Chapter 220: 5.40

Despite being Ms. Save the Hostages, Deen stepped back into the office and aimed her gun at the eyeball. She projected a sense of disgust I didn’t share. How many eyeballs had I stabbed? More than one, for sure. And eyeballs moving on their own? Nothing I hadn’t seen before—I’d met an Adumbrae who could control eyeballs, though a bit weird to encounter similar abilities.

“Don’t waste bullets. It’s harmless.” I nudged the gun’s barrel to the side. A nice feeling one-upping Deen, even if only in the not-creeped-out-by-eyeballs category.

The tennis ball-sized eyeball had a green outline—it had a mind I could control? Where the fuck was it keeping its brain in its small body? Didn’t feel safe shooting it.

It rocked back and forth like a beckoning hand.

“It’s telling us to follow,” said Deen, echoing my thoughts. “I’m not getting anything from Gabe—I mean, I don’t think it’s dangerous—”

“This is dangerous,” I said as pointedly as I could muster with a robotic voice.

“Uh, sorry. Of course, it’s dangerous,” she hurriedly clarified. “But we don’t have a choice here. We can’t close the door.” She first tried tugging the door and then pushing against it. Didn’t work. The creaks of metal, like the mating calls of a whale, proved she wasn’t faking her attempts. “The walls are probably the same. We’re trapped. The only way is forward. This thing is telling us exactly that.”

“Or we can stay here.” I tapped the tiled floor with my feet. Clearly, Deen was set on going through and looking for the hostages. She didn’t want to try punching through the walls for fear we’d break this portal or whatever this was supposed to be.

While we’d probably find the missing people if we went through this tunnel, this was also a trap set by Finlay. Likely that we’d end up captured too. Deen, anyway. I’d just return to my Erind body and leave her stupid ass behind. On the flip side, if this were the base of the Tea Party, Mom would be here along with the Greaves bigwigs they ferreted away. If this portal closed, we’d have no other way of finding this place.

“Weren’t you going to fight the Tea Party and save the hostages?” Deen said. “That’s why we teamed up and—”

“I’m being cautious,” I cut in. She was right—I am the hero, Pino. The main character of this whole gig.

The ending of this movie would be me leading the hostages, including my Mom, in escaping this place as it explodes. Then the police would arrive late to the party, and try to arrest me, the suspicious robot. As the ending music played and the credits rolled, I’d take off my mask and disappear.

Good thing I had a metal face, or I’d be grinning like an idiot.

“It’s leaving,” Deen said, snapping me out of my daydreams. The eyeball rolled away, diving into darkness before emerging again when it reached the next working light.

Jostling past her, I stepped through the doorway without hesitation to take charge. “Let’s follow it.” Diving into danger without putting myself in trouble—the benefits of my Pino body.

Nothing happened as my body passed the doorway. The tunnel was ahead, and the office was behind me. Deen followed, pausing for a second as her two feet stepped on the uneven earth. She awkwardly hugged herself, cumbersomely holding the rifle between her thighs, and rubbed her upper arms.

“Cold?” I asked.

“Very. Humid too, but that’s probably just my sweat from the fighting.”

“Good job back there.” I would’ve showered more praises to ease her distrust were it not for the metal door swinging shut with a loud bang. No need to try opening it—we both knew that even if we could, the other side wouldn’t be the convention center anymore. “Only way forward, like you said…”

Uneven walls with rocks jutting along its length looked odd for a tunnel, as if it wasn’t dug by a machine. But it looked roundish enough not to be naturally formed. Other than the exposed wires running on the ceiling and the wonky fluorescent lights they powered—oh yeah, and the metal door behind us—there was nothing else other than earth.

This didn’t appear to be a holding cell if this was a trap, though this could lead to a dead end, and we’d be stuck here—rather, Deen would be. But she mentioned that her Guardian Angel didn’t warn her of any danger. Her thoughts were also calm, unlike when she argued with her pet.

Did Finlay make a mistake?

I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a problem here… other than the many obvious ones. I was forgetting something. Something important. Or maybe it wasn’t important if I couldn’t recall it.

Eyeball… This could be the sensation of being watched. Every roll, it would look at us. Whenever it reached a dark portion of the path, it paused and waited for us to catch up. I could see its green outline, so there was no way I’d lose it.

The Adumbrae who controlled this eye would have the best-decorated house for Halloween, unlike ours. The past few years, Mom just drizzled a smattering of the not-too-destroyed decorations stowed in the attic—that was if she wasn’t abroad for work. When Dad was around, our family would turn the house into the aftermath of my puppet versus the parasite monsters.

Nostalgia for Halloween. That must be the peculiar feeling I had—an unexplainable fondness for the eyeball. Like it was familiar…

Our short journey ended in front of another metal door with a bright bulb on its upper left. Was this finally the trap?

Deen stopped behind me, saying nothing but wafting airs of distrust my way. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had the gun pointed at my back. She was troubled over my split-second mind control, forcing her to shoot the gun, unsure if it had something to do with me or if her nerves were getting to her.

