Capítulo 15: Despair
The return to Chainsaws Base was one of the worst experiences in Eve's life. No matter how hard she tried, under Eugen's paralysis she couldn't move a muscle. He stuffed her like a doll in the backseat of Cole's car, between himself and Cole, to be molested as they wished. Eugen was the worst in that; while Cole didn't seem very interested in her, thankfully, Eugen was just a step away from licking Eve all over.
Eve was envying Ellin at this point. He also was paralyzed, but afterwards Cole threw him in the trunk of his car. Eve could imagine how stuffy the place should've been, but it was better than Eugen's disgusting touches. Even if she closed her eyes, they and their trails still lingered. The only thing she could do is to distract herself by reading all the warnings sent by her nanite core.
[Warning! Host's mobility critically low!]
[Warning! Outside intrusion detected! Analysis in progress…]
[Analysis complete. Intrusion is identified as malevolent nanites. Activating countermeasures—in progress, estimated time left 6.4 hours.]
It was something Eve found herself able to do after entering level three. If before she could only interact with her core in her sleep, now she only needed to close her eyes and concentrate. She also felt that it was possible for her now to interact with other's cores too, but she didn't have time to test it out yet. 'Which is really pitiful, considering my bleak future prospects…'
When the car had reached gates of Chainsaws Base, Eve didn't know whether to sigh in relief or be terrified for her life and dignity. The sentries let them in without a fuss. When the driver stopped the car in the base's parking lot, Eugen threw Eve's motionless body over his shoulder and carried her out like she was a doll. Her braid fell to the ground; from her position, she could only see the back of Eugen's feet.
As everyone else also got out of the car, Eve could hear hurried steps coming from the side. They stopped a couple meters away; then an unknown person spoke in a deep voice, "You are finally there, mister Cole! Chief told me to get you and mister Eugen as soon as you return. He had something important to discuss."
"Tsk. I guess I will play with my new girl later, then," Eugen said with displeasure.
"I will keep her safe for you," Cole replied. "Don't worry, you know she isn't for my tastes…"
Eugen chuckled. "Of course."
Afterwards, Cole's two other men threw Eve and Ellin into a holding cell. It was, originally, some technical basement room, but later its door was roughly reinforced with metal stripes. Eve imagined she wouldn't be able to break it even if she could move. At this point of time, she wasn't even able to move and look at Ellin's face. At least nobody was touching her indecently… for now. And the basement even had working lights in it, even if the lonely lightbulb was dim and kept flickering, as if threatening to give out in any moment.
With nothing else to do, Eve closed her eyes and returned to her code. If she had some option of escaping, it was in there. The minutes seeped away like water through her fingers, and no matter how hard Eve looked at the code in front of her, the solution for her troubles wasn't growing closer. Just yesterday she was happy to finally find out the section of the code that handled her strange superpower, but today it was of no help.
Theoretically, Eve could've used this code as a base to write herself whatever superpower she wanted. In reality, if this was so easy, she would've done it a long, long time ago, even before the whole apocalypse thing. The way they developed in the field was chaotic, unpredictable, and mostly a result of sheer dumb luck. It was as if billions of monkeys with typewriters were released into the wild, and some wrote novels on the level of Shakespeare. Each nanite core was a monkey, each novel—a superpower.
Eve could write something like this—with time, research, and materials. Nothing of that she had on her hands right now.
Eventually, Eve found out with elation that she could move again. The first thing she did was stretching her numb limbs. The second thing she did was getting to Ellin. His eyes were open, but his body didn't move; even his face froze in a blank mask. Only the movement of his pupils showed he noticed Eve's approach.
She looked at him wordlessly. 'It looks like the paralysis on him is going to last longer than on me. Is it because of our levels?' Even after eating the zombie cores from earlier Ellin didn't break to level three, ending stuck on level two. She crouched near him and scratched her chin. Then Eve reached with her hand to Ellin's forehead and closed her eyes.
[Another device detected. Establishing a connection…]
[Connection established successfully.]
'That was easy,' Eve thought. Since the only methods for data exchange in everyone else's code were the most basic ones, she was afraid that this won't work despite her intuition (nanites) telling her it will. 'One day I'm going to understand how my core made it work.'
Now not only her, but Ellin's code opened in front of Eve. She could feel, though, that some parts of Ellin's would take her some time to reach—because of the narrow connection between them, no doubt. But right now Eve only needed the most surface one—his core's log. She reached it in a moment and scrolled to the last message.
[Analysis complete. Activating countermeasures—in progress, estimated time left 4.2 hours.]
Eve opened her eyes and stood up. Her voice was coarse from the long silence. "You will be able to move in about four more hours, Ellin. Want me to help you sit up? Blink once for yes, twice for no."
After a brief pause, Ellin blinked, and Eve moved his listless body into a sitting position. She propped him on a wall, but his chin fell on his chest. It didn't look like a very comfortable pose, but Eve didn't know what else to do besides hold Ellin's head up by hand.
The silence was heavy, but Eve didn't know how to fill it. She thought about escape plans, but they all started with the metal-enforced door that led outside. Eve also knew that on the other side of it stood a level two guard. 'Maybe I can create a ruckus to fool him into entering and then knock him out and run… That works in novels. Though, would he even hear us through this thick door? And what if he has a gun? Either way, I need to wait for Ellin to get better first. Escaping together is easier.'
Eve kept thinking about this for a while. She didn't have a good idea about the location of this basement or her and Ellin's things, but she kept thinking about what she would do if they got out of the cell somehow.
A sound of movement from her side brought Eve out of her musings. She lifted her eyes to see Ellin standing up and stretching. There was no trace of a smile on his face, not even a grim one. Instead, his expression looked just as blank as when he was still paralysed.
Eve looked down at her nails. Somehow, she felt very uncomfortable seeing Ellin like this. "You woke up. Did you come up with any ideas for escape?"
Ellin chuckled mirthlessly. "Escape? Impossible. Even if we get out of the cell somehow, there's still an entire base to get through. At this point… We better think about killing ourselves before Cole and Eugen return to do whatever they wanted to do with us. It wouldn't be pretty."
Hearing these words coming up from Ellin's mouth, Eve raised her face so sharply that her neck let out an audible crunch. She suddenly felt as if she was in some parallel universe. "Ellin, were you switched up with someone else while I wasn't looking?"
Ellin's lip twitched, but it didn't become even a semblance of a smile. Instead, he looked at Eve with a deep sorrow in his eyes and gulped. "No. Eve… I'm sorry. I'm sorry for dragging you into this, and for being unable to lift your mood anymore. It's just… What does it matter anymore? It was stupid for me to even think that I was could do more than drag you down, Eve… And in the end, I dragged you into this. I'm sorry. Zombies should've been killed me a long time ago…"
He fell to his knees. Two tears fell from his eyes, leaving glistening trails behind.
"Ellin…" Eve uttered. She reached towards him, before awkwardly moving her hand away. She didn't know what to say in this situation. The only words that came to her mind were the most cliche ones. 'Should I say that it's all going to be alright? In this situation, that just sounds like a lie!'
Suddenly, a door to their holding cell opened with a loud creak. Eve and Ellin's heads immediately turned towards it; but instead of the men they expected to see, it was no one else but Qiao Xia who walked in. In one of her hands was a gun, in another—confiscated from Eve and Ellin backpacks and swords. She looked at the two of them with a pout.
"Lin-Lin, you liar! You promised to me you will be fine, so why do I need to bust you out now?"
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