“Felix! You’re awake!” Mia exclaimed, brimming with joy.

Not giving him any time to answer, she immediately began to bombard him with even more questions.

“Wait, you’re not tied to the bed? That freak must have thought you had died! Ha! Joke’s on her! Hey, Felix! Untie me, quick! … Felix? Felix? Why are you not saying anything? Hey Felix!... Felix?... What’s wrong? Please say something to me.” Mia started to panic. Her mood quickly dropped as she began to imagine the worst. ‘Had he lost his tongue? Was he in extreme pain? Did something happen to his head? ‘

Thoughts of dark scenarios began to overwhelm her mind when she suddenly got interrupted by Felix. Yet instead of reassuring her, what followed shook her to the deepest reaches of her mind.

“Pfffffft! Hahahahahahaha!!” Felix suddenly burst out laughing. This, however, did not reassure Mia in the slightest. She knew Felix wouldn’t joke in that kind of situation; besides, she was much more worried about his voice. There seemed to be something fundamentally wrong with it. It was crude and lacked to intonations she was used to, as if he wasn’t used to his vocal cords. As if he wasn’t himself.

“You truly are a first-class idiot.” He said, shaking her out of her thoughts.

“What do you mean?” Mia replied, sounding extremely worried.

“Do you not remember our conversation?”

“What conversation?”

“The fact that I’m a zombie. It shouldn’t be too hard to connect the dots from her right?” Felix replied with a mocking look in his eyes.

“What? But I didn’t talk about that with you, just the weird lady…” She said slowing down these last few words as the truth started to dawn on her.

“Y- You… You mean that… You… F-Felix is a zombie?” Mia said hesitantly while trying to hold back tears.

“See! You got it! Good girl!”

“Does this mean that Felix is… is…”

“Dead?” The possessed boy interrupted her. “Yeah, and you better say your goodbyes because you probably will never be seeing him ever again.”

“No! You can’t do that to him! He’s my best friend! He’s always been there for me, ever since we were kids! Please leave us his body! We didn’t do anything to deserve that fate, at least please let Ross go. Take me instead! I’ll obey you and do whatever you want me to.” Mia begged with all her might, as the dam holding her tears back collapsed. Her thoughts were frantically banging around within her head. She could feel the pressure caused by that incessant banging trying to pop her eyeballs out. Her head hurt, her brain hurt and her ability to form coherent thoughts was lost with it. Yet somehow, she had managed to string of coherent words within that torrent of emotions.

Felix looked at her with an exasperated look. At this point, the girl had completely collapsed and was crying at the top of her lungs. It truly wasn’t a good day for her. This went on for a long time. At least from her perspective. After this seemingly eternal time of torment, she finally began to quieten down.

“Are you done?” A feminine voice rang out. “How long are you going to keep me waiting? I’ve literally been standing here for over ten minutes. You just wouldn’t snap out of it. Ugh, you’re so annoying, grow some balls already.”

“Please… *sniff* Please let them go…” She quietly begged.

“What can you give me in return? I’m not dumb enough to just give away my precious research material. Therefore, if you want that Ross guy freed, you better give me something worthwhile. That also goes for Felix, if you don’t mind having a zombie around of course.”

“You can have my life, my soul and all that I own!” Mia said.

“…” The woman looked at Mia in silence, with a slightly surprised and annoyed look on her face. “Are you actually stupid? I know I was making fun of you before, but that kind of stupidity is just on a whole other level. You do realize that you’re at my mercy, right? You do know that everything you just offered me; I already have?”

“I-I’ll give you knowledge!” Mia said after a brief moment of worry and hesitation. “I can teach you magic and all that I know!”

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“I already have ways of getting all of this. If you truly want them free you better come up with something else.”

Mia froze. A deep panic began to re-emerge on her face. It was quite clear that she was trying her hardest to come up with something. Time went by and as the woman was about to leave, Mia took her a deep breath and steeled her resolve before saying.

“I’ll betray humans. I’m willing to work for you as a spy within their ranks.”

“Hmmm. That sounds good, however, how do I know that you won’t betray me once I let you go?” The woman said, looking quite tempted by Mia’s offer. It was not every day that one could acquire such a highly ranked spy.

“I don’t know…” She replied looking slightly ashamed. “It was the best idea I could come up with, I didn’t really think about that.”

After taking a brief moment of thinking, the mysterious zombie woman named Jules replied.

