Sarah was shocked at her own capabilities. She’d seen evidence that the zombies had very powerful strength, but their actions were still only at the level of top Olympic athletes. Herself, however… no human could cleanly slice off an arm with a hand chop.

It must have something to do with that warm feeling that she felt before her kick. Now that she thought about it, there was one day where she woke up feeling weird and sore all over. It was hard to tell in the moment past all the muscle pain, but Sarah thought she might have felt a bit of the warm internal energy back then as well.

Maybe The Colony modified my body when I was asleep? And now I can use this internal energy… let’s call it ki.

Sarah was about to try and sense the energy within her, but at that moment the mold in her brain pushed her to pick up the goblin’s head, and start walking again. Reluctantly, she complied.

When the cave was in sight, a zombie spotted her. Upon the sight of the goblin head, it snarled, the first expression she had ever seen on one of them. Immediately, it left the cave and left in the direction that the zombies picked up green slime from.

I guess a corpse is a great place for The Colony to expand…

Sarah felt like she was solving mystery after mystery, and it was a great feeling. However, she still didn’t understand how other-her kept getting injuries. Even with jerky mold controls, which she assumed were much less fluid than other-her, the goblin was easily dispatched.

There are two possibilities I can think of. The first is that other-me was swarmed by many of the goblins.

The second possibility is that other-me was trying to capture goblins alive, which would be significantly harder to do unharmed.

The second one would make sense, given how The Colony liked to infect living humans. Although, that was assuming The Colony could infect goblins. Seeing as how Declan was killed instead of being infected, there could be something preventing The Colony from infecting certain organisms.

She only had the next half-hour to rest in the dirt cave, as her periods of consciousness kept getting shorter. Sarah started her habitual twitching ritual to shake off the paralysis, but her mind was elsewhere.

Over the past couple days, she wasn’t making as much progress as she would’ve liked at regaining control. No matter what she did, her legs just wouldn’t move. Sarah had tried to not think about it, but she had started to lose hope anyway.

The recent revelation about the ki inside of her gave her a much-needed morale boost. The overwhelming power it showed against the goblin was the type of power she needed to escape.

She stopped trying to move, and instead tried to meditate. Surprisingly, she remembered how to do meditation- it seemed to be part of the ever-shrinking remnants of her past.

Her version of meditation started with a deep focus on her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Everything else faded from her mind as she singled in on her breaths. Stray thoughts about ki, the mold, or the goblin kept appearing, and her response was to notice them, and then return to focus on her breathing.

Sarah thought she started to feel something warm, but it was easy to imagine feelings placebo-style. So, she moved on to the next step of meditation. While still breathing deeply, Sarah shifted her focus to her hip muscles (the lowest muscles she could affect), relaxing them. She moved up, slowly focusing on and relaxing her muscles one by one.

It was weird; her body seemed to be super active, and wasn’t calming down like her memory told her it should. Sarah could only keep going, starting over periodically.

Sarah couldn’t tell if she had made any progress, and she had to pause because Emma had just returned to the cave. Like in Sarah’s early days, other-Emma was just transporting slime to help The Colony spread, and Emma was able to wake up long before she returned to the cave.

“Emma, I just encountered a goblin outside. It seems The Colony is encroaching on goblin territory.”

Emma barely reacted, her eyes downcast.

“Don’t worry though. It seems that we have some internal energy in our bodies, which we can use to defend ourselves. It kind of feels like hot blood…”

Eventually, she managed to get Emma to try and meditate, but it was clear that she was too distraught to calm down.

***

After so many days, Sarah thought she had learned all she could about her situation. She was proven wrong in many ways, almost all at once.

Sarah shouldn’t have been surprised, as she had known little to nothing about what occurred while other-Sarah was in control. Now, by observing other-Emma, secrets were being revealed.

Perhaps the most mundane of her discoveries was how she continued to stay well-fed. Once, other-Emma came into the dirt cave with a bloody rabbit in their hand, and some green slime in the other.

With a squelch, other-Emma slathered the slime across the surface of the rabbit. Then, other-Emma opened their jaw beyond its limits, the jawbone dislocating automatically. The slime-covered rabbit slid smoothly down the throat, making a bulge that was unequivocally smaller than the rabbit was.

Sarah looked on in horror as other-Emma caught sight of her and smiled.

The next time she woke up, Sarah immediately saw a green creature in front of her and panicked. However, with her body being manually controlled by the mold, Sarah could do nothing but keep walking. A few seconds later, she sighed in relief as she saw patches of green mold growing out of the goblin’s ears.

“Crack!”

“Snap!”

The sound of clumsy forest walking behind her revealed the presence of more zombie goblins. Eventually, the goblins split off from her, possibly aiming for a different residence than her dirt cave.

