It had been a very long time since I'd had a good night's sleep. This was the first time I'd slept peacefully since I landed on this planet. I wondered if that uninterrupted sleep might have been because of the kiss Diana had left on me. It was highly likely. In fact, I must have had a very sweet, unforgettable dream because when I woke up, there was a smile on my face that I didn't want to lose for a long time.
But every time I tried to lift my head, I'd fall back down with a massive headache. The weight of the hangover was so strong that despite the extensive changes Jose made to my stomach, I couldn't stop myself from throwing up everything I had in me. When the undigested bug remains spread across the floor, I turned my head and squinted my eyes. I desperately wanted to drink water to ease the pain in my head, but… I didn't know if there was any water in this workshop.
"Jose?" I called out, but there was no sound. "Jose! I need water!" I yelled, but to no avail. I yawned big, and tried to crack my neck, but all I managed was a little stretch. Then I looked around. The area was littered with crushed alcohol cans. If I had drunk all this, I'd really accomplished something. Because even though those cans were crushed, when they were stacked on top of each other, they would form a hill that a person couldn't easily jump over. I didn't know whether to be proud or regretful. But if there was one thing I did know, it was that I would definitely never drink this much again.
"Jose!" I yelled one more time. "Help me, goddammit! I think I'm dying!" I said, and let myself fall back onto the floor. I waited for a helping hand or an angry shout, but there was no sound. The hard floor was so uncomfortable that even moving to get up from it felt like torture. The funny thing was that there were dirty rags under my head. Jose probably put them there so my neck wouldn't get stiff while I slept. I couldn't tell if they'd worked, though, because the headache from dehydration made it impossible to think.
I tried to sit up but to no avail… I dragged myself along the floor for a while, held onto a table, and slowly got to my feet. It felt as if all my muscles were struggling to hold onto my bones and pull them up. "I didn't think it would be this hard this early in the plan," I said to myself.
There was no sound from Jose. It seemed like there was no one else around. The fact that no one from the house a few meters away had come to check on me was really getting on my nerves. "Wait!" I suddenly yelled. "Did Diana and Rose betray me and run off with Jose?" I murmured to myself. This thought bothered me so much that my heart rate nearly doubled. Adrenaline rushed through my body, and my dehydrated frame sprang to its feet as if it were giving its last burst of energy. I tried to run but lost my balance and hit the wall. I continued to walk by rubbing against the wall.
I stepped out onto the street. There was neither a creature nor anything else, but at that moment… At that moment, something flew past my head. This flying thing was a mutant, but it seemed to have been modified in a different way. It had two metallic wings on its back, and it was gliding in the air with motors working inside these two metallic wings. It had a metal plate over its mouth and a weapon in its hand…
"Holy crap!" I suddenly yelled. In that moment, I understood that we were in big trouble.
***
I ducked out into the street and hid in the shadow. My timing was perfect, because at that moment a group of mutants with metallic arms that had been turned into weapons were marching robotically down the street I had just been on.
"What the hell is happening to these dumb mutants?" I thought to myself.
These mutants had a pump on their backs that was constantly drawing and pumping a green fluid. This pump was connected to other parts of their bodies with cables. It was as if this pump was taking their blood and deciding, through pipes, which part of the body it would go to. What did this mean? It meant that these mutants were so under control that someone was even interfering with the flow of their blood.
A giant scream echoed out. I peeked my head out from the edge of the alley I was in and glanced at the end of the street. There was a mutant three meters tall. It was as big and broad as an elephant. Its muscles were lumpy and shapeless. Its limbs hadn't even grown proportionally. This mutant also had a similar pump on its back, but it looked like a bigger and more powerful one. In fact, every time the pump hit the mutant's back, the mutant would visibly shudder from the impact.
