"Ellin, what does my level feel like now?" Eve asked.
He didn't answer immediately; first, he tied the bandage on his leg into a neat bow. Afterwards, he frowned his brows in concentration for a moment. "I'd say level two, Eve."
Ellin put his pants leg back down and looked at the bloodstained hole in it. He had an embarrassed smile on his face. "So, I wonder, do you have any plans for the nearest few hours? I don't want to burden you, but I won't be able to outrun even a snail on that leg until it heals at least a little..."
"If you show me the way, I will bring you to your base. You can sit on my bike's back carrier."
"You'd do that? Oh, you are going to be my saviour again!" Ellin's eyes sparkled.
Eve looked at her nails with sudden interest. They were all broken and black with dirt. "I wanted to go there in any case." She dropped her hands out of sight and out of mind and looked at Ellin's wounded leg. "I didn't see any zombies with weapons out there. Are you so awful with swords that you stabbed yourself in a leg?"
Ellin blinked at the sudden change of topic. "No, no, that'd require a special level of skill... No, that wasn't me." His eyes darkened for a moment. Then his face brightened again. "You have sharp eyes, Eve, to tell that it was a sword wound."
"A lucky guess." Eve looked at her nails again. "Don't tell if you don't want to. Actually, if you are ready, we can go to your base. Is it far away?"
"If on foot, then it's around three days of walking away. Riding a bike would be much faster. Not to mention that with you there we won't need to avoid zombies." Ellin gripped his sword and used it as a prop to stand up carefully. Then he bowed with a flourish. "After you, milady!"
Eve snorted, but led the way. Her bike wasn't the biggest one, and putting Ellin and two their backpacks in there required some thought, but in the end the two of them fit everything. It was uncomfortable at first for Eve that Ellin needed to hug her tight to not fall off, but she got used to it after a while, and Ellin didn't try to put his hands anywhere inappropriate.
As they rode towards Chainsaws Base, Eve used the opportunity to ask Ellin more about the current state of the world and where she was. It turned out that Eve wandered quite far from her secret laboratory; if she walked on foot in a straight line, the journey would take her around three weeks. It was entirely possible for her to return there one day, especially if she got a working car. 'It would be very useful for my future research.'
"There are other survivors' settlements besides Chainsaws Base, but they are far away. There aren't many living people in this area, and most of them gathered in Chainsaws Base, but it's still not big. I've heard that the really huge bases have many times the population! But I've never seen one myself. It's far away, and the risk of meeting a wandering high-level zombie is too great for me. I'm just level one! With my superpower, I can only water farm plots." Ellin made a long face behind Eve's back. She didn't see it, but could imagine it from Ellin's tone. But it wasn't what caught her attention.
'Not just zombies, but superpowers? I will need to investigate that thoroughly. Superpowers... that's actually amazing!'
Eve gripped the bicycle's handlebars tighter. "Ellin, can you explain to me about superpowers like I spent the last six years in a coma?"
"Eh... Well, anything for my saviour! When someone gets to level one, they usually awaken a superpower of some sorts. I can control a small amount of water, for example. It's useful for farming, because I can filter the water for plants, or if I need to get something to drink. There are a lot of powers... Controlling elements, teleporting, transforming into animals, being a walking microwave... Some are better than others, and some people can have several, but that's very rare."
"Is there some way to learn what's your superpower?"
Ellin shrugged; Eve felt the movement with her back. "It's all very intuitive. You just know you can do something... Or realise it when you are already doing it."
Eve fell silent. 'I wonder what my superpower is. On level two, I should have one. Could it relate to the fact that I was able to see my core's programming code in my sleep? I don't think this is a normal thing, at least, and I don't feel like I can do anything else.'
When the sky darkened, Eve and Ellin made a camp in an abandoned house. Eve watched with interest how Ellin cooked the dinner for the two of them. He gathered wooden furniture for a bonfire and put a small pot from his backpack on top of it. Then, he waved his hands around and water flowed into the pot from the thin air.
Afterwards, Ellin used that water to boil oatmeal porridge with a can of spam and some salt. It was a simple, but mouthwatering meal. Eve ate the food with enthusiasm of a person who had spent six years eating insects, even if her memories of that time were blurry.
When the pot of porridge was picked clean, Ellin spread a sleeping bag on the floor, leaving the only unbroken bed in the house for Eve. Looking at how relatively clean Ellin and his bag were, and at how dusty was the bed and herself, Eve didn't refuse.
"Don't wake me up unless it's something important," she said to Ellin from where she lay on the bed, still in her clothes. She didn't know what would happen if she got interrupted in the middle of redacting her code.
Just like the last time, almost as soon as Eve closed her eyes, sleep overtook her consciousness. Again, she floated in the vast darkness that was only lighted by the lines of text. Instead of continuing to read it, Eve wished to move to the place where she put her small function.
In the next moment, that segment of code appeared in front of her. It was a very basic program. During the time Eve spent riding the bike today, she got quite a few ideas about how to improve it. Now she was eager to implement them.
Eve didn't notice the passage of time as she worked. Word by word, the scary aura function took a more defined shape. She only stopped after implementing everything she wanted and checking it for mistakes. After that, she decided it was time to wake up.
When she rose from her bed with a yawn, Eve found Ellin looking at her with a frown. She blinked at him and rubbed her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"You've just slept for twelve hours! I was kinda starting to worry that you won't ever wake up... And the pose you slept," Ellin straightened up, and put both his palms together on his chest, "it was like you had departed from our world already!"
Eve gave Ellin a nonplussed glance. "Forget it. Let's move."
After a quick breakfast, the two of them continued on their way. Ellin's leg was much better than yesterday and he could walk, but not without worsening his injury. Either way, Eve wasn't going to ask him to go on his feet. That would only slow her down.
They didn't encounter any dangers on their way. Whenever there was a crowd of zombies blocking the road, Eve would only need to activate her scary aura to shoo them away. Thanks to her improvements, she could now focus it only on her targets and avoid Ellin.
She even experimented with it a little on the zombies they passed by. By changing the power of her oppressing presence, Eve could change the speed with which zombies ran away from her and even hit only individual zombies in a crowd.
By the time the twilight fell again, Eve finally saw tall brick walls of Chainsaws Base on the horizon. It was stationed right on the edge between the end of the urban area and the beginning of a wild one. She pushed her bike pedals harder. Her eyes gleamed with excitement and anticipation. Behind her back, Ellin grinned.
"We are almost there! My position in the base isn't that high, but with your level I'm sure the chief will provide you with necessary accommodations. Don't know about the lab you mentioned, but there is hot water to wash!"
'I just hope that there won't be any trouble as we enter... What if people in there turn out to be bastards?' Eve's eyes dimmed, and she bit her lip. In the end, she had little choice but to enter this base as of now. Unless she wanted to wander cluelessly in search of another base, she had to go with Ellin.