Worlds Apart

Chapter 27

Max could barely keep her eyes open.

At first, the adrenaline and fear had been keeping her wide awake, but as the hours passed on and Loki continued to keep his distance from her, all of that started to fade away and the all-nighter she'd pulled through this whole ordeal began to catch up with her. Max wasn't entirely sure what time it was, but she guessed that it was well into the evening, meaning she'd been up for at least thirty-six hours at this point.

Needless to say, Max's body was going through it. Between the lack of sleep and the injury to her abdomen, it was keeping everything inside of her not to pass out, and even everything she had was beginning to not be enough. Every time she felt herself drifting, she would force herself back into a state of consciousness, but each time she did so, those periods would get longer and longer, until finally, she slipped into a light, dreamless sleep.

That all changed when she was jolted awake by the sound of a loud shout from across the room.

"Then run it again!" she heard Loki yell angrily.

Adrenaline flooded through Max's veins as she got her bearings. Sitting up straight, she quickly shook her head in an attempt to shake her sleepiness away. She looked over at Loki, wanting to keep an eye on him but also ready to look away if necessary. The last thing she wanted to do was accidentally piss him off even more by accidentally making eye contact with him.

"Sir, the results would not change by-" the scientist tried to explain, but he was cut off by Loki.

"I do not care!" Loki said. "In fact, run them all again! As you've said, this is the last test you could run and you have nothing to show for it. There is something different about that girl; the answer is in here somewhere, and you will not rest until you find it, understood?!"

"Yes, sir," the man responded quickly. As the scientist turned back to his focus back to his work, Loki's piercing glare shifted over onto Max.

Max quickly shifted her eyes to look at anything else in the room, but her attempt to avoid conflict seemed to be in vain, because out of the corner of her eye she could see Loki coming towards her, getting closer and closer, until Max's eyes unwillingly shifted back to the god as she watched him close the gap between them.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Max watched in horror as Loki took his last stride towards her and kicked her to the ground. Max released a grunt of pain as she crashed into the concrete floor, and before she could find the strength to push herself to her knees, she felt a hand grab her by her collar. Before she realized what was going on, Loki had forcefully pulled her up into a sitting position and placed the tip of his scepter against her chest.

Max wasn't entirely sure what his goal was (maybe to test it out on her again to make sure that the previous failure hadn't been a fluke?), but regardless, and as she expected, nothing happened. Loki's eyes flickered up from the scepter to Max's face, and a chill ran down her spine as she watched the god's expression darken with rage.

Max froze. Was this it? Was this where he finally killed her?

Her awareness finally came back to her body when she felt a sharp pain on her chest. Max's brows furrowed in confusion and she looked down. As she watched the muscles in Loki's hand tremble, she realized that he was pressing into her chest with the scepter. The pressure built by the second, and it didn't take long for Max to let out a sharp gasp as the pain started to become too much.

Loki pushed the metal tip of the scepter into her chest slightly harder for a few more moments before he let out a low growl, pulled away the scepter, and released Max. Caught off guard by the harsh shove that Loki had given her, Max fell back to the floor, but managed to catch herself before her back hit the hard concrete.