> Enhanced Lifeforms drool! Unenhanced Lifeforms rule!

>

> — Kraej City graffiti

Israfel

I froze.

The world seemed to shrink until I could see nothing but the three girls. Sofia was rigid with shock. Her head was down and she was looking at her blood and gore-covered arms and chest silently. Katja had fallen to her knees and was making a wordless, high-pitched keening noise.

A part of my mind told me I should speak, warn them to get down in case the sniper fired again, but I was unable to move or make a sound.

Asteria’s body toppled down in slow motion then, incredibly, it moved back up until it was upright. Like a film being played backward, the blood, flesh, bone, and brain fragments on Sofia and Katja flew back as Asteria’s head reconstituted itself.

In seconds, Asteria was back to normal, alive and whole.

Sofia fainted. Oren was the only one who had the presence of mind to catch her and wave one of those foul-smelling potions under her nose. Katja and I just stood there with our mouths hanging open. Ravn’s red eyes were almost bulging out of his head in shock. Then Katja jumped up and fell into Asteria’s arms, tears running down her eyes.

“Shield.” Asteria was the first one to react by casting a shield spell.

“Get down!” I said. The warning was a little late, but Asteria’s quick thinking protected us. Bullets ricocheted off her shield.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Ravn was riled up. His eyes and right hand glowed as he fired a shot off in the sniper’s direction.

Sofia put another shield up and we retreated behind the shelter of a large rock. I couldn’t hear or see where the enemy was, but Oren kept up a barrage of fire spells in their approximate location.

“I can’t keep this up forever,” said Oren.

“Then you’d better stop. We can just hunker down and wait for reinforcements,” I said. The Kraej staff must have informed headquarters of the trouble here, so all we had to do was survive until they arrived.

“They stopped firing,” said Katja.

Oren stopped casting spells. Nothing happened. It was quiet for a few minutes until we heard the welcome sound of helicopters.

“It’s about time,” I said.

“Thank goodness,” said Katja.

The helicopter landed on the eastern side of the beach. EL soldiers in uniform spilled out of the helicopter.

“Israfel!” A familiar voice called to me from the other side of the beach.

“Freja!”

Was there anything better than meeting your girlfriend when you thought she’d ditched you on your vacation?

Freja was wearing her usual combat boots, camouflage pants, and a black T-shirt. Tall, statuesque, and with the face of a goddess, Freja was a sight for sore eyes. She walked up to us with her hands in her pockets.

“Wait a minute,” said Oren. He was frowning at the ELs.

“Guys, this is my girlfriend, Freja. See? I told you she’s real,” I said.

“Israfel, do you recognize those ELs?” asked Oren.

I turned around and squinted at the group walking towards us. They had the EL uniforms on, but they weren’t as tall as most ELs. “No, I don’t see anyone I know.”

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“Trouble?” asked Katja.

“Trouble,” said Oren.

Freja was just a few meters away, but the fake EL soldiers were almost on us. “Freja, wait! There’s trouble.”

“I know,” said Freja.

Wisps of her blonde hair had spilled out of its bun and danced in the wind. Her blue-grey eyes were melancholy. She walked forward a few more steps before taking her hands out of her pockets, revealing two small dart guns. A tranquilizer dart hit Asteria’s neck. I was fast enough to dodge one but the next two hit me on the shoulder and side.

I fell down, no longer in control of my limbs, but still conscious for a few more seconds. Asteria was already down for the count, but it took more to knock out an A-class EL like me.

“Why?” I asked Freja who was bending over me.

Oren and the others were fighting the fake Kraej soldiers, but with Freja here I knew they were doomed. They were all too tired to put up much of a fight.

“You knew I was trouble from the start,” said Freja.

She shot me with the dart gun again. Her frowning face was the last thing I saw before the blackness overtook me.

***

My hearing returned before anything else.

“Interesting,” said a dry, rough voice that was vaguely familiar. “Two polar opposites. Her body completely rejects the virus, but he bonds with it on a cellular level.”

I stifled a moan and tried to move but my limbs were restrained in some way. I could barely wiggle my fingers and toes.

“Ah, he’s coming to. You shouldn’t have shot him with that many tranquilizers, Freja,” said the voice.

Freja? She was here, too?

Memory returned in a rush. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in a warehouse or industrial building of some sort. They had used the standard EL restraints on me. I tried to break free of the solid mithril chains, but it was useless. The others were strapped down to steel tables, unconscious.

I had to admit that things looked bad. I had faith in my woman, but she’d better have a damned good explanation for this. I refused to believe that Freja had betrayed me. We’ve known each other for years. There’s no way she’d do anything to harm me.

“I’ll have to run more tests to check what this so-called ‘blessing’ is made of,” said the old man in the white lab coat. The grey fringe around his bald head was completely white now, but I remembered those piercing grey-blue eyes and bushy eyebrows.

“Doctor Greve? You’re alive!” I said.

The doctor ignored me. He patted Asteria’s face. “As for this girl, she’s going to be the centerpiece of my new project.”

“Asteria? What are you going to do to her?” I asked, but the two of them continued to ignore me.

Freja glanced at me for the first time since I woke. She was standing beside Doctor Greve in a hunched-over, defensive posture, and she kept looking down on the ground. The Freja I knew was a strong, confident woman who was nothing like this timid creature.

She was a fierce warrior, a freelance monster hunter. I’d met her by chance when I was on a mission in the sewers under the Kraej headquarters. She was an EL, but she must have washed out of the program before she enrolled in the military. Many EL Project subjects did.

Or had she? Her presence here with Doctor Greve, the scientist behind the EL Project confused me.

“Doctor, you’ll let this one go, right?”

“Your boyfriend, you mean? I see you like the brawny type, just like me. He’s just like your mother,” said Doctor Greve.

Did I hear that right? Doctor Greve seemed to be implying that Freja was his daughter. Come to think of it, their eyes did look the same.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Freja.

“Good. That was my mistake. You should select your partner for brains, not brawn. Maybe then you’ll have offspring with my genius instead of...” Doctor Greve gestured towards Freja.

“Yes, Father,” said Freja.

“I told you never to call me that!” said Doctor Greve.

“Sorry, doctor,” said Freja.

I wondered if Freja realized that the doctor hadn’t made any promises about letting me go.

“This girl, on the other hand, is a true genius,” said Doctor Greve.

“Her?”

Asteria? I thought she was as dumb as a rock! She never even finished her schooling. Even if she did, what kind of school do they even have in her town that no one’s ever heard of?

Doctor Greve smiled. His teeth were too white and even to be real. “You saw her cure them of the virus, didn’t you? I knew it was her. She appeared at the right time to have cured Uriel. I had her background checked.”

“And you found out that she’s a genius?”

“That Brahe-Ostenfeld test you keep failing? She got a perfect score on it when she was seven years old. Also when she was twelve.”

“People can’t ‘fail’ an intelligence test,” I said but they ignored me as usual.

“Then why wasn’t she given a scholarship and taken to Kraej City?” asked Freja.

“The stupid woman in charge of testing in Lieceni thought the girl cheated on the tests. That’s what she wrote in her report. She said it was impossible to get a perfect score.”

“It does seem unlikely.”

“The fact that she invented a cure for my modified virus proves she’s a genius. Not to mention that she was also able to activate the legendary shield artifact.”

Damn. I was the one who had leaked the information about the shield and the goddess’ blessing to Freja. I should have kept my big mouth shut.

“I see.”

“Our offspring will surely be genetically superior,” said Doctor Greve.

Did he just say “our offspring?” By the goddess, was he planning to…?

I threw up a little in my mouth.