Black Eyes

Chapter 12

Eva opened her eyes which immediately began to pulsate from grey to a bright blue light. She raised an arm to shield herself from a bright light source right above her face that blinded her surroundings to where she was, but she already knew where she was.

"Who are you?" asked a female voice she knew well. She had asked her that question a couple of times before.

"I'm Eva-zero-four" she pronounced the words well, covering her eyes with her arm. The answer came out almost automatically. It was as if one of her thoughts had travelled on its own to her lips, moving them without her permission.

"What is your mission?" the woman asked firmly.

"Hunt, capture and bring back to the Kwer the demon son of Xalitphi" she replied without meaning to say exactly that. She knew it was what the woman wanted to hear, but faces, voices and memories were already appearing in her newborn mind that didn't belong to her and that showed her a completely different reality.

"Well. I think that's enough of a test" the woman said, turning to someone out of Eva's field of vision. The woman spoke one last time with the android lying on the laboratory table.

"If you come back empty-handed again, it won't take me more than a minute to completely dismantle you" she asserted aggressively, then turned towards the door and disappeared from Eva's field of vision.

She could hear her high-heeled footsteps receding and thought carefully about the words she had already heard twice before. She wondered why she was still alive then. Maybe she was really the only resource that woman had to capture Xalitphi's son?

The two scientists in the laboratory made Eva stand up. They double-checked each joint and asked her to bend and twist to test the fluidity of her movements. Her hair flowing like a wave following her movements.

"It seems more than perfect to me" said one of the two, the younger, with a yawn.

"If this one comes back empty-handed, Zayfir will have us fired so stop thinking about dinner and concentrate!" the older man replied, his forehead beaded with cold sweat.

"Don't we have anything to dress it with?" the young man continued "Like this... it'll be the hunter's number one prey" he noted.

"I think it knows how to defend itself well. It's equipped with weapons under the ivory plates" the colleague replied, then grabbing Eva's arm who looked at him in surprise.

"Remember Zayfir's words. She doesn't care that you look no more than a teenager. If you come back empty-handed it's over" he said, staring into her eyes, then led her out to the back door, up through some stairs and finally through a metal door locked from the inside.

Eva found herself outside the imposing Kwer headquarters in the middle of the night. She raised her eyes towards the sky: the moon partially hidden by black clouds sent out faint glares, not bright enough to form shadows on the walls. A thin drizzle wet the floor and Eva's hair. The droplets caught in her curls and eyelashes. All this was not new to her. She had an almost already complete map of Zraegan in her mind and deeper there were a myriad of names, places, surgeons already present within her.

She already knew where she was going now and what she would have to do and unfortunately for Zayfir it wasn't "capture the demon and bring it to me"

She only had to think about it for a few seconds and the way to reach the Cathedral of the Saints appeared to her, how to reach the spire through the side nave and climbing the external wall to get to what had been their home.

As she climbed the rooftops of Zraegan, the rain making everything slippery, but her rubber insoles keeping her grip on every surface, she analysed the flood of information that came to her mind, the lives of the three past Evas and she analysed memory by memory. For now she had nothing new to add to that flood of information, but she would have gotten to work that same night to capture the demon and bring it to the Kwer.