Eve watched as several zombies pushed into a shoulder-level fence between them and her. The rusty old fence creaked under their weight, but held well enough. Some zombies tried to climb it, but their unresponsive limbs would not even rise high enough. The short, see-through metal fence which Eve herself climbed with ease was an insurmountable barrier for the zombies.
Despite their disgusting looks, their behaviour right now made them look funny instead of threatening. 'Artificial idiots...' Corners of Eve's lips turned up a little. It was time for her experiment. 'Activate false signals.'
After she thought that, Eve immediately felt the response from her core that showed that her little function was working. Then, she turned towards the zombies behind the fence and watched their reaction.
It was instantaneous. The zombies stopped walking towards Eve and instead staggered backwards, ignoring their neighbours. They tripped over each other and fell, only to keep crawling on their fours away from her. Their lines about the data search also changed with:
[Warning! Immense threat detected!]
As soon as these zombies followed Eve there, they all ran away, disappearing from her sight. In a dozen minutes, the last of them crawled away on his one and a half legs. Eve grinned.
'This was a success. I wonder, though, what made my nanites develop this reaction. There must be a reason for it.'
Eve put this question on her mental list of things to think about later. Right now, she was still hungry, thirsty and dirty; but with her new ability, Eve wouldn't need to hide from zombies, making her search for the necessities much easier.
Now, instead of creeping through the streets like a thief, Eve walked as if she owned them. All the zombies she met run away from her on sight. At first she watched them to make sure that no exceptions from that rule would appear, but after a while she relaxed completely and paid all her attention to the surroundings.
At some point, Eve discovered a bicycle repair shop. After an hour of tinkering with one of the most well-preserved bikes there, she continued her journey on two wheels. With that, her search became even more effective.
The further into her chosen direction she travelled, the more untouched places Eve saw. Soon enough she found a convenient backpack and a bunch of supplies to fit into it, including a can opener. After that, she switched directions and drove back. Her current goal was to find other survivors, and the looted places were a good sign of their presence.
Eve rode her bike for several hours. If it was in the past, she'd be dead tired by now, but this time she felt no tiredness at all. Eve marvelled at how well her nanites were working at strengthening her body.
Following a road, she left the urban area. The only thing she wasn't able to find was a map. The paper maps were long ago out of use, and all electronic devices were out of charge. There were solar and wind generators out there, but Eve didn't find any of those that were still working as she explored the town. So she travelled without a certain destination in her mind.
Soon the road brought Eve into another small town. It wasn't much different from the previous one, but Eve hoped she would find more signs of the other survivors out there. At first she didn't; yet after half an hour of riding, she heard a voice coming from behind a street corner. And it wasn't a robotic voice of a zombie! Instead, it sounded like it belonged to a woman. It was too far away to hear the words, but it sounded angry.
Eve immediately turned her bike to the direction of where the voice came from. As soon as she turned around the corner, she saw a vast crowd of zombies surrounding a store entrance, where someone was fighting them off. "Off with your head!" another shout was heard.
A moment later, the zombies sensed Eve's overwhelming presence. Just like all the other times, they instantaneously dropped what they were doing and ran, walked and crawled away, leaving behind only a dozen beheaded corpses and a lone person standing in the store's doorway.
As Eve drew closer, she saw that it was not a woman, but a man. He was looking at her with a hanging jaw. His blond hair was cut short, and he was dressed in military-style clothes. In his hands he held a sword that he right now used as a cane; one of his legs was dyed red with blood.
Eve dismounted her bike to a stop a few meters from the man and left it standing on its prop. When she was only a couple meters away from him, the man closed his jaw and made a step back with a frown. From up close Eve could see his androgynous face with pursed, yet still plump lips. In another life, he could've become a model.
"H-hey, thanks for rescuing me. I'd sure die there if not for you!" The man looked at Eve with visible worry. "But now that's these zombies gone, maybe you could stop dominating me like these, please?"
Eve blinked and looked around. Indeed, there was no zombie in sight anymore. The only person from whom she could feel a presence of a core was the man in front of her. Eve could imagine that the pressure he was getting from his core right now was enormous. She hurriedly thought the command to deactivate the fear-inducing aura.
'When I next have an opportunity, I should think of a way to control it better than simply turn it on and off.'
The man whom Eve saved sighed in visible relief. "Thank you again. My name is Ellin. I know I am not of much help right now," Ellin pointed at his wounded leg, "but if there's anything you might need, just ask. You had saved my life, after all!"
"I'm Eve Ziffer. Don't thank me; it was nothing." Eve dismissed Ellin's gratitude with a wave of her hand. She would not take credit for something like a lucky appearance. "But if you want to help, you can answer my questions. Just dress your wound first. Last thing I want is for you to bleed to death in the middle of our conversation."
Ellin chuckled. "That's kind of you. Alright, I will do that, just you wait!"
Using his sword as a cane, Ellin walked inside the store. Once it was probably a bakery, but animals and looters had eaten all the food inside long ago. He sat on a preserved metal chair and took off his backpack. Eve watched from the side as he got a small first aid kit out and rolled up his pants' leg to reach the wound. It was a short, but deep gash that looked as if something long and sharp made it... Like a sword.
Eve's eyes darted to the Ellin's sword that was now leaning on a nearest wall. It didn't fit a picture of a zombie-apocalypse in her head, but made sense if she thought about it. Zombies controlled by nanites would only stop if their core was destroyed or disconnected from the rest of their body. And cores were small, inconvenient and hard to break targets. It made more sense to use long blades and nanites-enhanced strength to straight out decapitate zombies.
While Eve was thinking, Ellin disinfected the wound and started to wrap it with a long strip of white fabric. While his hands moved, his mouth worked too. "So, I've never seen you before, Miss Ziffer. You must not be from Chainsaws Base. I know all its leaders and there is no one there like you are!"
"Do I look like a leader of anything?" Eve poked at the nest on top of her head with a sour face. "Where did you get that idea? And just call me Eve." In the past, nobody called her 'Miss Ziffer', because she was 'Doctor Ziffer' instead. She didn't like the sound of a 'miss'.
Ellin's hand stopped for a moment. He raised his eyes at Eve in surprise. "With a presence of yours you must be level six, no less, Eve! There are only two people with level six in our base, and none of them is a woman. They are the base's chief and his right-hand man."
"Level six? What are you talking about?" Eve felt like she fell into some sort of game again. "What levels?"
"You... you are really strange to not know, Eve. Well, it's not my place to ask, anyway! You saved me–who am I to ask about strangeness, eh?" Ellin laughed a little and returned to putting a bandage on his leg.
"When some people became more powerful than others, there was a need to compare them somehow. Someone had an idea to divide everyone by levels, and it spread. The bigger the number, the stronger the person. Or a zombie. They level up too, these bastards! Zero is the smallest level and eight is the biggest... The biggest one I've heard about. I'm level one myself!"
Eve could feel that Ellin's presence was noticeably stronger than that of the zombies she had met. She wondered how her own presence felt like without the false signals. Was it weaker or stronger?