Nadia didn’t have any time to admire the towering fronds that seemed to block out the entire sky, nor the globes of brownish nutrients that accumulated along the edges of the tree’s trunks. She was more focused on acclimatizing to the new body, mastering its urges and simplistic behavior.

All George had to do now was deliver her body back to Calvin and the System would wrench her soul out of this meat-creature when he added her back to Chained Spirit.

Probably.

Her host had a body about the size of a child, but heavy with muscle. It was a quadraped, hairless and just barely big enough to reach the globes of sugar water growing on the side of the tree. It was the first thing she’d landed in after desperately following the rope-like thread of consciousness, trapping her in the body of a docile prey animal.

She could feel the creature’s liver pressing taut against the creature’s skin, still growing at a cancerous rate that surely spelled doom for this creature in only a few short months.

What kind of life is this?

Her host had a strong desire to go to the west and say hi to the nine foot tall humanoid creatures with slavering jaws that busied themselves carrying metal beams and other supplies back and forth.

Nadia vetoed that.

She was just barely getting the hang of the creature’s over-muscled limbs when every single creature in her field of view froze for a fraction of a second. She froze too, for a different reason.

She felt One’s influence reach into her host’s mind and elicit some kind of response.

Unsure of what it did, Nadia intercepted the response and took a fraction of a second to decode it. The code wasn’t difficult, the signal was a widespread ping to identify – crap, time to jump ship!

In a fraction of a second, Nadia wrapped the trace amounts of Bent in the creature’s body around her mind and leapt. The Bent formed the jellyfish-like invisible layer of protection that kept her soul from being scattered to the winds.

In Ilethan royalty the technique was known as Soul Dive.

It was far more advanced than Mind slavery and very difficult to pull off without a complete disregard for your life and body.

Nadia hadn’t used it the first time she’d died because she hadn’t thought of it, and even if she had…Nadia was far too young and liked her body way too much. It was irreplaceable.

At the time.

She’d outgrown that sentiment earlier than most Ilethan nobles, because she’d already died once.

Most Ilethan nobles never outgrew it at all, to be honest. Human naturally liked their lives, and equated their bodies and their selves. The first man to use the technique had been a suicidal misanthrope.

Uncle Jerry. He still stole the body of one of her cousins every now and then to go on a killing spree.

Nadia’s mind floated away from the creature. In soul form she couldn’t see or hear in the traditional sense. She could perceive other minds though, fuzzy glowing orbs of light in a backdrop of pitch black. But everything around her was the same mind, even the trees. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

There was a flash of light from beside her as all the orbs of light seemed to converge on the host she’d just abandoned and lit that fucker on fire.

The meat creature’s mind was snuffed like a candle, but Nadia was already gone.

Nadia saw the minds of the biped creatures approaching, following the will of their master to investigate the disturbance.

Good. I can’t hold out very long in this form anyway.

The time limit on soul dive was fifteen seconds, give or take. Nadia’s cloak of Bent that preserved her mind was sloughing off even now.

She burned the last of the Bent in her jellyfish wrapping and floated into one of the glowing orbs

The creature’s mind didn’t particularly resist, as it wasn’t designed to be a strong-willed individual, so Nadia was able to assume control of the slavering monster in a tiny fraction of a second.

She couldn’t stay though, One would direct his attention to this creature, and if she was still in it when he did, that was the end of her little keepaway game.

She blinked the creature’s eyes, taking in the eviscerated husk of the host she’d been riding in up until a couple seconds ago.

Nadia started juggling two actions, gathering all the free Bent available in the monster’s body and drawing the thing’s big wrench form its hip holster.

She whirled and lodged the wrench deep into the skull of the nearby monster before bailing from the creature’s body.

Total time spent: roughly half a second.

I’ll bet you’ve never played hide and seek before, abomination, Nadia thought as she sought out the damaged, flickering orb that was the brained creature’s mind.

If what she knew about One was accurate, it would abandon the wounded giant immediately, which was just how she wanted it.

Soul Dive took a lot out of her, and she needed to recover.

Nadia dove into the twitching mass of giant while her previous host was torn apart by his former coworkers.

Nadia settled into the ruined giant’s mind and was pleased to find it’s vitals were still very strong, it’s brain gradually reforming.

Cut from the same cloth as Elliot I suppose, Nadia thought, her mind giving a wicked grin as she faded her control into the background, leaving One futilely sniffing around for her.

If he got wind of where she went, or caught her off guard, that would be it, she’d get popped like a pimple.

But only if.

***One, Undead Bioweapon***

One did a quick cost-benefit analysis.

Focusing his attention strictly on Nadia decreased his work output by twelve percent.

Across eight billion organisms, that was the equivalent of nine hundred and sixty million drones not working.

Unacceptable. At most, Nadia would only be able to ruin one facility, which was one eighteen thousandth of his total workflow.

The best option was to cut his losses and ignore her completely, but that did not solve the problem.

The mind-mage had exposed a flaw in One, and it needed to be remedied.

Treat the problem, and the mind-mage issue will resolve itself.