This gigantic mutant's body was covered in chains, and it was pulling something with these chains. The thing it was pulling was a vehicle. A colossal, all-black vehicle, maybe a car, that looked like a boat with wheels. The creature was taking surprisingly fast steps for its size with every stride, and the chains wrapped around its body tightened even more, leaving marks on the mutant's skin. I would never want a creature like that charging at me.
Suddenly, a hand clamped over my mouth.
I was about to scream, but she gestured for me to be silent.
"Rose?" I whispered.
"Be quiet, you idiot…"
"What's going on here?"
"I don't know, but if Jose hadn't warned us, we would have been screwed. We don't know what these mutants are and we don't know where they suddenly came from. I think this might be the work of the voice in your helmet."
"Where are the others?"
"Jose and Diana are hiding in the sewers. Neither of them is particularly level-headed. That's why I came out to get you."
"Thank you, Rose, but… But didn't you arrive a little late?"
"We had to save our own asses first." At that moment, the mutants were entering our alley, and Rose scooped me into her muscular arms. She first jumped onto a metal trash can. It might seem strange to you that she could jump this high with a human in her arms, but the next part is even stranger, because she jumped from that trash can again and put me back into the repair workshop where I had fallen asleep.
"Aren't you going to tell me what happened?" I asked, wrapped around Rose's neck. The woman had put me down, but I was still clinging to her neck. I felt like I wouldn't let myself fall to the floor unless she gestured with her eyes.
"Jose noticed a strange signal from your helmet and came to us right away. It turns out your helmet was constantly sending a signal to a receiver-like place. As soon as Jose noticed an answer to that signal, he came to warn us."
"And what was the answer?"
"'We're coming for you.'"
"What happened after that?"
The shadows of the mutants appeared at the door of the repair room. Two or three guns were fired, and the door's chain was broken. Rose shoved me into a closet with her powerful arms and then squeezed herself in with me.
The mutants looked around inside. With every robotic step they took, they crushed a metal can. They looked under the table, they glanced at the mezzanine in the repair station, they walked around with their hands pointed at their surroundings. Then they suddenly started shooting. As the ballistic rounds from their guns raked the entire building, one of the guns turned toward our closet—right at my face. I was screaming like a little girl as the gun fired at us, and Rose kicked open the closet door, grabbed the rifle from her back, and took down three mutants at once. The fourth mutant was just aiming its gun at us when Rose flipped to dodge the bullet and shot this last mutant in the head.
"It's like these mutants have a collective mind… It's only a matter of time before they swarm this place! Let's go!"
"Where?"
"To the sewers!"
At that moment, the roof of the building suddenly collapsed and two winged mutants came inside. Their claws were like sharp knives. They tried to grab Rose with their claws, but Rose dodged them and plunged the knife from her waist into the leg of one of the creatures. She fired her rifle in quick succession, knocking one of the creatures to the ground, but the chase had just begun.
***
First, we ran into an alley. Rose was firing in a barrage while I was just running. A mutant came out in front of us and was about to shoot, but Rose shot it before it could. I, however, hadn't even noticed the mutant in front of us. The woman's reflexes were unbelievable. She was unmatched at instantly noticing and shooting at anything that entered her field of vision.
A lot of flying mutants fell to the ground. A lot of mutants that appeared in front of us were riddled with holes. Finally, Rose picked me up and gave me her gun:
"Hold on tight!" she said. And I held on tight. Rose gave her legs such force that she ran as fast as a leopard. In fact, she could easily overcome any obstacle that appeared in front of her.
I, meanwhile, was just shooting randomly from Rose's arms. I actually managed to take down a few mutants by mistake.
Finally, Rose stopped when she reached a manhole cover and dropped me to the ground from her arms. When I fell on my butt, I felt all my bones ache. Then she took a bomb out of her pocket and threw it on the ground. It was a smoke bomb. As the smoke bomb engulfed the area, I felt a force grab and pull me. It was Rose… She had taken me in her strong arms and pulled me into the sewers.