A takeaway was that there was no immediate danger if she was thinking about me.

The eyeball wiggled in front of the door. I pointed a finger at it, about to shoot. Suddenly, it sprouted several spindly legs. Deen gasped and shuffled back. I didn’t move. Memories crawled from the depths of the stuff-I-don’t-care-about zone of my brain.

Wait a minute…

The spider eyeball creature scuttled towards my right foot and looked up, locking gazes with me as if it was trying to tell me something. Up close, I recognized the light blue iris against the black backdrop of its pupil. The way the pink veins spread across the whiteness of the eye was familiar.

Eye familiar! She’s alive?

“Impossible…” I whispered.

“What did you say?” Deen tinkered with the door latch. “Is it locked? I can try—” A click. The door shifted an inch. “Oh, it’s open.” The eye familiar scooted through the small gap. She carefully pulled it, ensuring it didn’t make more sound than needed. “Let’s go. Careful not to hit the door.”

“Yeah. With you,” I absentmindedly replied, still preoccupied with replaying my escape from the tunnels beneath Eves club.

It wasn’t that long ago, but I had buried my memories of that night since all of my fellow escapees from Eve—if I could call ourselves that—died back then, mostly because of me. That whole Eve bullshit was a done deal, the box closed and tied with a neat string. I deleted it from my mind because nothing would come back to bite my butt.

Contrast Eve with my escape from my crumbling condo building. Up to now, its consequences remained, like that Finlay asshole teleported us to this fucking place for one.

And what was this place supposed to be?

Deen and I exited into a neater tunnel, more like a hallway, with finished concrete floor and walls, bright lighting, and similar metal doors spaced along its length. Pipes lined the lower parts of the walls and the ceilings. Still no sign of a trap. Maybe the eyeball did something to mess up Finlay’s plan.

As the eyeball moved faster with its spider-like legs, more memories returned.

It’s really her… But how? She was super-duper dead!

I watched even after her body was engulfed in flames, only leaving after the garage collapsed from the fire, unlike movie villains who left before they made sure the hero was truly dead. Hang on, was I the villain? After what I did to her, I probably was. I recalled the stench of her burning body—fucking gross, by the way, especially burnt hair.

“She’s gone…” I said under my non-existent breath. She had to be.

Though some of her familiars must’ve survived the Skitter carnage. This little guy had a green tinge, so it had some semblance of a mind. They could probably continue existing without the main body. This didn’t mean that she had survived the fire.

False alarm.

There was still the question of why we were following this thing.

“Camera.” Deen cocked her head upward as she adjusted her mask that was part of Praying Man’s coat. As we turned left, a fisheye security cam was at the corner of the ceiling. “We’re on a timer.”

“Yes,” I said. “We need to find the hostages soon.” So that I can get a new puppet.

The eyeball stopped and turned to us. It tapped the ground with its front legs, then waved it left.

“Let’s hide,” Deen said, pulling me to the door nearest us. She tapped the button, and it opened to a regular storage room full of boxes. The door whooshed shut as we heard another door open.

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“You’re good at interpreting what it’s saying.” It was probably her Guardian Angel telling her what to do, but a compliment didn’t hurt.

“Huh? Uh, yeah,” she distractedly replied, pressing her ear against the door. “People outside.” Several seconds after, she said, “Scratching… I think it’s the eyeball telling us it’s okay to leave.”

“Why are we still following it? How about we go our own way?”

“It’s helping us so far. But yeah… it isn’t safe to trust it.” Her thoughts were clear that I was more untrustworthy than the eyeball. “I don’t know why this eyeball is saving us, but we take what we can get. We’ll stick with it until we find the hostages. Let’s just watch out for danger and react accordingly.”

With the eyeball as our ready guide, we traversed more passageways and dodged other guards. One time, the eyeball provided a distraction for us, revealing itself to a couple of dudes in sweaty clothes lugging crates on their shoulders. Were they Tea Party grunts? Maybe men of the 2Ms? They did have pistols strapped to their belts, and it seemed like they were doing illegal stuff.

Or I’m assuming the worst of people. Deen and I hid behind more crates, listening to their conversation to gather information.

“Hey, it’s that eye spider,” one man said.

“Yeah, it’s her pet,” the other guy replied. “Don’t mind that thing.”

“She’s really hot, isn’t—ow! Why did you hit me?”

“Don’t let it hear you talk like that!”

“That’s an eye, not an ear, you fuckface. And good job for making me nearly drop my crate. You don’t want slugs up our ass, do you?”

“Just be mindful of what you say with Adumbrae around.” Fading footsteps and another whooshing door told us the coast was clear.

Deen snorted. “That wasn’t helpful at all.” She rounded the stack of crates and went after our eyeball guide.

Not helpful in finding the hostages, but those bozos confirmed that she somehow survived getting roasted. How? Could she have regenerated—no, that wasn’t important. I should first decide if we should continue following the eyeball familiar. It was leading us to her, specifically me.

Just a guess… a slight hunch… I bet she was angry as fuck at me.

