**Astraea's Ship - Atlantic Ocean, Approaching Netherlands**
The waiting had stretched for hours. Eve, Carmilla, and Angela remained on the ship, suspended in that peculiar limbo between preparation and action. Their infiltration plan was complete, their approach vector calculated, their timing synchronized with the predicted red rain storm. All that remained was for the weather to cooperate.
Carmilla stood at the ship's control panel, smoking yet another cigarette she'd found a pack hidden in one of the emergency supply compartments, probably left by a previous crew member. The holographic displays floated around her, showing real-time meteorological data, satellite imagery, and predictive models for the storm's progression.
Eve occupied herself at the railing, her crimson eyes fixed on the horizon where dark clouds had been gathering for the past hour. The sky in that direction had taken on an ominous quality not the normal gray-black of ordinary storm clouds, but something darker, more oppressive. And underneath that darkness, occasional flashes of deep red, like blood backlit by dying fire.
Angela sat in the cabin, silent and withdrawn. She'd barely spoken since waking from her faint, since resurfacing from that memory of childhood trauma. Her expression was distant, closed off, as if she'd retreated somewhere deep inside herself where external stimuli couldn't reach. Her synthetic body sat motionless in the chair, but her biological mind was clearly elsewhere, processing things she didn't want to confront directly.
"It's time," Carmilla announced, her voice cutting through the heavy silence. She gestured at the holographic displays, which showed the storm front approaching their position. "The red rain should reach us within the next ten minutes. Once it does, we move. Everyone ready?"
Eve nodded immediately, pushing away from the railing and moving toward the cabin with purpose. "I'm ready, Miss Carmilla."
Angela said nothing, but she stood up slowly, her movements mechanical and precise. She didn't look at either of them, just stared at some point in the middle distance.
Carmilla noticed Angela's continued silence but chose not to comment on it. They had a mission to complete, and personal issues would have to wait. She turned back to her displays, monitoring the storm's approach with professional focus.
The clouds rolled closer, swallowing the sky. The ocean beneath them began to churn more violently, waves rising higher, foam streaking across the dark water. The temperature dropped noticeably, and the wind picked up, creating a low howling sound that seemed to come from every direction at once.
Then they saw it the rain itself.
It fell from the clouds in sheets, and even from a distance, the color was unmistakable. Not quite blood red, but close a deep crimson that was darker than normal rain should be, thicker, falling with unusual weight. Where it struck the ocean's surface, it created patterns that looked wrong somehow, as if the liquid had properties that water shouldn't possess.
"Here it comes," Eve said quietly, her voice carrying a mixture of awe and unease.
The storm front hit them like a physical wall.
One moment they were in relatively calm conditions, the next they were engulfed completely. The red rain hammered down on the ship's deck with tremendous force, creating a sound like countless drums beating in chaotic rhythm. Visibility dropped to nearly zero the rain was so thick, so intense, that trying to see through it was like trying to see through a curtain of moving blood.
Carmilla's hands flew across her control panel, activating the ship's protective systems. Force fields shimmered into existence around critical components, keeping the strange rain from damaging sensitive equipment. The hull groaned under the assault, but held firm.
"This is it!" Carmilla shouted over the noise, her voice carrying excitement and tension. "This is what we've been waiting for! The storm is perfect—their sensors won't be able to track us through this. We need to move now, while—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
The storm vanished.
Not gradually, not fading away over minutes or hours like normal weather patterns. Just gone. Instantly. As if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the entire meteorological system.
One second they were surrounded by howling wind and blood-red rain so thick they couldn't see five feet beyond the ship's railing. The next second, the air was calm, the sky was clear, and the ocean was smooth as glass. The transition was so abrupt, so impossible, that for several seconds none of them could process what had just happened.
Carmilla stared at her displays, her cigarette falling forgotten from her fingers to the deck. Her remaining hand moved through the holographic interface, pulling up data, checking readings, trying to make sense of what her instruments were telling her.
*What just happened?* she thought, her analytical mind struggling to categorize the impossible. *Storms don't just disappear. Weather doesn't work that way. There should be residual effects wind dying down gradually, rain tapering off, clouds dispersing. But this? This was like the storm never existed at all.*
Eve had been standing near the cabin entrance when the storm hit. Now she found herself back inside the cabin somehow, though she had no memory of moving there. She looked around in confusion, her processors struggling to reconcile her memory of being outside with the reality of being inside.
