[REND] B2. 12.1 - A Very Angry Sister

Myra Fletcher (Merge)

“Here’s how it’s gonna go,” Myra said, her voice muffled by her hardened mask. The smell of rust went up her nose, fueling her annoyance of the world. That metal door she had absorbed was quite rusty. “Are you listening to me, human?” She kept up her cover story as this Red Hood’s minion.

“Ye-yes…” The man that she had dragged away from the other captives nodded several times. She had stowed three other PCM members inside the broom closet of this small office.

Myra pointed at the map of the city she had laid out on the table. “The PCM has bases under the city. Okay? They’re using bunkers and tunnels. Do you know where they are?”

“I-I don’t know about any bu-bunkers. I really, really don’t—Ow!”

Myra slammed the guy’s head onto the table. Just hard enough to hurt him, but not enough to knock him out or kill him. “You know about them. Now, where are they located?” She gave him a marker.

The man fumbled as he picked up the marker. “I’m saying the truth! I’m just a new member! They don’t tell—”

“Hold the fucking marker!” Myra yelled. “Is that your dominant hand? Your right hand?” The man nodded, his worried eyes displaying confusion. Myra grabbed his left arm. “I’m going to squeeze until you mark a location.”

“Uh, uh, I have no idea—argh!” The man tried to yank his left arm away, but Myra had a firm grip on it.

“Mark your fucking bases!” Myra squeezed her steel fist the size of a paint can.

“Here!” The man scribbled the marker near the head office of the PCM.

“That’s not a hidden base,” Myra said, squeezing some more. The man’s skin had torn open as flesh spilled out. She couldn’t hear it over the screaming, but she must’ve broken this guy’s bones, too. She let go of the minced arm and grabbed his head, palming it like a basketball.

“Please don’t kill me! I don’t really know anything!”

“You all say the same thing. And you’re going to die the same way as the others.” Myra gradually closed her thick fingers around the man’s head.

“Thi-this one!” He frantically pounded the tip of the marker at a random building.

Myra knew the guy was pointing randomly because the place was a Chinese restaurant that had been there for decades. Johann took her there once. Cheap place but very good food. No PCM shit there. No tunnels or bunkers.

“I’m not going to mess this map with your blood,” Myra said, releasing the man’s head.

He dropped to the floor, frantically rubbing his reddish forehead, as if it’d make the pain go away. Myra kicked him. His head snapped back, his chin pointing at the ceiling. He dropped to his side and spasmed on the floor.

Nothing… Myra thought that after killing around a dozen PCM members so far, she really didn’t feel anything for them.

Some might be truly innocent. Myra hated to concede that most, if not all, of these fuckers probably had nothing to do with Kelsey. But she didn’t care. She was so close to finding her sister that she wouldn’t let herself be stopped by morals or anything else. She’d sacrifice thousands of lives to get her sister back.

This time, it wasn’t a simple matter of Kelsey running away. The PCM were after her, and if they captured her again, they’d subject her to horrible experiments. Not only that. The police or the BID might find Kelsey. Myra didn’t have the luxury of entertaining morality. Or caution.

There’d be hell to pay later for what she had been doing for the past three hours. The police would investigate. The BID would be involved. Dario’s stupid ass would be furious if he knew. The others would judge her. Deen, especially.

I just have to make sure this stays a secret, Myra thought. She probably didn’t need to do anything. The PCM would cover this shit up.

Myra glanced at the man with a broken neck. He had stopped moving after a few seconds.

She didn’t need to kill him. It didn’t help her one bit in her quest to find her sister. Unless… letting off steam and frustration counted?

Half a day had passed since Kelsey escaped the tunnels. Half a day of no progress in finding her. She was really pissed.

Myra walked back to the broom closet. She kept the PCM members there so they’d hear the screams of their fellow without seeing what was happening. Psychological torture, in a sense. It might scare one of them into telling her the information she sought. If none of them knew anything, they’d all die.

Same as what happened to the PCM members in the other buildings she had raided.

Opening the closet door, she found the PCM idiots huddling around something. It was a phone. Myra had mistakenly thought that she had taken all of their devices.

