I'm Alone In This Apocalypse Vault With 14 Girls?

They rounded a corner, and Eve stopped abruptly, her head tilting like a predator catching a scent. "Oh! Someone's been fighting recently!" She spun toward Scarlett, moving with that liquid grace that shouldn't exist in human joints. "You've killed... seventeen? No, eighteen crawlers in the last six hours. The sweat smell is very specific."

"How can you possibly—" Scarlett started.

"I can smell it in your sweat!" Eve explained cheerfully, getting uncomfortably close. Close enough that Scarlett could see the faint blue veins pulsing beneath translucent skin. "Oh, this is perfect! I should show off my fighting skills! That's how animals show they're good mates! All the cool animals do it!"

She bounced on her toes, the movement making her white hair float like she was underwater. "Can we go to the training room? Please? Pretty please? I promise I won't break anything important! Well, anything you can't replace. Actually, I can't promise that, but I'll try really hard!"

Elena stepped forward, her cybernetic eye whirring as it studied Eve. "A fighting demo could give us useful info. I'm curious about her mixed abilities."

"Yes! The smart lady gets it!" Eve clapped, the sound sharp as breaking bones. "I can show you all how useful I am! Then Jin will definitely want to make babies with me! It's basic animal stuff—girls show they're strong, boys pick the best partners. Though we could switch roles if you want? I'm very flexible!"

"Please stop talking about... that," Jin said, rubbing his temples where a headache was building.

Eve had already started toward the door, practically skipping. "Training room! Training room! Oh, this is exciting! I haven't had a proper fight in..." she paused, counting on her fingers, "Well, forever!!!"

The walk to the training room was weird. Eve kept up a constant stream of comments, her voice echoing off metal walls with disturbing cheer:

"This ceiling panel is crooked by 3.2 degrees—could hurt someone during fights!"

"That air vent is 87% full of dust—bad air could make thinking harder!"

"Ooh, a security spot! But the controls are old—could get past in 4.7 seconds if needed!"

"Please don't get past our security," Scarlett said firmly.

"I wasn't going to!" Eve protested, though the sly grin on her face suggested otherwise. "Unless I really needed to. Like if Jin was in danger! Or if we were running late for baby-making time!"

Sera looked like she might actually scream. "There is no baby-making time!"

"Not yet," Eve said cheerfully. "But we're working on it! Dating first, then sex, then babies! That's the right order, according to my programming. Though we could skip the dating part if you're in a hurry. I'm flexible!"

The training room doors hissed open, showing the space where they'd fought crawlers just hours ago. Burn marks still decorated the walls, and the air had that smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder that anyone who'd survived the apocalypse knew well.

Eve took a deep breath, her chest expanding more than human bodies should. "Oh, it smells like death. Lots of death. I love it!"

She moved to the center of the room, her thin suit showing off every curve of her small body while offering no real protection.

Eve looked at the training controls. "Can you set it to super hard? The normal settings probably won't be hard enough."

"Super hard is meant for full teams," Maya said from the observation deck, her mind already calculating force and damage. "It's not meant for—"

"Please?" Eve's eyes went wide, somehow looking innocent despite the cat-like pupils and red eyes. "Pretty please? I promise I'll be careful! Well, I'll try to be careful. Okay, I'll try to try."

Clara looked to Scarlett for guidance. With a tired sigh, Scarlett nodded. Clara activated the controls with shaking hands. The training room's holographic systems hummed to life, showing a swarm scenario—thirty crawler signals, including two alpha types.

Eve's whole personality changed the moment the simulation started.

Gone was the bubbly, confused girl. In her place stood something that made everyone's instincts scream. Her posture shifted, lowering into a predator's crouch that looked wrong on a human body. Her fingers extended, and—were those claws? Real claws sliding from under her fingernails with a sound like knives on glass?

The first holographic crawler appeared, and Eve moved.

Not fast—wrong. She seemed to teleport between spots, leaving after-images that hurt to watch. One moment she was crouching, the next she was in the air, those claws growing to impossible lengths as she cut through the simulation.

"Bad movement patterns," she commented cheerfully while tearing through three more. Her voice hadn't changed—still bright and bubbly—which made the violence more disturbing. "The spine is all wrong for moving on all fours. See, if you fix the bones here—"

She showed them by grabbing a simulated crawler and bending it backwards until its spine made a perfect U shape. The simulation's pain responses were just real enough to make everyone flinch.

The smell in the room changed. Even though the crawlers were holographic, Eve's body was reacting to fighting—releasing smells that made the air taste like copper and sugar, danger and desire mixed into something that messed with every instinct.

