"When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork."

― Paul R. Halmos, I Want to Be a Mathematician: An Automathography

***

[Keep me in sight.]

[Fly around me at a twenty to fifty-meter distance.]

[Cry out if you see any living creature.]

I added [Avoid flying into things.] to the set of Commands I implanted, after my second pigeon splattered itself on a crooked road sign.

Incidentally, that was the same stop sign my first pigeon hit, except the second bird killed himself on the opposite side from the first.

It was a trial-and-error testing method, and initially, I had tried something broad and simple like [Obey my orders.] or [Do what I say.], but apparently, things weren't that easy.

The birds I'd forced those blanket Commands into simply stopped moving entirely and died. Or spastically vibrated and died.

There is not too much variation in the final result there.

It was probably because their understanding of English was severely limited because, well, they're birds. Or their tiny animal brains couldn't handle whatever I forced into it with those Commands.

Because I was forcing something into them.

Something massive.

The link I created between the birds and myself worked precisely like the first one with the crow. I bypassed the bird's defences, created a funnel, and every moment I kept the conduit open, the heat from my implant burned its way through my head into the bird.

Every Command I sent the linked birds was painless for me, and except for the continuous smouldering from the Heat crossing through the link, there was no additional damage from the Commands.

I could cut the heat flow off, but that'd free the birds unless I implanted a larger, more comprehensive Command inside them. My initial attempts at those Commands were so large they overwrote part of the birds' minds.

Which was logical when I thought about it.

There was no way a bird could just follow complex orders like I was shoving in their heads without extensive training and conditioning. So, at the least, those Command packages had to have incorporated a fair bit of comprehension for the birds to be able to follow the complex orders.

I needed to experiment more and document what happened to the animals I press-ganged into my service to get a complete picture.

Still, for now, I had found a tipping point between a Command that was comprehensive enough to keep the animal doing what I wanted it to, even when the link between us was closed, and where the Command killed it.

I also needed to develop some unambiguous terminology because I'd found my notes getting muddled when I described my experiences.

Might as well get the ones I used the most out of the way now, starting with the wording for my psychics.

I liked the Command phrasing for a single, simple order that I flung at something's defences. It covered the function and effects, so I'd keep that.

I'd name the more expansive multilayered orders I implanted after breaking through a bird's defences a Directive.

I think they meant precisely the same from a dictionary perspective, but the psychic difference in size and complexity between what I called a Command and a Directive was like a page to a book, so they needed a different moniker.

Clara had already told me that I was horrible at naming things, so I just accepted the presumably terrible names and that when I got back home, there would be another Psychic who'd thought of better ones.

Or mine would be the best, and I'd rub Clara's nose in the fact that my names for things at least weren't the worst.

Moving on.

The link between my birds and me I'd call a Conduit. It seemed appropriate with the connection between us and the Heat that flowed through it.

Finally, I kept calling the heat my implant supplied Heat, but it was more than apparent that Energy was a better name.

Clara called it Power. Same thing, I guess, but I liked Energy better as Power could also be used to describe our supernatural abilities.

After the first half hour of testing, I'd taken ten minutes to update my notebook with my new and improved terminology and continued my experiments with a much more confident idea that my notes were comprehensible.

At Clara's -almost disgusted- suggestion, I'd also tried to read the birds' minds or see through their eyes, but all that had given me was an even worse headache.

So we'd not have 'expendable drones' flying around to keep us safe.

The birds also weren't strong enough to carry anything that could be used effectively against the Bugs, so dive-bombing birds dropping weapons were also out.

Still, they were more than worthwhile, if for no other reason than giving me something that felt like something helpful to do with minimal effort.

Pushing through the birds' defences initially cost me some effort and made me feel disgusted with myself, but everything after was almost effortless when the Conduit had formed.

I likened it a bit to those movies where hackers created a backdoor into the government systems that they hacked into. Getting in the first time was a lot harder than the subsequent times.

The Directives I left in the birds had them doing their assigned jobs as early warning systems even after I cut off the flow of Energy through their Conduits.

Having the birds wasn't without drawbacks, though.

When a bird died, the Conduit between us shattered and rebounded like an explosive glass storm cutting into my brain. It hurt a lot more than the Energy burn would have.