***
My stomach was churning like crazy and I kept throwing up. I had thrown up so much that I wasn't even sure if there was anything left to empty from my stomach. Rose didn't seem tired at all and was walking at the same steady pace. I, on the other hand, felt like I could give up the ghost at any moment. I thought about sitting down to rest for a bit, but then I remembered the sewer water reaching my legs, so I closed my eyes and continued to walk.
"When Jose came to warn us, these freaks had already surrounded our building," Rose said. "Diana is a master mind-weaver. The mutants aren't very smart. That's why she was able to get into the minds of the mutants surrounding us and temporarily make them mentally paralyzed. We escaped and hid in the sewers. Then we came back to get you."
"And where are they?"
"Going to the third wall doesn't seem very logical. We decided to retreat. We'll pull back to the third wall. We'll make a better plan and then continue moving forward. They'll be waiting for us at the exit of this sewer. This sewer will probably connect to those gigantic pipes that lead to the mutant village after a while."
"Great plan! But what about the helmet?"
"We destroyed the helmet, Mehmet. Whoever was receiving that signal inside it and calling himself Arthur Vale doesn't seem to have good intentions… How could the helmet have been sending a signal to him?"
"My helmet used to say it was transferring an analysis to a computer every now and then. Could that computer have belonged to whoever was following us? After all, my helmet is John Crowrift's helmet… When it found a receiver computer registered to John Crowrift, it would want to transfer the data to it. The man who introduced himself as Arthur Vale probably thought the computer was his own. He passed the entire analysis to it and suddenly became visible to that computer."
"You never told us something like that happened."
"Because we didn't think something like that would be important."
"Oh, really?"
"What do you mean, 'really'? Do you still not trust us?"
"Trust? You? You're the terrifying man, John Crowrift, Mehmet! Even if you're a trustworthy person right now, I can't even begin to imagine what you could turn into when your memory comes back. That's why I don't trust you. Or rather, I will never trust you. My sister might trust you, but I, even though my sister is a mind-weaver, don't give any weight to what she says."
"That's great. You don't have to trust me, but I don't know if you know this, but I made a very comprehensive plan last night. And you were in this plan."
"As what? Bait?"
"No… My plan was to reunite you with your master. Look, Rose, you might not want to trust me. I don't even want you to, but I want you to know at least this one thing: I'm going to help you."
"What good is it to know a lie?"
"At least…" I started my sentence, but I couldn't hold myself back and started throwing up into the brown fluid.
Rose put her hand on her hip and waited for me for a while.
"At least…" I was about to start the sentence one more time, but I was interrupted as my stomach continued to empty.
"At least what, you idiot!"
"At least if I really do help you… You'll apologize to me for these words." I said, coughing.
"I'll apologize?"
"You'll apologize for not trusting me. That's the only thing I want from you in return for my help."
"That's it?"
"That's it…" and then I held out my hand. "…do we have a deal?"
"You'll help us fulfill the purpose of our lives. And the only thing you want in return is an apology? Am I understanding this correctly?"
"Yes…"
"What a ridiculous agreement this is…"
"Just stop thinking about whether the agreement is logical or not. Are you accepting this agreement or not?"
Rose frowned and looked at me for a while. "You're either a truly terrible person or a complete idiot."
I held out my hand a little further to Rose. Rose first looked at my hand, then at me. Then, when I looked at my hand, I noticed the dirt on it and was disgusted with myself. It didn't look like she would shake this hand even if she accepted. I wiped my hand on my clothes, but it was as if all that dirt had been ingrained into my skin. It made no difference.
"Instead…" Rose said. "…how about we make a mind-weaver style promise?"
"How do they do that?"
"I'll show you when we get out of here."
***
When we reached the end of the sewer, there was a maintenance facility. The metal door of the facility was locked, but Rose broke the lock with the butt of her gun. After she kicked the door open, we entered the deserted room.
