Sister Sorceress

"Congratulations, Sister! Your wound has closed up nicely, and even the scarring is minimal. You still shouldn't do anything strenuous for a few days at least, but you are good to travel now," Xia said after another examination.

Eve nodded, but didn't say a word. Her eyes turned towards the door into the living room, but her gaze was pointed at something beyond, something unseen. There was a heavy, tense air around her, and it was impossible for Xia to miss it.

"Are you alright? Is there's something on your mind, Sister?"

Eve focused on Xia and made a slow nod. "Yes. I'm worried about Mister Kraust. He acted strangely this morning."

"Isn't he always weird? I learned to accept it. He doesn't feel like a bad person, even if he is such a tyrant almost all the time!" Xia pouted and crossed her hands on her chest.

"He certainly has his share of mental disorders, but it's beyond that." Eve's hands clenched on the hems of her clothes. "Xia, I want to you to be ready for… anything."

"You suspect he might turn on us?" Xia's attitude turned deadly serious this instant.

Eve shrugged. "I don't know. The real problem is that if he does, there's little we can do. And of all three of us, you are the best with these kinds of situations, Xia."

She nodded. "I will be on alert. Be calm, Sister, we are going to get through this."

"Alright, but before that, let me do the modifications for your core that I promised. I've been looking over your program yesterday and have some thoughts, but I didn't see how it evolved after your level up. Were there any improvements in your superpower?"

Xia's previous seriousness evaporated like morning dew under the sun as she bounced up and down in anticipation. "No, Sister Sorceress! Please, make me great, Sister Sorceress!"

Eve scowled. "Then stop calling me that and come over there!"

After the forehead-to-forehead contact was established, the first thing that Eve did was looking over at Xia's superpower. To her sourness, the part that enhanced Xia's vision almost didn't change, while the cancerous heap that was the rest of it increased both in size and complexity. Most of the ideas about it with which Eve came up before now turned useless. With no other choice left, Eve explored the changed code.

It was still a mess, but as Eve looked over carefully, she felt that there was an order in this chaos too. Something changed between the level two and the level three, something new was added to it like yeast into dough. 'Though who knows when it bakes with no outside influences, and what kind of bun it's going to turn into? Probably an ugly one. Well, let's see if I can turn it into a delicious cake!'

Eve dived into the work. Originally she was most inclined to delete that part and redistribute the computing resources, but now she felt like there was a better use for it. All she needed to do was to brush and clean things up—but while that sounded easy, in reality it was anything but. This was even more so when the ultimate purpose of the program wasn't entirely clear to Eve. In the beginning, she only knew that it was related to data and image analysis.

But when the first pieces of the puzzle clicked together and Eve understood… She could only feel proud of her work. The way the program processed data was something so insane and outlandish, yet creative and amazing that it could only be a work of a genius, a chance or both. It was no wonder that this algorithm took so much computing power from Xia. After Eve finished putting everything together into something, if not perfect, then at least working as more or less intended, she hoped it would be worth it now.

When Eve opened her eyes to the world again, the room was dark, and only moon shone bleakly through the window. She was stiff all over, and her stomach was painfully empty. 'Damn! What's the point of having a clock if I don't look at the time, anyway?' She tried to move and groaned from the pain in her tense muscles.

"Are you alright, Sister Eve? Are you hungry?" Xia sprung from her seat as if she didn't spend an entire day without movement and pointed at the nightstand where stood a couple of bowls, a cup and a spoon. "Lin-Lin came around earlier and left you some food. I can reheat it if you want!"

"I should be the one asking you that. You should've interrupted me earlier." Eve looked at the energetic ball of muscles and cuteness named Xia with sour eyes.

"Oh, that's nothing. You know, I was a sniper previously. Sometimes, I would need to spend days waiting in ambush. Once, I waited eighteen hours with no movement, food or water to make a shot. This was nothing. I even had Lin-Lin to massage my shoulders," Xia waved her hand with a proud, but blushing face.

Eve blinked, trying to take the mental image of Celina massaging Xia right under Eve's nose out of her mind. 'I've missed so much… It was for the best.'

"No need. Just go rest now, Xia, and try to feel for changes in your power. Tell me if there are any problems."

"I will, Sister Sorceress! Thank you very much for your help!" Xia bowed deeply to Eve and grinned. "Good night!"

⠀

After eating her cold dinner, Eve went to sleep, but for the first time in what felt like forever, she couldn't make herself to close her eyes and enter the DreamscapeEdit. The questions that she put away from her thoughts for the day returned with a vengeance in the darkness of the night. The air of mystery hung heavily in the air, making Eve unable to stay as calm as usual.

The man behind the mystery… Victor Kraust. Who was he now and in the past? What made him into the person he was now? What was the extent of his power? And finally, what decision he came up with?

These questions weren't new, but never before did they distract Eve from her sleep. He didn't need to bother then—after all, she was planning to leave after her wound healed, following the map Victor made for her as he promised. Now she didn't even know if she would be able to.

Over and over, Eve put everything she knew about Victor together. Every glance and every word, everything she could remember. The way he was domineering at one moment only to back off when met with the slightest resistance, only to start ordering people around again. The way his hazel eyes pierced her soul each time she looked at them, the way he seemed to study her and the way he sometimes answered the questions before she would ask them.

Victor would talk to things and to animals, though he never called any of them by a name, even the bear that hung around the house the most of them. Most strangely, animals acted as if they really understood his words, following even complex commands without pause. Eve wondered if his superpower made him able to communicate with them or, possibly, their cores.

She could only hypothesise at that point, but since animals were so depended on their instincts, nanites should have an immense influence over their behaviours. At the same time, it couldn't have been absolute, since animals had their own minds as well, even if those were simple. According to Celina and Xia, unless they turned into zombies, animals rarely ventured out of their natural habitats, despite their increased aggressiveness.

If Victor's superpower truly made him able to control animals via their cores, then it would most probably make him able to control zombies too. Not to mention, with the distances of that control that Victor showed, it was something that Eve could only salivate on. There was only one problem—as impressive as that power was and as enticing… Eve feared to become its victim. Even more, that was only a theory—Victor's actual power could be something entirely different.

As Eve kept thinking, something that Victor once said emerged in her mind. ''It follows my orders, like everything else in this forest,' he said. Everything else… Somehow, I feel that this choice of words was deliberate. Everything else in this forest. Could've he meant not just animals, but us too? And if so, then…'

Eve froze when a sudden epiphany hit her. Her hands trembled; her temples covered in cold sweat. 'Impossible! Even the most powerful espers I've heard about are only a fraction better than common magicians! If Kraust really is one, then…' She shook her head. 'Forget about 'hows' for now. A better question if that if he is a telepath, then how much does he know? Is he ignorant, or only pretending to be?'

She could only hope for the first. Espers were something very rare and barely studied by modern science. Most of them could, at most, lift feathers with telekinesis or guess what card a person picked out of the two. Eve never heard about someone like Victor, if he truly was an esper. Even the probability of him being a telepath, though, filled her with fear.

A quiet knocking on the door rang thought the room like a bell signalling Eve's doom. The timing was perfect to confirm her worst fears, but there was nothing left for her but to meet them with head raised tall.

"Come in, Mister Kraust. You know I'm not asleep."