Still, on balance, I'd say an early warning system was worth it.

When I finally got through what I considered the most essential tests, I'd already killed over a dozen birds in different ways, and I felt horrible.

And it wasn't just the throbbing headache edging into a migraine.

I couldn't hide from the fact that I was no better than those large pharmaceutical corporations using animal testing to prove a new drug might be viable.

During uni, I'd helped to get petitions signed by as many people as possible to force the companies to stop. I guess I am a hypocrite because I would use up and kill every bird in the city if it helped me survive.

And they did help.

With the help of my first bird, well, my first after the crow, this one a tiny sparrow, I'd been able to locate more animals and had forcefully recruited them.

After finishing my tests close to the end of the afternoon, I had three crows, one dove, and three sparrows circling us left.

Birds weren't the only animals we found, though. A large black rat had died during testing; I thought rats were supposed to be smarter than birds, but it still couldn't handle one of the even slightly more complex Directives.

The final member in my new menagerie had to be the most bizarre one; he was a mangy red-white tomcat with half its right ear missing who now dogged my steps.

The feline differed vastly from the birds and the rat.

I'd psychically pushed against his mind to try and establish a Conduit as I had with the other animals, but his defences had been vastly superior to the birds'. His mental walls felt even more solid than the Bugs' and might have been closer to Carla's strength.

I have no idea how that could be, especially since every iota of evidence I'd seen suggested that brain size, or at least intelligence, equated to mental defences.

Still, if that were all it was, I'd assume the cat was simply more intelligent than the average cat or some kind of Anathema.

Except, the cat had glared at me for a moment as if he had known what I was doing, and then... he just let me in.

It was like a door I was pushing on suddenly opened, and psychically, I fell forward.

I also have no idea how that was possible or why he did it, but a Conduit formed between us, just like with the birds. Also, like with the birds, I instantly knew everything about the cat's physical well-being.

And he was definitely a cat and not an Anathema in disguise, which was good but supplied no answers to how what was happening was happening.

The cat was malnourished, had a few scabs and bruises, and he'd been 'helped' at some point, so he was probably somebody's pet, but nothing stood out about him.

At least not physically.

My psychics, however, went haywire.

My implant reacted to the connection without my conscious direction, and Energy exploded through the Conduit straight into the cat while I was still spinning from him letting me in.

I heard him angrily growl and hiss unhappily while it happened, so I was sort of convinced he hadn't done it on purpose.

More Energy than I'd ever channelled in one go flooded into the cat, and it hurt about as much as you'd expect lava streaming through your head would. My eyes teared up, and my by-now-incessant headache ramped up again.

I was getting far too used to being in pain.

Still, those experiences helped me deal with a level of agony I'd never imagined being able to deal with, allowing me to grit my teeth and bear the pain.

First, I tried to clamp down on the flow through the Conduit as I'd done with the birds, but it was like trying to close the door on a tidal wave.

There was no chance I could cut the flow off; too much of it gushed through me. It reminded me of those movies with sinking boats where water burst through doors.

Okay, damming the river doesn't work, so maybe guide it?

Siphoning off a tiny fraction of the Energy flow, I formed my psychic hand inside myself. It immediately started roasting my brain and felt plain wrong, as if I was compounding the damage to my brain by channelling energy inside my head.

Instantly, I let go of my psychic hand, and it dissipated.

I breathed, trying to think of some other option, but I couldn't think of anything that might help. I also couldn't bring myself to simply sit back, do nothing, and hope for the best.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I had to survive.

Clenching my jaw, I recreated my psychic hand in my head and folded it around the route from my implant to the Conduit like a funnel, cushioning some of the burn from the transfer.

It hurt, but no worse than letting the torrent run free. It also felt very wrong, but I could push past it.

Ten seconds later, I was sure that however painful and wrong using my psychic hand inside my head felt, it was at least cushioning my brain enough to prevent it from being burned to a crisp.

I could not do much more, so I stood fast against the onslaught, simply breathing in and out.

Eventually, after what felt like hours, the flow tapered off until it stopped altogether.

According to Clara, I'd fallen to my knees, and by the time she shook me less than a minute later, I was coherent enough to tell her to piss off.

I don't remember talking to her. I was too focused on my link to the cat.