Jin felt the Entity stirring with interest, recognizing a kindred spirit in Eve's casual violence. His sync percentage went up without him wanting it to:

**[ENTITY SYNCHRONIZATION: 63% → 64%]**

"Jin-sama," Shūmei's voice was silk over steel, her hand finding his arm with possessive pressure. "Maybe we should leave. This show is... not proper."

But Jin couldn't look away. Eve was fighting the alpha types now, and she was laughing—real, happy laughter like a kid playing. She let one alpha grab her, its claws sinking into her shoulder with a spray of real blood that splattered the floor in red arcs.

"Oh, that's fun!" She giggled, the wound already closing with visible speed, flesh healing like a video on fast-forward. "The pain feels amazing! The scientists did such good work on my nerves!"

She fought back by shoving her whole arm through the alpha's chest, her hand coming out its back holding what would have been its heart if it were real. The hologram flickered and died, but not before everyone saw her lick the fake blood from her fingers.

"Needs salt," she said thoughtfully.

The simulation ended. Thirty crawlers down in under three minutes, with Eve getting hurt on purpose just to see how it felt. She stood in the middle of the room, not even breathing hard, her suit somehow completely clean despite the blood that had definitely been there moments ago.

"So!" She bounced over to Jin, those red eyes bright with excitement. "Was that hot? Did it turn you on? I can do it again with more violence if you want! Or less? What's the best amount of violence to turn you on?"

Jin's mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. The Entity was practically purring in his mind, really impressed despite itself.

*We could make such beautiful monsters together,* it whispered.

*Shut up,* Jin thought desperately.

"That was..." Elena stepped forward, her face showing the first real emotion besides cold efficiency anyone had seen from her. "That was amazing. The skill, the precision, the no-hesitation attitude..." She was actually smiling. "You're a living weapon."

"Thank you!" Eve beamed. "I like you! You understand good violence!" She pulled out her notebook. "Changing threat level: Elena Kozlov, not very threatening. Possible friend!"

"I'm honored," Elena said, and she seemed to mean it.

The training room fell quiet except for the hum of machines and everyone's heavy breathing. The air was thick with competing smells—fear, attraction, violence, confusion—creating a chemical storm that made clear thinking hard.

"We should..." Sera started, then stopped, not sure how to finish that sentence.

"Assign rooms," Scarlett said firmly, taking charge through sheer will. "Eve needs a space, and we need safety rules."

"Ooh, can I be near Jin?" Eve asked hopefully. "For best baby-making chances?"

"Absolutely not," Shūmei said, frost literally forming on the walls around her.

"What about across from him? Diagonal? Same floor? Same building?" Eve pulled out a measuring tape from nowhere. "What's the farthest away I can be while still being able to get to Jin for baby-making?"

"There will be no baby-making!" Sera snapped.

"But—" Eve's face fell, looking genuinely hurt. "That's my whole purpose. If I can't make super babies with Jin, what am I supposed to do?"

It was such a truly lost question that it stopped everyone cold. She really didn't understand life beyond her programmed mission.

"You could..." Rosa started, then trailed off. What could a genetically engineered killing machine with baby-making programming do in a post-apocalyptic vault?

"Help protect the vault?" Clara suggested weakly.

"Oh, I can do that!" Eve brightened immediately. "Protecting the baby-daddy's area is normal! Should I start patrol routes? I can get rid of dangers within fifty meters without waking anyone!!"

"Maybe let's start with just... existing," Scarlett said carefully. "Without killing anyone."

"That sounds boring," Eve said honestly. "But I can try! For how long? An hour? A day? What's the longest I can go without killing someone?"

The complete craziness of the question made several people laugh—harsh, crazy laughter that bordered on breakdowns. Here they were, dealing with Jin's entity problem, Shūmei's hidden crazy side, and now a cheerful genetic experiment who treated murder like a scheduling issue.

"This is going to be a long apocalypse," Rosa muttered for the second time that day.

"The longest," Scarlett agreed, watching Eve pull out a calendar and start marking "no killing" days with little smiley faces.

Meanwhile, Jin felt the Entity's sync percentage go up another point just from being near Eve's casual insanity:

**[ENTITY SYNCHRONIZATION: 64% → 65%]**

As they finally got Eve out of the training room and toward her assigned room, she skipped ahead, humming that cheerful tune that sounded more like a sad song in the context of everything that had just happened. The vault had survived the end of the world, the crawlers, and the Entity's corruption. But with Eve's arrival, something told them the real challenges were just beginning.