"How much is One thousand two hundred and fifty two times three ?"

"Three thousand seven hundred and fifty six." Krogar answered without thinking. "Why?"

"See? You are a calculator, experimental proof right here!" Cirse giggled.

"Agh, this again? It seems some good for nothing half-lizard has nothing to do."

"Don't deny it, you have answered!"

"Spontaneous reaction, that is no proof." Krogar snorted. "And if you open your mouth and say something about my gender, I will kill you."

Cirse closed her already opened mouth.

"Well, tell me where you want to go, I promised to find you a place to stay." Krogar wanted to move on with his plans.

"That . .will be complicated." Cirse said and continued before Krogar could interrupt her. "I am an exiled person, a criminal. In addition to that, we have now a common criminal history because of our escape. Whoever is going to hunt you will be going after me as well to find more about you. The safest place for me is probably with you."

"You mean, you want to stay with me?" Krogar thought about it for a second, an hour ago he would say no, but in the light of the recent events he was no longer sure. "What about beyond the wall in the wilderness?"

"Victoria, I will not survive in the wild outside the wall, except for the camps in safer places and those camps are notorious for surveillance. For me, it is to stay either with you or get pinched. Hell, I cannot even work as a prostitute probably!" Cirse's mood worsened when she said aloud what she wanted to suppress in her mind to keep her cool. "It is so unfair! You could do probably both, your body is nearly perfect."

"Nah, I do not think I could be a prostitute." Krogar shook his head immediately. "Doing something like that with males would be quite repulsive."

"Ah, you are a lesbian." Cirse nodded with understanding.

"Damn no! That is not the problem."

"I see, being an AI the biological matter surely digusts you. What about with a refridgerator, or a .. "

"Stop right there Cirse!" Krogar pushed her slightly with his palm. "I have been developed as a male, being in this body is just a circumstancional necessity."

"That means you have the program for sex, but it is not compatible, like when I need to update the software in my mobile phone, but the versions does not fit right?"

"Cirse you are just. . Let's end this debate with the statement that I can execute said action with women alright? Debate closed."Krogar spoke and when he looked at Cirse"s face, he repeated himself again firmly while gesturing with his hand. "Closed. "

"We should be talking about our next destination, or we will end up lost." He added, they were still passing through the underground complex of tunnels From time to time, it was merged with the city's sewer."By the way, tell me more about this city, I feel like a barbarian."

"Short version or a long one?" Cirse limped next to him and Krogar wondered how long would she be able to walk, but she did not seem tired yet.

"The long one."

"I must warn you that the history of this city is a subject of politics and the first period in history that is more or less believable dates about five hundred years back, with the advances in genetics. There was a race between using artificial inteligence or mutants as super soldiers, but it ended with another clear winner, bioweapons. Weapons that aggressively modified DNA of targeted set of population. First, it was thought that the DNA modification would be used for enhancing rich poeple into superhumans, but the truth is that degrading is much easier than enhancing and it ended up in a race to debilitate population with mutations. The wake up call was the destruction of several orbital fusion power plants and in the name of continued existence of humanity, dictators rose to power in cities that managed to keep operational infrastructure. With time, dictators were replaced with the caste of The Gifted, heavily enhanced individuals that govern the cities from the shadows. It is believed there exists some kind of a secret world government that controls the space, because a single shot of the fusion beam weapon is able to destroy a whole city in minutes."

"Wow, so the city cannot control the beam?" Krogar's eyes widened.

"No one truly knows, probably not. Still, all energy, even energy to grow food comes from it. It is believed that it is the reason for such a long-term stability. If you want to usurp power in a city, all they need to do is to redirect the beam and the city will starve to death. "

"Huh, that's what I call a perfect setup." Krogar smirked. "By chance, do you know where can we find people with the knowledge to build advanced processors?"

"Government, or some private companies, but it is quite interconnected." Cirse spoke after a while of thinking.

"Anyone in this section of the city?"

"Let me think." She began to play with her hair. "There might be some people, but do not expect anything extraordinary."

"I will be fine with what I can get."

"Why do you need processing power?"

"I need to do something, but I am not strong enough as I am now. I need to upgrade my body." Krogar said with determination.

