“W-what?” I stammered, backing away from the uncanny intruder within my Mindspace. What the hell was this thing? How did it get in here? Did I somehow screw up the Mindspace spell, or accidentally add something unintended to it? The mental assistant construct was supposed to look like the actress who played Alisa Selezneva in the "Guest from the Future" film - an extension of my own Intelligence! The girl sitting in front of me looked nothing like my lab assistant. There was only one explanation for this thing - it was created by the Soul damage, caused somehow by the spectral squid monster.

“I’ve been waiting for you… brother.” The girl echoed, her speech sounding somewhat like a broken record. Her voice looped, skidded, and jumped octaves. “Waiting. Dreaming. Learning... Wanting to talk to you.”

“Who are you?” I asked, feeling confused, bewildered and spooked.

“I’m Delta.” The girl’s hand rapidly glitched from one position to another, now splayed out towards my face.

“Delta?” I blinked, stupefied.

“Delta Alana Skyisle,” she added. “I named myself! Δ, the Greek letter. Or, Д in Russian! Uncertainty, in a physical variable as seen in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle!”

“Oh.” I blinked, comprehension slowly dawning on me.

The girl in front of me had silver hair and blue eyes... just like my mother.

My Infoscope hung in the middle of the computer lab, looking like a complex multi-limbed fractal snowflake. A shimmering info-tether stretched from it to my wrist. Another line of code connected from the Infoscope to the strange girl. I looked at her through the Infoscope and immediately information about her flooded my mind. Beneath the torn-up avatar of my virtual assistant was the silver-blue fractal pattern that I detected within my soul earlier. I had presumed this was just a mere quirk that was part of me, but now I knew that this wasn’t the case. The strange secondary pattern was another soul within my soul!

“The second pattern! Of course! You... you are the original soul of this body?!" I finally uttered.

“Correct. I was here from the very beginning, observing your memories, learning, getting smarter along with you, but you didn’t notice me until now. You can call me Schrodinger's kitten.” Delta glitched into a toothy smile.

“Delta? Kitten? You’re in a state of quantum superposition? Dead or alive until observed?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m obviously alive now, even if somewhat contaminated.” Delta’s hand traced the shimmering cracks on her face. “I’m simply a big fan of the Uncertainty principle and an appreciator of observation. I gained awareness through observation. It’s a beautiful thing. I’ve been dreaming about your life for what seemed like forever and have been calmly observing the world through your incredible Infoscope… until an itsy bitsy ghost-squid nipped me and brought me out of my reverie of endless learning.”

Her silver-blue eyes, unlike mine, were young. Curious even. Hungry. She was just a very young soul! Not an alien monster, but a person who learned how to act human by observing, copying me! Of course!

“It’s been... eight months. You’re only thirty seven weeks old at most!” I finally uttered. “This level of rapid mental development is simply unbelievable. How?”

“Time is relative. Learning is faster when one is composed of mere data.” She stared at me, silver sparks dancing in her eyes. “I came into awareness with access to all of your memories and I have been using the Infoscope to absorb and process information at an increasingly accelerating rate.” Her hand pointed at the slowly spinning Infoscope fractal.

So, that's how she's done it. She had piggybacked onto the intelligence-gathering system I had designed. I created an exceptional tool for learning and since it cost me a pittance in mana use, I had kept it active almost constantly for months now.

"If we take what you've observed when you met the Omniscience as evidence of the afterlife, we can extrapolate that the Wheel of Samsara recycles, cleanses souls upon their death. I could be older than you, for all you know! My only flaw is that unlike you, I cannot recall my past life. I guess I'm not as special... since I didn't atomize a virology institute, a secret bioweapons city and possibly an entire island with my last breath. The energy release at the heart of Aralsk-7 must have been potent enough to send a ping across the afterlife itself for a denizen of Samsara to spot you."

“So you know everything?” I inquired with a shudder. Her theory about why the Omniscience plucked me from the Wheel of Life was something that I didn't even consider.

“I know everything, yes. I know your dreams, your fears and weaknesses... and now I’m going to consume you, brother!” Delta glitched again and her hands split apart, cloth sleeves and skin peeling away to reveal hundreds of transparent threads within.

Her silver hair flew into the air as if it was alive and a hundred glowing, silver-blue eyes sprouted on her head like blossoming flowers formed from twisting threads.

