[REND] B2. 3.1 - The Importance of a Corkboard

“Yes, we’ll meet at my house later,” Deen said on the phone with Myra.

Deen held her phone with one hand while her other hand was on the steering wheel. Distracted driving was a misdemeanor. Deen, a model law student, apparently didn’t care about that. I thought of pranking my best friend by doing a citizen’s arrest. She probably wouldn’t find it funny. I was just giddy at the prospect of complicated plotlines developing in the awesome movie that was my life.

“Please tell everyone to come around nine in the evening,” Deen said. “My sister won’t be around, and we’ll have the house to ourselves. The road to Poblacion Verde Hills will be relatively empty by then. It’s easy to spot if you’re… If there are other people.” She paused, listening to Myra’s reply. “We’ll talk about what it is later. Yep, it’s very, very important.” And Deen clicked the call end.

“Good thing that Myra didn’t get angry we ditched her,” I said.

We cancelled the meeting with Myra. Too risky with Tower Cop roaming around the campus. But we did need to talk to the whole group, so I suggested that we gather at Deen’s house if her older sister wouldn’t be present. We shouldn’t go to New Hope because someone observing us would expect us to go there.

“Myra trusted us that this was trouble,” Deen replied. “And it truly is a big one. We should’ve expected this to happen. What do you think of it?” She pointed at the calling card I was fiddling with in my left hand. I had kept my right hand by my side and out of sight.

“I’m more than half sure that Ramello’s uncle thinks that I’m innocent.” I had told Deen about the entire conversation. No secrets between best friends, amiright? “Erm, innocent as in I have nothing to do with the Adumbrae stuff. He’d think differently if he knew that I was no longer human. I don’t think he’d buy that Dario’s group is backed by the government and all that stuff.”

Deen nodded. “He’d more easily believe it was a group of Adumbrae conducting human experiments.”

“Yeah. I can’t say that that’s another group—the 2Ms. My claims of being an innocent bystander won’t fly high if I knew that much. I’d just maintain this… vibe with Ramello’s uncle. He didn’t seem angry that I lied to him about the Adumbrae attack. He was previously looking for witnesses who could support his fourth Adumbrae theory. He no longer needs that.”

“What he now needs is for you to investigate Reo.”

“Yep. Ramello’s uncle might ask me to spy on the rest of the group eventually. I feel that he thinks Kelsey is sketchy.” That rhymed, didn’t it?

“Does Sgt. Hall know about New Hope?” Deen asked. Then she answered herself. “He most likely does. We really have to take care of him before he investigates more and finds the buildings where we had hysterical strength training.”

I glanced sidelong at Deen. “And by take care, you mean…?”

“That’s Dario’s problem,” Deen said. “This’ll be a good opportunity for us to observe what they’ll do because they might do it to us someday.”

I held up Tower Cop’s calling card. “Hmmm… this situation is relatively easy to, uh, take care of if it were only Ramello’s uncle that we should be worried about. But if it had spread, like the BID knows about it as well, Dario’s group won’t be able to make it go away on their own.”

“What do you mean?”

“In that scenario, the Professor and this secret organization will be forced to make a move to keep their secret operations, well, secret. I doubt they’d want the BID or anyone else to know about it, even if it were true that their artificial Corebring experiments are backed by the government.”

Deen let out a frustrated exhale. “This won’t be the first time a government agency conducted illegal activities in the name of national security. The question is what’ll be the Professor’s response to a BID investigation? If it’ll be cutting losses and liquidating us, then we wouldn’t want that… obviously.”

“Liquidating? So morbid.”

“It’s a real possibility that we have to consider,” Deen said. “We can’t be naïve and hope that Dario will protect us.”

“What about Ramello’s uncle?” I asked, playing the naïve role, since Deen had already mentioned it. “He promised me that—”

“Sgt. Hall might be an upstanding cop, but his words won’t mean anything if the BID would kill us for being non-humans. Or maybe they’d perform their own experiments on us. We have to be realistic about this, Erind. The only people we can trust are each other. Do you understand?”

