"Ava," she called out for her sleeping girlfriend.

"Ava," Alice shook her shoulder.

"Ava!" she pinched the girl's nose.

"By my grandpa's hairy ballsack! What is wrong with you, girl? Do you have any idea what time it is?" Ava grumbled as she finally woke up.

"First, eww! Second, a lot. Third, no idea."

"Then why the flying fuck did you wake me up? You do remember that one of the perks of going out and getting ourselves almost killed every fucking day is that we get to sleep at night, do you?"

"As I said, a lot. I'm fifty percent sure Simon just entrusted me with the lives of his wife and daughter," Alice explained.

"What Simon?" Ava asked groggily.

"Simon McBell."

Ava halted as her mind tried to catch up. "He died three days ago," she finally stated.

"I know! I have no idea how or why, but I'm reasonably sure I just dreamt his entire life. Then I woke up and caught the last moments of his soul dissipating."

"Urgh. I need to be awake for this, and that won't be now. Sleep now. We will talk during breakfast," Ava finished, putting her head back on the pillow.

"But..."

"Yes, you have a nice butt. And no, we won't talk now. Even if we do, we won't be able to do anything until morning. Now, sleep," she demonstratively put her hands over her ears.

She was right, Alice realized. Even if she wanted to do something NOW, she simply couldn't. As much as she disliked it, she put her head back down, hugged her partner, and tried to go back to sleep. But her mind continued racing.

A mostly awake Ava, and a pretty tired Alice sat in the cafeteria, eating their breakfast. It consisted of mostly watered down tea, cold, tough meat, and beans. In short, it sucked. The perishable foodstuff had run out the day before, and from now on, everyone was under a strict diet.

"Tired?" her girlfriend asked her.

"A bit," Alice played her condition down, using Soul absorption to heal herself. A warm shudder ran through her body, and she was right awake again. Just like a very good and morally questionable coffee.

"So, Simon McBell?" Ava finally asked.

"Yes. No idea how or why, but I'm pretty sure it was him. I basically saw his entire life, including bits and pieces I could gladly do without."

"Well, I have a few ideas about the how and why. He died while his soul wasn't in his body, so it might just be that he was trapped in that state. Or human souls, in general, take longer to dissipate. It might mean that we will run into ghosts sooner or later. Probably a bit of both. That's it for the how.

The why should be pretty obvious. If he was reduced to nothing but a soul, who would he go to besides the single person he knows that she can see souls?"

"But how did he give me his memories?" Alice posed her actual question.

"Who knows? By the way, why do you think he entrusted you with the lives of his wife and daughter?"

"Basically, all memories were blurry. Like a picture that's out of focus. Only those two were clear from the very beginning," Alice explained.

"Might just be because they were the only things he really cared to remember?"

Thinking back on it, Alice realized that that might be true. Overall, the memories became clearer the newer they were, but still, "That doesn't really matter. I basically know Angelica and Sarah as if I had been friends with them for years... Scratch that, I even have memories of changing Sarah's diapers. Urgh, this is so weird."

"Does that mean... You are now half Simon? Are you still yourself?"Ava asked with clear worry in her voice.

"Yeah, I am still myself. It's like..." Alice tried to find the right words, "Like a movie. A very long movie. A memory of a memory. I can tell that those aren't mine, and they don't influence me. Not any more then such a movie would, at least. And I've probably forgotten ninety percent of it already.

Still, I'm intimately familiar with them, to the degree that it's going to be either super awkward or super not-awkward-at-all should we actually find them.

Besides, I think you are actually friends with Sarah? I think I have seen her with you a few times now that I think about it."

"Sarah? I think I know a Sarah, but we aren't especially close. We get along, but she is just a friend of a friend. But, do you even know where to look for them?"

"I know where they live, for starters. just a few streets away from the campus."

"You do realize that 'a few streets away from the campus' is basically half the city?"

