{I'm… ALIVE!} - Kyon's consciousness shouted out loud. A single coherent thought throbbed in his head — revenge! The only desire provided his fragile body with life. The desire to take revenge, destroy, trample upon the one who had driven him to that terrible state. His vital energy seemed to be emanating from his very soul.

If he had not reached the 2nd stage of development, his body would have fallen apart. And if it were not for the modernization of his nervous system, which had increased the resistance to the stress of all his organs and the whole organism, he would definitely stand no chance.

The bony hand of death, which had squeezed Kyon's heart, had reluctantly let it go. Death allowed his heart to make an uncertain beat and then another one, and another... In the next moment, the boy's heart started beating in a furious rhythm, striving to break through his ribs, which were not particularly intact. He took another convulsive sigh, and his body shuddered in pain that pierced him to the very marrow.

It was scary to look at once handsome boy: the blood vessels in his eyes had burst of tension; his hands looked like flat pancakes with shattered bones as a “filling”; his right leg was turned out in an unnatural way; his whole body was covered with dried crust and stains of still fresh blood…

Kyon had scanned his body. He found out twenty-eight fractures of various degrees of severity, internal bleeding, a failing kidney. Most of his teeth were missing. He had a brain hemorrhage, contusion, and concussion... His lungs and tendons were torn, his joints were fractured.

Kyon slowed his heartbeat to 25 beats per minute. He hastily "patched" the torn blood vessels, stopped the internal bleeding, sent all the proteins and energy from the recently eaten sausage to heal the most dangerous injuries. He isolated the damaged kidney and infused it with some Synergy so that it wouldn't atrophy. He would restore it later. He could survive with that for quite some time.

His incredible will to live must have amazed the heaven. The clouds filled the sky and it cried washing up his body.

The time inexorably flew by. The early morning was approaching. A cool rain came in real handy. It filled his mouth with water and saturated his drained organism with vital moisture.

If the servants noticed Kyon, crippled and barely alive, they would throw him off into the cesspool by all means. He would never get out. Therefore, he had gathered all his willpower and crawled to the wall slowly, carefully, with gentle light movements. He didn’t forget to grab the sound transmitter with his mouth. It had fallen from his pocket and was lying nearby.

He found some room for himself behind a dense thicket of bushes. There was a stone-paved path nearby and a little bench in the distance.

If the gardener fancied going around the hedge to trim it, he could find Kyon lying there. Although, it was unlikely that they plucked shrubs every day.

In the morning, the first servants came to the park. They didn’t notice any traces of blood because the rain had already washed them away but they found some suspicious items of black clothes lying around for some reason against the wall. They took them away.

The servants set about their work never suspecting that a half-dead boy was lying in the pose of a broken star behind the nearest bushes.

The whole day flew by in the blink of an eye. The evening came, and the night, and the morning again. Kyon was desperate for some energy. All the nutrients he got from the sausages had expired. His recovery began to decrease.

Kyon moved his head to the sound transmitter and dialed Marina’s frequency with his tongue.

Fortunately, the girl was good enough to answer his call. She could hardly make out what he was lisping to her in his barely audible voice. If she had not recognized his frequency, she would not have even guessed who was calling.

Yielding to the boy's plea, she took some food and water from the kitchen. Alone, without telling anyone, she sneaked to the nook in the training ground, looked around stealthily and pretended to drop something. She crawled into the bushes under that “plausible” excuse — Kyon cringed at her fake nervous “Oh, how awkward I am!” - and almost screamed. That time it sounded way more natural.

Her emotions were hard to describe. Shock, horror, disbelief! All the colors had suddenly disappeared from Marina’s face leaving only fear, despair, and a strong desire to help the dying boy whatever it takes. While she was staring at him, Kyon conveyed to her, with obvious difficulty, his two main requests: “don't tell anything to anyone” and “take care of me.”

That’s how Marina’s double "behind-the-scenes" life began. She spent part of the day near Kyon’s rookery spoon-feeding him with liquid food and water. She treated him like he was a wounded chick. She brought in medicine, ointment, infusion. She bandaged his wounds and even put a crooked splint on his broken limbs. All in all, the girl got into the role of a nurse-mother-hen looking after the wounded "warrior".

When his vocal cords got a little better, Kyon managed to express his thoughts more or less distinctly. First of all, he asked Marina to forbid the servants to trim the bushes behind which he was hiding. Otherwise, they could find him. He also explained to her the situation with Juno, who he was and what he was doing in the mansion where death awaited him on each step. Her care was vitally important to him. When he got better he could start thinking over his next move.

Worrying about Kyon put Marina through hell. Flitz had forbidden her to talk to boys but that one appeared to be an exception... She really liked Kyon. The more she cared for him, the more she became attached to that boy.

Marina told Kyon more about that strange meeting with Juno at the entrance to the mansion. She turned out to look like the young mother of the little demoness, Diana.