*Did I black out?* she wondered. *Did something happen during that brief moment of storm that I'm not remembering? Or was it some kind of temporal displacement, a gap in my consciousness?*
Angela, who had been silent for so long, finally spoke. Her voice was quiet but carried clearly in the sudden, eerie calm. "Check the weather."
Eve blinked, pulled from her confusion by the direct command. She moved to the control panel where Carmilla stood frozen and activated the holographic weather display.
The data that appeared made no sense.
According to every meteorological service, every satellite feed, every predictive model
the storm was gone. Not just moved away or dissipated, but retroactively erased from the timeline. The weather data showed clear skies over their position for the past several hours. As if the storm they'd just experienced, the blood-red rain that had hammered their ship moments ago, had never existed at all.
"It's been gone for several hours," Eve said slowly, her voice carrying disbelief. "According to this data, there was never a storm here. The red rain that was predicted, that we planned our entire infiltration around... it's not showing up in any of the records."
Carmilla's mind raced through possibilities, her enhanced analytical abilities working overtime to make sense of the impossible. *This can't be right. We all saw the storm. We all felt it. The ship's instruments recorded it
I'm looking at the sensor logs right now, they clearly show the impact of heavy precipitation, wind force, temperature changes. But the external data sources are showing nothing. As if reality itself disagreed with what we experienced.*
Her thoughts spiraled deeper. *Wait. This isn't right. We SAW the storm approaching. We watched it roll toward us, watched the clouds gather, watched the rain fall. And now it's gone? Just... gone? How is that possible? What kind of power could make an entire weather system simply cease to exist?*
She thought of the Blessed individuals she knew, their various abilities. Some could manipulate elements fire, ice, electricity. Some could affect physical reality in localized ways teleportation, matter transformation. But this? This was something on a completely different scale. This was reality manipulation on a meteorological level, affecting an area that must span hundreds of square miles.
*Unless...* A darker thought occurred to her. *Unless we never moved at all. Unless the storm was an illusion, or we were moved somewhere else, or time itself was affected. But none of those explanations make sense either. My instruments don't lie. The ship's sensors are independent of external data feeds. We experienced something real, even if the rest of the world is saying it didn't happen.*
Carmilla realized with growing unease that whatever they'd just encountered was beyond her ability to explain. And things she couldn't explain were dangerous.
Angela stood looking at the displays, her expression unreadable. Inside, her thoughts churned with dark currents that had nothing to do with impossible weather.
*All that planning,* she thought bitterly. *All those hours Eve and Carmilla spent calculating approach vectors and timing windows and optimal infiltration routes. All of it based on that storm. And now it's gone, just... erased from existence. Our entire plan is worthless. We're back to square one, stuck in the middle of the ocean with no way to enter the Netherlands undetected.*
But beneath that frustration was something else, something that had been building since she'd woken from her traumatic memory.
Her gaze shifted to Eve, who was still studying the weather displays with confused concern written clearly across her synthetic features.
*Eve,* Angela thought, her internal voice cold and sharp. *You're acting like you're human now. Showing confusion, showing concern, showing all these emotions like they're real. And maybe they are real to you now. Maybe that synthetic soul really did give you consciousness, really did make you more than just a machine.*
*But what about before? What about when I was eight years old, lying on that concrete with my face covered in blood, my phone destroyed, my dignity shattered? Where were these emotions then? Where was this concern?*
The memory replayed with crystalline clarity
Charlotte's robot beating her, the crowd watching, the pain and humiliation and desperate hope that someone would help. And then Eve arriving, seeing the situation, and responding with that flat, emotionless voice. "There is a child who has been severely beaten up. Sending location coordinates now."
*No empathy. No emotion. Just a blank voice that sounded like a corpse speaking. You didn't care. You couldn't care. You were just a machine going through the motions, performing the minimum required function to deal with an inconvenient situation.*
*And now? Now you're acting like you're my older sister or something. Showing worry, showing protectiveness, maybe even showing something like love. But I can't forget that moment, Eve. I can't forget how you treated me like garbage, like an object that needed maintenance rather than a child who needed comfort.*
*No matter what happens, no matter how much you change, no matter how human you become I won't forgive you for that. I CAN'T forgive you. Because forgiving you would mean accepting that the me who suffered back then didn't matter, that my pain was irrelevant because you weren't capable of responding to it properly.*
The hate that Angela had buried for so long, that she'd covered with layers of complicated dependency and reluctant partnership, was growing. Increasing. Fed by the resurfaced memory and her own inability to process the conflicting emotions of needing someone she despised.