"Come on! Trenton isn't THAT small. Besides, I know exactly where they live. And if they are still alive, then they are hopefully there. They have a freaking bunker under their garden, after all. Either that, or we could look for Angelica at her workplace."

"Okay, now to the most important question. Do you think we can get there on foot?"

"That is..."

It was one of the rules they had worked out with the Captain and the other scouts and looters. Even if they had bikes, they wouldn't go any further than what they could safely travel on foot.

Alice took a look at how her Stats had changed in the last few days.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Name: Alice Liddell

Level: 12

Class-primary: Necromancer 75,1%

Class-secondary: Warrior 79,7%

Resources:

Stamina: 15/15

Mana: 15/15

Soul energy: 19/20

Primary Stats:

Muscle-density: 25

Stamina: 15

Mana: 15

Magic power: 15

Secondary Stats:

Soul energy: 20

Bodyreformation (T) 3/100

Mana regeneration (T) 14/100

Skills:

Soul collection Lv 1

Soul sense Lv 3

Undead constitution Lv 1

Flesh grafting Lv 1

Soul absorption Lv 2

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Over the last two days, they had gone out and fought quite a few battles. They had adopted a system where they would go out with a group consisting of Scouts and Looters. The Scouts would find and secure a house, while the looters would then go in and clear it of everything useful while the Scouts guarded the place.

Alice and Ava were both Scouts, of course. They hadn't even considered a different possibility. However, they had made sure to only pick fights they were sure to win, so they hadn't leveled up too much. And this time, all three level-ups had gone into increasing her Stats.

Regarding her secondary Stats, Mana regeneration was going up slowly, but she was making progress. Even Bodyreformation had increased a little. No matter how safely they played it, Alice still got injured and then healed herself, resulting in the Stat increasing. But according to Ava’s and her own observation, that would quickly slow down the higher the Stat went.

In the end, however, Alice knew she wasn't strong enough yet. She probably could run the entire distance if she used Soul absorption to increase her Stamina, but that wasn't an option for anyone else. Not to mention, Soul energy was basically reserved for making sure she wouldn't die.

"No, we aren't strong enough. There should be a week's worth of food for three people in the bunker, so we still have some time. I would say, three days before they would risk going outside?"

"Hmm... You know, you sound awfully confident that those two aren't capable of taking care of themselves? That is, if they are even there."

"You might be right. Getting to know them from a husband-slash-father perspective might have given me a certain opinion of them. Still, I think taking no longer than three days might be a good idea. Even if they aren't there. No, even more so if they aren't there."

"Three days isn't a lot of time to get stronger, you know?"

"Hmm, I think we should be able to do it if we stop taking it easy," Alice argued.

"I wouldn't say risking our lives counts as taking it easy. But, I know what you mean, and as much as I hate it, you are right. We will have to be as strong as possible to deal with whatever is going to happen in New York, and I don't think we will meet that mystery duo if all we do is raiding the homes in walking distance."

"Oh, Captain, what do you want?" Alice suddenly turned around, asking the approaching Michael.

"First of all, how about you stop reading my mind?"

"You know that's not what I'm doing. You were walking around aimlessly and then got excited and came straight towards us. "

It was something Alice had been working on for the last two days. She was trying to be more aware of the souls around her, so that her ability to sense souls would stop being a tool she had to use, and turn into just another sense instead. It wasn't easy.

While she was at the base, there was rarely a moment where there were less than thirty individual souls in her range, and being conscious of every single one, was basically impossible. However, she had gotten to a point where she could quickly find almost everyone if she looked actively, and for a select few, she was always aware of where they were.

Those people included her mother, Ava, and some of the leadership. Michael most of all, since she wanted to know where the man was should an emergency come up.

"Being able to read my emotions from ten meters away without seeing me comes already too close to mindreading to be comfortable."

"Anyway, what does your majesty want from us on this fine morning?"

"Have you finally run out of military titles to misuse?" the man asked, "Well, there are two things, actually. A Flasher has apparently been making a ruckus since yesterday at night, and people are equally annoyed and scared of what it might be able to do. I do..."

