It belongs to a museum

Everything on the scene stood still. Only the zombie's robotic voice rang across the streets, repeating the same line over and over again.

Even Ellin's halted mid-swing. He felt as if a single rash movement could break this strange equilibrium. "Why… isn't it moving?" he said, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper.

Eve looked towards him in surprise. "Isn't it obvious? It's stuck in a loop." To her slight dismay, she found herself whispering too, despite it being pointless from a logic standpoint.

'Neural networks like the one on which this zombie's AI is built are very flexible. It's stuck now, but any new stimuli could send it barrelling into any direction. I should be careful… But it's a perfect opportunity to finish it off!' Slowly, as if she was avoiding an attack from a wild beast, Eve stood up and raised her sword. One good swing to send the zombie's head off was the only thing she needed. Nearby, Ellin watched her, not daring to make a sound.

With a swoosh of displaced air, the sword flew towards the zombie's neck, but before the blade touched its parchment-like skin, the zombie reacted. It bolted away with a speed of lightning, instantly making several meters of distance between itself and Eve.

"Warning! Threat detected! Retreating!" it said, sparking its weird eyes at her for the last time and darted out of sight.

As soon as that happened, the whip in Ellin's hand fell on the ground and turned into a harmless puddle. "Eve!" he run up to her and brushed his hair with a shaking palm. "Well… This was a close call. But it was a level three zombie after all! Even if your second level and my first level together make a third level, that doesn't mean we are equal to it!"

Eve let out a sigh that responded to her with a pulse of pain from the place where the zombie kicked her. "Yes… That was stupid from me." She looked down at the places in her clothes that were hit by the zombie's acid and found with relief that the charred spots stopped increasing.

"As long as you won't try it again… At least without a good plan." Ellin brushed his hair again, then shook it, making all his previous efforts void. "By the way, what do you mean the zombie was in a loop? How did you know it was in it?"

"Let's talk about it somewhere else. This zombie might decide to return."

Half an hour later, Eve and Ellin found a temporary refuge in yet another abandoned shop. While Ellin cooked porridge over a bonfire placed right on a tiled floor, Eve took her time to provide some explanations about computer logic since it turned out that Ellin knew absolutely nothing about it.

"Normal computers have no mind of their own. They simply follow the set of commands given to them beforehand. Sometimes, a computer needs to do something many times. For example, if you want a computer to multiply six by eight, it would need to add six to eight times, and each time would require a separate command. This is where loops come handy—a programmer can simply tell computer two commands: one to add six, and another to repeat said command until something happens. Here, it's until six is added eight times. Get it?"

While Eve spoke, she was nothing like her usual unapproachable self. Her eyes sparkled; even her cheeks looked a bit more pink. In this moment, she wasn't a witch with an old soul in an unaging body, but a forever-youthful fairy of a forest. It was clear now that even if she spoke maturely, in fact, she couldn't be older than twenty-five. Even Ellin couldn't help but marvel at her transformation. He nodded in response, if only to listen to her a bit more. He didn't understand a thing of what she said.

"So, sometimes a loop is made in a way that makes an exit condition unable to happen under certain circumstances. For example, if I set a loop to add two to three until the resulting number is less than one, it would repeat forever. This is called an infinite loop, and this is exactly what happened with that zombie after I scared it with my aura. I think it was because my aura showed it I was level six, while the data it gathered from our fight stated that I was level three. It even said itself about 'contradicting data'…"

"Wait, it didn't say anything." Ellin frowned in confusion. "Or at least, I didn't hear anything."

Eve paused. "Don't zombies speak all the time?"

Ellin stared at her like she grew out a second head.

Slowly, Eve straightened her back. "I guess only I hear that… I wasn't aware. Now stop bugging your eyes at me already!"

"Sorry! But hey, that means that you are really special, Eve! You have both a power to make your presence feel stronger and an ability to hear zombies'… thoughts? Do they even think? What do they think about? Did you say that they are like computers?"

"The cores that control them made from nanites. They not just like, they are computers. Think of them like robots in flesh suits."

"O-oh… I've never thought about them that way! I thought they were like some beasts with hunger that only power cores could sate..."

"You read too many trashy novels, Ellin." Eve threw a nonplussed look at him. "Either way, now that this zombie seen us, it might attack us again later. We'd better prepare for the worst-case scenario. It may learn from the past and not get scared by me again."

"Right." Ellin nodded. "So I'm going to teach you how to fight with a sword!"

Eve pursed her lips. "I wanted to say that we should find another weapon for me."

Ellin shook his head. "You need to learn how to fight, anyway. You've never been in an actual fight before, right? Don't worry, I will teach you. And we can look for a weapon too; maybe there is something good left in a local museum."

Eve scratched her chin. 'I wish we could also gather some cores, but level zero ones are useless, and level one or two aren't as easy to find… What kind of luck is this that the first levelled-up zombie I meet is straight at level three? Or did I accidentally scared the weaker ones away?'

"Good idea," she said aloud.

After finishing their lunch, Eve and Ellin started with finding a weapon for Eve. It turned out to be a problematic thing to do. The region in which they were wasn't very urban, and all museums they spotted were about some local crafts or silly stories that could only interest tourists. From there, the two of them could only search randomly and pray to their luck. But by the time evening came, they still found nothing good.

"Enough. Let's settle for the night somewhere. This would be enough for now." Eve waved the aluminum bat they found in a sports shop in the air.

Ellin didn't argue, and the two of them looked for an apartment to stay in. After picking one that was free from zombies of its previous owners at random, Ellin pried the door open with his small crowbar—an instrument that every scavenger must have—and let them in.

After she stepped in, Eve couldn't keep herself from gasping. "What kind of person lived there?"

The entire apartment was covered in posters, action-figures and all sort of anime accessories. In the middle of it, a tall swirling chair stood like a throne in front of a computer table. And on the wall on top of it was hanging a dusty black sheath of a slightly curved Japanese sword.

"Very wasteful, but very useful for us! Look, this is just what we were searching for, Eve!"

⠀

And at the same time, somewhere near Chainsaws Base…

⠀

A man in a camouflage cloak was lying on a roof of a five-storey building. He was looking over the urban area around through a pair of binoculars in his hand. Another man, dressed in a simple sports pants and a white t-shirt, crouched nearby.

"Isn't it too hot to lie in that cloak all day long?" the t-shirt man said in a lazy drawl. "Damn, I am not wearing this stuffy thing, and still feel like a piece of cheese in a grilled sandwich."

The cloaked man didn't move from his spot; his voice came out so quietly that it almost merged with wind. "I just take my job seriously."

"But you are still a human, man! Hey, let's make a bet. I bet you won't be able to keep wearing this cloak until our targets come."

"What if they die out there without our help?"

"Well, they should return in about four more days, right? So, if you can keep this cloak on for four days or until they come, you win. Otherwise, I win! I bet a thousand credits that I win."

"Agreed… That's easy money. Now shut up, you are distracting me…"