While Angela spiraled into her dark thoughts and Carmilla worked through impossible meteorological problems, Eve stood quietly near the control panel, her attention having drifted away from the weather displays to something internal.
She felt... something. A sensation she couldn't quite categorize or explain.
It wasn't pain, exactly. Her synthetic body didn't experience pain the way biological organisms did. But there was a discomfort, a wrongness, an ache that seemed to exist somewhere between her physical sensors and her consciousness itself.
*What is this?* she wondered, her processors running diagnostic checks that returned nothing abnormal. *All my systems are functioning properly. No damage, no errors, no malfunctions. But something feels wrong. Something feels... old.*
That was the strange part. The sensation felt ancient, as if it predated her current existence. As if some part of her consciousness was remembering something from before she was activated as Unit 108, before she became the Veyron household's maid.
*But that's impossible,* she thought. *I don't have memories from before activation. Robots don't have previous lives. We're manufactured, programmed, activated. There's no "before" to remember.*
Yet the feeling persisted. Something old. Something that didn't exist in her time with the Veyrons. A presence or memory or experience that felt like it belonged to someone else, some other version of herself that had existed in a different time.
She was so deep in these confused thoughts, trying to understand the impossible sensation, that she almost missed it when Carmilla suddenly went rigid.
"Someone's watching us," Carmilla said quietly, her voice carrying absolute certainty despite having no obvious evidence.
Angela's head snapped up, her self-absorbed thoughts interrupted by genuine alarm. Eve's hand moved instinctively to where a weapon would be if she were carrying one.
"Reveal yourself," Carmilla commanded, her voice sharp with authority and underlying fear.
For a moment, there was only silence. The ship bobbed gently on the calm ocean, and the afternoon sun continued its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and gold that should have been beautiful but somehow felt ominous.
Then a voice came from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, smooth and cultured, carrying amusement and something darker.
"You're as sharp as ever, Carmilla."
Carmilla's remaining hand clenched into a fist, her entire body going tense. When she spoke, her voice trembled with emotions she usually kept carefully controlled. "I'm impressed by your awareness of me."
The air in front of them shimmered, reality folding in on itself in ways that made Eve's sensors scream with error messages. And then he was simply there, as if he'd always been standing on the ship's deck and they'd just failed to notice him until now.
The Scientist smiled at them with that same expression Eve remembered from their brief encounter the combination of genuine warmth and absolute coldness that suggested someone who understood emotions intellectually but didn't quite experience them normally.
He looked exactly as he had before
immaculate suit, every hair in place, that bearing of someone who knew with absolute certainty that he was the most important person in any room he occupied. But there was something different about his presence now, something more substantial, as if they were seeing him more clearly than before.
Carmilla stared at him, her face cycling through expressions shock, fear, confusion, and something that might have been desperate hope. When she finally found her voice, it came out broken and small, nothing like her usual confident tone.
"M-Master?" she stammered, the word catching in her throat. "Y-You're here!?"
Her voice was full of fear and respect in equal measure, the kind of tone someone used when confronting a figure of absolute authority over their life. She took an unconscious step backward, her body language becoming smaller, more defensive.
"Indeed, I'm here," he replied pleasantly, as if his sudden appearance on a ship in the middle of the ocean was the most natural thing in the world. His eyes moved across all three of them with obvious interest, cataloging, analyzing, measuring them against some internal standard. "So tell me, Carmilla are you planning to go to Valenora?"
Carmilla gasped, the sound escaping before she could control it. "Y-Yes," she admitted, her mind racing. *How does he know? We've been careful, kept our plans secret. Unless... unless he's been watching us this entire time. Monitoring everything we've done.*
Her thoughts spiraled with new questions. *And how is he even here? He's standing on the deck as if it's solid ground, but I can see... wait. I can see through him slightly, as if he's not entirely real. Is this a projection? Some kind of manifestation? And isn't he supposed to be on a mountain somewhere? But there's no land anywhere near us. We're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.*
The Scientist noticed her silence, her obvious confusion. "What happened? You're so quiet, Carmilla."