“Ye-yes,” I said, even though I was irked by her patronizing tone. Still, this was what I wanted. “I guess we’d have to wait for Dario’s plan before making our own.” Deen and I would be using Dario’s group for our protection, and I’d be using Deen for my own protection.

I needed a corkboard for this layered planning. I’d have pictures and maps, pin them on the corkboard, and then add strings. I’d stare at the complicated mess for hours until an idea would click that’d solve all of my problems and propel me to the last act of the movie.

But I needed to buy a corkboard first.  

“Have you done anything else that might be considered suspicious?” Deen asked. “Anything that I should know about?”

That’s going to be a long list. “No… nothing,” I replied. “Oh, there’s one. This isn’t a problem, but you should know about it. Mom’s visiting next week. Just checking up on me and so on. We have to make sure she doesn’t find anything suspicious with me.”

Mom had wanted to come after the Adumbrae attack, but I told her not to bother. She was busy with work, and everything seemed to be fine. But with the ‘explosion’ at the docks, the swirling rumors of Adumbrae in La Esperanza, and the BID hanging out here, Mom got more worried. I really didn’t want to deal with her, but she had already bought a ticket.

“Oh? I want to meet your mother!” Deen said. “You should introduce me to her. We can tour her around the city, like a shopping trip.”

“Shopping? Mom isn’t really the type to—”  

“If not shopping, we can instead visit Eloyce. She must be proud of you for studying there.”

“Uh, I guess we can do that.”  

I found it somewhat relaxing to have this mundane conversation with Deen. She was especially excited to meet my mother—I wasn’t. It was a major disruption of my not-so-normal life. Well, Deen was just being my best friend, wanting to meet Mom.

For all I knew, Deen could be wearing a face, too, pushing for us to tour Mom around the campus to have some sense of normalcy in her life.

Or maybe not? Had Deen already adapted to our new life? I expected her to have a mental breakdown while alone in her place. But she appeared to be fine today.

Not sure if she had nightmares about all the dead people and monsters during the docks mission. We hadn’t talked much about her role during the raid, but I bet that she had killed some people. At least, she injured them. She might even be troubled by memories of my giant werewolf form eating everybody. It must’ve looked disgusting.

And awesome!

Deen didn’t say much about Blanchette other than that they were saved by the same Adumbrae who saved us when we were kidnapped. She was evasive when pressed for more details. She probably didn’t want to tarnish my view of our ‘savior’ turning into a monster.

I swore I’d bring up the Blanchette topic during the meeting later. I’d been looking forward to hearing the hero wannabes’ thoughts about it. I’d also need a corkboard to keep track of my Blanchette and Red Hood personas. Overdrive and the Marsh Row boys had to be included there, too.

“Deen, uh, can you drop me off at Sanders Mall? I have to buy something before going home.”

Two corkboards, pushpins, and different colors of yarn. I could probably put the corkboards above my study table. Not sure yet what pictures to put on it. Of course, this ran the risk of someone finding it, exposing me. But that was expected in movies.

“Home? Are you going back to your condo? Why not spend the rest of the day at my place and wait for the group to arrive this evening? We can order food. Strawberry croissant, if you want. Milk tea, too. A hundred percent sugar.”

“Aha! You’re trying to get me to return using sugar?”

Deen rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. I’m just being practical here. We can have a group study session.”

“Are two people considered a group? A pair? Anyway, it’s better I’m not there yet, so the others can’t question me as they arrive. I want to see their reaction when I tell my story for the first time. Like, will they blame Reo? What will Myra say about Kelsey? That kind of stuff. As genuine a reaction as possible, so we can gauge who we can try to get on our side.”

“Do you mean that we’ll observe if any of them has the potential to betray Dario?” Deen asked. “Myra is the best candidate so far. But her sister is an Adumbrae. I’m not… comfortable with that.”

You’re quite comfortable with me, I thought. But I didn’t say anything more on that topic, returning our conversation to Mom. It didn’t take long until we reached Sanders Mall, and I bid Deen goodbye. She tried to accompany me, but thankfully, her sister called her.

It didn’t take long before I found a corkboard. My day was going well.  

