First contact

Eve coughed to dispel her awkwardness and beckoned Victor close with a hand. He leaned in and their foreheads touched; Eve tried hard to not be distracted by his eyes. From so close she could see the small speckles of blue in their depths and each individual black eyelash. She really didn't need it.

She closed her eyes and entered DreamscapeEdit. From there, her body felt so distant from her, it might as well have belonged to another person. Together with it, Victor's eyes disappeared from her sight to be replaced with endless lines of code. It was a much more familiar sight, one that always brought Eve excitement of exploration and creation.

To start her exploration with, Eve was going to save all that code into her own core. She activated the transfer and, to not waste the time, pulled out several fragments of Victor's program to read. With the experience Eve had, she quickly found the superpower part of it. After reading for a little while, she let out a sigh. 'It was like I feared. I don't understand a half of it. I wish so hard I had a neurologist handy…'

Sadly, Eve didn't have enough time in her life to study anything besides robotics. Other people didn't even finish their medical colleges when Eve had started to work on her last project. Then, though, she had assistants and helpers and anything she needed. Renowned, experienced professors were there to help her; but now Eve only had herself, trials and errors.

Dispirited, but not deterred, Eve set to write a testing program for Victor. She was in a middle of it, when a fresh problem arose.

[Error! Not enough memory to save the file.]

'Damn,' Eve opened the data transfer log to investigate. The progress bar showed that only about a fifth part of data had been copied, and the memory of her core was full. She frowned unhappily and interrupted the transfer. 'I can still use the data to improve my core, which will increase its memory too, but working on it like that would be very inconvenient. The best way would be to write the testing program without Victor, then install it on his core. I will need to run a lot of tests to know which part of his program does what, anyway. But first, let's delete all of that and copy his superpower sub-program instead…'

While Eve did that, on the outside, Victor kept studying her face. From so close he could see every pore in her skin. Whether it was a work of nanites or Eve's good genes, it was smooth and free of pimples or black dots despite the lack of professional skin care in the apocalypse. Her eyes were closed, and there was no expression on her relaxed face, as if Eve was in deep sleep; but from so close Victor only needed to reach out a smallest bit to feel her thoughts and emotions.

He might have pretended that he didn't know them, but in truth Victor had long ago stopped feeling bad about invading others' privacy. For him it was inevitable; the best he could do for other people is to not attract their attention to it, letting them live in sweet delusions. It was humans' natural sanity-preserving mechanism. If they couldn't forget about it, they would distract themselves with other things; the way Eve did. The fervour with which she launched at Victor's problem filled him with hopes that, he was afraid, would become the end of him if she fails.

As Victor's thoughts strayed, so did his gaze. His eyes moved to Eve's lips. They were plump, red and inviting—a cruel reminder of years spent without a woman's company. Victor let out a slight sigh. It was easier for him to ignore the other two women in Eve's company, as their thoughts were so often centred on each other, filled with tender feelings.

Eve's thoughts were almost always on her goal, or on the steps that were going to move her towards it, or on something about robotics. The only time she had even thought about Victor like a man, and not a potential assistant, was a couple hours ago, when they sat together for data transfer. And he was embarrassed at himself that this thought, coupled with Eve's closeness, was almost enough to make his body react like he was a teenager.

Victor's fist tightened. He really hoped that Eve wouldn't need to repeat data transfer soon, but he also knew perfectly well that she will.

It was in this moment that Eve's eyes opened. Victor's troubled expression and his opened eyes that were turned towards her lips were the first thing she saw. With a frown, she hurried to move away and give some rest to her sore shoulders. "Is everything alright, Mister Kraust?"

Victor took a deep breath and stood up. Suddenly, hearing her calling him so formally felt wrong. He made a step away from the couch. He might have sifted through many minds, but Eve was the only one to whom he was ready to offer his own. His tongue moved on its own accord. "Call me by name."

Eve raised his brows at him in surprise, but shrugged. In the end, she never cared a lot about formalities; she assumed that Victor did, though. "Alright, Victor," she nodded and began massaging her neck with a hand. "You were right—you are a natural esper. Therefore, I'm going to write a testing program for you to install. Hopefully, with its help and a lot of tests, I will be able to isolate parts of the programming that handle your ability to control minds and block them."

Victor nodded. His eyebrows creased into a frown; his mind itched to put something, anything, in order. "Just tell me when you need me again, Doctor Ziffer," he said and turned away. His legs moved him towards the shelf with his collection of jigsaw puzzles.

⠀

Eve finished the testing program and the test schedule by next day. To her relief, while they still were throwing shifty looks at him from time to time, Celina and Xia stopped treating Victor like a leper. They still spent most of their time on the outside, away from him, but it was only natural—the small house didn't have enough space for all vigorous hand-to-hand combat training they did. It had little space for anything besides sitting still and putting together jigsaw puzzles.

Despite Eve's best efforts, the second data transferring session with Victor was no less awkward than the first one. Even if the awkwardness lasted only until Eve dived into DreamscapeEdit, it was still enough to make her divert willpower to chase it away purposefully.

It was all in small things: the way Victor's eyes darted towards her lips for a briefest of moments when he leaned towards her, the way his fists clenched as if he was holding something in… It wasn't something that Eve would've paid attention to normally, but this time she found herself painfully aware of it all, and of the fact that Victor also knew all that even if she couldn't see his reactions. If Eve stayed like that for longer, she was afraid that it will be like putting two mirrors opposite of each other—their reactions would only reflect and amplify infinitely. She had closed her eyes as soon as her forehead touched Victor's, but it was already enough to make her thoroughly unsettled.

The testing program was relatively small in size; by the time Eve installed it in Victor's core and moved away from him, her muscles didn't even have time to get sore. With her mind back on business track and Victor on a respectable distance away, she was focused and ready to work again.

It was a complete opposite from Victor. He could feel his desires taking more and more dangerous forms. Victor wished Eve didn't put science as her foremost priority all the time, that she would focus on him instead. He wanted to make her to plunge deep into the echo-chamber for two and let him… He closed his eyes shut and did his best to suppress these thoughts before he would really do any of that.

"Are you feeling well?" Eve's voice forced Victor to look at him again. In her eyes and thoughts was only a clinical curiosity, and it didn't make Victor feel better at all. Still, it made it easier for him to hold himself together.

"I'm fine."

"Alright, then," Eve opened her mouth to explain how the testing course was going to go, but snapped it close the next moment. "Actually, I don't really need to waste my words, am I? Let's just begin."

Victor's eyes widened in surprise. He never expected for someone to accept and make use of his power this way, instead of ignoring it for the sake of their psyche or fearing it. Indeed, she didn't need to explain—he heard everything he needed to know from Eve's thoughts. The corners of his lips curved into a small smile and he nodded.