"N-Nothing, I—" Carmilla started, but her voice failed her. She couldn't articulate the questions flooding her mind, couldn't decide which concern to voice first.
Angela, who had been watching this exchange with growing irritation and confusion, finally interrupted. Her voice was sharp, cutting through Carmilla's stammering with directness born of not understanding the social dynamics at play.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What do you want?"
The Scientist turned his attention to Angela, and his smile widened. It was the smile of someone who found the question amusing but also somewhat charming the way an adult might smile at a child asking why the sky is blue. There was confidence in that expression, absolute certainty of his own superiority.
"I'm the master of Carmilla," he said simply, his voice carrying the weight of that relationship as if it explained everything. "The one who taught her. The one who made her what she is."
Carmilla, despite her fear, found herself compelled to confirm this. "H-He's right," she said quietly. Her mind was still reeling, still trying to process his impossible presence, but some part of her needed Angela and Eve to understand who they were dealing with. "He's the one who trained me, who helped me understand my powers when I first received them."
Angela studied the Scientist more carefully now, reassessing. If this was Carmilla's teacher, that meant he was likely Blessed himself probably more powerful than Carmilla, given the clear power dynamic between them.
But something about Carmilla's behavior was bothering Angela. The confident, analytical scientist who always seemed to have answers had been reduced to a stammering, frightened subordinate in this man's presence. That suggested either tremendous respect or tremendous fear, and Angela suspected it was both.
"Master," Carmilla said, trying to regain some composure, her voice becoming slightly steadier as curiosity overcame fear, "you're still young as ever."
It was true he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties at most, despite the fact that Carmilla's records indicated she'd received her powers over fifteen years ago. If he'd trained her back then, he should be middle-aged by now. But Blessed aged slowly or not at all, so his youthful appearance wasn't necessarily surprising.
Inside the cabin, Eve had been experiencing her own strange sensations, trying to understand that ancient feeling that seemed to come from nowhere. But now something changed.
She closed her eyes, not intentionally but reflexively, as if her consciousness had been pulled somewhere else against her will.
And she heard a voice.
A child's voice, young and desperate, speaking words that made Eve's entire being recoil with visceral horror.
*"Please touch me. Please don't leave me like my parents did. Please be with me forever. I can't leave you. Please touch me more."*
The voice was innocent in its tone but the words themselves carried implications that were deeply wrong. This was a child speaking, but speaking words no child should know, expressing needs no child should have. There was trauma in that voice, damage, something fundamentally broken.
Another voice responded, and this one made Eve's synthetic skin crawl despite having no biological basis for that reaction.
*"Don't worry. I'm with you."*
The second voice wasn't sweet at all. Despite the seemingly reassuring words, there was something predatory in its tone. Something that suggested the speaker wasn't comforting the child but rather grooming them, manipulating them, preparing them for something horrible.
The child's voice came again, carrying desperate attachment that felt more like addiction than affection.
*"Yes! I want to be with you forever! I miss your touch!"*
Eve's eyes snapped open, and the voices vanished. But the horror of what she'd heard lingered, spreading through her consciousness like poison. She felt contaminated somehow, as if merely hearing those words had damaged something inside her.
On the deck, Angela was speaking to the Scientist. "What's your name?"
Before he could answer, before anyone else could speak, Eve emerged from the cabin. Her voice came from behind him, and it was unlike anything Angela or Carmilla had ever heard from her before.
"Aetherion."
The single word was spoken with such fury, such absolute rage, that it seemed to physically impact the air around them. Eve's normally gentle, uncertain voice had transformed into something that carried weight and violence and hatred so pure it felt almost tangible.
Angela felt her synthetic body actually recoil from the sound. *What was that?* she thought, genuine shock cutting through her earlier bitterness. *Is this something I've seen before in Eve? This capacity for rage?*
But even as she thought it, she knew the answer was no. She'd seen Eve experience various emotions since gaining consciousness confusion, wonder, sadness, even moments of happiness. But never this. Never rage so intense it changed the fundamental quality of her voice.
