[REND] B2. 7.2 - Slippery Sisterly Sightings

“This is bullshit!” Myra rushed out of the room to follow the blood trail.

Deen went out, too. I didn’t immediately follow them, deciding to first remove the techie metal strips on Cecilia’s body. Not sure if it was worth taking this, but I wanted to give it to the Professor. We might need Dario’s help this time because that wormy mad scientist might’ve seen our faces. We lost our masks when Illusory Eye tried to integrate us into the floor.

Did Cecilia hear me shout my name? And was she around while we talked about my power? This wasn’t how this scene was supposed to end. We should be celebrating our win instead of finding a bigger problem. The credits weren’t rolling yet!

With the blood-soaked, sci-fi thingy on my hands, I rushed out of the room. Deen and Myra were milling around the tunnel while looking at the floor.

“The blood ends here.” Myra pointed at a spot. “No more blood elsewhere, and most definitely no head.”

“It’s as if she disappeared,” Deen said, brushing the ground with her foot as if it’d reveal more clues.

But I could see that there really were no more blood spots. “Ho-how is this possible?” I asked, trying to sound worried. We all knew the big problem. My timid Erind face should be scared of the implications. The real me was pissed off with my carelessness. It was too much effort to be on guard all the time.

“I don’t know what happened here,” Deen said. “But the PCM scientist, her head, had escaped. We have to accept that. I don’t think we should follow…” She turned left, staring at the rest of the tunnel that must lead to the aboveground.

I followed Deen’s gaze. Cecilia most likely had gone up somehow. Should we?

“Fuck! I should’ve crushed her head!” Myra stomped her foot, making the ground shake. Her poor sneakers were taking quite a beating today. “I should’ve made sure she was a hundred percent dead. I’m going after—wait. No more impulsive moves. Deen, what’s the word?”

“Gabe’s silent. There’s no immediate danger.”

“Then I’m going up to fucking kill everyone I meet. I’m going to dig out every crack until I find that stupid head and—”

“It’s best we leave.” Deen started to tear a strip from the bottom of her shirt. “The longer we stay here, the more details the PCM can glean about us. I very much doubt that you’d find the scientist’s head.”

“I-I agree,” I chimed in. I copied Deen and tore my shirt for the second time. It was becoming unflatteringly short now, exposing my abdomen, which no longer had well-defined cuts like back in my cheerleading days. “Maybe the scientist didn’t see our faces. She probably escaped the moment you threw her body away.”

“If we go up and fight,” Deen said, “we’ll be exposing ourselves for nothing. In the off-chance that the scientist stayed for longer and saw our faces, it doesn’t mean she’d know where to look for us.”

“Look at my hair!” Myra flipped her blue hair back.

“You should change your hair color as soon as possible,” Deen said. “And the PCM still needs to look in the right place to find you—to find us. It’ll take them time.”

Myra then pointed at me. “And you blurted out your name!”

“It-it was in the heat of the mo-moment,” I stammered. Because you were about to crush me, you hot-headed psycho, I added in my head.

But it was still a mistake on my part. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about keeping our identities secret and all that; I was shocked by Deen one-hitting the Adumbrae to kingdom come. Lesson learned. How bad were the consequences of this lesson? Or we might have been overthinking all of this.

“Let’s go back,” Deen said, grabbing Myra’s arm. “Cut our losses and don’t make things worse. You’re here to find your sister, remember? Don’t get sidetracked fighting the PCM.”

Myra yanked her arm away. For a moment, I thought that she’d leave us and go on a murder rampage upstairs. “Ah, yes… you’re right. That damn head probably warned the rest of the PCM fuckers to run. No one for me to kill.”

“We should run, too,” said Deen. “But first, we need light.”

The flashlight we stole from the chess guys was still by the door where Myra had left it. Deen picked it up and led us back into the blood-painted ‘holding tunnels’ for the Adumbrae. Breaking our new midriff tradition, Myra chose to tear her sleeves to make a mask. I should’ve done that. Not like I’d bring in more viewers when my pathetic abs would be shown in the trailers.

“Do you remember the way to the Marsh Row bunker?” I had mostly turned off my brain when we strolled through these boring tunnels.

Fortunately, Deen and Myra took mental note of our path. Without them, I might’ve just gone up, so I’d know in which part of the city I was. Such a hassle to always be thinking about being careful and escape routes and all that important stuff. I was here to have fun, and being prudent wasn’t fun. It was a chore. I sort of missed the days of being a normal law student.