We stopped in front of yet another door. “Deen, we should split—what are you doing?”

She crouched by my right, holding the butt of the rifle up. “Stand still,” she said. “The door is going to open.” And it did—the power of foresight and all that.

What she didn’t tell me was that there was a guy on the other side.

His mouth gaped as he saw me, the cigarette in his mouth teetering on his lips. Deen hit his chin with the gun’s end, shutting his mouth before the cigarette could fall. “Argh!” he grunted as he retreated, trying to unsling his own gun. Deen kicked his stomach. He fell on a metal grating.

“Come!” She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the door, hitting the touchpad to shut it. Then she bashed the guy’s head with the gun a couple more times. He stopped moving.

Yey! A puppet for—my thought was cut short when I looked around. “What the…” It was my turn to gape. The door didn’t lead to another boring hallway. Instead, it opened to a steel walkway high above a cavern that was as large as the underground arena of Eve.

“They have the hostages!” Deen hissed like an angry snake. She dragged the unconscious guy to the end of the bridge and motioned for me to stick to the door, hunkering beside it so that we wouldn’t get spotted. “So many… They’re all here.”

Leaning over the railings, I saw throngs of people and formerly people—now parasite monsters—held in rows of transparent cages. They were those that disappeared from the Greaves convention center, and there were more of them than I had estimated. Perhaps, while we were held at the convention hall, those in the side buildings were already whisked away.

Dozens of clay men carrying guns, not wearing any clothes or body armor to hide their true nature, patrolled the cages. Vats and machines like those Stella set up in my condo littered the ground far below.

I was wrong. The parasite monsters weren’t for a diversion for the Tea Party’s escape. They have already escaped! And they were helping the 2Ms with their experiments, probably trying to summon an Adumbrae Titan again like the giant mushroom in La Esperanza.

“Is Mom—is Erind’s mother there?”

“Not sure,” Deen said, kneeling and peering through the slats of the bridge. “Could be.”

“How can we find…?” I turned left, looking at the eyeball. It was tapping the walkway, trying to get our attention. I could just ask her where Mom was. I wouldn’t be surprised if she kidnapped her as revenge. “Deen, we should split up,” I continued what I intended to say earlier. My best friend shouldn’t meet my former best friend.

“Why?”

“It’s hard to make out faces from this distance, but some people look familiar. I suspect the other hostages we had saved were caught again. Imani’s friends who went with them might also be there. Boojum and that other person? You find a way down and try to save them.”

“And what will you do?”

“I’ll make a distraction for you,” I said. “Perhaps, by following this eyeball, I’ll get deeper into this facility and find their control room. I can hack into the main frame and destroy what I can.”

“That doesn’t sound—"

“Look! They’re turning more people into monsters! You have to stop them. I’ll do what I can on my end to help you.”

Deen nodded. A determined but curt “Okay” was her only response before going through the door.

With my finger, I shot the guard with the bloodied face, took his gun, and went to the other end of the walkway, trailing the eyeball. Behind me, my new puppet got on his feet.

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The eyeball looked at me, then at the door. The message was clear.

Time for a confrontation. My link to Deen had severed—she was too far away. Could also be dead, but that was very unlikely. But I had a new puppet. He stayed behind the corner of the corridor, far enough that the eyeball wouldn’t spot it but not too far that I’d lose control. I was beginning to pump him with power.

I opened the door and entered a dark room, with only the light from the corridor illuminating part of it. I didn’t close the door behind me. In the shadows, I could make out a figure moving.

“Hello, Rachel,” a female voice said. The sound of heels tapping the ground echoed as a woman at the end of the room approached. “Or should I say… Erind?”

“Vanessa,” I said, calling her name before she stepped into the light, demonstrating that I figured out her plan, even though I had no idea what was happening here. Rachel—that was the fake name I gave when she and her two friends found me in the tunnels below Eve club after I survived the BID agents’ self-destruct bullshit. No one but her group should know about that name.

A brunette woman stood in front of me. Vanessa Minnows, the niece of the former mayor. Phew, it’s really her. It would’ve been so fucking embarrassing if I had been mistaken.

There was something different with the way she carried herself. Gone was the anxious and frightened girl who faced the gun barrel before I pulled the trigger. Now, she was full of confidence, thinking she had control of the situation. Her much longer hair tied in a high ponytail added to her poised look.

She wore a black sleeveless shirt. Easy for her familiars to move in and out of her bare arms. I caught a couple of eyes on her left arm, staring at me before closing tight and blending into her skin. Her right arm was a curiosity. Overlapping metal rings covered it like armor but with locks as if she wasn’t ever going to take them off. Scared of using her mouth familiars?

I adjusted my grip on the gun I stole from my puppet. My finger was on the trigger, but I didn’t aim it at Vanessa. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m not Erind?”

She chuckled. “Nope. I saw your metal body emerge out of your face. My familiar was peeking through the grates of the central air conditioning.”

“I suppose you’re after revenge.”

“Revenge? For what? I’m just happy to meet my friend.”