Before deciding to answer to the woman’s please or help, something bugged Met so immensely that he just had to say it. “Pia, you have a sensory magnification, so all the sensors I receive, hearing, seeing, smelling, you can magnify it and expand it to a great degree, correct?”

Yes, you know that is correct. My smelling ability rivals that of the best tracking dogs like bloodhounds or beagles and-

“Don’t get off the topic and lead me off! I might be dying… but I’m not stupid.”

A moment of silence where only Mat’s harsh breathing could be heard.

Pia broke the silence in the end. Do I need to mention that if i was not helping you, you would have died from your abdominal wound more than two hours ago.

"Don't work me. You know I hate that."

I only tried to help.

“You could have identified that voice a long time before I could hear it, couldn’t you?”

I had.

“And you decided not to inform me… because?”

Another silence. It was not because Pia needed time to come up with the answer. The time she waited to answer was not indicating that she did not have it. Met knew perfectly well what was going on. The pause was meant for him, to try to force him to compose himself because he will probably not like the answer that was to follow.

When Pia finally spoke to him, it was almost nothing less than he expected. She is asking for help. A young woman’s voice appealing to your sexual desires. So, you can run there to help her and… most likely die. If not right away, then probably later due to the fact that the longer we wait to take care of your wound, the risk of what might go wrong increases. So, you can try to heal yourself here and now, and then, once you feel better, you can see if you can help her.

“I see. Now you make the calls at what I do and what I know? And what kind of person I’m going to be.”

There is no presence of physical pain inside her voice.

“Because you can’t trust me, right?”

I only detect a lack of hydration, nothing else. Not even fear.

Mat enhalled a long breath and shook his head. “She’s probably dehydrated, calling for help for who knows how long.”

Most likely. But if she can call so loudly, and again she keeps on calling, that means she is fully conscious and doing just fine.

Met, still holding the torch toward the direction that the voice came from, finally made up his mind. “Well, let’s make sure that’s what it is. And if she is fine, then we’ll take care of me.”

Longer you wait, there will be only so much I will be able to do.

“I know.”

Mat moved cautiously toward the rubble of stones, going around it, slowly, suddenly feeling all his strength leaving him one step at a time.

Do you see all the iron craw bars around, Mat?

Mat sighed. “Of course I do. I was hoping you would not comment on it.”

You know we are down in a dungeon, don’t you?

“I know. A deserted one. I don’t see any corpses.”

Well, not completely deserted, right?

“I know.”

And she did not sound like a dungeon guard, did she?

“Nope, did not sound like a guard at all.”

Mat was just too gone to be able to lift his legs anymore. He just skidded them against the floor, unable even to keep his head straight up anymore.

“Here, please, help me!” the voice reached him again, louder, but meters of darkness and another pile of fallen stones were in the way.

Further we walk inside the dungeon, more dangerous it gets for you.

“I know,” Mat said. “Just another step.”

But it was not just another step. He walked all around the pile of stones and threw down the torch a good ten feet in front of him, right where the voice was coming from. There was a cage there with its bars untouched behind which was the shadow of a small figure.

“Who are you?” Mat asked.

“My name is Helen. And I need to get out of here.”

Mat leaned with his back against the pile of stones and tried to make her face through the darkness. She moved a few steps closer to the fire, but all he could see was a small figure, resembling more of a child than a woman, and a lot of dark black hair covering it.

He let the scabbard of his sword skid down his back and then decided before sitting down to kick the torch back away from the cell. It was a good torch. It would burn for another hour, he guessed. But he wanted more heat and looked around to see if he could find anything else to burn.

“Should have picked those logs by the door,” he muttered to himself.

“You have more wood for the fire just a bit to my left,” the woman told him, so he dragged himself slowly to see if that’s the case.

“You see, I helped you out,” Helen said as she saw him in a minute caring a pair of chopped logs. “Now what are you waiting for? Get me out of here!” Helen demanded.

“Who locked you up in there?” Mat asked as he picked a pair of logs from the pile and walk back to lay them over the torch.

“You did not lock up yourself, did you?” Mat asked again as he got no answer.

“Some crazy priests.”

“Oh yeah, and why would they do that?”

“I do not know. Why does it matter? They did not like me, I guess. Come on, mister. Just let me out. I’m dying of thirst. You would not want my life on your soul, would you?”

“I’ve got so many lives on my soul, young miss, I’m certain one more would not make a darn of difference… if you know what I mean.”

He had a bag of water tied to his scabbard. But it was almost completely empty. He should have filled it up when he was by the river. By the river… it seemed closer to get to the Core than to the banks of that river now.

He took a sip of water, and another, and stopped when he heard her, “Please, my Lord.”

“I’m not your lord,” he said and threw the water bag in her direction.

Groaning through his teeth, he leaned again against the rumbled stone and slid down to the ground.

The logs crackled and the fire got stronger, and Mat slowly dished a hunter’s sword out of his boot. Even extending his hand to put its blade on the flames of the fire required so much strength and pain that he had to shake his head just to stay focused.

“Okay, Pia, we’re doing this first. Never say I don’t listen,” he said and slowly took his jacket off. How about that shoulder? Do I need to catalyze that too?”

