Considering how fast she was changing, I had to admit it was a bit freaky that she might be ‘literally in my head.’ It wasn’t like I disliked her change, it was a little fun, to be honest, she rode the line that put me at ease with sass.

“Aye, aye, what the hell is with this feeling? It feels like my entire body is licking a battery.”

“I’m transferring energy through your cells, conducting through living tissue is far easier because your body has conductive properties, it is normally conductive, cloth… not so much, I would have to arc the energy through your socks, which would buuuurn them.”

They were cheap socks; I didn’t have all that much of a connection to them, but if I could avoid it, I would. Burning through a pair of socks and needing to get them replaced would be a massive waste compared to the two seconds it would take to remove them.

“That’s… Hella weird, shouldn’t electricity, like, make me spaz out a little? I’ve been electrocuted a little before,” I asked her, plopping down on the bare floor and taking my socks and shoes off.

“That is utterly unsurprising, it would if it was interacting with your underlying biological machinery. It's travelling using the same wires, but it skips everything else,” she told me, dumbing it down so my ‘sub-standard’ intelligence could parse it.

“Wild, also, you're getting good at those explanations where you don’t over-explain stuff,” I told her, getting back down on my ass, pulling off the shoes and my socks, and depositing them in the bag in a wad in either shoe.

Seeing my toes and paying attention to them for a moment, I was once again struck with the difference. My five toes were a bit weird; the pinky toe didn’t tuck in at all, and there was no minor bend to my big toe, it was like a drawing of a foot instead of a foot.

It made the sensation of my foot feel… fake. Made it feel like it was something else, like it wasn’t real, just some highly accurate facsimile, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my foot, it was wrong. I pushed that back down as best as I could. I tried to keep it distanced from my thoughts and put the shoe back on, but like everything I was shoving down, it was still there, like an intrusive thought being shouted in a separate room, divided by only a paper-thin privacy wall.

Putting the shoes back on, the connection finished, and the sensation of static in my skin died down, the energy pathing directly from my gut to the two points and increasing in presence as it presumably found the path of least resistance and increased its output to power the two artifacts.

It made me feel like I needed to pee a bit, but after it reached the bag and boots and it settled down into a lighter zipping feeling, it calmed, instead feeling like I had a thousand little bikes racing up and out of my body instead of an all-encompassing need for speed.

The shoes lit and shrunk on my feet, making me more aware of the fakeness of my body, but at least I could use them right. The light was, of course, a massive pain to my eyes. If I was going into a war zone, it would have been my death, it this environment? It would also probably be my death, but at least I could run faster.

Standing, I found that their bounce was amplified, testing them, I found that my feet didn’t slide; they griped the ground until I wanted to lift the shoes, and then they stopped and pushed me forward.

“That… is either going to be useful in a fight or kill me so dead I won't get a burial. Are you controlling them to grip? Or is that like some weird property of the artifact?” I asked her.

It was an important question for someone who thought about footing and footwork in a fight, especially when it came down to the wire, and I couldn’t think and just had to act and rely on my fighting instinct. Small changes, some that are stupidly small, could make the difference between causing a problem and not being a problem.

Hell, if you change the dimensions of a staircase by as small as eight-hundredths of an inch, people would trip on the stairs.

Changing movement in a tense fight? I was well aware of why the phrase, ‘he fell,’ meant they got referred to in the past tense for the rest of the series.

“I am, I’m reacting to your intentions and commanding the boots in real time, it probably won't be a problem in most cases, though be aware of the change and attempt to react accordingly. When you become more acquainted with resonance technology, you can do it iiiinstead, but we should get you used to bio-resonance first, it's easier, and you already have some.”

That was reassuring and not reassuring at the same time. The upside was that I probably wouldn’t trip and die so easily, the downside was my mind was being read. The second upside was that it didn’t always need to be that way.

“Skiping that last part, can I ask, and you don’t need to answer if it would make you too uncomfortable, how literal are you about being in my head,” I asked her.

She didn’t say a thing for a second but answered as I tested out my movement and rearranged my kit to be balanced now that my weapons and junk were literally as light as a feather.

“I suppose it's important that I tell you, considering the low likelihood of receiving training,” She told me, “The answer is very literal and in more than one way.” I waited for her to finish while I played around with my shoes. They felt like they were giving me a stupid amount of spring when I wanted to and almost none when they griped, instead compressing when I didn’t. It was a relatively small but useful piece of equipment.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That wasn’t to say I wasn’t paying attention. I could aim and fire with both hands and balance on my old bike and fire, I could listen just fine while testing my gear.

“How are you in my head?” I asked her, “Because it’s a bit unnerving knowing someone else is in here with me.”

She once again became silent, the same thinking silent as before, it was a pause while she no doubt dumbed down the answer into something I could understand without a degree from a university in some specific field I had never heard of.

“You remember that soul shard I mentioned earlier? I am a part of that. The shard is in your head, is connected to your brain, which is one of the ways I am in your head.”

“Yeah, you mentioned it was deactivated, though. If your in a deactivated thing in my head, how are you even talking?” I asked her.

“I’m connected to the core of the shard,” she said before letting out a quick sigh, “and it being inactive is not the issue, it’s bio-resonant, it’s powered in the same way your brain is, it being inactive right now is more like a loaded gun with a safety on.”