My first test proved that the Conduit between us was jammed wide open, and trying to close it off like the others had me uselessly flailing around psychically.

Either my control wasn't good enough, or the opening was just too large because I couldn't close the Conduit off, no matter how hard I tried.

The only positive aspect was that no Energy flowed from my implant to the cat. Maybe the massive amount already flooded into the cat meant the smaller stream wasn't needed anymore? I didn't know; my sample size of one cat didn't allow me to deduce much.

The very next thing I tried was adding Directives and Commands to the cat, but he seemed to effortlessly reject them all.

They just dissolved, and he gave me an angry look whenever I pushed one towards him.

It took me almost another hour to recover from the experience, and the cat sat near me the entire time.

My bracer confirmed I had progressed out of the moderate Strain level I'd finally fallen into before the tests and was once again high. I didn't need it to tell me.

Integration, however, had jumped to nineteen per cent, a two per cent increase in an afternoon. That added another notch to the idea that Integration increased the more you used your abilities, not just with time.

I wasn't sure if this was good or bad, but I faithfully noted it in my notebook.

When I'd recovered enough not to see double, we continued southwards. The cat sat for a while as if it'd let us go but finally followed and stayed close to me. I was ridiculously happy that he did.

Mum loves cats, and because of that, I grew up with them. I have been around them my entire life, except when I lived with my last two partners. Neither Adam nor Megan liked pets, and I... well, I chose them over the cats.

I named the cat Tom and instantly felt better with him around, even if I had bucketloads of questions about what had happened and how. He'd snagged one of the dead pigeons to bring with him and had started snacking on it during our rest moments.

He seemed happy enough to follow us around, and I scratched behind his intact ear when he walked up and headbutted my leg. Every time he did, it made me feel a bit better. Guess I'm a cat person, after all.

It wasn't all great, though.

Clara had finally asked about the slant of my eyes, and I'd stupidly answered that Mum was Japanese, Dad was Irish, and I had a mixed heritage.

She pounced on me not being 'pure'.

I hadn't expected her to be a Purist; they were usually pretty highly educated and articulate, so I'd just answered. I was basing my preconceptions on the eloquent Purist preachers on TV and on the radio. Stupid, I know, her being a bigot fit like a glove.

Now, Clara alternated between addressing me with new and creative obscenity about my heritage, mostly about hidden yellow centres, and calling me different Disney princesses.

Not the worst, and I could handle name-calling. Except, she had given me a look of utter disgust when I'd just told her.

I might have damaged a bridge there.

Clara was also apparently a dog person and gave Tom more than one almost-kick when he tried to make friends with her.

Which was pretty often. I know cats liked to make friends with those that didn't like them. They were suicidal like that, or he did it just to piss her off.

Clara didn't dare to actually hurt the cat, though. I'd given her a look the first time she'd shoved him away, stopping her from following through with whatever she was going to do.

Apparently, the bandages couldn't hinder a good glare. They might even have improved mine. Or Clara was worried that whatever I was doing to the animals was something I could do to her as well.

I couldn't, but I didn't tell her that. It was better to have her a bit scared than to let her think she could run roughshod over me.

I'd tested her defences while we travelled through the city. I'd never want to use anybody like I was using the birds, but I wasn't stupid. Something had changed in our already precarious relationship, and it didn't seem like it was for the better.

Clara was out for herself and could kill me quickly enough, even without her balls of compressed air. She was physically stronger than I was and trained in survival and army tactics.

I think.

Plus, I barely knew her. So, who knew what she'd do at what point? She wasn't the friendliest person I'd ever met. Heck, verbally, she was downright abusive.

I wouldn't forget she'd saved my life at least twice now. Probably three times. That got her more than a bit of gratitude and thanks, but she'd also casually informed me that she'd 'end me' more than a few times. And that was before I'd dropped the unpure bomb.

My abilities increased her chances of surviving, but I was also something she evidently disliked, both in heritage and in the type of ability I had.

I don't know if it balanced out, but I would need options if she'd turn on me.

So I'd psychically felt her out while we walked. I'd carefully used my psychic appendage to probe her defences without actually putting any pressure on them.

It was painful and kept me from recovering from my existing Strain, but as long as I didn't try to get a complete picture in one go, I didn't get any worse. Small, quick pulses over the course of the early evening hours gave me a comprehensive impression of her defences.