“Who are you talking to, my Lord? The name is Helen, not Pia” the woman slowly. “Please let me out. Otmas might arrive any minute and then they’ll butcher me for their supper.”

Health Analysis: Sholder wound still bleeding and has the risk of infection of eighty percent. The location of any antiseptic material is not known.

Recommended action: cauterizing the surface of the wound for at least five seconds.

“Okay, we are doing the shoulder first. Would not want to be not ready if these… Otmas show up.”

“Please, let me go. I’ll help you with your wound. It would not even hurt you any. You just need to let me out.”

She practically admitted being locked up by people working for the mage, my contact. And if my contact wanted her locked up, there would be a reason behind it. She must be dangerous. Better leave her inside. What if I set her free? She could just take my sword and finish me off. I don’t think I could defend myself, not even against a skinny little girl.

But a skinny, little girl she is.

Do I really want to let her be there inside all locked up?

What if I don’t recover and I die? She’d be most likely dead too. Good that I at least gave her the water.

No, she will be fine.

No more delaying. Time to take care of myself…

Mat sighed deeply, looking at the blade of his knife now glowing red.

Is it me or Pia entering ideas in my head? Since I had the implant, I really can’t say that I’ve been myself now that I think about it. How much of my free will do I really have? Am I just a robot being led on, manipulated? Not even a robot. More like a wooden toy puppet, being moved around with strings I cannot even see.

Well, let’s summarize it all. In a few hours I’ve gained back my consciousness, I ended up killing three of my allies and made the enemy of the whole race of humanoids, stabbed myself with a piece of wood, opened my shoulder up with my own blade, and was almost eaten by these river fish monster! On top of that, I realized that I’m nothing more than a kids-entertaining puppet in the hands of my AI! Crap! Crap! Crap!

I need to get better fast. This just won’t do.

So, better just get on with it.

He started to breathe hard and reached for his knife’s handle.

“Well, Helen, if I make it through this, you and I are going to have one nice long talk,” he said before he clenched his teeth hard.

“You fucken’ bastard!” she answered.

Met screamed in agony as the blade burned his flash, his hand first twitched back reflexively, but he took another deep breath and force the blade against his flesh again.

He fought for more air as he asked Pia, “How is that now?”

The probability of a wound recovery is now over 90 percent.

“Hey, that’s not all right,” Helen said from behind the bar. “This place was supposed to be overrun by those monsters. If you keep on crying your guts out, don’t be surprised if they pay you a visit.”

Mat moved his body just a bit, trying to find a better spot where he could feel less pain, but he knew perfectly well that was a useless task. “Crying my guts out? You have not heard anything yet. I just hope when I pull this piece of wood out, my guts don’t come out with it.”

Warning: Besides the piece of wood inside your stomach, there is also a bit of cloth from your shirt. You need to take that out as well. If you leave it in, I will not be able to fight the infection that it may cause.

“Uh, that’s nasty,” Helen said as she saw Mat tare most of his shirt off and expose the bleeding abdominal wound. “That might actually kill you. If you don’t let me out to help you, you will die.”

Warning: You are breathing in and out too fast, risk of hyperventilating yourself. If you do not control it, you will pass out before you even start.

“Thank you, thank you for the warning.”

“No need to thank me now. Just let me out and I can take care of that for you. Then you can thank me.”

“Not going to happen, sister.” Mat said as he placed the blade of his knife back on the fire again. “But I tell you what, since you like to talk so much, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself. Maybe that will change my mind. Maybe hearing your voice will make me… forget my pain.”

“Oh, you’re so nice. Nobody had said such a nice thing to me in the longest of time.”

“Were you a naughty little girl, and that’s why you ended up here, all locked up?” Mat said, fighting to stay awake. He looked at the blade. It was not ready yet.

“Not really.”

“If you have seen what’s up there, you would have thanked the people who have locked you up here.”

“No, no I would not. But I would kill them all, that I would if I only could.”

“Maybe someone had already beat you to it.”

“I doubt that. Those priests are fuckers. Portray themselves as mages, miracle-makers, my ass! But they are a mighty hard thing to kill, I can tell you that. I bet they are just fine in their towers.”

“Sister, have you not heard of any explosion recently??”

“Yeah, everything shook, even stones fell down. I guess they really screwed up one of their experiments up there, haven’t they?”

“If that’s what it was, they screwed up royally.”

“Royally?” Helen asked, and started to giggle. “I like that word. They screwed up royally. I guess you can say that,” she said and giggled some more. “They screwed me up royally as well. Serves them right.”

“Why, what have they done to you? It seems you have a story to tell,” Mat said. Found it easier not to think at all about what he was going to do next. He knew what he had to do, and no more thinking about it would make it any less difficult. Only more so.

“Well, if you insist. I’ll tell you my story. But you promise, you will let me free after I do that?”

“We’ll see,” Mat said and went for the knife, fearing if he waits any longer, he would wait too long. He took a few deep breaths and passed the red-hot iron from his left hand to the right. Then placed his left hand around the wound, putting the pressure on, squeezing the sides.

“Uh, that’s going to hurt,” Helen said.

“You don’t say, sister,” Mat answered and pulled the shank out with the back of his right hand.