But it wasn’t just her face.

Something… was hidden in it. I see it.

I make sure to capture the image with all my modes of vision.

It’s complicated. It- feels like a puzzle, but… I don’t know how to solve it. Not a single decryption algorithm I know fits. That, usually, would be enough to tell me that it wasn’t much more than a face.

Yet, something knaws away at me. It feels like there is something hidden from view.

“Huh,” I say.

“Dan? Uh, Dan?” Grace calls out.

“Hmm?”

“Why are you staring at empty space? Are you hallucinating or something?”

“No. I’m not. I just… I- never mind. It’s nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. I was just asking.”

I stand.

“Say, do we need any gear for the mock battles?” I ask.

“Yeah. Just a mo-gun. And a mo-knife.” She says.

Mo-guns were essentially guns that were all show, and no damage. Same goes with the knives. The sensors inbuilt into the spheres would be enough to tell who had been hit, where, and how many times.

There were different types of mock battles. The first type was Skirmish. In it, the rules were simple. Simply try to deal the most damage. The mo-guns had a bit of electricity loaded in for a momentary stun effect, as well, so the fights were more controlled. You couldn’t, of course, deal actual damage. That would call for a penalty, or sometimes, a ticket out of the game.

Also, damage obtained would subtract from damage dealt.

Skirmishes were the most popular type of battles. Capture the flag, was the second most popular.

Of course, the rules were simple here as well. The stun effect of the mo-guns and knives lasted longer, but there was no damage score. Also, this was a team battle. The team to hold the opposition’s ‘flag’, that is, a small spherical data storage device for a minute would win.

I had once looked up the definition of ‘flag’. Just a rectangular piece of colored cloth that symbolized… something. Nations? History wasn’t my strong suit.

Capture the flag was an idea invented in the last millennium. How it lasted this long, I had no idea. Perhaps the laziness of people to come up with something new.

“Oh. I’m assuming it’ll be distributed…?”

“Oh yeah. The room right before each mock battle sphere has them. You can only take two mo-knives, and a single mo-gun.”

“I already know that. You think this is my first mock battle?”

“But then again… I thought since you didn’t know about-”

“Nevermind. Stupid question. Let’s go.”

I start walking.

“How are you gonna get there without a map?”

I pause.

“Er…, right, do you have one…?”

“Yeah. Here,” She says.

I receive a bundle of information through our neural link. I unwrap it. My decoding processes turn it into a map, that I conveniently place at the bottom left corner of my vision.

I start walking again.

“You’re absentminded.”

“Haha. No.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Nope. Am not.”

“Yeah right.”

“Shut up.”

“Nope.”

“I swear…”

She laughs.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing…” I grumble.

“Coward.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Haha.”

I sigh and walk faster. Just a few minutes more.

“What’s the matter? Am I bothering you?”

I ignore her.

“Are we playing the ‘silent’ game now? I’m gonna try too.” She says.

I nearly sighed in relief, but then she speaks again.

“I lost. Now let’s play something else. Did you know that sound, in code, sounds exactly like ‘sound’?”

I restrain the urge to facepalm.

“It does. Uhuh. Take a matolaerite and halve it, then process it with a…”

Her droning immediately sends me into ‘tune out’ mode. Now all I hear is background noise. A small shadow catches my eye.

I stare closely at it.

It stops, and I feel a shiver creep down my spine. All my internal alarms are screaming at me. My paranoia working at full power.

Imagine a million people screaming at you, screeching in your mind, all of them telling that something has severely…

Gone wrong.

My eyes widen, and I stumble backward.

But the next second, Lucy appears. She wraps her large wings around me, and the blaring alarms disappear. I… my mind, distorts.

What does…. matter? What does… all, stop, wait, someone’s calling out my name…

I hear a faint voice. My vision… it’s… strange. It’s.. weird… gray… twisted…

Someone’s calling out my name… but no, this is… me? I’m… what? What is… this is… same as ever, but no, it isn’t… because I have… yes, I have…lived this before but I haven’t… I have, and haven’t… but not… is that Lucy? Why is she… why am I..? Is someone calling for me…?

I feel a sharp pain in my forehead. It snaps me back to reality. I’m left reeling in confusion.

“Dan?” Grace asks.

I ignore her.

What just happened? There is so much… and yet so little. What the hell?

I check my neural interface. It shows elevated levels of certain hormones. No problem with programming. So, it’s me.

But. What just happened? I saw something… and then my paranoia kicked in, and Lucy arrived? After that…

My memory of that is shot to shit. I have weird images… and worst of all, they don’t even feel like images. More like… my mind’s interpretation? I don’t know. Did I have an existential crisis in that one moment?

Or was it just a hallucination? But no, my implants say different.

Actually, it shows a lot of weird off the charts signals. But it’s sure as hell is not a hallucination. More like-

“Dan! What the fuck is going on!?”

“Shut the hell up!” I snap at her.

I get off the ground. I then realize that Lucy is still in front of me. Her face is devoid of emotion.

“What just happened?” I ask.

“I’m asking the same thing here,” Grace says.

I ignore her.

“…A disturbance. That is all.” Lucy says.

Her lips don’t move. And she doesn’t use words to talk to me. But… she does communicate. What I hear is just an interpretation of my own mind.

We’ve theorized that there are things… that the human mind cannot perceive. Just like, how 27th-century A.Is couldn’t perceive emotions till a… weird Builder came along and changed that. Similarly, there is something about Lucy… that I cannot perceive.

But now… it’s different. That twisted world…

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Wait, are you not talking to me?” Grace asks me.

I ignore her.

Lucy smiles.

“Of course. You are but a child. You have a long way to go. Perhaps, this may help.” She says.

Before I can respond, I feel Grace shifting. Evolving.

Next, to Lucy, a new form emerges. The naked form of Grace. She stands up and gapes at Lucy and me.

She opens her mouth to speak, but then she thinks of something else.

“I need a bigger set of tits.”