"Hey, hey, hey! Do not tell me we will be rescuing Lucy! That is absolutely crazy! " Cirse was stupefied, it was the worst idea ever. "She is with the government now, it is even worse if she is an AI, they surely have tabs on her, gosh they can surely even see what she sees. How do you plan to rescue someone, who will certainly be unwilling to be rescued? It might not even be her anymore!" Cirse was gesturing with her hands, imagining herself in a prison cell or worse.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"It is her." Krogar fumed angrily. "Se passed me a message. - Heavy satellite surveillance, Second traffic lights. a pet shop on the right, cellar leads underground, find Riddle, good luck. Lucy compromised." - "

"But that message even states it, Lucy compromised. It is not a message from her!" Cirse fought unusually hard, she was sure to be dead if she was unable to persuade Victoria of the futility of this endevour."Someone clearly wants us to join some resistance movement. This is for sure some power struggle amongst The Gifted, we will be just their pawns and Lucy have probably been deleted already." Hups, she certainly should not have said that.

She expected to be on the receiving end of some violence shortly, but Victoria just walked next to her like a puppet with its strings cut and after a while, she stopped and a heavy sigh escaped her lips.

Cirse thought of saying something, but acting like not being present was probably the most sensible action at that moment, damn she might have even gained some sort of a stealth skill if this was an RPG game.

Suddenly she heard something hitting a nearby wall, the sound forced her out of her suspended animation. She turned her head slowly in the direction of the disturbance and saw an imprint of a fist in the wall and Victoria who was slowly walking forward.

"You are right." Victoria said in a hoarse voice. "It would be a suicide mission, but I want to upgrade myself anyway."

"He migh have a constant itch to update himself like one of my mobile phone's app had." Cirse thought, while scratching her scaly foot. "Let her do what she wants, but I am not paying any subscription fees."

Krogar continued walking and listened absentmindedly to Cirse, who continued talking about their possibilities, but he was unable to focus, thus he knew nothing anyway and Cirse knew better than to reprimand him, continuing her awkward monologue.

"Cirse, just lead the way."

* * * *

" . . . and that will probably be our next option if you agree." Cirse finished and threw one eye in the direction of her zombified companion, but he was silent, which she translated as consent.

"It is probably his first, he will get over it." She thought remembering her own comrades that had died in the rotten system of Nas'Librion's slums. Especially one of her childhood friends, she might not have gotten over that one completely yet.

For now, she was the strategist of their thieving duo, because that was what they had to do. In Nas'Librion money were stored exclusively in the city network, associated with personal IDs, there was no official physical money. They could circumvent it by possesing valuables, but only the ones at odds with law would be willing to exchange goods with them.

Cirse understood Victoria needed to basicaly build a supercomputer. They could try to use an existing one, but if The Gifted happened to find out some data residues of what Victoria planned to do, they would be hunted like dogs. It would be for the best if the machine was their own with no direct access to the city network.

"We will need a person with the skills, a lot of parts and a place to build it."Cirse mumbled, constructing a plan in her head. "Thats a theft, probably some blackmail and a lot of scouting. We should find the place first, but we cannot find materials without our future technician."

"We are heading to the Dwarven Capital." Cirse said, Victoria seemed to be back online.

"Ok, there are dwarves?"

"No, it is a very old ruined city buried under this one. People used to be smaller a few hundred years back, that is why the Dwarven Capital."

They walked for hours, before realizing they would have to eat something before reaching their destination.

"We can eat rats." Krogar proposed, his mood significantly better.

"They are terrible raw and we have nothing to cook them with." Cirse's answer surprised him. " . and do not even think about the sewer frogs, I will never gulp down even one bit of that mush again. "

"Cooking frogs? Your eating habits are too complicated. " Krogar was already holding a fat rat by its meaty tail, sinking his fangs deep into it. In seconds, the rat turned into a bloodless corpse , drops of blood dripping down from Krogar's mouth.

"Oh. .yuck" Cirse looked at him, her whole face wrinkled in a disgusted grimace.

"No dilly-dallying, just get some frogs and be done with it." Krogar urged, but his mate did not look the least bit enthusiastic about catching them.

"Or just . ." He extended his hand closer to Cirse, the limp bloodless rat swinging wildly while hanging down by its tail.

"Well, we should hurry, no time for cooking right? I can eat something later." Cirse gulped, watching Krogar throwing the rat away with no regrets.

It did not take too long before they found themselves arriving at their destination of the Dwarven Capital. Krogar whould never recognize the place, but Cirse assured him they were on the spot.

"Right, now we can go up and look for some suitable person to build our machine, how do you want to do it?" Cirse looked at Krogar/Victoria and waited for his opinion.

"We should target someone no one will search for." Krogar would not have bad sleep after the kidnapping, for they just planned to borrow the person's skills for a time, nothing more.

They both thought about it more while ignoring the sounds of Cirse's stomach.

Actually, it was not the only sound Krogar was hearing. He raised his hand to signal Cirse to be silent and listened closely to the periodic noise. It was the sound of breathing!