I had only had a fraction of a moment when I'd sent the [JUMP] Command to feel her defences, and I'd likened it to a brick wall.

It still felt a bit like that. Hard and unyielding, but not smooth like a concrete wall. It had ridges, bumps, and crevasses. Maybe it was more like a natural rock cliffside than a brick wall.

If I had to fight her, I'd aim for the crevasses.

Assuming I could even direct my Command like that. The cracks seemed like they were probably the weakest part of Clara's defences, so if I could aim, those should be my target.

Fuck, what am I doing?

Figuring out the best way to take down Clara rubbed me the wrong way in every way, but for some reason, I couldn't stop myself from preparing for the worst.

Probing Clara's mental defences with my psychic appendage brought me information about her, but it also brought something else to light.

I couldn't look at Clara intently while I 'felt her up'; otherwise, I'd definitely tip her off. So I'd kept whatever psychic proprioception allowed me to direct my psychic hand pointed at her while keeping my eyes busy scanning the ruins we were moving through.

Before long, I noticed that I knew where she was even when I wasn't using my psychic hand. Approximately. Like a sense of her walking a bit to my left behind me.

To test this further, I experimented with sending out an omnidirectional psychic limb, like some sort of sonar pulse and not only did it work, but all the birds, Tom, and Clara, all 'pinged.'

It wasn't anywhere near precise like sonar or radar, but I got a weird sort of approximate direction and approximate distance from all of them.

There was a lot of approximation in there.

Even the quick pulse took a lot of Energy, though.

My headache spiked, and my eyes started itching as soon as I sent the pulse, so I couldn't keep it up continuously. However, occasionally feeling out living things around me would be invaluable in avoiding creatures that wanted to kill us.

"Fuck me," I muttered, realizing that my chances of surviving even without Clara had just gone through the roof compared to before.

I also realized that I had apparently picked up Clara's preference for the F-bomb in just a few days of association with her.

When did that happen?

"What?" Clara's voice reached me like she was whispering right next to my ear. I jumped a bit when I heard her so close to me and turned to see her grinning with too many teeth shown about five meters away.

Her air control was also improving if that was any indication.

I hesitated for a moment but decided to go with what I'd been going with all along; to survive, I'd need allies, and I'd need to trust. Not blindly, but I did need to be less paranoid. A little bit less.

Give to get and all that.

"I can feel you and the animals around me." I said, then when I saw her frown, I clarified, "Like a radar pulse or something."

"Useful. Anything else out there except for us?"

"No. Just us, the birds, and Tom."

The other woman glanced at the cat, then asked, "How far around does your radar go?"

"Forty or fifty meters around us or so," I guestimated. I'd need to test to be sure, but that was the furthest the birds flew, and they were the furthest thing I could sense.

"Useless then."

"What? Why?" I looked at her in surprise. Wasn't 'Information was life' or something like that one of the armed forces creeds?

She stayed quiet and simply indicated something down the street with a nod. I followed where she was looking and saw a building which had been demolished just like all the others about thirty meters away.

It had what had once been a massive stone porch extending across the entire front of the forty-meter broad building. It had been demolished for the most part.

A few pieces of the porch's roofing were still hanging from the metal frame, which had reinforced the connection to the building's wall'; nothing unusual there as far as I could see.

Then I remembered her telling me that she didn't need to see things to feel the changes in the air, like those caused by breathing.

Well, two could play the 'look at my fancy superpowers' game.

[Fly past the wall.]

LewisTwo, one of my sparrows bravely following in the footsteps of LewisOne, who had been killed when he flew into a wall while exploring, joined ClarkOne, and together they passed in front of the ruined porch wall.

For a moment, I marvelled that they flew exactly as low, close to the ruin, and in the 'formation' I had wanted them to.

It was another point of confirmation that my Commands held more than the actual words, with at least some of my intent.

Possibly. Maybe.

When LewisTwo, who led the way in the formation, passed the gaping hole of one of the windows, something struck out from inside in a flash, turning the tiny bird into a puff of blood and feathers.

I flinched from the Conduit destruction's blowback but kept my eyes on the window. I still couldn't see the camouflaged Anathema, but LewisTwo's death proved that my psychic radar didn't work on the Bugs.

