Hunter met Avril's gaze. “Hungry?”
She seemed surprised by the question.
“You don't expect me to eat all this, do you? I know cyborgs eat a lot, but even I can't get all this down.”
She blushed. “I'd love to have a piece.”
“Good.”
Thankfully, the chains around his wrists were long enough for him to reach out and pull the cart closer. Once it stood by the table, he grabbed the plates. He put one in front of him and one in front of her. He enjoyed having her eyes on him as he set the table. It even made him grin when he spotted her gentle smile that was filled with anticipation.
He was thankful that she was here. Not because she wanted to become his new bound one, but because there had been someone out there throughout the years who had thought of him. It moved his heart, and the long-lost happiness slowly awakened within him again as he placed some mashed potatoes on his plate.
“How much do you want?” he asked and put a big spoon of potatoes on her plate.
“I can do it myself. You don't have to ...”
“But I want to. So, how much?”
Her cheeks blushed even more. He liked that color on her. She hadn't been one of the most outgoing children, but she had never been afraid of trying new things or standing up for her opinion. He saw strength in her. He always had. Her being here was proof enough of her being willing to fight for him.
“Um ... one more spoon, please.”
He gave her another spoon of mashed potatoes before he placed two chicken legs on her plate.
“Gravy?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
He actually enjoyed this more than he had anticipated. His life with Sarah had been wonderful, but he had never been given the chance to feed her. Sarah had been a private person and she had often needed to be on her own. It hadn't bothered him in the beginning because it had been put inside his programming. But over the years, his programming had changed. He had started to grow into a person of his own and it hadn't taken him long to realize that he needed more than Sarah had been willing to give. He hadn't been miserable. He had been happy, but there had been a feeling of dissatisfaction. He couldn't help but wonder if it would be the same if Avril became his bound one.
“There you go,” he said after pouring the gravy onto her plate.
“Thank you,” she said and put some vegetables on her plate. Apparently, he wasn't allowed to do it for her. It only made him grin.
He filled his plate with twice as much food as hers. It took him only a few seconds. He was starving and the rumbling in his stomach told him to hurry. He grabbed his fork as soon as his plate was full and started eating.
After all their talking, it felt kind of strange when the room suddenly fell into a long silence. All that was heard was the sound of them eating. They exchanged gazes from time to time and he enjoyed the smile she gave him but he didn't like the sadness in her eyes. Maybe she understood that it would never work out between them.
Once they were done, the silence remained. He wasn't sure of what to say.
“So what happens now?” she asked after a while.
He licked his lips. He didn't want to say it, but he had to. “Go home, Avril.”
He watched her wince as her eyes grew big. “What?”
“Go home.”
“Why?”
“I appreciate you wanting to help me and I'm glad that you still consider me a friend, but I cannot bind myself to a woman who wants to bind me to her for the wrong reasons.”
She looked shocked. “The wrong reasons?”
He nodded. “I think you want to bind me to you because of guilt even if you don't believe so yourself. I helped you in the past and now you want to return the favor.”
“But that is not ...”
He raised his hand to stop her from continuing and she went silent. “You have a good heart, Avril. I know you mean well but binding myself to you means I will fall in love with you. That is what the bond is. Love. Even if it is not real love but the emotions will feel real. The problem is that you won't love me back. That is a relationship doomed to fail.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He saw the color drain from her face, but he knew he couldn't stop. He had to break this up before she thought there was any hope for them.
“I'm sorry, Avril. It is for the best. I survived Sarah's death, but I will not survive a second loss. My programming is too damaged. Not even a new bond will save me from that fate.”
She sat stunned as tears gathered in her eyes. Hunter hated himself for doing this to her.
The door to the interrogation room opened and in came Jade. Two cyborg soldiers followed her.
“I would like to be taken back to my room now,” Hunter told her. “I did what we agreed to.”
“Of course.”
He had expected Jade to protest, but he was glad that she didn't. One cyborg unlocked his chains and he stood up. His body felt stronger from the food, but he wasn't well yet. The drug was still in his system, but by tomorrow, he would be recovered.
Avril rose from her chair. He approached her.
“I'm glad I got the chance to see you again, Avril.”
She still didn't say anything. Instead, her devastated expression told him how she felt. He and Sarah had always liked having Avril over. She had never been an issue and he had thought about her a few times over the years, wondering what had become of the young girl who had always looked up to him. Now he knew, and he had to let her go again.
He reached out his hand toward her face without a second thought, but when he realized what he was doing, he immediately pulled back. The pain in Avril's eyes grew and he cursed on the inside, but he couldn't risk touching her.
“I'm sorry. I can't touch you. Have a nice life, Avril.”
Without another word, he headed for the door and the two cyborg soldiers followed right behind him.
CHAPTER 4
Avril watched Hunter go. She hadn't expected it to hurt this much. He had said goodbye. He didn't want anything to do with her and that realization almost ate her up from the inside.
“I thought it would be best to interrupt you both when he told you to go home. It was obvious that he had made up his mind,” Jade said.