The woman screamed as Myra loomed over them. Myra squeezed the phone between her fingers, crushing the woman’s hand with it. The woman continued to shriek. Myra flicked her head, shutting her up.

Maybe for good.

The older PCM member, sporting a bushy beard, cradled the unconscious and possibly dead woman. He stared with fury at Myra, but was helpless to do anything else.  

“I have nothing to do with this!” exclaimed the younger guy with a freckle-covered pasty face. He vomited in fear earlier when Myra had burst into the office. “It’s their plan to call—”

“Shut your mouth, you disgraceful wuss!” The bearded man elbowed the other guy.

Myra grabbed the older man’s leg and pulled him away from the woman. He tried to hold on to the door hinges, but Myra continued pulling just the same. It was admirable how the man continued to grab onto anything they passed—the water dispenser, a table with a vase, and even a column.

“Argh… You Adumbrae bitch!” The bearded man held his arm while squirming on the floor. It must’ve gotten dislocated when Myra forcefully pulled him off the column. “Damn you to hell, and Red Hood, and all the other Adumbrae!”

Myra smiled. She hoped that this man would tell whoever they called that one of Red Hood’s subordinates was her. Myra was very vocal about that when she threatened them. This man didn’t know who Red Hood was, but the PCM higher-ups should. It added a layer of safety for Myra, directing the PCM’s attention to Red Hood instead of her. Myra also hoped that it’d force the PCM to lie low for a moment, fearing that there’d be more Adumbrae attacks, giving her more time to search for Kelsey.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” Myra said, pulling the man up by his collar. “And you’re going to answer me truthfully.” This guy might know more than the others, given his age and devotion to the PCM.

“You’re not going to get anything from me.” The man spat at her.

Myra felt a surge of white-hot anger about to erupt. She tensed her arms to stop herself from smacking this guy’s head off. She breathed in and spoke, “The PCM scientists—where are they working?”

“Your pitiful traitors to humanity can’t stop our noble work!”

“You do know about it?” A flicker of hope. “Where are your other labs? Tell me, and I’ll spare you. Point them on this map.”

“I’m resilient! I’m a beacon of strength!” Spit flew everywhere as the man raged, his face reddening. “Adumbrae will not make me cower! I’ll stand against Adumbrae with my life!”

“What if I killed your friends back there, huh? You don’t care about their lives? I’ll spare you, but I’ll kill them.”

The man’s face froze for a second. His beard furiously twitched. This guy was probably a good person who wholeheartedly believed the PCM’s surface goals. He should also care about the lives of others. But did he care enough to spill some info and betray the organization?

“Where are the PCM scientists?” Myra tapped the map. “I’ve heard that they conduct experiments underground, in the tunnels and bunkers.”

Confusion replaced anger on the man’s face. “Bunkers?”

It was a genuine reaction.

“Okay… You don’t know anything.” Myra grabbed his head and squeezed until the skull gave up resisting. Blood spurted. She clicked her tongue, annoyed that some blood splatters hit the map. She dropped the man and turned to the hallway leading to the broom closet. “Oh? Feeling talkative?”

Shambling along the hallway was the younger man. He leaned on the wall for support because his knees badly knocked against each other. His face had turned even paler, highlighting his freckles. His lips trembled as he struggled to find his voice.

“I… I might know a place…” he said.

“What place?” Myra asked, doubting him. To her, he was someone in the lowest rung of the PCM hierarchy. He probably joined because he was a loser trying to find purpose in life.

Or the PCM recruited him, and he was too scared to reject them. This fucker was just desperate for any chance to live. At some level, Myra appreciated the effort and decided to hear him out.

“The pla-place you’re lo-looking for. Scientists, right? I can’t say for sure… but I may have a clue.”

“Let’s hear your clue then.”

The young man gained confidence in his voice, given that Myra didn’t immediately kill him. Myra bet that he falsely believed he had a chance of surviving. “I drive delivery trucks for the PCM. Uh, not really me. My buddy, Macky, the guy who brought me into the PCM, drives the truck. I ride shotgun with a clipboard. Help him unload, record, and sort various deliveries. You know how it works.”

“And why should I care about this truck?” Myra stepped closer to the man.

“Because! Because we’re delivering to, uh, secret places! Yeah, that’s right. I bet they’re the hidden bases you want to find.”