"What the hell is a Flasher?" Ava interrupted.

"Those hairless dogs."

"You mean the horse-sized chihuahua's? But why Flasher?"

"Because they run around fast, are completely naked, and make you want to look away. Literally, actually. It's apparently supernaturally hard to focus on them. Albert named them.

Anyway. People are worried and asked me to do something about it. And now I'm here to ask you to do something about it. I will be honest, I am reasonably sure that we can take it down the next time it shows up. However, just to make sure, I wanted to ask how confident you two would be in dealing with it."

Alice thought about the few times she had seen one of those things running past and quickly came to a result, "Not impossible. But I'm not confident."

"You took down that... Goliath, was it? And that one sounds a lot stronger," the Captain asked.

"You saw how Alice looked after that fight," Ava stated, her voice unhappy.

"Calm down. I won't force you. I just want your opinion. You are our most experienced Scouts after all."

It felt strange to Alice. It was true, she and Ava had been out there fighting every day, and they did have the highest levels, at least as far as she knew. Still, it felt weird being treated like some kind of professional monster hunter. It just didn't feel real, as absurd as it was, considering how stuff happened that should feel even less real, but didn’t.

"Okay, let me think... The Goliath, if that's the official term now? It was big, strong, and had powerful magic. But it was relatively slow, which allowed us to get the initiative. If not for the armor and my ability to turn undead, I wouldn't have been able to continue fighting after getting hit for the first time, and then I would have died.

After that, however, I could mostly evade its attacks since they were slow or had clear tells, like its magic for example.

If what you said about those Flashers is true, they are basically the exact opposite. They are fast and can make you lose focus at just the right moment. I would probably have to face its charge head-on, at least if it does that kind of thing, to take its initiative away, and that's not something I want to do on purpose."

"And if you had a gun?" he asked for more detail.

"With a lot of bullets, sure. But most people in this place are a lot better than me at that. What about you?" Alice threw the question to her girlfriend.

"I'm pretty sure I'm faster than those things, but only in short bursts. And I will be honest, moving that fast is already scary enough: I really don't want to know what will happen if I collide with anything at that speed. Not to mention hitting something that's also very fast itself.

If you ask me, either use some kind of trap or fireball the shit out of it."

"Aren't you supposed to be an Assassin? You know, with stealth?" Alice reminded the girl.

"Yeah, I counted that under traps."

"Okay, thank you for that. I will think about it," the Captain fell into a thoughtful silence.

He was just about to walk away when Alice reminded him, "You said there were two things."

"Right! Sorry, there is always so much stuff going on that I forget half of it. I know that we said we wouldn't go any further than we could go on foot, but we, the leadership, came to the conclusion that we shouldn't delay much longer. We have to start up search-and-rescue before people start to go out on their own. Luckily, there aren't many people that are missing someone, but we do have five family members we need to find.

You don't have to. You are already taking on more risks than most in this place, but I would be very thankful if you two could help with this."

Alice threw a meaningful look at the other girl. "Actually..." she quickly explained to the head of security what had happened.

"The first Ooba already?" he looked astonished.

"Oh god! You are already using acronyms? What does it mean?" Ava asked.

"I know, right? It stands for Out-of-bounds-abilitiy. It refers to stuff like this, where people display supernatural abilities outside of what they should be capable of according to the system.

We decided to keep track of happenings like that because of your little theory, which now even has a name, by the way. The council dubbed it the administrator-theory."

"Anyway, yes, we will help with looking for people. When is this supposed to happen?"

"Tomorrow. I know it's a bit sudden, but we can't wait any longer. Not if we want there to be anyone left to rescue."

"Then, I don't think we will be able to help with looting today," Ava said.

"And we are going to need full support from our metal mages," Alice added.

"Thats... Okay, why?" Michael asked.

"We are not gonna go grinding without being as well equipped as we possibly can."