[REND] 6.2 - Hero Wannabes, At Your Service

Since Myra wasn’t human and was hanging out with other non-humans, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that her sister, Kelsey, was superpowered too. If so, it must’ve been Kelsey who fought the mutant on the train. Couldn’t have been too many women with superstrength taking the subway during Monday rush hours. Tower Cop, Ramello’s uncle, was looking for Kelsey. Same with Purple Mohawk’s group; Deen and I were just collateral damage here.

Fucking Kelsey. Thanks a lot for getting me kidnapped by monsters.

Myra and these weirdos must also be looking for Kelsey. That explained why Blank was interested in a supposedly not-normal human who barged in to save me and Deen. Blank’s team probably shadowed me, thinking I’d get taken, then followed the black SUV to this place. If I’d confirm we were just used as bait, I’d be very pissed.

In sum… Kelsey was the main character of this story. Not me. Dammit.

“Since we’re talking about Kelsey…” Blank said.

“What is it?” Myra said.

“Let me preface that this is just a suspicion. Do maintain calmness when—”

“Get on with it,” grumbled Myra.

“It’s possible…” Blank said, “that Kelsey attacked the 2Ms’ warehouses slightly earlier than we did.”

Two Ems? Was that the name of Purple Mohawk’s group? Sounded lame.

“What!” Myra exploded, grabbing the wheel from Ride. “Turn the van around!”

“Let go, you lunatic!” Ride shouted.

“Woah!” Emcee exclaimed behind us. “Myra, what the hell?”

The van zigzagged across the road. Deen and I got flung to one side. Blank leaned forward to join the tussle, grabbing Myra’s arms. After a few seconds, Myra wilted as if falling asleep, her strength gone. Ride took back control of the van and set us straight on the road.

In slurred speech, she said, “Ass… don’t use… powers… on me.”

“I’m breaking our rule to save these girls.” Blank set Myra back to her seat. “If we crash, they’ll die. And we’re not in the clear yet.”  

Another of Blank’s powers? He could weaken those he touched?

Add in the headache-aura, it would be difficult to fight him up close. I’d need to strike first, killing him before he could use his abilities. My hot, monster body might be able to do it. If I ate his brain, would I become—Cut that out! Spooky Erind might be influencing me.

As soon as Blank let Myra go, she sprang back to her violently energetic self, raising a fist at Blank. “You better have a good explanation why we’re not saving my sister.”

“Clarifying, I’m not sure if it was her.” Blank gestured to me. “Erind told me that a woman with superstrength helped them escape. She was no longer there when I got there.”

Myra turned to me with an intense gaze. “Did you really see Kelsey?”

“I’m not sure. My glasses…” I patted my eyes to show that I lost them.

“Tell me what happened,” she almost growled.

“Take it easy,” Ride said. “You’re scaring her.”

“I-I… was in a cage,” I began, trying to hide my giddiness at the opportunity to tell a story.

I enjoyed it when Mom told me fairytales as a child, and I wanted to tell mine too. If not a lawyer, another career path I envisioned was to be a librarian, reading stories to kids. However, telling stories that I made up felt so much more rewarding. This must be what authors felt like when they saw their published works on bookstore shelves.

Wait! Do librarians read stories to kids? Focus, Erind! Where were we?

“Deen and I.” I hunched my back and bowed my head to look scared. “We were in the same cage. Um, another guy was in a cage next to ours. There was lots of blood a-and… dead…” I broke into sobs.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?” Emcee said.

“Truly, a horrific sight,” said Blank.

A horrific sight? This Blank guy was a bit of a weirdo in the way he spoke.

“I’ll explain my read on what I saw in that warehouse,” Blank continued. “The 2Ms were making their prisoners fight mutants. I mentioned before that they conduct such activities in their secret arenas to entertain their clientele. They did a mini-version of that back at the warehouse. The place was a mess, shredded body parts strewn across a blood-covered floor. My guess is that they used the mutants to scare their prisoners into giving them the answers they wanted.”

This disrespectful bastard! I had paused for dramatic effect, but he was now taking over my scene.

“Guns would’ve done the trick,” Blank said. “Moreover, those people weren’t hiding genuine secrets. They would’ve answered even if not threatened. Unnecessary to kill them in such a manner. It’s the general cruelty that infects even those fake Adumbrae. This is why we fight. This is—”

“What about my sister?” Myra pointed at me. “What happened next?”