“Well, there is a way… Sadly it’s still in its experimental phase. To be completely honest there is a chance you will die, including your friend.” She said pensively. “If both of you survive, I’ll let you go. Otherwise, I’ll keep the remaining one here for further experiments. Do you agree to that?”

“So, we’ll still have to be experimented on?” Mia said somewhat disappointed.

“It’s your choice. You can decide to stay here and be experimented on until death or you could decide to undergo only one and buy your friend’s freedom. Now quick, make a decision, I’m getting impatient.”

“I-I agree to the deal.” Mia replied, hoping that she made the right choice.

“Very well. I’ll be back soon.” The woman said as she left the room.

As soon as the woman had left Mia began to worry about what was to come. She had decided to betray her people so that her friend could live! She had decided to side with a zombie-like creature that held no regards for human life. On top of that, there was no guarantee that they would both make it out alive! What if she decided to go back on her words and kill both of them? No, that wasn’t possible, she benefitted from the deal after all. But what if she just enjoyed giving her false hopes and tormenting her?

Thoughts were whirling around in her head like an unstoppable storm. No matter how hard she tried to stop them, grim scenarios would always find a way to get to her. The woman still wasn’t back yet, leaving her at the mercy of her own thoughts. The wait seemed like a painful eternity to her. What had she done? What had she done!?! She frantically looked around trying to find a way out of this place. Unsurprisingly she couldn’t do anything more than what she was able to do beforehand. Escape was impossible.

As she was about to go insane, the familiar figure of the woman with a pulsating heart on her back walked in. She was carrying a small bag filled with some sort of living creature in her right hand.

“Took me a little longer than I planned to find the little buggers.” She said with a mocking tone in her voice. Hinting at the fact that she knew how Mia was feeling, and that she had taken a long time to come back intentionally.

“What are you going to do to us?” Mia said in a weak voice. “What’s in that bag?”

“Oh, that? It’s a little surprise. However, I’ll tell you that I essentially am going to place something in your bodies that will allow me to kill you at any time from anywhere. I’ll be able to monitor you through that. Therefore, don’t even think of breaking our deal or I’ll make sure to give your friend the most painful death possible.”

With these words the woman made her way to Ross, bringing her mysterious bag along with her. She took a seat next to his bed and opened her bag. As her hand reached for the things contained within the bag, Mia felt her heart tighten as worry began to flood her body. Finally, her hand came back into sight holding something that looked like a shiny, smooth, and black rock. But it wasn’t a rock, the thing had a consistency that resembled that of fruit jelly. That wasn’t where the weirdness ended. The thing moved by itself as if it had a life of its own.

“W-What’s that?” Mia blurted, somewhat scared of this new thing she had never seen before.

“It’s a thing of my creation. I call them slimes.”

“Slime? It doesn’t look like a slime though.”

This seemed to have piqued the woman’s interest as she sunk deep in thoughts. After a small while, she replied.

“Indeed. Its doesn’t look very similar to the slimes you find in the forest. After all, these are much larger significantly more… liquid. And these little ones here don’t have cores, unlike the others.”

‘What the hell?’ Mia thought. ‘One second she had never heard of slimes but suddenly she’s very knowledgeable about them. This is beyond creepy.’

“Anyway, back to the experiment.” The woman said.

And then nothing. The woman just stood still.

This made Mia extremely uncomfortable. She looked around trying to figure out what was going one. She even tried calling out to the woman but didn’t get any replies. Seeing this Mia decided to quieten down and wait for something to happen.

The tent had fallen not a deathly silence. Once her hearing had gotten used to it, she found out that she could hear the woman’s heartbeat from where she was. And thus, time passed silently only to be interrupted by the occasional heartbeat or breath. Mia noted that the woman’s heartbeat was surprisingly slow, probably because it was so big. She had heard somewhere before that the bigger the creatures were, the slower their heartbeat was. Or perhaps it was just that her body would explode if it pumped away at full strength. She didn’t know nor cared to be honest. Therefore, she just kept waiting as her thoughts wandered from place to place.

Suddenly she broke out of her trance and exclaimed.

“Alright! I’ve gone over everything. Simulations have been run using the new data. Failure chances are at 23% and the chance of death is 10%. Everything is looking good. Let’s begin!” She shouted eagerly.

And before Mia could realize what had just happened, the woman pinched Ross’ nose and shove the slime in his mouth.

The only thought occupying Mia’s mind was:

‘What the fuck?’