A woman possessed

When Celina went outside of the strangely empty house, she was surprised to find Xia in the yard, kicking and punching at the air as if it was her personal enemy. Each movement of her lean body was executed with sharp, jerking economy and precision, each of them perfectly lethal whether Xia attacked with a knife she held or with a bare hand. It differed from the way Xia showed her around self-defence, and the viciousness Xia showed made Celina feel uneasy.

She came up closer, but not close enough to become a victim of an accidental strike. "Xia, you had returned already? Did something happen? Did they notice you?" Xia had told Celina about her plans on shadowing Eve, and Celina didn't expect her to return earlier than Eve and Victor.

Xia made one more movement, a swift, high stab with a knife—to a face or a throat of someone tall, Celina guessed—and paused. She put the knife in a sheath on her leg, dropped her hands and turned towards Celina with unfamiliarly dark, icy face. "Si… Miss Ziffer said I was obstructing her research," she spat the last word like it was something disgusting. "And she thinks herself so smart. What is she even researching? She never told us, did she?"

Celina swallowed. The uneasy feeling that made home in her chest ever since Xia's and Eve's argument yesterday became ten times worse. She remembered when she last saw Xia looking that way—it was when she was talking about Cole and her future revenge.

"Isn't she making our nanites more powerful? Xia, are… are you alright?" Celina furrowed her brows in concern and stepped closer, reaching towards her shoulder.

Xia didn't recoil, but her gaze moved to the side. Suddenly, a steel armour around her cracked, showing the soft core within, and her lips trembled. "I'm fine, Lin-Lin. I'm just…" she broke off. "We shouldn't have come to this place. We should've left when Mister Kraust had first told us to. Now I must watch Sister Eve feeding herself to that dog."

Celina sympathised with that fear, but she trusted in Eve's power, just like she trusted in Xia's. The only one powerless there was Celina herself. The only thing she could do is to smile and tell people that it all would be better… and sometimes not even that.

So Celina smiled softly and wrapped her hands around Xia in a hug. "It will be alright, Xia!" she said in a chipper voice. "Really. Eve has so many tricks in her sleeves, and she had rebuked Mister Kraust once already, didn't she? What about you show her some of these movements you did just now?"

Xia closed her eyes, taking in a calming smell that came from Celina. No matter how sweaty or dirty she was, there always was a fresh, watery undercurrent coming from her body, and Xia revelled in that, and in the feeling of Celina's long arms around her. Even if she knew that Celina only meant the gesture in a friendly way, it filled her heart with sweet longing.

"Thank you, Lin-Lin," she said. She couldn't lie to Celina and say that teaching Eve more hand-to-hand combat would be enough to calm her now. No, nothing short from slitting Victor's throat would help, but Xia knew that the idea would probably terrify her. It needed to be done, though, for their all sakes. With each step Eve did towards her own and their all graves, Xia became more and more aware of that.

And she felt as if there was a laser dot on her back whenever Victor was around. It was as if he knew her thoughts and was watching her. Xia could only hope that it was only her imagination, and that he wasn't that good at what he did, because otherwise they were all doomed.

Celina pulled back, but left her palms on Xia's shoulders. She was a head taller than her and needed to look down to meet Xia's eyes. "You're welcome, Xia." Celina kept smiling. "I'm still there for you."

Xia felt her eyes prickling with tears that threatened to come outside and quickly blinked to get rid of them. The longing in her heart intensified. 'Like a friend, she is there for you like a friend,' Xia reminded herself, but it didn't help to stop the fluttering of butterflies in her stomach. "Thank you," she repeated, gazing into Celina's sky-blue eyes. Her body leaned forward on her own.

Petrified by the intensity of the feelings in Xia's eyes, Celina could only let her. Her heart beat as hard as Xia's, but butterflies in her stomach were from anxiety. Only when Xia was close enough that Celina felt her breath on her skin, she found in herself strength to make a step back.

Xia's eyes flickered with deep hurt. It lasted for a moment, but it was enough for it to reflect as guilt in Celina's. Once again, her heart bled from the knowledge that she wasn't able to give Xia what she needed or deserved. She looked into Xia's eyes, hoping that she would read her feelings in them. "Xia, please, don't be so masochistic. Look around. If you don't want men, that's alright! There are many girls who'd like you too! Anyone would like you, just… I don't think I can do it the way you want."

Xia swallowed and made a step forward, shortening the distance between herself and Celina again. "No. I won't give up on you, Lin-Lin, and just like I won't give up on Sister Eve," she said with steel in her voice and added softer, "That's… that's alright if you don't want me. But can you… can you hold me for a while longer, please?"

Celina nodded. "As long as you need to," she said, pulling Xia to her chest again.

She leaned into it, drawing surety from Celina's breathing and heartbeat. Their bodies melded together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Celina's wider and a head taller frame was like a wall that protected Xia from the outside world. In the past, she had always been the one to protect herself, but it was physically—she wasn't able to protect her heart. Celina was the only one to do it. Even now, when her friends argued, Celina stood by Xia's side, not Eve's, comforting her, not Eve. It brought an almost sick, possessive satisfaction into Xia's heart.

They stood like that for a while longer, before Xia finally pulled away. She'd love to melt into Celina's embrace for all eternity, but she had things to do.

⠀⠀⠀

The night was pitch-black; the thick layer of clouds swallowed the stars and the moon like a bottomless abyss. Without nothing but a short supply of candles and burning wood to light the place during the nighttime, dwellers of the small house in the woods were forced to go to sleep with the sun. Even the enhanced nightvision that nanites gave to many—but not all—people wasn't good enough to see in a complete darkness.

Xia was an exception. Even now she could see the warm and cold silhouettes of things. Celina and Victor looked like red blobs in infravision, their chests rising and lowering in a slow, sleepy rhythm. It was deep enough into the night that Xia was sure that both of them wouldn't wake up from small noises even if Xia made any. Centimetre by centimetre, she slithered out of her sleeping bag like a snake—careful, precise, able to see the warmth of her prey. A knife in her hand was her fangs—not venomous, unless poisoning by heavy metals counted, but just as deadly.

She creeped through the living room; her steps light as a feather, her presence suppressed into almost nothing. Xia had committed to her memory every creaky board of this floor—and oh boy, there were many of them. Thankfully, she only needed to make several steps to reach the couch. Victor was curled on it in a visibly uncomfortable pose, his long legs barely fitting in. His shoulder-length hair was scattered on the couch pillow that lied under his head.

Xia swallowed with a knife already raised in her hand. She suddenly felt unsure—not to kill, but to meet her friends', Celina's eyes after she did it. 'Their safety is more important than that they like me.' She steeled her heart. Nothing (visible) had happened with Eve today, and there were no signs of a struggle that Xia could see, but she knew that it only meant that Xia was blessed with a temporary delay. Bad things always happened, and usually sooner instead of later.

She moved. The knife struck like a thunderbolt, aiming for Victor's throat.