This is why Spooky Erind is surprised I’ve lasted this long. I’d rather not admit it, but luck played a huge role in my survival so far. Several instances where I could’ve died, and probably many more that I wasn’t even aware of. Should I start taking things seriously?

Funny how I was an Adumbrae and an artificial Corebring, and some people wanted me dead, and yet I viewed everything as a game. Rather, a movie where I was the main character. I was going to ultimately win. That was what the script said.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be more careful. Wouldn’t want the movie to abruptly end.    

“This was a colossal fucking mess!” Myra threw her hands up in exasperation as we jogged. “I don’t even think my sister is in this place. Those PCM bastards only had one Adumbrae—the illusion bitch. The lady scientist pretended they had more Adumbrae captured, so I wouldn’t immediately kill her.”

“You might be right,” said Deen. “The narrow tunnel leading to the laboratory—it had the machine that looked like a short pillar. Did you see it? But it didn’t have blinking red lights.”

“It’s turned off,” Myra said. “So what?”

“If there are other Adumbrae,” I said, “they wouldn’t have left it off. No other monster could waltz in. The scientist lied to you.”

“I really, really, really should’ve squished her head!” Myra shouted, her voice bouncing on the walls. “Ambriel, why didn’t your talkative pet warn us about her?”

“She didn’t pose any immediate danger,” explained Deen in a tense voice. “Gabe’s not responsible for everything.”

“We shouldn’t have gone in,” I mumbled loud enough for them to hear.

Starting a little blame game to relieve my annoyance at myself. I was ready with a bunch more blame. I did say my real name out loud, but Cecilia would likely make a mistake spelling it. Most people didn’t know how to spell ‘Erind’. And I looked as generic as could be, the plain-looking main character who’d get the hearts of all the handsome side characters.

Myra let out a sound similar to my Blanchette growl. “I messed up, okay? No need to rub it in my face. It’s freaking done already.”

“I-I wasn’t blaming you. Um, sorry. I—”

“No one’s blaming anyone,” Deen interjected. “We should calm down and not overreact. Infighting muddies the mind. Okay… honestly, this might not be as big a problem as we think. Maybe, as Croissant said, the lady scientist had left right away.”

“And if she didn’t?” Myra asked. “She would’ve seen our faces and heard Croissant’s name.” She used a mocking tone when mentioning my dumb, impromptu codename. “Instead of wasting our time talking about Croissant’s power, we should’ve—”  

“No more blaming each other!” Deen firmly raised her voice.

I was ready to clap back at Myra for choosing this fool’s errand while her sister was somewhere else, but I decided to hold myself back. It’d be out of character for my face to argue with Myra. Also, it was more sensible to let Deen defend me. Deen sounded like an angry parent.

“In the event the PCM discovers our identities,” Deen continued, “which is a remote possibility, I want to emphasize—”

“Not as remote as you’d think,” Myra grumbled.

“—then, we’ll fight them,” Deen said. “I very much doubt that the PCM’s forces are stronger than the 2Ms. We’ve defeated the 2Ms before.”

“With the help of Blanchette,” I added. “And Blanchette might be Red Hood. I’m thinking… maybe the PCM wouldn’t even want to find us. They think we’re Red Hood’s underlings.”

“Kinda possible,” Myra said. “But we’ve just had a lesson on being careful. We shouldn’t drop our guard now.”

“Maybe we can ask Red Hood for help fighting the PCM?” I suggested. “She’d be angry at them experimenting with Adumbrae.” I became more inclined to sign the death warrant of the PCM.

My original intention was to use them to unite the gangsters of the city under Red Hood’s banner. And then, we’d push the PCM out of the various territories. But with this development, I should declare an all-out war to wipe them out. If they were coming for me, I’d strike first.

“Great idea,” Myra said. “We were planning to find Red Hood to ask about Kelsey anyway.”

“That’s an… option,” Deen slowly said. “However, informing Red Hood about the PCM is different from working with her. I have reservations about it, assuming she’d be open to it. But if Red Hood is Blanchette, then I support it. Anyway, setting that aside, we should work with Dario and the rest of the team. It’s fine if we tell them, right? Kelsey’s not involved in this.”

“Guess not,” Myra replied.