-----

At around twenty minutes past nine, I arrived at Deen's place. Being late was against my very nature. But this was necessary. To make up for it, I had stayed at a café a few blocks away from the entrance of the gated community that was Poblacion Verde Hills. Then I texted Deen that I was nearby and would come when the group was complete—I regarded this as substantial compliance with my no-late rule.

I pressed the buzzer thingy, and Deen was there to greet me. “Dario’s not here yet,” she said. “I thought you’d come only when—”

“Got tired of waiting.” In truth, my anti-lateness instincts forced me to get going. I couldn’t sit still knowing that I was twenty minutes late. “He’s already on the way, isn’t he?”

“He’ll get here in a few minutes. Come downstairs. We’re hanging out in the den.”

“What’s the difference between a den and a basement?” I wondered aloud. “Like dens are usually downstairs, right? And that’s why they’re called dens.”

“What are you talking about?” Deen giggled as she patted my head. “There you are again with your random tangents. To answer your question, a den is like a second living room. It doesn’t need to be in the basement. Our home in Aspen has a den with windows looking out into the surrounding forest.”

“So, what makes a den… a den? Do you need a living room first so that it’ll be considered a second living room?”

“I know that you’re just messing with me now,” Deen said, poking my side. “And don’t ask me why a living room is called that.”

The sound of the news blaring from a TV echoed through the spiral staircase as Deen and I descended to the entertainment-room-slash-den-of-sorts where the meeting would be held. The TV was also turned on—it was the news. I heard the reporter talking about an inquiry into the bioscanners of the city. It turned out that they found some corruption stuff going on with the maintenance contracts.

Deen stopped in the middle of the staircase. She waved her hand without looking back at me. I took that to mean that she wanted to eavesdrop a bit before showing ourselves.

“This is such useless bullshit,” Myra said. “I want actual useful news that’s related to us.”

“Isn’t it good that we’re not on the news?” That was Reo’s voice.  

“Very good,” Everett chimed in. “My mum always told me that she’d disown me if I’d ever show up on the news. She never thinks I’d be on TV for something good.”

“She is kind of right,” said Reo. “What circumstance would you be—?”

“Is there anything else on that we care about?” Myra cut in. “Something up with the docks?”

“I don’t think there’s any,” said a fourth voice. It was Johann. The sound of the TV changed as he flipped through the channels.

“The situation at Madagascar is escalating with the appearance of the third Kreggan Class, Adumbrae Titan earlier today,” blared a reporter. “The Gerhard International Research Alliance is set to test their new weapon on this—”

“Ugh, Madagascar is so far away,” Myra said. “I don’t care about this. Any word on the police about the 2Ms, Johann?”

“I’m having difficulties doing some digging,” Johann said. “The BID is taking over the case.”

“Uh-oh,” Reo said. “That could be what Erind will tell us about. Wait. She won’t know anything about it. I wonder what she’s—”

Deen continued down the stairs, loudly stepping to announce our presence. I followed her lead. We weren’t going to get any intel from eavesdropping. Possible that they had agreed to sanitize their conversations while at Deen’s house.

I have been to the den a couple of times before. It wasn’t that huge, but huge enough for a pool table, the latest Imago Virtual Reality system, a mini bar, and a bunch of beanbags of assorted colors congregating around a huge screen, probably fifty, maybe fifty-five inches.

Reo and Everett were lounging on the beanbags. Johann was in an armchair, with Myra sitting on the right armrest. Those two might be a thing. Not sure yet how I’d use that to my advantage.

“Hello!” I cheerily said. I couldn’t believe I was thinking this, but I was glad to see the hero wannabes.

(Author's Notes: Things are shaping up to get more complicated. Oh, and Erind's mom is visiting! In the previous version, she came to Las Vegas, not La Esperanza. It’ll be a fun downtime when she arrives. But before that, we’ll have some action first. This Book 2 might end up more complex than I first planned because I intend to bring in the Overdrive plotline as well. Do share your thoughts and suggestions.

We have one more REND chapter this week. Plus, I intend to write (hopefully) 2 or 3 Smite chapters over the weekend. I’m starting to get well. Thank you all for your continued support!)