On one side of the room, there was a console with many buttons. This console must have been controlling the sewer system. On the shelves in a corner of the room, there were different chemicals. The best part of the room was the refrigerator in the corner. I went to the refrigerator with great excitement and opened it. The refrigerator wasn't working, but there were canned foods and bottles of water inside. First, I washed my hands and face with the water, rinsed my mouth, and spat into a bucket. I wiped my hands, face, and everything else as much as I could with that water. Then, after placing the canned food on the console and opening it with a can opener, I started eating with gusto.
"Aren't you eating?"
Rose, while peeking through the cracked door and surveying the outside, said, "I wasn't the one who was constantly throwing up. I'm not all that hungry."
"I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you, but…" I said, and swallowed a huge tomato-like bite in my mouth. "…last night was a bit rough."
"It was obvious from what you did at that bar with your alcohol fixation."
"Ah… Can you believe it? A part of my friend's brain, named Hulk, was transplanted into me so that I could live. That's why I became an alcoholic. And I don't mean the drinkable kind."
"Hulk? You never mentioned that friend before."
"Ah…" I really hadn't mentioned him. Yet Hulk was a friend I'd traveled with for a long time. He was one of the star members of the old team. You might have thought I forgot him, but since a part of my brain was his, of course, I couldn't forget him. It's just that the sadness inside me had finally subsided a little. The claws of the grief that I thought were raining down on me had moved away from my throat, at least a little, with the new friends I had made. This was the bad part about being human. Loneliness wasn't a good companion for people. "…he was a good freak. I would have loved for you to meet him."
Rose took the strap of her gun from her neck and placed it on the floor. She undid the braid of her red hair and sat cross-legged on the floor, with her back to me. Her red hair touched the floor as she surveyed the outside through the crack in the door. She played with the clasp in her hand for a while. She cleaned the hair that had gotten stuck in her clasp.
"I don't understand why you're like this, Mehmet," she finally said.
Because I wasn't expecting the question, the food I brought to my mouth went down the wrong pipe. The bite I spit out from my mouth spread across the console. I responded with a cough: "What do you mean?"
"You're a clone of a supervillain. Maybe if you went to the other side, the side of the villains, you could have an incredible force behind you." Rose ran her hand through her hair. To get rid of the loose hair that wrapped around her fingers, she moved her fingers and flicked her hand. "But you, you prefer to eat, choking on vomit, in the same room as an alien who can kill you with the push of a trigger and doesn't trust you."
"That's a nice thought, but I don't know how I could do what you're suggesting."
"What?"
"Join the other side…" For some reason, I was full all of a sudden. I shoved the canned food into the refrigerator, thinking I might eat it later. "…what should I do? Kill people and oppress them? Be a cruel person? I don't understand how people can enjoy that. Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. If you told me tomorrow, 'we're handcuffing you and taking you to our planet as a slave,' I probably wouldn't be able to do anything. If Jose didn't save me, I'd come along quietly. Because I have no weapon and I can't fight. I'd probably obey you without saying anything, without even making a sound. But if a mutant came running at you with a gun and tried to kill you, I'd stand in front of it even if I didn't know how to fight." It was as if the last word I said had created a reaction in Rose. I don't know, but she turned half of her face, which was covered by her falling hair, towards me and listened more intently. "The same goes for Diana… I can't let her die either. If…" I stopped and thought. "…if I can touch someone's life in this damned galaxy, then I'll be happy."
Rose, with a clasp, tied up her hair and fixed her gaze on the view outside. The astronaut suit clinging to her body was highlighting the hard curve of her hips. When she unzipped it all the way down to her navel, her muscular back, woven with the marks of a thousand battles, was revealed. There were claw marks, bullet scars, and many other things… There were so many red and purple spots that it was hardly possible to see the white of her skin on her back.