The zombie goblins were holding the unconscious bodies of five goblins, and while Sarah couldn’t tell if they were infected, she bet they were on their way to become zombies in the near future.

Sarah analyzed the situation. She had previously noted the strangeness of the wounds on her limbs, and one of her theories was that she sustained injuries trying to capture the goblins alive, to turn into goblin zombies.

The recent event seemed to validate that theory. Perhaps, after obtaining enough zombie goblins, some had been sent to support other-Sarah in their endeavors. Sarah didn’t know how much help the goblins would be, given that other-Sarah could decapitate them with a kick, but perhaps the mold made the zombie goblins stronger than their normal counterparts.

Sarah didn’t think they could use ki, however- or at least she hoped they couldn’t. The more valuable and powerful ki was, the stronger her chance of survival.

With that thought, she finally reached the cave. Sarah collapsed into a heap after manual control was released, but using her upper-body control allowed her to rest her head on a raised patch of dirt.

This time, Sarah thought, I need to sense the ki in my body. If she continued to be unable to sense ki, then she would have to accept that the mold was the source and controller of the ki, and consequently Sarah would have to return to trying to get her leg muscles to move.

As she meditated, Sarah felt the same restlessness that kept interrupting previous sessions. When she ordered her shoulders to relax, they would, but the arms that she had finally calmed down would turn restless again. It was frustrating, especially since she needed her meditation to work if she wanted to live. The emotion did not help her meditate.

At this point, Sarah knew that the restlessness she was feeling was unnatural. The remnants of her previous memories told her that she was practiced enough at meditation to relax easily. Sarah, hopefully, theorized that ki was messing with her relaxation.

Whenever her focus left a spot, the restlessness would flow back in, like water. She concentrated on that sensation, feeling it rush in and out of different parts of her. Soon enough, she was immersed, bathing in the ebb and flow of energy.

So, this is ki, Sarah thought.

Sarah felt stupid. By trying to forcibly relax, she was chasing away all the ki in the area of her focus, rendering herself unable to sense anything. Still, she couldn’t contain her excitement. Merely following the swirls of ki inside her was intoxicating.

After an unidentifiable period of time, she felt all the ki in her head get violently expelled. A thought appeared in her head: Ah, it’s my time to serve the colony. It confused her. Why would I think that?

And then she immediately blacked out, and H143 took over.

***

Sarah woke up mid-stride as her body was being controlled to walk back to the dirt cave. As always, she was momentarily disoriented. She couldn’t quite remember what had just happened: she was meditating on ki, and suddenly she was knocked out.

Eventually, she shook off her confusion, and started to focus on her ki again. It took her a while, but eventually she was able to bask in the swirls of warm ki inside her once again. Yet, this time, only the ki in her head and neck was swirling, and she couldn’t feel any ki swirls in the rest of her body. She didn’t think it was a coincidence that the empty region overlapped with the part of her body being forcefully moved.

At first, she thought there was no ki in those parts of her body, but upon closer examination she noticed that any ki swirls that moved from her neck downwards vanished from her senses as well. Either the ki instantly vanished, or she somehow became unable to detect it.

Sarah thought it more likely that she just couldn’t feel the ki. After all, ki had already proven to be hard to pinpoint.

Right after she got into the dirt cave, suddenly the telltale warmth of swirling ki re-appeared in her lower body, although her legs were paralyzed.

For the next few days, Sarah continued to meditate on ki, trying to learn how to manipulate it, and detect the ki that was hidden from her while walking back to the cave.

She talked with Emma a bit as well, though it seemed like she didn’t have any ki, or was just unable to feel it without already knowing what it felt like. Sarah almost smirked, thinking about how the bloodthirsty goblin had helped her, but just a glance at the still zombies smothered her happy emotions.

She became a bit better at following the motions of ki through her body, but didn’t make any progress on other fronts. At least, she was starting to get a clearer idea about what happened to her the instant before she was knocked out.

Her memories about those time periods were still fuzzy, but hopefully she could piece together something useful out of the many fuzzy memories she had.

It was excruciatingly hard to not get frustrated, but talking with Emma released some of her stress. Their time was limited, as it was rare for them to both be free from control at the same time, and it was unwise to cut into their sleep time too much.

It was after a full day without any chances to talk with Emma that something broke up the standard routine. She happened to wake up particularly far from the cave, by her count surrounded by fifteen goblin zombies and three of the seven human zombies.

They were carrying the unconscious bodies of around five goblin zombies, and the corpses of ten more- the spoils from a fight Sarah wished she could’ve experienced. The feeling of using ki would have greatly benefited her.

Suddenly, a sonic boom attacked her ears, and one of the human zombies had its head exploded.