Jacob heard a commotion outside and answered the door.  Two lovely young women were standing outside his door holding hands.  The fairer one, with hair that abounded in bright, silvery curls and with a hint of eyes blued, kept her face downcast so all he could see was the flutter of an iris under its lid and a hint of a rosy lip.


    The other, who seemed eerily familiar, gazed at him and he saw recognition in the great, green swirls of her eyes.


    “Jacob I missed you,” she said. Smiling beneath a cloudy fringe of coppery tresses.


    Just as he twigged to who this creepily sweet-eyed, little hellion was, her female companion spoke.


    “I didn’t. I think you’re almost as bland as the last guy we trapped in the mists.  Less of a great blubber baby, I suppose.”


    Jacob was horrified.  Before the name Mist could leave his lips, the girl began to disgustingly transform; her limbs thickening and soon muscles appeared lithely beneath a well-fitted shirt.


    “Just so there is no doubt of what we are and you will take us seriously,” Shiver said.  “Besides, we did you a favour; seeing me turn into a man would have been far more disconcerting and traumatizing no? I do make a beautiful boy.”


    “I already believed you, mostly,” Jacob spoke as he twisted his hands together before thrusting them into his pockets. Better than using them to throttle monsters.  At least ones who could basically strangle your cells from the inside.


    “How did you get out here…” Jacob asked after quite the pause. “You live in Australia.”


    “We flew. Aryan took us so we could come to the ceremony to help crown the winner of the Virtual Tournament. We’re magnanimous like that.”


    They then asked Jacob if they could come in for tea, and reluctantly, he invited them in.  Even though inviting monstrous demons into your home was the first thing you learned not to do. Unless you were working with one.


    They sprawled out on his little sofa and waited for him to serve them.  Shiver asked for a large dash of milk and seven hundred biscuits.


    Jacob gave her seven.


    “Well at least the tea is milky,” she said.  She ate her biscuits in mere seconds.  Mist crushed all his up and then ate the crumbs slowly.  They asked him which one of them made the prettier girl.


    Jacob ignored this and when they finished their milky tea they left.  Giggling.


    “Will I get another charming visit from the racist Prince?” Jacob inquired of a dozing Shiver.  They were once more doing their nightly ritual of meeting in a virtualizer land to plan out schemes to beat the AI.  Within the virtual realm, she had turned herself into a great, green-and-blue serpent and then slithered onto the old, oak table and curled up on it, and was now lying upon the wood dreamily in a state of half-repose. Her sleepy, snake eyes were in scarlet ringed.


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    Shiver’s head rose indignantly.  In so much as a snake could convey such things as human emotions.  Which in her case, was quite well.


    “He isn’t just that! He is also a shapeshifter and a great beauty with a gift for pranks and puzzles.  You are being too judgmental."


    “Right,” Jacob said.  "Will, he do any more transformations?"


    “Wait and see.”


    Jacob sighed. He soon left the virtual land to get himself some nice, meaty bread.  Shiver had said she would get herself some golden chips and crispy chicken and a loaf with butter and honey.  She really was a greedy little beast.


    Just before the dawn as they worked together yet again and as the lightest layer of the sun outside this feigned land broke through dark, smoky, wine-red clouds, Jacob asked what he had long wanted to ask.  “ Why are you helping me? It seems counterinitiative since it only hinders and doesn’t at all help you.”


    "Fair enough, you don’t trust me.  You probably will not believe this but I am capable of remorse you know.  Of wonder and hope.  There is but one way to redeem a serpent.”


    Jacob frowned.


    “God,” she whispered.


    “You have neither the raw talent nor brilliance to win through any strategist''s logic but you are brave and true and if God is watching…You may yet succeed. Under his watch, even a lowly sparrow does not fall unnoticed to the ground.”


    Jacob believed her.


    "You see, Emanuel believes that the gene-splicing end of humanity he predicted will indeed come to pass.  The majority of simulations he ran all support it. That all hangs sickened in its looming, rose-welt tinge.  Yet in my heart of hearts, I want to believe The Legend of the Infiltrator,” Shiver said then paused before speaking up again.


    "I am indeed praying that the bloody but golden rise of the Shiverla or Emanuel''s predicted deathly outcome are not our only possible, future realities," Her lips parted with a hopeful whistling.


    Later, Jacob again wrung his hands together.  How did Emanuel win if what Monovalent said was true about humanity never fully succumbing to genetic engineering? That some humans always resisted.


    “Interspecies contamination,” the Ai informed him.  Jacob turned to Shiver for an explanation.


    “Because they were killed not by being engineered, but by the offshoot diseases.”


    “What?”


    She tossed a proud, coppery little head.


    “You know how diseases can cross the species barrier?”


    “Yes, I know that can happen.”


    “Well, what occurs is that the predominately bird-based DNA people get something from the birds and then it mutates so that a chimera person with any bird in them suffers from it and then eventually, it mutates to infect even regular humans.  Basically, it has an easier path to mutation due to our species becoming more similar to other creatures and less diverse,” she explained.  Stretching her little limbs that were no longer serpentine and tapping her black-shoed feet against the rosewood chair.


    Jacob was barely listening at this point because he was utterly certain that he finally understood what Shiver had meant by beating the AI at its own game.  Shiver spoke in silly riddles but that didn''t mean there wasn''t a shadow of meaning coded into them.  Jacob brushed back his brown hair as Shiver, with a smile that honey-held and a soft demeanor for one so wicked, gazed at him unblinkingly.  His air of determination had gotten her excited.


    “Monovalent,” he said.  "If a genius AI like you were to able update humanity to such a state you could control their cells and turn them into a sea of new beautiful beings and keep them immortal and healthy and safe by your overseeing AI hand and if you then at some point decided to kill them all, after you had long since slain all of the old humanity, would that be a win? For humanity and its offshoots would all lie dead?”


    There was a great silence.  Shiver exhaled the air from her lungs and then lightly breathed.


    “Jacob…You may have won.”