Dozens of knives were hidden on the straps of her bra, which was tied in an 'X' shape in the back. Stretching her muscular back, she reached for one of the knives on the back of her bra and began filing her fingernails with it, as if it were a common manicure set. As she filed her nails, she was hunched over, and the muscles on her back were eye-catching.
"I can't say that I understand you. Because you're not much like the other people I've known." She took a piece of dirt from under her nail and wiped it off the knife by rubbing it on the edge of the door. "You wanted a promise from me, didn't you? A promise that you'll help and in return, I'll apologize." It was at that moment that I first realized Rose smelled beautiful. It was known that mind-weavers were created to influence humans, but I hadn't realized their naked bodies smelled so beautiful. Besides, Rose was a half mind-weaver, and we were in the smell of the sewers.
"Well, if you're so hesitant to make a promise, it's not a problem."
"No… I promise."
"Then I promise too."
"But mind-weavers can't make promises that easily. Mind-weavers must have shared something with the person they are making a promise to before they can make a promise."
"I just have some vomit on me. And there's a lot of canned food in the refrigerator. Oh, if you want Jose, I'm sorry, I can't give him to you. I'm not going to give away my only friend for the sake of an agreement."
"You have other things too."
When I heard this, I couldn't stop myself from sweating.
"Look… You're really beautiful. But you look like a psychotic warrior. That's why I'm imagining the fantasies you might have, and because of that, I'm afraid to accept…"
"You damn idiot! Do you think I'm that desperate for your scrawny ass?!" Rose yelled and threw the knife. The knife grazed my head and plunged into the metal panel behind me. There was a small spark on the metal panel, and the electricity to the refrigerator was cut. Rose's hand was trembling with anger. "What an idiot you are! I was just starting to gain some respect for you, and then I was reminded once more of how much of an idiot you are."
"Oh, really… damn… Is the problem with me or with you? What else do I have to put on the table besides my body? You're saying something like that…"
"You have your mind, your mind!"
"Oh… Wait a minute… What do you mean?"
"We'll share our minds."
"This won't harm me, will it?"
"No…"
"Are you sure? My brain won't explode, will it?"
"No?"
"And you won't go into my mind and mess with my head, right?"
"I said no already!"
"No, I don't want to. You're very angry right now, and I don't really want you to go into my mind when you're angry."
"Ah…" Rose said and stood up. "…why am I even bothering." She took two steps towards me. I was about to say something when Rose's cold hand was on my neck. She grabbed and squeezed a nerve in such a way that my hair stood on end, and I passed out.
***
"Looks like you were looking for an excuse to pass out…" Rose said.
When I opened my eyes, I was inside a pit. The hills around the pit were filled with metal tombstones. There was a wooden floor beneath my feet. When I looked at the sky, time seemed to have frozen. The continent-sized spaceship called Hyperion, along with many other smaller spaceships, hung suspended in the sky. John Crowrift was watching the army descending from the sky. He was standing just a few meters away from me, in his purple-dyed trench coat, the hard plastic armor he wore underneath it, his raven necklace, and his helmet. Dante Shade, with his long hair, was watching the chaos coming from the sky.
"Where is this place?"
"Your subconscious…"
"This place?"
"I didn't expect to encounter a place like this as soon as I entered your subconscious. Either you don't have many places in your memory, or your subconscious is stuck here."
"I honestly want to slap that bastard right now," I said and took two steps toward John Crowrift. I was just about to land a slap on John Crowrift's face when he blocked my slap with the staff in his hand and zapped me with electricity from his ring. As I lay on the floor, trembling from the effects of the electricity, I thought, "You bastard! You're even resisting me in my own subconscious! Who the hell are you, you son of a bitch!" As soon as the electricity wore off, I got up and charged at John Crowrift. This time my head hit a force field, and I fell back on my butt.
Rose's laughter could be heard from behind, which was even more disturbing. "Look at our hero's subconscious!" She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Rose had exposed her muscular body in her combat bra and her form-fitting leggings, and she looked ready for a fight. "He can't even beat the John Crowrift in his own subconscious. His subconscious thinks it's not even possible."