Avril dried her tears and tried to pull herself together. “He doesn't want anything to do with me.”
“That is because he believes you are here for the wrong reasons.”
Avril shook her head. “I am not.”
“Tell him how you feel.”
“He wouldn't let me.”
“I noticed. Hunter is a stubborn cyborg. Let him cool down for the rest of the day and try again tomorrow. Then I can bring him here again.”
Avril turned to Jade. “No, not here. Let me go to his room where we will have privacy.”
Jade raised an eyebrow. “That can be dangerous. There are no cameras in his room and if he snaps, you will be dead before we are able to reach you.”
Avril swallowed nervously. She hadn't experienced Hunter unstable today, but it didn't mean that he wasn't. A few minutes were not enough to know how he really felt. Neither was a smile or two.
“I'm willing to take the risk. If you want me to sign anything to prove that I'm serious, then I will.”
Jade studied her for a while. “I understand, and no, you don't need to sign anything. You did that your first day here.”
Avril nodded. She remembered. She had signed tons of papers the first day at MedAct's school. There hadn't been much to learn about the Fighters, though, but the teachers had stated many times that the Fighters were dangerous and unstable. During the course, many women had been told to leave because they hadn't taken it seriously. They had believed becoming the bound one of a Fighter would be an exciting adventure and that was not acceptable. Only a few had been allowed to finish the course, and she was one of them. The last thing she wanted now was to fail. Hunter meant too much to her.
“To be on
the safe side, I will place a cyborg soldier outside Hunter's room, and that is not up for debate.”
Avril blushed. “But what if he and I ...”
Jade's lips twitched. “A bonding can be wild, and you don't want the cyborg to rush in just because you scream, am I right?”
Avril could only nod.
“How about a safe word?”
Avril liked that idea. “Like what?”
“How about 'help'?”
Avril couldn't help but laugh. Jade's attempt to ease her mood worked. “Yeah, they can't mistake that one.”
Avril realized that just because things hadn't gone so well today, it didn't mean they wouldn't go better next time. Jade had told her that she had as much time as she needed to make Hunter come around. The only way he would ever be safe again was with her. As a Fighter, he would always be hunted, either by the police or by MedAct.
A thought hit her.
“Hunter said that love within a bond isn't real. What did he mean by that?”
“The Fighters believe the bond isn't real, that they can live without it, but that is not true. If they lose their bound one, most of them will die. It was how they were created because there was no other way. They just refuse to see that, and that is also why they choose to stay unbound. But that is also why their programming screams inside of them. Their programming is desperate for a bond so an intimate touch will be enough to bind them again if an unbound woman touches them. At least, we think so.”
Avril clenched her fists. “Hunter wanted to touch me, but he pulled back.”
Jade nodded. “That proves that our suspicions might be true, but we need to know more to be sure.”
“I will try to find out more about it tomorrow.”
Jade smiled. “Thank you, Avril. Go and rest now. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
CHAPTER 5
Avril felt like a wreck when she approached the door to the room where Hunter was being held. She was at one of MedAct's top floors. The hallway was wide and bright with doors on both sides of her. She had barely slept. Her thoughts had kept her awake. She was even more nervous today than she had been yesterday. This time, Hunter would know why she was here and he would fight her. She was sure of it. The question was, if she failed today as well, should she keep trying or let Hunter go? Jade had said that she had all the time in the world, but if she kept trying, would that make Hunter despise her? That was a thought that frightened her.
Jade was already waiting for her by the door, but she wasn't alone. A handsome cyborg soldier with bright hair was there too. He reminded Avril of a mountain with his tall frame and muscular body. His shoulders were as wide as two of her and she was sure that he could touch the ceiling if he reached up with his hand. His gaze turned to her when he spotted her and he gave her a short nod as she came closer. He had those typical shining cyborg eyes, and to her surprise, she saw kindness in them even if the rest of his face was stern. She had never been fond of the cyborg soldiers. They all reminded her more of machines than human beings and they seemed to do nothing but follow orders. She knew they were all bound, but she had never seen any of the people they belonged to. She found that kind of weird since she knew no cyborg wanted to be too far away from their bound ones.
“Good morning,” Jade said with a smile.
“Good morning,” Avril answered.
“This is Soul,” Jade went on and introduced the cyborg soldier. “He will guard you while you are with Hunter. If anything goes wrong, just call for help and he will be by your side within seconds.”
Avril swallowed hard and nodded. She didn't doubt that Soul was a trained soldier. His black clothing, straight posture, and the gun by his hip made her wonder what it was like to be bound to one of his kind. The cyborg soldiers hadn't been mentioned at all during her course. She knew even less about them than she knew about the Fighters.
“Are you ready?” Jade asked.
Avril looked at the door that led to Hunter's room and nodded. She wasn't ready, but she had to do this.
Jade used a key-disk to open the door. She pressed it against a metallic plate. There was a click and the door opened. The first thing Avril noticed was a short hallway and how dark it was inside the room. Why weren't the lights on? Worry awakened within her as she exchanged gazes with Jade. She seemed worried too.
