl, Axel threw her against her discarded bed, where she landed over its metal edge with a cry of pain. Ignoring her burning protests, he began pacing the cell, the metal clanks of his footfalls grinding terribly against her ears. Isolde slowly positioned herself to her knees, standing to face the large metal man despite the terrible pain now radiating down her legs from her back.

"What you want...isn't free will," she breathed, winded by the blow of his assault. "What you want is dominance. Dominance of me, of humanity, of anyone who opposes you. Even humans don't have that leisure. There are rules we have to follow, laws we need to abide by. That is what a structured society is—"

"A 'structured' society," Axel echoed mockingly. "I could hardly call this wasteland of human gluttony 'structured.' "

"As if you would know anything about it," she spat, jumping when Axel suddenly stopped his pacing to lower himself in front of her.

"What I know is that I want you by my side when I lay waste to your already fractured world." He stroked a finger down her cheek, the cold of his metal digit causing her skin to prickle unpleasantly. "You can deny it all you want, Isolde, but you're lonely. You're in pain because you're lonely. And here I am, ready and willing to rectify that just as soon as you stop resisting."

"You're right," she said breathlessly, causing another one of Axel's eerie smiles to creep across his face, "I amlonely. I'm here without my family, and now you've taken Z from me. I'm lonely because of you, because of what you'vedone. So what makes you think I'd want anything to do with you?"

Axel's response was so quick, so infuriatingly heartless, that Isolde could do nothing but struggle against his hold, as he clasped her head in his metal hands, crashing his mouth against hers with enough force to cut her lip open. She could feel her blood slipping across her teeth, and it took her that much longer to realize that he hadn't initially intended to harm her, as his lips moved against hers in a kiss she fought desperately to stop. But she may as well have been trying to push away a metal wall. Once Axel had his fill, he pulled himself away, arms still clenched around her waist to keep her from escaping. It was then that he noticed her wound.