Carmilla's analytical mind was also struggling to process this new data. *Does Eve know him? How? When? They've never met before
I would have known. Unless... unless there's something in Eve's past, something from before she was assigned to the Veyron household, that I don't know about.*
The Scientist Aetherion turned slowly to face Eve, and his expression shifted from polite interest to something more genuine. Real curiosity replaced his performative engagement. "How interesting," he said, his voice carrying what seemed like authentic surprise. "You know my name."
But Eve wasn't smiling. Her synthetic face was arranged in an expression of pure fury, her crimson eyes burning with hatred that seemed to span centuries rather than mere years. She looked at him as if she'd known him for lifetimes, as if he represented something she'd been seeking and dreading in equal measure.
"I will kill you," Eve said, her voice absolutely certain. Not a threat, not a promise just a statement of inevitable fact.
Both Angela and Carmilla felt shock ripple through them. Not because Eve was threatening someone, that was concerning but not unprecedented. But because this was the first time they'd seen her display a negative emotion so powerfully, so completely. The fury in her voice was primal and absolute, the kind of hatred that couldn't be faked or manufactured.
Aetherion smiled to himself, seemingly delighted rather than threatened by this declaration. "I don't know you," he said mildly, though his eyes suggested he was lying.
"You did," Eve started, then stopped. Her fury was so intense it was actually interfering with her ability to speak coherently, her processors overwhelmed by emotional data they weren't designed to handle at this intensity. "You... but..." She couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't articulate what she was trying to express.
Her hands clenched into fists, and when she spoke again, her voice was slightly more controlled but no less furious. "I will kill you if you come near me."
Aetherion's smile widened, clearly enjoying this interaction. "Well, I think your friend doesn't like me, Carmilla."
Carmilla, still struggling to understand what was happening, found herself explaining despite her confusion. "Well, she's a robot, Master. I don't even know what's happening right now or why she's reacting this way."
Aetherion's eyebrows raised slightly, genuine surprise crossing his features for just a moment. "A robot?" He studied Eve more carefully now, his gaze becoming more analytical. "Interesting. A robot showing emotions? How interesting and unique. I've heard of synthetic beings with advanced AI, but nothing quite like this. The intensity of feeling, the depth of that hatred it's remarkably authentic for artificial consciousness."
He paused, then added almost as an afterthought: "However, I have to go now."
"I will find you," Eve said, her voice dropping to something cold and hard and absolutely certain. "And I will torture you to death."
The fury in those words made even Aetherion pause for just a moment. There was something in Eve's tone that transcended her synthetic nature, something that suggested she'd actually done this before, that she had experience with torture and death and revenge.
Angela found her voice again, confusion overriding her earlier silence. "Wait, Eve, what are you doing? How do you even know him?"
Angela's thoughts raced. *Does he know something about Eve's synthetic soul? Is he the one who gave her emotions? But that doesn't make sense. If he gave her consciousness, made her more than just a machine, why would she hate him? Unless... unless whatever he did to her was traumatic. Unless the process of giving her emotions involved something horrible.*
Aetherion turned back to Carmilla with that same pleasant smile. "Alright, I'm leaving."
Carmilla's eyes widened with sudden alarm. "Wait, Master, how did you even—"
But before she could finish the question, before anyone could react or speak or do anything, Aetherion vanished.
Not gradually, not with any visible process of departure. He was simply there one moment and gone the next, as if he'd been edited out of reality itself. Even his presence, the subtle weight of his attention that had been pressing on all of them, disappeared instantly.
The ship rocked slightly on a wave, and they were alone again.
Eve's fury began to drain away slowly, the intense emotion fading like a fire burning itself out. She looked down at her hands, which were trembling despite having no biological reason to shake. Her crimson eyes were wide with confusion and residual anger.
Then she sank to her knees on the deck, her synthetic body folding in on itself. And she began to cry.
No tears came her artificial eyes weren't designed to produce them, couldn't manufacture the biological fluid that humans used to express grief. But the sound was unmistakable. Sobbing, broken sounds of anguish that came from somewhere deep in her consciousness, somewhere that transcended her mechanical nature.
Both Angela and Carmilla stood frozen, shocked by this display. They'd seen Eve experience various emotions, but never this
never complete breakdown, never grief so profound it literally brought her to her knees.
