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After a day and night of work, Eve was as incredulous as she was disappointed. The remote data transfer mechanism that she was hoping to use turned out to be absolutely useless—but how! It was something on the razor thin edge between a genius and a madness.

In the beginning, Eve thought that her ability to hear "voices" of zombies was a form of wireless transmission. It was the most reasonable way to do something like that—but of course, the natural evolution of nanites had little to do with reason.

Instead, Eve's core constantly let out billions of nanites into the atmosphere around each second. If they met a creature that let out signals of computing activity, but no signals of brain activity (or, in other words, a zombie) they would gather some data from it and return. In Eve's mind, it was barely faster than sending that data with carrier-pigeons. The amount of what her nanites could gather this way was small as well, and the distance in which they worked was only a dozen meters at most.

In the end, Eve couldn't do much about it at the moment. The function spent little of her computing power and sometimes proved itself useful, so she left it be—after she allowed data from humans and animals to be gathered too and saved as a text in her core for Eve to examine at will.

Just like that, Eve's idea to steal information from Victor's core (or "pirate", to say it better, since Eve didn't intend to harm Victor in any way) met a great roadblock. She would need to write the entire program for it from scratch, and Eve believed it would take more time than her wound will need to heal. It was already looking very good according to Xia's words as it was.

After all, this wasn't a simple task. Any transmission required a sender and a receiver of some sort; but even if Eve build both of them in her core, if it didn't exist in cores of others, her efforts would be for naught. It would be the same as trying to shout at a deaf person or hear sign language. Only nanites could interact freely with other nanites, since it was built in their basic nature.

And like that, Eve had no other choice but to forget about Victor's core and focus on other ways to improve herself.

Next morning, Eve ate sat at breakfast with a deep frown on her face. She chewed her food with mechanical movements, paying no notice to the outside world; she wouldn't have noticed if someone put a cockroach on her spoon. This picture of concentration was not unfamiliar to Celina. The androgynous woman sat in silence and didn't interrupt Eve's thoughts; following her lead, Xia did the same. Victor, of course, was quiet as well. It made the atmosphere around the table feel especially uneasy and awkward today.

"El… I mean, Celina, Xia, come to my room later. I have something to discuss with you," Eve said out of the sudden. Then she threw her spoon onto her cleaned plate and left the living room without waiting for anyone's reply.

Xia looked after her and bit her lip in worry. "Is Sister alright? What could this be about?"

"Don't worry, she is probably just thinking hard about something… You know, science and all that. People like us wouldn't understand anyway!" Celina let out a short laugh. "It must be something about where we are going to go after she heals."

After they finished eating as well, Celina and Xia joined Eve in the bedroom. She was half-sitting on the bed with a pillow propping her up. Her complexion now looked much healthier than only a couple days ago, but she still was a little paler than normal, and her full lips were chaffed.

"What did you want to speak with us about, Sister Eve?" Xia said. She looked Eve over and frowned. "Are you feeling well?"

Eve shook her head. "I'm alright. But I need your help with something. It's going to be beneficial for you two too, though. I need more data from my research. Since I'm not in a position to hunt for cores now, I ask you to let me copy data from yours."

"Copy data? Sister, what do you mean?"

"Oh, you mean like that time with zombie cores? You can do that with our cores too?" Celina jumped in. She turned towards Xia. "When we scavenged together, we got to kill some zombies, and afterwards Eve used their cores to upgrade without actually eating them. Then I ate them and we had double the profits!"

"Exactly like then, Celina. Except this time I will be able to send data from my core to yours afterwards. The only thing I would require from you is time."

"If it can help not just you, but us to boot, then of course I'd agree! Doctor Ziffer, how can you be so brilliant in science but silly in things like these?" Celina grinned. "We have all been through so much together already. You shouldn't talk with us like with strangers!"

"Exactly, Sister! Do your magic!" Xia nodded at Celina's side with enthusiasm burning in her eyes.