After Yurich disappeared, Juno’s mother plunged headlong into work on the plantations and she rarely came out. Not everyone remembered her anymore.

Marina noticed long ago that servants bowed to her reflexively. When they looked closer at her they winced, puzzled. No one had ever given her any intelligible explanation of why it happened.

Things in the mansion were a little different. Any guard knew how Diana looked like. Anna and Dinah were completely confused when they saw Marina. Some scared servants bowed to her but they quickly realized she was not lady Diana. She was just a girl who looked like her. And yet, they treated her with respect, just in case.

When Juno heard the story of the unfortunate girl and her duty to “serve” Flitz, she immediately sheltered Marina and promised her that the old goat would never touch her mother’s doppelganger or he would have to deal with her. Thus, Marina had been unexpectedly promoted from a “suckretary” to “a good friend of the lady of the house,” which was, of course, a much more pleasant “duty”.

One of those days, Kyon told Marina that Juno was Flitz’s weakness, in his humble opinion. Awareness washed over her with the force of a tidal wave. She was piously convinced that Kyon had invited her with a sole mission to save her. He must have calculated everything! Her soul filled with overwhelming gratitude and admiration.

Early in the morning and late in the evening, Marina was sitting on the bench, behind the bushes and Kyon’s little nest. He had changed his primary habitat so that it was more convenient to talk with her and get food while she was sitting and reading a book without attracting attention.

Day after day, cell by cell, Kyon was restoring. He had restored his kidney, the neurons, his eyes and broken nose, healed all the internal injuries and tendons, as well as his joints. He still had to work on his bones and teeth. It’s impossible to restore them for an ordinary person but Synergy can do everything. He asked Marina to bring him some cottage cheese and milk. His body needed a fresh supply of calcium.

During one of her visits, Marina solemnly gave Kyon his black clothes that she had found, washed, ironed and carefully mended. When the servants picked up his garments, they did not dare to throw them away. You never know who of the nobles might have had an urge to get undressed and run around naked in the light of the moon. They whipped Kyon's clothes into shape and put them in the linen closet, neatly folded.

The anxiety, that had frozen Marina’s heart, had finally let go. Her friend from the bushes was getting better. His voice was already strong enough to please her with all sorts of interesting stories from time to time. Marina often told him about Flitz, how they lived, what they did, about her sad past, how her family was killed, and how their house was burned. In fact, Flitz had saved her from starvation.

Flitz kept thinking of recovering his seed so that she could give him a child. It had been an issue with him as long as he remembered himself. He had even come to terms with it in some sense, but after Marina appeared in his mansion, he felt the need to get healed. His desire grew bigger and bigger and now he was making every effort to find a cure. Marina was touched by his dream in a way. It was thanks to her.

Despite his poor character - greed, hypocrisy, lust, and anger; the girl still noticed his sincere kindness to her. The rare tenderness that he gave her, like some caress, a hug, a look filled with love, a gentle kiss in the morning, combing up her hair, all that penetrated the deepest corners of her soul.

There wasn’t a day that Marina did not mention her former master. Now she told Kyon how Flitz had taken her to buy some new clothes for the first time, her face lit up with an embarrassed smile; then she told him that later in the evening he had torn that unfortunate dress off her, her eyes shining with animal longing. She told Kyon that she wanted to get in touch with Flitz so that he would not suffer the grief of her loss. But she could not find the courage to do that.

Kyon wondered why she was so worried about someone who she hated so much? Did she hate Flitz at all? He used to think that Marina could not stand the old man, that she was afraid of him, that she hated him. It turned out that there was something hidden behind the veil of her fear... At the moments of such revelations, her voice sounded pitiful, sad, anxious. She felt anything but hatred. Vague suspicions crept in his mind. He started to believe that Marina didn’t despise Flitz at all... She was attached to him. His rare kindness and promises to make her the mother of his kids touched the strings of Marina’s soul. Yet, whatever her feelings might be, they were unequivocal. Despite all her gratitude, appreciation, and respect, she was disgusted by his abuse and decrepit old body that she had to endure night after night in herself and on herself.

Kyon was astonished, baffled, amazed and angry with the strange girl. With all that, his soul filled with warmth every time he saw the blonde girl. He would have died without her help... her kind words, her care, her inept but very diligent medical assistance, a well-timed blanket, (sleeping on the grass is not grilling under the sun at the resort but the easiest way to pneumonia) food, water, and above all, the fact that it was more than just “a good deed of a Homo erectus.” Kyon realized that he was incredibly lucky to have met Marina on his difficult path. Her kindness wrapped him up like a warm blanket. She could heal the whole world not just his bony little body. Her past, the loss of her parents and brother had left an indelible mark on her soul and character but instead of getting embittered against the whole world, she imbued her soul with the best feelings of humanity: compassion, mercy, love for all living things. And, as the practice had shown, for half-dead things, as well.

{I will definitely pay you back… And Martha from the mine, too. I don't know how to do it yet. Just see it come.} - Kyon had made up his mind.