I’m not hungry. No. It’s like a hunger. But it’s not hunger. My stomach doesn’t feel empty, it’s my very soul that aches for something. But what it is, I cannot tell. All I know is that as soon as I returned from escaping the super nova, I was something like hungry.

I ate half the food in my room just to be sure. But no amount of chips or chocolate or even ramen seemed to satisfy. There’s a taste on the tip of my tongue, something that I can almost picture. It’s salty and metallic. I cannot place it but it is delicious.

The night passes in fitful slumber. I sleep for only a few minutes at a time. I am always pulled back to the waking realm by a desire for this thing. It consumes my every thought. There is something in the back of mind telling me that I need this unknown nutrition. It is a part of me that is missing. I cannot be whole or complete without it. I must have it, or surely I will perish. 

When the morning comes, I am thoroughly convinced I will die. It has been too long since I have consumed this thing. And surely I must have consumed it at one point, right? Otherwise, how would I have known this delicious taste? You can’t miss what you don’t know. And I miss this something fierce.

A knock on my door finally pulls me away from the hard folds of my bed. My body is so weak. Possibly adrenaline poisoning from the event yesterday. Possibly a lack of sleep. Possibly a lingering physical effect from the sun’s blast that the mech’s medical scans didn’t pick up on. But it’s none of that, is it? No. I am weak because I do not have this thing I hunger for.

I open the door and squint out into the bright light of the hallway. As my vision blurs, Avery smiles back at me. 

“Can I come in, mate?” he asks. 

I shamble to the side and he strides past. He lets out a low whistle as he takes in the sight of the mess my hunger has made. He doesn’t understand. He’s never truly been lacking anything, not in the desperate way I am lacking this thing.

Avery makes a joke about the state of my room but I hear not his words, only his laugh. All other sound is drained out by the hard thump-thump-thump of a steady heartbeat. I realize it is not my own. It can’t be. My heart explicitly hangs dead in my chest. A note on my mechs’ records scrubbed before my return. 

No. The thump-thump-thump comes from Avery. I can hear his heart beating from all the way across the room. It is loud and growing louder still. Soon it will surely be the only thing I can hear. And an instinct in the back of my mind forms a thought: 

I can silence the noise and satisfy my hunger all at once.