Eve's gaze lowered to her fingernails as she swallowed down her awkwardness and embarrassment. "It will take an hour or two for each of you. Breaks will be possible, but not recommended, so prepare yourself and choose who is going to be first."

Celina and Xia exchanged glances. "Can I?" Xia said. "I want to see how it happens. I am ready for it right now!"

Eve sat up and patted her hand on the bed. "Then sit there. We will need to maintain body contact, and the closer our cores will be, the faster the transfer will be. Ideally, the point of contact should be our foreheads."

Xia nodded. The two women sat side to side with each other, and Eve pulled Xia closer until their foreheads touched. Xia's curious eyes met Eve's distracted ones, but in the next second Eve closed them and entered DreamscapeEdit. From the side, Celina watched the process with interest.

[Another device detected. Establishing a connection…]

[Connection established successfully.]

The activation of the data transfer was a simple matter. The only problem was the speed of it. It was already faster than before by a noticeable amount—in the past, Eve spent an hour on level two core, but now she would need third of that… And an hour more to transfer the data from her own level three core. It was all because of the increase in her level.

When Eve connected with other computing devices, her core used nanites to create a temporary "wire" between them, which then transferred information. It was akin to ants building a living bridge out of their bodies. Since these nanites weren't made to exist out of the host's body, the direct contact was necessary for the "wire" to exist.

The more nanites were used to build the "wire", the faster the transfer would be. The more computing power a core had to control its nanites, the more nanites it would have to build connections. It was as simple as that.

Eve ventured into Xia's core's code. The estimated time until the end of the transfer was an hour, and Eve wanted to look around and see if she can add something useful to Xia's core during this time. 'Let's consider it a "thank you" gift…'

An hour and a half was a small amount of time, but at least Eve was already somewhat familiar with what she was going to see. It wasn't an exact copy of her core, since they developed independently, but it was similar enough for Eve to know where to look. She added a few minor improvements there and there and went to look at Xia's superpower.

'The way it's built is a complete bullshit. No self-respecting programmer would ever write anything like that. But, ah… For a self-improving neural network that doesn't even understand what it's doing, this is an outstanding job already,' Eve thought. She had a strong sour feeling in her heart when she analysed the code that went into Xia's power. Part of it enhanced her eyes; part of it processed the images to enhance them; and the biggest part… did nothing useful besides eating core's resources.

'This isn't something I can fix in an hour, but Xia would definitely benefit from it. Her superpower is so weak despite her level exactly because of this… I must look deeper into it later.'

Eve checked the state of data transfer and found that it was completed a dozen minutes ago. She opened her eyes to see that Xia's were half-closed; but as soon as she saw Eve awaking, they opened wide.

"I'm done here," Eve said, moving away from Xia and stretching her stiff neck. She glanced around but found that Celina had left. "Xia, come to me again later. I have a way to improve your superpower, or at least use the resources from it to strengthen your body if it can't be done. Either way, it will be much less useless."

"Really?" Xia's eyes sparkled. She stood up from the bed and bowed low before Eve. "Sister Eve, if you really can do it… Then you'd really be a witch!"

"A witch?" Eve's voice was sour. 'Is this a way to call someone who helps you?..'

Xia blushed. "Sorry, Sister! I… I had misspoken! I forgot the better word for it! It should've been a female sage… or a mage…"

"A sorceress?"

"Yes, yes!" Xia nodded several times. "You'd be a sorceress, Sister Eve! What should I do to thank you? Do you want to have your neck massaged?"

Eve scowled. "I didn't even do anything yet. Massage Celina if you have nothing else to do. And when you finish, call her in."

"This instant, Sister Eve!"

Eve let out a sigh as she watched Xia hop out of the room. When Xia acted in this childish way of hers, the steely look in her eyes and the self-assurance with which she acted during their escape from Chainsaws Base felt like a dream.