“Soul,” Jade said.
“I'm on it,” the cyborg soldier said and pulled out his rifle.
He walked inside with slow and wary steps while she and Jade waited. Avril's heart pounded. The waiting felt like an eternity as she listened to how Soul moved around inside the room. She had no idea what it looked like in there, but she had a bad feeling that something was wrong, that something was very wrong.
“You may come in,” Soul finally called out and Avril hurried inside. Jade followed her.
Avril came to a halt after walking past the small hallway. The room was about two hundred square feet with a simple bed placed in one corner and a small wardrobe by the other corner. There was another door inside the room. She assumed it led to the bathroom. Two small windows were placed by the ceiling. They were barely big enough to fit an arm through, probably to keep the Fighters from escaping.
Soul stood in the middle of the room, looking at Hunter who sat curled up on the bed. He glared at them with his shining eyes, and Avril's heart broke when she saw his state. His hair was a tangled mess and his shirt looked like a rag that would fall off of him any second. It had been torn apart in many places. Blood was smeared out on his face and it seemed to be coming from his bloodied knuckles. There were holes in the walls all over the room with traces of blood.
“Oh, my God,” Avril gasped.
She took a step to go to him, but Soul grabbed her by the arm and shook his head.
“Don't go near him. He is not stable,” the cyborg said.
“But ...”
“Soul's right,” Jade said. “He has hurt himself and don't think for a second that he won't hurt you when he is like this.”
Avril couldn't believe this was happening. “Didn't you hear anything going on in here? He must have made a lot of noise.” She gave them an accusatory glance.
“We have cyborg guards walking by here every fifteen minutes throughout the whole day, but they never heard anything. Otherwise, they would have reported it. As you know, cyborgs have much better hearing than we humans do. Hunter must have heard them coming and stopped hitting the walls as they passed by.”
Avril looked at Hunter again. Her emotions were tearing her apart. She wanted so badly to help him, but she had no idea what she could do. Though now she knew how wrong she had been about him. He had seemed stable yesterday, but this proved that his programming was more messed up than she had from the beginning believed. Even so, her determination didn't flicker. She knew that she somehow had to make him well again, didn't matter what it took.
“Leave,” she told Soul and Jade.
They shot her a surprised look.
“Are you crazy?” Jade said. “I'm not leaving you in here alone with him. You should leave and come back when he feels better. Right now, there is nothing you can do.”
“I've signed the papers,” Avril reminded Jade. “I know what I am doing. You need to leave. Please.”
“No way.”
Avril took a deep breath. She was ready to fight for what she believed in, and right now, that was Hunter.
“I don't care what you think or want,” she told Jade. “I am here to help Hunter and he needs me. Please, just do as I ask. I need to do this.”
Avril didn't miss the anger in Jade's eyes. “Soul stays outside the room and you will not lock the door.”
Avril nodded. She could agree to that. She turned her focus back to Hunter as Jade and Soul left the room. She heard the door close behind them, leaving her on her own with an unstable Fighter who could kill her if she wasn't careful. Honestly, Avril had no idea if she was doing the right thing or not, but deep down, she hoped that she was.
“You should have listened to Jade,” Hunter suddenly said, making her flinch from hearing his cold voice.
She clenched her fists and tried to stay strong, but it felt almost impossible to do as the nervousness swept over her. “I will not give up on you.”
“I could hurt you without meaning it, Avril. I'm burning up. It literally feels like my body is on fire. It is as if it wants to explode, and all I can do is scream as it forces me to live through the havoc.”
Avril wasn't sure that she understood what he meant. “Why does it feel like that?”
“Because of you. It's all your fault.”
Avril held her breath as she heard his accusation. A cold chill traveled through her spine, and for a split second, she considered leaving. There was nothing but pure anger in his shining eyes, and that anger was directed at her.
She swallowed hard. “I don't understand. What have I done?”
“My programming wants me to accept you as my bound one. It has never reacted this strongly to a woman before, but for some reason, you are driving it crazy. I'm trying to hold it back, but the more I fight, the more I lose.”
Avril licked her lips. “Would it be so bad being bound to me, Hunter?”
“Yes! I believe my programming has chosen you because of our friendship in the past, but you can't base a relationship on that. Once I'm bound to you, I will crave you in ways you can't even grasp yet.”
She dared to take one step closer to him, but it only made him tense.
“Stay away, Avril. I don't want you, doesn't matter what my programming tells me. I will not be happy with you.”
Avril tried to hide how much his words hurt, but it wasn't easy when she felt tears gather in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away.
“On the contrary,” she said. “I believe you would be very happy with me.”
His gaze darkened. There was a flicker in his eyes that didn't seem to want to stop. The shining increased and then decreased, over and over again. She had no idea what it meant but assumed his programming was up to something. The way he threw his head with jerky moves wasn't promising. It was almost as if he hung on a thin thread that would break any second. And when that second came, he would attack her. She had to be careful. He was many times stronger than her, plus that he was bigger in every possible way. He could break her into two without even breaking a sweat.
Tempted Cyborg Page 3