“Now you’re speaking my language. I suppose that makes more sense, so you're literally in my head in a thing that’s currently locked up. But what about the, in multiple ways part? How are you in my head beyond being literally in my head, how are you reading my ‘intentions.’”

“The shard is connected to your brain, most of it is a bit too complex to properly read without equipment, but I can read your intentions by checking where the signal is going from your brain, and working off of that, I’m doing something similar to how you can hear me Speeek, I’m listening to you hear yourself, and sending an answer.”

“Oh, that’s… honestly not that bad, actually. The shard connecting to my brain is a bit scary. But I need to get out of here, how long until you're done… not copying stuff?”

“Only a few minutes. Is there anything you want me to go over?”

I started checking myself over, making sure I was ready to go, stuff in the featherweight bag, pockets full of ammunition. I loaded up the shotgun with its weird plastic shells, pulling back the pump and sliding them into the loading gate on the bottom until they didn’t want to go in anymore while I mulled it over in my head.

“I have two. You said I have bio-resonant stuff already, right? That’s one. I don’t understand this beyond that artifact do something, but bio-resonant implies, what? Bio artifacts? And a second one would be how do I activate this shard? It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that having something that sounds that important not working is not good.”

“I can do that,” she chimed, almost glad sounding to get away from the context of talking about how she was in my head.

Honestly, for such a possibly spooky context, her answers of she can tell how I was moving and her literally located in my head were more minor than I had originally thought, considering her mind reading could be substituted for standing next to me and paying attention.

“The second is the most straightforward answer, oh, check the next row over for a goodie you won't want to miss, you’ll know it when you see it. You can either spend Imperial Credits or Contribution Points, I doubt you have the credits for it, so you’ll need Contribution Points. Contribution points are gained by taking orders from higher authority Leigonares, keeping the peace, suppressing xenobiology, maintaining the law, or following directives like those currently set up during wartime.”

“Ok, makes sense, it's like getting company credit for following along with stupid stuff… got it. How do I get these points? And how many do I need for the shard?”

“Weeeell,” she said, doing her weird robotic stutter, “There are six components, each is worth 100 contribution points. I am awarded the right to give you some based on what you do, but I can't give them out for free, unfortunately… The war directive is a little weird, but all the rest of them require others, obviously, you can't enforce the law on a tree.”

“600. I have no idea how much that is, honestly. What's this weird war directive thing, and how well does it pay?” I asked, honestly curious at what might have had the power to off humanity so hard they were all but gone.

Whatever it was, it had to be something big. They were in a golden age of technology, they had artifacts like my sword, rolling off automatic production lines, fueled by billions of servants and a solar system of materials to exploit.

“Apparently, a species of alien from a separate spatial dimension with anomalous resonant properties.”

I squinted.

“Like… Like the dog thing that looked like it was drawn by someone who had never seen a dog and decided they hated them anyway in the hallway? The one that didn’t show up on the camera?”

“I… Maybe?”

“If I kill that thing in the hallway, will you give me contribution points?”

“Well, it certainly didn’t look like it belonged here… If I include all the possible points I can give you, it would probably give you 12, maybe more if it’s particularly resilient.”

I mulled that over for a moment. If one weak thing was worth something like twelve, that would imply killing a bunch of small things was worth it. It was a quantity vs quality thing, which I supposed made enough sense if it was a war: killing the enemy and taking as many of them down with you as you can was sometimes the priority. If you killed them all, you won.

“So I would need to kill 50 of those dogs?”

“Fifty dogs, carrying young, inside a restricted area, yes. Outside, it would be four less.”

“Wow. Life is cheap, huh?”

“Humanity made hundreds of thousands of genetically engineered people to do free labour because paying Artificial intelligence was too costly. Yes, yes, it is.”

“Ok, so kill weird aliens, get paid, I can do that.”

“Yes, you do have an apparent affinity for slaughter.”

That gave me a bit of pride. I had cut my teeth on fighting, it was what I considered myself good at. I could fight a dog.

“So you’ve been throwing around resonance like it’s the coming of our lord and saviour. So, run it by me: what’s this bio-resonance stuff I apparently have, did I get some when I enlisted? Joined the Silver whatever, or what?”

“This is a bit complex, so bear with me, everything resonates, including your body, cells, and even protein. A simple effect of driving home what bio-resonance is would be asking if you’ve ever felt like you were being watched.”

She paused, apparently waiting for my response.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been watched before, everyone has. What about it? Are you saying that I was being watched?”

“Yes. Or, more specifically, you were observed. That is one common, naturally occurring form of bioresonance. It’s caused when certain proteins are observed. You have several similar proteins that cause different effects and that are intentionally triggered. You can think of them like talents and triggers. Some affect you, and some can trigger other stuff, like artifacts. One of them has effects on an altered ear structure and promotes balance by altering the ear to maintain balance based on what you observe, there are quite a few here. Your ancestors must have had a lot more because there is some DNA degradation, causing many of them to become unexpressed. We can work on those later, but we need to activate your shard first.”

So my sense of balance was due to some kind of protein?

“When you say protein, I take it you don’t mean meat?”

She sighed.

“Close enough.”