a lot I haven’t figured out yet, to be quite honest.” Cindrac knew Loquan would assume he agreed with her when he was speaking of the alien databases that he still hadn’t discovered yet.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re light years ahead of me and keeping me ignorant?” Loquan sounded hurt, but it didn’t fool Cindrac. She was pissed off.
Sliding a plate of steaming omelet across the counter to Loquan, Cin shook his head. “The two of us are all we got — you and me, against an entire world. Just because we don’t know one another yet, doesn’t mean that we won’t be friends and allies. We need each other, and for you to be useful, I need you on my level. Therefore, I won’t keep you from evolving.”
Cindrac refilled her coffee cup and then his own while Loquan added the milk and sugar to hers as he had done earlier.
“You think that’s what’s happening to us? We’re evolving?” Loquan was honestly curious but hadn’t tried to understand it all yet.
“Yes. I think the nanites and AI, coupled with some of the computer chips, are evolving our brains,” Cin admitted before taking a bite of the omelet. “This is so fucking good! You have to try it!”
Loquan was shocked at Cin’s excited outburst and watched him devour half his omelet before trying the strange looking thing on her plate. One bite of the fluffy eggs and vegetables, and Loquan was shoveling it in as fast as she could chew.
Cin ate the last half of his omelet more slowly, wanting to savor and enjoy each bite of the first real meal he’d ever had. Only the elites were allowed meat, eggs, fish, fruits, and vegetables.
Everyone else was forced to eat prepackaged foods made with more chemicals and fillers than actual food. The quantity and vitamin additives were different for each slave class, but the tasteless food was the same for everyone.
The only choices given to the enslaved were which flavorless meal out of the four options they would eat at each of the two sanctioned meals a day. The omelet was the most food Cin had ever eaten in one sitting, and he’d never had something of this quality.
“We have to get more food like this!” Loquan hummed with happiness after finishing her last bite of food. “If the bastards fed my ass like this my whole life, I might not hate them so much!”
Cindrac noted how easily her loyalty could be bought, and it only heightened the odds that he would have to kill Loquan soon. According to her admission, Loquan’s nanites weren’t working correctly because of her mental defects or because they refused to give her the power to destroy everything around her.
The nanites and AI were hastening Loquan’s insanity, and the kind of power allowed to Cindrac would never be within her reach. At some point, her jealousy would force Loquan to try and kill him, and that was when he would do what must be done.
Until then, Cin would give Loquan a taste of the freedom she sacrificed her life for, even if it meant feeding and cleaning up after her for a little while. After everything Loquan had been through in her own short life, Cin believed she deserved a small slice of the happiness denied to all of humanity.
“We’ll definitely be raiding the food again. In fact-” Cin ran into the pantry and grabbed a stack of reusable cloth totes they could use.
When he came back out into the kitchen, Cin laid them on top of the counter. “We can fill these up!”
Loquan looked at them oddly for a moment before her eyes lit up. “This is perfect! We can grab more this way.”
“We need more spices, too,” Cindrac said off-handedly. “There are tons of things we can make with what we have now, but we lack the required spices.”
Loquan raised her brows at him. “Damn, I’m surprised the elite didn’t create you for cooking.”
Cin shrugged, making sure the nanites would remind him to go through the spices next time. “I like the process of cooking. It’s peaceful and allows me to plot our next move against the elite.”
“Yeah, how’s this going to go?” Loquan looked a little worried but was trying hard not to show it. “You saw the news and know they’re panicking. Plus, the elites are all scattered now, and they’re ramping up security.”
“I’ve heard the chatter over their comms,” Cin agreed with a nod. “It has no impact on