“Where?”

“Uh, uh, last week… We went to Angelus Heights, to the back of the rows of apartment buildings. I don’t know what that place was, but many of us, PCM members, were there. Doing construction. We delivered bricks and bags of cement.”

Myra remained silent.

If this guy’s story was true, the PCM might be making a base there similar to the one at Marsh Row. Meaning, they must be keeping Adumbrae underground and had to make accommodations for researchers and sacrificial people. If the PCM had captured Kelsey, they might bring her there.

The man feebly smiled. “It-it counts as a hidden base, doesn’t it? That’s not all! There was a woman there wearing a long white coat. A lab coat! You’re looking for scientists, right? She’s one! She has to be.”

“Is that all? I already know about that place.” Myra hadn’t checked Angelus Heights yet, but she knew from her research that there was a bunker there. She wanted to terrify the freckled guy into giving more information. It might be a lucky coincidence that he mentioned a female scientist. “You don’t know about any other base? Then I have no use—”

“Wait! Marsh Row! We also did a delivery at Marsh Row. They’re doing construction there. Lots of work! If-if you’ll allow me… I can mark it on the map.”

Myra stepped aside and gestured at the table. The man shuffled forward, intently avoiding looking down at the corpses on the floor. He shakily picked up the marker. Then he jumped on the table, rolling across it to get to the other side. He picked himself up and ran like a crazed gazelle toward the exit.

I was about to let you live, Myra thought, forming a metal spike out of her fist. Swinging her arm, she flung the spike at the idiot trying to escape.

It hit the guy in the middle of his back, impaling him to the wooden door.

Myra rolled up her map as she shed bits of her armor, shrinking herself enough to fit in a vehicle. She opened the door with the guy stuck on it—he was still alive, heavily breathing and bleeding—and entered an empty lecture room. This must be where the PCM brainwashed their followers. She couldn’t judge them because she had become a worse person than most of them.

The PCM scientists were still worse.

She walked past the tables and chairs and went up the stairs to the ground floor.

“Kelsey, where are you?” Myra wondered as she stared at the sun peeking through the clouds.

Fortunately, the parking lot and the street were empty, and high walls blocked the view of neighboring properties. There was no one to call the police about a mysterious metal person.

Myra got into the car that she had stolen from another PCM building.

The PCM higher-ups should be aware by now that their offices and centers are being targeted. Would they order their members elsewhere to evacuate? Would they close down their underground laboratories? Or would they gather their forces to fight her? They had monsters of their own.

“I just want my sister back,” Myra muttered as she drove off the parking lot, heading to Angelus Heights.

If their only choice was to be on the run, then so be it. There’d be so many people after them. She expected even Dario and the Professor would hunt them. More specifically, hunt her, a test subject of the government. Assuming Dario’s story was true.

What about law school? The life that she built? Her bright future?

“Doesn’t really matter,” she said, opening her mask to breathe freely. “I just want my sister back.”

There were times when Myra was irritated that Kelsey got seeded. They were supposed to have new lives, free of problems. The shit they experienced in the past should stay in the past. Myra even wished that Kelsey was gone so that she could enjoy her own life.

Wouldn’t it be better if Myra didn’t have to find a cure for Kelsey’s condition? Myra wouldn’t have this stupid artificial Core in her chest. She’d be hanging out with friends at parties instead of attacking the 2Ms’ bases and fighting monsters.

Myra was ashamed of those thoughts.

Catching the start of the rush hour, it took her about an hour and a half to reach Angelus Heights. Throughout the drive, she reviewed her life, her decisions, and her plans for the future. She weighed her resolve. Many times, she asked herself what was most important to her.

“I’ll find Kelsey.” Her heart had decided. She was willing to give up everything to be reunited with her sister.

Nothing would stand in her way.  

(Author's Notes: One of the Three Bs is turning violent. Maybe it's the curse of their group to become unhinged. Myra really shakes up the situation with her bloody rampage, though it’s funny that Myra is pinning this on Red Hood. Everyone is just making everything more confusing with their fake stories. I think our next chapter will be Cecilia, so we'd have some glimpse into the PCM. Then we'll return to Kelsey and Erind. Thanks for your continued support!)