"Can you guys calm down? My ears still work." Jinx said with a nonchalant tone. Everyone looked between each other before Fume spoke. "We-We need to get her out of here. She clearly needs extreme medical attention."

At that moment, Jinx coughed up blood, caking what was left of her face. "Girl, I'm fine. It's just a flesh wound. " Jinx said casually. "I can see your brain! This is not a flesh wound Jinx! You! go fetch a gurney, I don't want to get her out of those chains until we are safe, and don't turn her either when we take her, we don't want her brain slipping out."

Jinx went to roll her eyes hearing what she just heard, but forgot they were squishy mulch over where she was beaten earlier. Honestly, things were not as bad as they appeared. Sure, her face was gone and the rest of her skull was basically fragments and she was in a decent amount of pain, but at the same time, she knew from her parasite that her brain was completely intact. Sure, she had blood all over her brain, but it was fortified enough not to cause neurological damages.

'I hope the nest pod doesn't change my face too much after the deep soak, I wouldn't want Apollo not being able to recognise me whenever he comes back...' Before her fantasies could get the better of her, someone entered the warehouse. "Fume! We found White Death! He is in a bad way!"

Everyone dropped what they were doing and followed the man outside immediately, leaving Jinx there on her own. 'Finally.' Jinx began to wiggle in her chains. The idiots thought they had fully entrapped her earlier, but they seemed to forget she was missing a good chunk of torso and after a bit of shimmying, she freed herself.

If Jinx's current facial structure made her look like she should have been dead. The giant hole just below her ribs that had also taken her arm below the elbow should be another indicator to prove just how resilient Jinx was. Her mix of Psionic toughness and her status as a bio cultist had turned her into a literal cockroach. The only effective way to kill her, she presumed, was stabbing her in the brain with a stick and stirring the contents of bone pot into a nice grey paste.

Jinx stood up for a moment and placed her hand against the hole in her head, she didn't want her thinker slipping out as she began walking carefully away. Her ears were not the sharpest of her senses, but she had an inkling of where to go for safety.

...

"Timmy!" Fume screamed as she ran over to the leaders of the current gang war. Talos was now a big hunk of scrap metal. Torso here, legs over there and Timmy had a giant gaping wound in his torso and was missing almost all of his skin.

The mission objective was to wipe out Talos' group and save Jinx, but that changed. She needed to get her lover out of here. As despite his tearjerking sight, she could see his chest still moving, ever so slightly.

"We need to get him out of here now! We won't need to regulate his body temperature as he already is well below normal humans so he won't get hyperthermia, but everyone with Psionics needs to come for a blood test and skin graphs. Quickly, I don't think we have long to save him!"

After Fume gave the order, she knelt down next to Timmy and planted a kiss on his head. "You were good to me, despite your violent nature. That is why I am saving your life instead of finishing you off while you are this vulnerable. If you can hear me, you probably think that is weakness, but it's not. We are stronger together."

...

Delilah rubbed her head. What she heard was a lot to take in. So much so that she verbally needed to speak back out what she heard so she could make sure what she heard was actually correct.

"So you are a human artificial intelligence?" She asked and stated at the same time, causing Zeona to shake her head. "No... And yes. Look, Zeona, the person this body frame was, was a scientist working on a government sanctioned project roughly nine hundred years ago. At that time, we were on the back foot against the coalition, a war that has been hidden to history. The Kings at the time were desperate for extra troops so they were doing some treasonous shenanigans. Zeona was a part of this. I won't bore you with the details of what we were working on, but the artificial intelligence that Zeona had created was sapient, sentient, all that stuff and absorbed knowledge quickly. Turns out, there is this Seer in the Coalition that saw it as a threat as the Artificial intelligence was very adept at taking over other tech, and considering all the Thurx drones the Coalition uses... It would have been bad for them if the intelligence got a hold of even one of them."

"So this Seer came for you?" Delilah asked. "Us." Zeona replied. " They launched a massive invasion towards our research facility, we didn't have time to pack everything away, but Zeona had a plan. Heh, she was smart, but very reckless. She had kitted out her body in some very neural heavy implants and fused the two of them together. They trusted each other beyond imagining. They didn't see each other as code and a meat bag. They were friends, best friends. They agreed to give up our individualities and become one. Something new."

"And that worked?" Delilah asked the question with the rather obvious answer.

Zeona nodded her head. "It did. With me being a new entity, I calculated, and five hundred years later got confirmation, that the Seer just lost us completely. The confusion halted the invasion just long enough for, me, to escape with a few of the other experimental artificial intelligences we were working on."

Delilah shook her head. If she wasn't a member of an extra galactic cult, this would be the most outlandish thing she had ever heard. Never mind the questions Sophia was firing through her head right now about this mystery, she wanted to ask so many questions. She had known Zeona for quite a while after all and she always just appeared as a person with great synergy with augmented body parts.

Zeona read her best friend like an open book, as she was exactly that. There were no secrets that this woman held from her. "Ask your questions Delilah. The fact you are still sitting in the room with me is proof you don't think I am some abomination."

Delilah smiled with a warmth that caused Zeona's heart to skip a beat. "Well. It's not like you have been lying about your whole personality is it? You have just been lying about half of your... Is species the right word? Meh, doesn't matter. The point I am making is that Zeona is my friend, not whatever you are composed of."

Zeona got up from her seat and walked over to Delilah, she then sat down beside her and hugged her. Their bodies swayed back and forth for a few moments before Delilah could not hold back her questions anymore.

"So, can the two of you swap minds? Like can human Zeona come out more and likewise with whatever artificial intelligence is in there?" She asked, prompting Zeona to shake her head.

"No, when I say that they merged, I mean they fully merged. I am not either of the two originals, I am an amalgamation of the two. We aren't quite human and we aren't quite an AI. We are something in between. For example, recently we have been feeling some sexual arousal as you know with what you found in my wardrobe, but then I can turn off all emotions and kill those I loved for centuries to quiet someone who betrayed me. I am not stable in my emotions, but I also am as I can use cold logic with my reasoning... Also, I am like 95% synthetic flesh and metallic augmentations, I barely register as human as is. All that truly remains is Zeona. The name and the framework for this body of mine."

Delilah made an audible noise of understanding and was about to dive right into her next question before Sophia relayed an excellent point regarding Apollo and had also given her permission to 'extend' her current job.

She then looked Zeona in the eyes, the woman clearly felt a weight lifted off her shoulder as she looked at her. More than eager to answer any questions Delilah had.

Instead, Delilah put on an excited face and jumped slightly where she sat. "Do you know what? Fuck it! You are my friend, I am coming with you!"

Zeona's face visually lit up. "Wait. Really!" Delilah then nodded. "Yeah, you are my best friend and Devora can go and eat a bag of dicks! Besides, it's been years since I have gone gambling! This will be a blast!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.