"Ha… very funny… Did you bring me here to mock me?"
"Of course not," she said, her cheerfulness still audible in her tone. In fact, the mocking smile on her face remained as she spoke. "I came for a deal, but what I just saw was a gift."
"What deal?"
"First of all, we mind-weavers call this place we are in right now the Mind Tunnel. This is the place where both of our minds intersect."
"Wait a minute, so you're sleeping too?"
"We mind-weavers can go into minds without sleeping. Yes, my mind might be asleep, but my body is still awake and watching the door. Whenever my eyes notice something, a warning will be sent to my brain, and my mind will return to its place in my body. Don't worry, I haven't left us unguarded."
"Ah, I don't know how to thank you enough. So what exactly is the Mind Tunnel?"
"Let me explain…" she said and held out her hand to me. I slowly climbed out of the pit and grabbed the woman's strong hands, and she pulled me up.
When I got up, the atmosphere suddenly changed; a sharp smell of metal and soot filled my lungs while the city's noise deafened my ears. I was on a hard, iron platform; this was a flying car track. And right below me, a gigantic dystopian metropolis stretched out in all its glory. Hundreds of houses, made of rusty metal and worn-out brick, looking as if they were randomly stacked on top of each other by a giant hand, surrounded us like a fog with the dense chimney smoke rising from each one.
The sky, tinged with red, looked less like a sunset and more like the reflection of a hellish flame. Every breath I took carried not just smoke, but also a bitter taste of coal and burnt oil. In this grim landscape, a single skyscraper in the far distance, like a black crystal, jutted toward the sky, dominating the entire city. The sky was full of flying cars constantly zipping over our heads, their whirring engines and screeching metal grating on the ears. It was so intense that I had to bend my knees and firmly brace myself, gripping a metal railing, to avoid being swept off the platform by the powerful wind they created.
The streets were full of half-robot people, and most of them had weapons in their hands. These were people who had lost so many of their limbs that they had turned into half-robot, half-human freaks. The streets were painted with blood-red colors. The writings were the same. "Death to the Nobles!"
A police flying car was raking anarchists in that street with a barrage of fire while a child died in his mother's arms. A bomb exploded in a market, and as torn limbs were scattered everywhere; looters who were collecting the metallic cards on the torn limbs swarmed there before the police. From time to time, spaceships would come down from the sky and land on the planet. These spaceships were probably commercial ships. These commercial ships were even more protected than the planet itself. They were surrounded by flying robots with wings like angels.
"What the hell!"
"This is my planet, CLAUDIS IX."
"I'm sorry, but screw this planet! Can people live here?"
"You can't choose where you're born."
"That's fine and all, but why are we here?"
"The Mind Tunnel is a neurotelepathic space where shared minds come together. I told you that mind-weavers have to share minds with the person they are making a promise to, right? If you want a promise from me, then we must give each other a gift from our subconscious. We mind-weavers call this a mind-bond. A mind-weaver doesn't make a promise to someone without a mind-bond."
"Are we going to give something like a memory? You know I don't have many of those."
"No, a memory isn't mandatory. We're in your endless mind right now, and all you can think of is a memory? You can give a memory if you want, or an experience, or an idea, and many other things. A mind-weaver gets to know the person they're making a promise to through the gift this person gives in the Mind Tunnel."
"So, if you don't like the gift, you won't make the promise? Is all this effort worth it for a simple promise of an apology?"
"If you don't want to bother, that's fine. I can wake both of our minds."
"No… It's not a problem. Let's do it, but I don't know what I can give."
"Do you want me to open your mind? We can browse it a little together."
"Sure, why not?"
Rose walked with heavy steps on the iron platform and placed my head between her two hands. Her eyes were closed, but I could see her moving eyes from behind her eyelids. I could feel the heat rising from her hands to my head.