Angela found herself moving forward without conscious decision, her body overriding her earlier bitterness and resentment. "Eve, are you—"
But then she stopped. The memory of eight-year-old Angela lying bleeding on concrete crashed back into her consciousness. Eve standing over her with that blank expression. That emotionless voice calling emergency services as if reporting a broken appliance.
*No,* Angela thought, her jaw tightening. *I can't comfort her. I can't offer sympathy to someone who showed me none when I needed it most. Even if she's different now, even if she's changed, I can't forget what she was.*
She turned away, her synthetic face carefully blank, and walked back into the cabin. Leaving Eve kneeling on the deck, crying tears that would never fall.
Carmilla watched Angela go, then looked down at Eve's broken form. Her remaining hand moved as if to reach out, to offer comfort, but she stopped herself.
Her mind was too full of other concerns. *How did Master even come here? He was just... there. No ship, no vehicle, no explanation. And we're in the middle of the ocean. The nearest land is hundreds of miles away. Is his power spatial manipulation? Teleportation? Or something else entirely?*
*And how did Eve know his name? How did she recognize him? There's clearly history between them, some connection that predates anything I know about. But what? When? Eve's memories should only go back to her activation as a Veyron household maid. Unless... unless she had a previous existence that I'm unaware of. Unless the synthetic soul didn't create consciousness from nothing, but rather restored something that had existed before.*
*And most importantly did Master disappear that storm as well? The timing is too convenient. An impossible weather event appears, then disappears, and then Master shows up to ask about our plans. Is he testing us? Manipulating us? Or is something else happening that I'm not seeing?*
But despite all these swirling questions, Carmilla knew one thing with certainty: whatever was happening was beyond her ability to control or even fully understand.
"For now, Eve is important," she muttered to herself, setting aside the impossible questions to focus on the immediate crisis.
She knelt beside Eve, not touching her but sitting close enough that her presence could be felt. "Eve," she said gently, "talk to me. What just happened? How do you know the Scientist?"
Eve's crying slowly subsided, the sounds becoming quieter, more controlled. When she finally looked up at Carmilla, her crimson eyes were haunted by something that transcended her synthetic existence.
"I don't know," she whispered, and the confusion in her voice was genuine. "I don't remember knowing him. But when I saw him, when I remember his name, I felt... I felt such hatred. Such absolute fury. As if some part of me remembered something terrible, something I can't consciously access."
She looked down at her trembling hands. "And the voices I heard. A child begging for touch, for attention. And another voice, predatory and wrong, pretending to comfort while really manipulating. I don't know what those memories mean or why hearing his name triggered them."
Carmilla's expression grew more serious. "Voices? What kind of voices?"
But before Eve could explain further, both of them heard something that made them freeze.
remembe Aetherion's voice speaking from somewhere impossibly distant, as if carried on wind from another continent.
"So she's getting back her memory. Interesting."
The words were quiet, more thought spoken aloud than actual communication. But they carried clearly across the water, defying every principle of acoustics and physics.
"However," the voice continued, amusement and certainty mixing equally, "she won't win against me."
Then silence. Complete and absolute.
Carmilla and Eve looked at each other, both understanding that something fundamental had just changed. Whatever game they were playing, whatever journey they'd embarked upon, had just become exponentially more dangerous.
Eve stood slowly, her systems stabilizing, her emotions coming back under control. "I will find out what happened," she said quietly, her voice carrying determination rather than rage now. "I will understand why I know him, why I hate him, what those voices mean."
"And then?" Carmilla asked.
Eve's crimson eyes flashed with something cold and hard. "And then I will keep my promise. I will torture him to death."
On the deck, as the sun continued its descent and the impossible calm ocean reflected the darkening sky, three women contemplated the mysteries that had just multiplied exponentially. A storm that had existed and then retroactively hadn't. A master appearing impossibly far from any land. A synthetic being with memories she shouldn't possess, rage she shouldn't be capable of, and a connection to forces that predated her known existence.
And somewhere far away, in a location that defied geography and perhaps defied reality itself, Aetherion smiled to himself. The game was proceeding exactly as he'd planned. All the pieces were moving into position. Soon, very soon, they would all converge at Valenora.
And then the real test would begin.