Tisis

Rose's gift (N)

More time passes and Sirus is growing more restless with every day.
He doesn't like this situation...not one bit.
And I don't know how much longer I can stall him.

The other day, I told him about a number of explosives, I was 'not able to remove, without risking to set them off'.
He probably understood it as my escape plan, as a way to defeat Rose and get out of here...but he fails to understand, that we are dealing with a God here.

An entity, which is responsible for all life that exists on this planet...definitely not someone you want to get on the bad side of.
Besides, it's very unlikely that the explosives would go off, even if I tried to prime them...after all, they are ancient.

I sigh and finish connecting the circuits Rose has me working on today.
Light returns to the complex I am currently stuck in and the debris quickly begins to be cleaned up, restoring the previous state of things.

Another clean cut through the circuitry...someone definitely tried to cut off Rose's limbs with something really sharp...the burn marks around the cuts suggest it was something akin to a plasma blade.

Nobody performing a 'planned shutdown' would do it like that...no, they were fighting Rose. And seeing how Rose is still here and they aren't, it's easy to see who won the fight.

"Alright, I'm done. Thanks for getting that debris off me," I say while dusting myself off.

"No problem, thank you for reconnecting the section. You really have a knack for these things, you know?"
"Eh, it's all thanks to your guidance and the tools you supplied. I'm just the hands that uses them."
"No, really, I mean it. None of my maintenance bots could ever have reached those parts, because the terrain was too rugged. You are a life-saver."
I lean against the wall and take a sip from the water bottle.

"So...that friend of yours...do you consider him a threat?" Rose suddenly asks.
"...he is violent and dangerous, but I don't think he would hurt me. He needs me, after all."
"But do you still need him?"

Rose's second question feels like a sucker punch to my stomach.
Not so much because of the question itself...but because I find myself actually pondering it.

"I enjoy his company," I partially evade the question.
I hate myself right now, but that answer is still a lot better than the other one that's on my mind.

No, I don't need him any more.
I have water, I have shelter, I have food.
Except for the company, there is nothing left Sirus can give me.

And even the company...really, I barely see him any more.
Either he is out hunting or I'm rummaging through the bowels of this complex, trying to repair what someone destroyed a long time ago.

And with that, the matter was taken care of...or so I thought.

The coming night, I have a strange dream.
I'm surrounded by fellow Asmodei, but they are none I've known.
In fact, they look a lot like the archetypes you would expect to find in media aimed at young and easily impressible females.

I've seen a few of my peers interact with holograms looking like them when they really should have studied how to become productive members of the society of the ark.

In that dream, the larger than life males try to woo me with their respective traits, while dream me certainly seems to enjoy herself being the center of attention.

But still, something about this situation seems...wrong.
I certainly cannot remember ever having dreams like that and how is it, that I'm so painfully aware that I am dreaming, yet seemingly cannot control the actions of dream me.