One drew up two solutions.

He could make a specialized drone whose task was to sniff out infested drones and extract the infestation, or he could put more signal encoding and firewalls in every drone, making them more difficult to usurp without permission.

There was no reason he couldn’t do both, but both both countermeasures took energy to create and maintain. The question was, was it worth the bio-energy he would have to spend in order to grow these new drones?

He roughed out some math, and found the cost to be negligible, especially when weighed against the possibility of encountering a more powerful creature that could overwhelm his control over his units and turn them against him en masse.

Both it is.

It would take years to get the new designs planned and operational, but after that, Nadia’s little body-hopping trick would be stonewalled.

In the meantime, the mind-mage was beneath One’s notice.

***Nadia***

Nadia’s host blinked its eyes and stood up as the last parts of the brain reformed, notably slower than Nadia’s original body, but that gave her plenty of time to get her bearings.

It glanced around and saw that everyone had gotten back to work and picked up a nearby crate like nothing had happened and got back to work.

Yess… he thinks I’m dead. Perfect.

Nadia assumed control, setting down the crate to sneak up behind an unsuspecting giant who was busily handing metal plates to Knick-knacks who were bolting them onto a strangely phallic piece of architecture.

Like a giant steel cock, Nadia thought, shaking the creature’s head with a sigh.

She snuck up behind her opponent and drove an iron rod into the giant’s spine.

Time to go!

She ditched the body and flitted over to a mind all the way across the way, trying to get some distance between her and her most recent victim.

He set down the machining tools in her hands and glanced over at the dead giant and his murderer.

Despite her expectations, her former host wasn’t being torn to shreds. It simply nudged the corpse out of the way, picked up the plate the creature had dropped and handed it up to the Knick-knacks, who began pinning it onto the giant metal dildo.

What the abyss?

Experimentally, Nadia picked up a large, bladed piece of metal in her hands, and decapitated a nearby giant, ready to jump out of the body in a fraction of a second.

They kept on working, ignoring her outburst entirely.

They’re ignoring me?

Ignoring! ME!?

Okay, Nadia thought, dropping the blade from her hand as a nearby drone dragged the corpse away. Two can play at this game.

Nadia had grown up around leaders, and she understood the cold math behind the decision to ignore her. One had simply crunched the numbers and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to crush her. Like a gnat.

I’m gonna make him regret that decision, She thought, testing out her vocal chords.

All that came out was a dry rasp.

No vocal chords, silly me.

Still, that wasn’t the only way to communicate.

Time to give this bastard a lesson in counter-intelligence.

Nadia casually cut the head off a nearby giant and picked up a steel plate, using the blood to write on it, catching the attention of nearby Kncick-knacks

Continent of Bal wishes to negotiate cessation of assistance to creature known as ‘One’.

The knick-knacks got agitated for a moment before one of them approached.

‘Wait right here’ one of them said in their strange inhuman voice.

So she waited. A few minutes later, a rather sleek and shiny, more humanoid-looking Knick-knack arrived.

“I am diplomat.” It said in a smooth, cultured ilethan voice. “What do you wish to discuss?”

She pointed to her sign.

“I’m sorry, Knick knacks pride themselves on strict adherence to bargains. Unlike meatsacks, we are capable of integrity.”

Nadia rolled her eyes. She wasn’t expecting much she flipped the metal plate over and wrote on the back of it.

Buy information about metal penis? Nadia wrote, pointing at the giant phallus.

“Oh, I see. Penis. Our agreement with One prevents us from disclosing any information about the specific details of the Two-stage bulk ground-to-space transport rocket.”

Nadia raised a brow. She had no idea what a rocket was, but it was for bulk transport, apparently. Perhaps Elliot could clarify.

Are there more? She wrote.

“We are not at liberty to discuss the number of rockets or any of the work that we do in the employ of One, My apologies, that is part of our agreement with him.”

Nadia frowned for a moment before an idea occurred to her.

At liberty to discuss your movements?

“Those…were not stipulated as classified. What do you wish to know?”

Send Calvin Gadsint in Calvin’s March map of Laborer traffic across the surface of this continent over past ten years.

“And the matter of payment?” diplomat asked.

One ton of plastic on arrival, more payment negotiable with local Diplomat on delivery. Nadia wrote.

“We will send word. Is there anything else?”

No.

“Very well, we wish you luck in your ultimately procreation-centered biological endeavors.” Diplomat said, bowing in Ilethan style.

Is it because I wrote in Ilethan? Nadia thought, glancing at her sign.

Probably.

Nadia smudged out all the blood on her sign and tossed it aside, where a drone picked it up and handed it to a knick-knack, who added it to the metal dil – Rocket, Nadia corrected herself. Whatever that is.

Giving Calvin a map of Knick-knack traffic across the continent should at least divine the locations of each of these constructions, likely more. Nadia thought, her lips parting over her massive tusks as she smiled.

It had been part of the agreement to keep him appraised of any movements against him, and Nadia was fairly sure this counted.

Now…how else can I make this creature regret ignoring me?