“I took the metal stuff on the lady scientist,” I said. “Dario can give them to the Professor to analyze. We’ll know what we’re up against. They’re conducting creepy experiments like the 2Ms. Not sure what their big plan is.”

“We’re supposed to be lying low, but we’re fighting again,” Myra said. “We got this Hall guy and now PCM, who’ll probably hunt us.”

A light bulb lit in my head. “What if I tip off Sgt. Hall about this? I could say that the PCM tried to recruit us. We’re innocent because we didn’t agree to join. Like, during the orientation, we overheard concerning stuff. Or maybe, we glimpsed something inhuman. We can work on our story.”

It wasn’t just for the drama that I wanted to point Tower Cop at the PCM. It was an easy way to clean them up, especially with the BID in town. Yes, the PCM was studying a way to turn an Adumbrae back to human, but it wasn’t certain they’d succeed. I also shouldn’t trust Cecilia to experiment on me. Creepy weirdo head puppeteering a human body. Yep, the irony wasn’t lost on me.

And did I really want to return to being human?

Huh?

Was that thought… mine? Was Spooky Erind influencing me?  

“Pit the police and the PCM against each other?” Myra wondered, snapping me back to our conversation. “The PCM will hold that annoying cop’s attention. Know what? It might be an opportunity for us to, uh, strike.”

“What do you mean by ‘strike’?” Deen asked.

“Strike as in take care of Sgt. Hall,” Myra replied. “I’m going to stop beating around the bush—I meant to kill him. If we do it now, the other cops will hone in on us. I assume Sgt. Hall’s not alone in his investigations. But if he’s going after the PCM, then… they might go after him. See?”

“I see it, yes,” Deen said. “The police take care of our PCM problem, while we use the PCM as cover to take care of the police problem.”

“You’re fine with it?”

“Why won’t I be?”

“Okay… That’s a surprise.”

I didn’t join Myra and Deen discussing how to off Tower Cop. I couldn’t even laugh in my head because we entered the range of the Adumbrae-shoo-away machine we had passed earlier. It took all of my concentration to steady my jog so the other Two Bs wouldn’t notice something was wrong with me.

There were probably other machines scattered throughout the network of bunkers and tunnels under the city, protecting the PCM’s access to their captured Adumbrae. I could plow through it using willpower. Adumbrae who had lost their minds would probably just turn away. The machine did well to fend off Illusory Eye, it seemed.

“That’s one gore fiesta we passed,” Myra said, picking up speed. “The next should be the exit to Marsh Row. Reckon the PCM warned their guys at that place about us?”

“We need to be closer for Gabe to warn us,” Deen said. “But I suspect they may have found the guards we had dispatched.”

Myra snorted. “Dispatched, huh? You really like sanitizing things.”

“The PCM guards and workers at Marsh Row must’ve cleared out by now,” I said before Deen could respond. “They think we’re Adumbrae; they’re not going to fight us.”

“You’re right,” Deen said. “There’s no need for us to kill.”

A few minutes of running later, we neared the next bloody area in the tunnels. Deen’s Guardian Angel didn’t warn us of any danger, so we approached. And then, we found another problem. The world couldn’t just help to mess with us.

“The door…” I pointed at the bent rectangular slab of metal on the floor. “It was torn off its hinges.”

“Did you do this?” Myra asked. “You were the last one—”

“Huh? I just walked out the door, and that’s it. You were there, too. You’d know if I had wrecked the door.”

“Uh, yeah, yeah,” Myra distractedly said. “Then that means…”

“There’s another Adumbrae here,” Deen said. “It had gotten out because of us.”

Because of me, I corrected Deen in my head. I destroyed the Adumbrae-shoo-away machine securing this area since it hurt my head.

“The scientist wasn’t lying,” Myra said with a gasp. “Could this Adumbrae be Kelsey?”

(Author's Notes: Erind and Deen were normal law students only a few weeks ago, and while they are intelligent, they're not going to be on their guard all the time. They didn’t have experience with this kind of situation. I want them to have lapses early on that they'll learn from, like here with Cecilia. My take is that they should commit mistakes early rather than be completely infallible in their actions. That said, we're not sure what Cecilia learned from them, or how the PCM would react.

We also have this interesting possible development of having the cops and BID raid the PCM. I'm still not sure about this. What I'm sure of is the plotline with the Adumbrae who escaped the tunnels because of Erind. Thank you for your support!)