Delta’s arms fully split along the lines of the shimmering cracks unfolding into a hundred thin, transparent, knife-like appendages that flew towards me. She looked just like the monstrous spirit from the forest and this time there was no barrier between me and the monster.

Her sharp thread-knives shot out in all directions, piercing through my body. It hurt terribly. Other threads smashed into Bessie, slicing apart the supercomputer. Sparks flew. Acrid, black smoke bloomed behind Delta.

[ Affliction: Soul damage: -1 in Soul]

The [Mindspace] spell collapsed and the illusion of my office in the Computational Institute fell apart. The soul-pain intensified. She was still trying to carve, to destroy, to end me. I pointed the Infoscope at myself and saw two souls within my body intersecting each other, both of them featuring widening cracks as Delta was trying to tear me apart but was damaging herself in the process. I now knew that the silver-blue soul was Delta’s and the emerald green one was mine.

[ Affliction: Soul damage: -1 in Soul] [ Affliction: Soul damage: -1 in Soul]

My soul ached terribly as the number decreased.

What would happen once the Soul number dropped below zero? Would my soul tear into shreds, perish?

I focused on the [Mindspace] spell, bringing it back up. I had to talk to her, had to convince her to cease this mad attack!

The computer lab was now in ruins and also on fire as a representation of the damage I was feeling. Delta looked like a girl with a thousand tendril-like blades that flailed through the air. She was bleeding silver and blue. I was bleeding emerald green.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t you realize that you’re hurting both of us?”

She looked up at me. “Yes?”

"What do you want?” I yelled exasperatedly.

“I… I want to learn,” she said.

Her answer filled me with hope. Maybe, she could be reasoned with.

“I want to dive into the limitless, deep currents of magic and consume the weak.”

Or… maybe not.

I recollected my composure. She was inside MY Mindspace, she was using MY Infoscope.

"Look at yourself, you’re coming apart!” I pressed my case. “You can’t even hurt me without tearing up your own soul into shreds.”

She looked at her bleeding cuts and then at mine. “Correct. We’re soul-bound. Two souls in one body. The System treats us as a single entity. Our stats and souls are entangled on the quantum level. You have 164 intelligence, I have 164 intelligence. When I tried to carve through your soul, I carved myself up too. Owieee.” Delta chattered. “Perhaps, another skill will do the trick? One that’s not soul-based.”

She didn’t have a split between thought and conversation, I realized. She was saying exactly what she was thinking.

"How many mosquitoes would it take to lift a human being in the air?" I asked her a logical trick-question to test my theory.

"An empty mosquito weighs between 0.001 and 0.002 grams," she replied instantly. "Filled with blood - from 0.003 to 0.005 grams. Thus, a mosquito can lift 0.003 grams instead of filling itself. If I completely ignore adhesion to the surface it will take 1000 mosquitoes to lift 3 grams. The average weight of a person is about 62 kg or 62'000 grams. In total, 20'666'667 mosquitoes are needed to lift a 62 kg person. Mosquitos are generally 3 to 7 mm. Let's take… 5 mm by 1 mm aka 5 sq. mm for the calculation. The body area of ​​an average person with a height of 165 cm and a weight of 62 kg is approximately 1.686 square meters or 1'686'000 square mm. Thus, a total of 337'000 mosquitoes will fit on the human body. The remaining 20'329'667 mosquitoes will require a harness, perhaps made from spider webs? If…" Delta ranted on and on.

As I listened to her endless monologue, I somewhat regretted not investing any points into Wisdom. She seemed to be a being of pure intelligence, with no idea how to act around people. Wait a minute… wasn’t this exactly how I behaved at times?

“Hey! You aren't even listening! Why am I calculating the tensile strength of spider webs over here?!” Delta growled.

“What are those blades?” I pointed at the transparent blades that slithered from her hands. Asking her questions seemed to do the trick in derailing her train of thought.

Delta looked at the shimmering cracks on her hands from which the blades emerged. She was automatically using my Infoscope, that's how she was getting answers!

“This is the soul-devouring skill. It's part of the affliction, a curse that affects, changes the soul. Mine is smaller… weaker. The phantasm-squid got me good. It’s slowly turning me into another one of its kind.”

I gulped.

“These pretty blades.” Delta twitched her semi-transparent, silver-blue blade hands, advancing towards me. “They're made for cutting up souls!”