Before I could get annoyed at losing a potentially potent survival tool, ClarkOne's rebounding Conduit shards smashed into me.

The little bird had kept going for another six meters or so when another claw flashed out from beneath one of the bits of the roof still standing askew and killed the second of the duo.

"Two of 'em," I whispered through the pain and saw Clara grimly nod.

She'd already known. Could have fucking told me. Bitch.

Clara raised her hands and started forcing air into two separate compressed air bullets. My first instinct of avoiding the Bugs clearly wouldn't be what we listened to.

That sounded suicidally stupid when I thought about it.

"Clara, there's two of them," I whispered fiercely.

Being a decoy and keeping one of them still while I wasn't already close to overdrawn was hard. Two of them? With bruised ribs, a borderline migraine, and a throbbing face?

I didn't think I'd be able to do that.

"They never fucking move simultaneously and always move in the same way. Seen it before. We can't leave them so fucking close when we are looking for a place to hunker down, so just lock one the fuck down and switch after I kill the cuntflap. Easy peasy."

I chewed that over.

Hunt.

Clara had been with other Implanted and had a week more experience fighting these things. Probably at least some professional military or paramilitary training.

Plus, she wasn't scared. She even looked eager.

I took what strength I could from her attitude. I could do this. I needed to do this. Maybe she'd just drop the unpure thing if I could prove without a doubt that I could pull my weight.

All I needed to do was just hold one of them, then switch to the other before it noticed there were two of us. I could do that.

Survive.

"Okay," I decided, then nodded at Clara's sword, "But I want your sword."

"Fuck off," she growled at me.

"No, listen," I started, "my sword is too fucking big. There's no fucking way I can swing that thing with my ribs, but if I'm standing out there as bait, I need at least something to fucking defend myself with."

Language, Lana, there's no need to drop down to her level.

The foulmouthed woman's look made me feel like something she'd stepped in, but after a few moments, she nodded.

"You fucking lose it, and I'll rip your head out through your asshole. Leave your pack."

I dropped my backpack and the attached honking sword, then took Clara's much smaller weapon.

I swung the weapon around several times to get a feel for it.

The grip was slightly too large for my hand, with the bulge in the middle about two centimetres lower than I'd like, but the half-a-meter-long blade was much easier to handle than my behemoth of a weapon.

Not that I was even remotely qualified to use the weapon correctly, but it made me feel slightly better.

I took a few steadying breaths. Even shallows as they were, to make sure I didn't strain my tender ribs; it helped. A bit.

I brought my remaining birds in closer, told Tom to stay hidden for a bit, and then edged my way forward.

The difference in sound I made near Clara and when I was stumbling alone was like night and day.

It was alright, though; we needed to bring one close enough for a kill shot, and the sounds of me stumbling along would do that nicely.

I glanced back and saw Clara with two compressed air bullets hovering a few centimetres above her palms.

We could do this. I could do this. I adjusted the grip on Clara's sword and channelled a tiny bit of energy into it. It reacted just like my own, only with a lower power requirement.

I carefully continued until I was less than twenty meters from the broken window where LewisTwo had died.

A loud caw from one of my crows followed another caw a second later. I frowned because I'd been focusing on the two apertures that had killed LewisTwo and ClarkOne, and neither showed any movement.

The crows shouldn't have been able to see the Bugs hiding inside there, right?

"Fucking fuck, FUCK! OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING STREET!"

I heard Clara's shout and whipped my head to the left.

Another one of the Bugs was bolting out of the ruins on the left side of the road.

Plus, the two Bugs I had already found had also heard her warning.

Like the Bug we hunted yesterday, as soon as they saw more than one of us, they all dropped any pretext of playing with their food.

Three Bugs simultaneously burst from the building with the wrecked porch instead of the two I expected on that side.

"FOUR! FUCKING RUN!" Clara yelled behind me, and I heard the telltale whoosh of one of her air bolts cut towards the three to my right.

The bolt was off the mark; even I could see that with my almost non-existent experience with anything related to combat or shooting bolts of compressed air.

Just like I could see how fast they were moving.

I started to turn but pulled up short when it dawned on me that we'd never outrun them; they were too fast.

I'm dead.

I was going to die here, and there was nothing I could do to stop that.