Rose scrunched up her face for a moment. "It's like someone has been in your mind…"
"That would be John Crowrift," I said in a bored tone.
"No… You're a clone, and John Crowrift was the man who created your mind. John just made some mistakes while creating your memories, and memories that shouldn't exist sprouted in your mind. What I'm talking about is something else… It's like you've had an uninvited guest in your mind at some point. This… this looks like a mind-weaver's work."
"Holy crap!"
"Wait a minute…" Rose took her hands away from my head, but she didn't break her hand shape. It was as if she had an invisible box in her hand and had just put it down. As she took two steps back to look at that box on the floor from a distance, a visual appeared in front of the iron platform.
"Yes! That's it! You're so good!"
In the visual, I was lying on a stone floor. Something was on top of me. Her naked body was moving up and down on me with a harmonious rhythm. Her foam-white hair, with each wave, poured over her shoulders and away from her face, flowing like a magical river. My hands were busy caressing the woman, feeling the weight of her full breasts. Sometimes, she would press down on me with all her might, bite my lips with passion, and squeeze the muscles in my stomach as if she wanted to pull me even deeper. As her long nails wandered over my body, they left marks like scattered rivers. This thing on me was Diana, and we were literally like the leads in a cheap sex tape.
I don't know if it was from shame or anger, but Rose's face had turned completely red. She kicked the iron platform multiple times with her foot, causing the visual to disappear.
"What the hell is this nonsense?" she said, and then I suddenly remembered waking up peacefully that morning. When I woke up from my sleep, I felt as if I had shed a century's worth of burdens. And hadn't Diana appeared to me in the silhouette of a woman named 'Yorleny' before I went to sleep?
"You should be the one to tell me!" Rose said, clenching her fists.
"I'll be damned if I remember anything!"
"You…" Rose said, her fists trembling. "You…" Suddenly, a revolver appeared in her hand. Pointing the revolver at me, she yelled, "Did you screw my sister, you son of a bitch!" The revolver fired, and the bullet went right past my head.
"What are you doing? You almost hit me. I really don't remember anything. I was crazy drunk last night. The only thing I remember is telling her we would help her. Oh, wait a minute… I might have given her something like a promise that I would help her."
"And then you entered the Mind Tunnel and reinforced this promise, huh…" She stopped, scrunching up her face.
"What's wrong?" I asked when I saw Rose's silence.
"I didn't think of this when I said we needed to give each other something in the Mind Tunnel."
"No! No… I don't want something like that. I can't want that… I was buzzed and I don't know how I did something like that. I'm not really skilled in these things. The last time I was with a woman, she created a test subject from my DNA, you can imagine…"
"So…"
"What were you thinking of giving?"
Rose took a breath. "Since I met you, I've observed a certain weakness in you."
"I guess you could say that."
"You're a coward, you're weak, you don't know how to fight. I'm very good at fighting. So I thought of giving you my fighting experiences."
"Is that possible?" I asked. "Are you going to give me fighting training?"
"Yes…"
"Won't that take a long time?"
"Time inside the mind works differently than outside. You can think of it as being in a timeless place right now. Yes, time is still progressing outside, but weeks spent here will be hours in the outside world."
"Do we have hours to spare while Diana and Jose are waiting for us outside?"
"A mind-weaver and a highly-equipped robot assistant can easily take care of themselves without our help, can't they? We are not the ones who should be helping them. They should be finding and helping us."
"When you put it that way, it makes sense. So what do you want in return?"
"Whatever you can give me. But the value of the gift will reinforce our agreement."
"Can I get your gift first? While I think about it."
"Then…" she said and ran toward me, punching me in the stomach. As I fell to my knees from the pain in my stomach, she said, "…let the training begin."
"Was that necessary?" I hissed between my coughs.
"It was necessary for me. The good thing about this training is that I'm going to vent some serious anger."