Krogar's head slowly sviveled in the direction the sound was coming from, it was the corner of a small side tunnel, probably some sort of a maintenance shaft. Making no sound, he sneaked closer to its edge and his hand shot out to grab something organic that was hiding in its darkness.

Pulling the breathing entity out into their view, they stared at a petite figure of a man dressed in grey clothes, his hair was unwashed and messy, its color being hardly distinguishable from the dirt of the floor, apart from his messy and mundane features, Krogar noticed his clothes had stains of something greasy and black, hopefully motor oil.

"H-Hi folks!" He raised his hand awkwardly "Just passing by."

"Just passing by." Cirse repeated with a smirk and snuck her right hand into his pocket.

"Hey! Hands of you thieving bi-i-i-tch, just be my guest, take whatever you want." The tone of the man changed instantly, the moment Victoria applied a little bit of torque to his hand.

Cirse's hand quickly visited all of his pockets, apparently her hand was very skilled in paying visits to other people's pockets, regardless of not being invited in. Looking at the content she pulled out, the right corner of her mouth lifted in an amused grin.

"This is not exactly an ordinary sewer rat's livelihood, what are you doing down here? Why do you have cables and wires in your pockets?"

The man was not willing to answer and was squirming in Vitoria's grip for a while, but he realized shortly that they were not your ordinary pair of beggars and it would be unwise to play games with them.

"I am just doing some repairs to a grid here." He uttered unwillingly.

"A grid? Lead the way." It was plain to see for Cirse that the grid he was talking about could not be the city grid that was not deep in the ground.

"I can't, it aaaagh. Alright, I am going." Upon seeing the efficiency of Victoria's twisting,it was plain to see the man's pain tolerance was rather poor, the fortunate fact that made their conversation much easier.

Cirse had her guess as to what the man's origin was. Illegal connections to the city's power grid were a common business in this part of the city, largely because hunting down the culprits was not worth the effort given the huge volume of energy the city had at its disposal. The main reason she intended to push the matter further was that with a bit of luck, the man's customers might be the poeple they were looking for.

Neither of them were expecting what happened next. After a long walk full of twists and turns, the man stopped in front of a decently camuflaged door that looked like rock, but were made of steel. It had to be the work of some want-to-be-evil-villain as the camuflage was far from perfect.

The man pushed a few protrusions on the door and a view of a concrete room opened in front of them, with a heap of cables, wires, capacitors and integrated circuits in the middle.

"No way!" Vitoria exclaimed when she saw the scene, nothing short of euforic.

"Lucky! What is this exactly little man?" Cirse smiled, looking at their prisoner who looked like a bundle of misfortune.

"Just do not destroy it, it is our business!" He said in a pleading voice.

"Just how is this thing your business?" She pressed on.

"We have a private network placing bets on things.This is the central where everything is processed."

"So, this is basically a big, illegal computer network?" Krogar asked, almost drooling.

"Yes." The man looked at Krogar, a huge part of his willingness to cooperate was probably due the countless blood stains on Krogar's clothes.

"You say it is private?" Krogar could not tear his eyes off from the machine.

"Yes, we cannot do this publicly, it is a private network."

Krogar closed in on the machine and touched one of its data inputs hungrily, he would have never imagined that he could find somthing like this so quickly. Sending a few nanobots in, he established a connection with the machine.

Only to be stupefied a few seconds later

WARNING! VIRUS INFECTION DETECTED!

A big, red notification flashed in his head and this was the moment he knew, he fucked up.

WARNING! VIRUS INFECTION DETECTED!

"You little fucker, you have said it is a private network!" Krogar grabbed the small man with his both hands and shook him like he was a doll. He had withdrawn his nanobots the moment he saw the notification, but it was clearly too late.

SYSTEM COMPROMISED!

"I swear it is, but our wireless system has only a basic level of security . ."

ATTEMPT TO MODIFY SYSTEM FILES DETECTED! SCANNING FOR THREATS

"you. . y-you know, we can't earn credits from this anyway, clients pay hard cash or in materials, guns and stuff . . "

BASIC ROUTINES MODIFIED

" . . all the computation is just to show 'em nice pictures, crunch numbers and stuff, not to store money so . . "

SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED

" . . just some basic protection is enough man!"

SHUTTING DOWN

" . . just some basic protection is enough man!"

" . . just some basic protection is enough man!"

The last words resonated in Krogar's head as he was falling to the ground, his consciousness fading. The last picture Krogar saw, was Cirse shaking with the little, evil, stupid, incompetent man, shouting something at him, but the words were unable to reach his brain as his mind gone blank.