“Uh, the guy beside us,” I said. “He was forced to fight a monster. The-then it was our turn. One of the kidnappers, he, um, wanted to have his way with my friend… before, you know, killing her.”

“Animals,” Emcee blurted with disdain, surprising me because he was trying to sound friendly before. “Animals and traitors to humanity.” His voice was also clear.

Emcee must’ve removed his mask. I wanted to check his face, but that’d be suspicious. Blank and Ride still had their masks on. Ride only had a simple facemask. He had dark brown hair and the face in the shape of a pencil eraser. I couldn’t tell for certain, but Ride must be quite tall if his knees were up while sitting.

“That’s right,” said Blank. “You’ll be pleased to know that they’re dead.”

“Dead? How? You killed them?”

Before Blank could steal more of my part in the script, I told the story of a woman appearing out of nowhere to kill the bad guys. Bullets didn’t stop her. She also defeated one of the bad guys, who was an Adumbrae. My tale was somewhat incoherent in places to sell my traumatized state.

“Was it Kelsey?” Myra asked. “You’ve seen Kelsey in law school, haven’t you?”

“She already said that she didn’t get a good look,” Ride said.

“I found no traces of this woman,” Blank said. “Be she Kelsey or anyone else. She has safely escaped and has proved to be able to take care of herself. If it were Kelsey, she would return soon.”

“But she’s not coming back home!!” Myra shook the backrest of her seat. “That’s the fucking problem. The last thing we know, she was on the train. She fought one of those accursed mutant experiment creatures. She’s gone. Now, the 2Ms are looking for her. Some cops are, too—isn’t that right, Johann?” She turned to Ride.

“The cops aren’t a concern,” said Ride, who was Johann. I kind of liked the name ‘Johann.’ He added, “I thought I had scrubbed the files clean of Kelsey. It turned out that the 2Ms got the footage first.”

“Drop me off here,” Myra said.

“No way,” Ride said.

“If you’re not turning the van around, drop me off so I can look for my sister,” she said. “Or I’ll just jump out.”

“Are you going to fight Jim Ambrose?” Emcee said. “That guy and his team are equipped to deal with us. We’re barely ten minutes from their warehouse.”

“And we’ll just leave Kelsey?”

“We’re not sure if it was Kelsey.” Blank shook his head. “It may have been someone else. It makes no sense why she’d attack that place instead of rejoining us. I regret telling you about this.”

They continued their banter, with Myra almost kicking off the van’s door to jump out. Blank had to threaten her with his powers again. He kept repeating that they’d finish their mission and return together. No one left behind. That sounded like a line from a war movie or something. Blank, Johann, and Emcee spouted all sorts of stuff to calm Myra down.

It went on for several minutes, and they almost forgot about me. I stared outside the window. I had seen some of these buildings before—personally, during nighttime, and on the internet, with pictures taken during the day.

We were passing through Marsh Row.

The base of the Two Ems was behind this area? Huh… Tattoo Sleeves and his gang were right; people were indeed being kidnapped. They were even turned into monsters. The terrorist theory turned out to be true.

“I bet our friend here—” Johann jabbed his thumb back at me “—saw a mutant in the beginning stages of transformation. A woman who looked mostly human, but with superstrength. The creation turned on its creators. That’s what happened.”

“Plausible,” Myra said, sulking in her seat.

After several seconds of silence, Blank turned to me. “I suppose we’re not making the best of impressions.” Blank took off his ski mask, revealing himself to be a lighter blonde than Deen. He had an immovable, serious face that he unsuccessfully tried to mold into a friendlier one, his steel blue eyes piercing mine. “My name is Dario. I go by the codename Blank. We call each other by our nicknames during missions.”

“Hello… Uh, I’m Erind, but you already know that.”

“You have many questions, and we’ll have those all answered. But it's going to be a long story. Let's get to safety first. For now, rest.”

“Where are you taking us?”

“Downtown. We'll blend with traffic first, then go to our base.”

“Wha-what?” I injected the right amount of fear in that one word. A congratulatory pat on my shoulder for that acting.

“It’ll be safe at—” Dario, the former Blank, the formerly former Blank-For-Now, started to say.

“Drop us off at the police station,” I pleaded. Of course, I didn’t want that to actually happen. But this was the reasonable action of my face. Rule #2. “We’ll be safe there.”

Dario shook his head. “I advise against that. The 2Ms have targeted you. They have connections with the police. Don’t expect your reports to be taken seriously.”

“Some corrupt cops might off you,” Emcee chimed in.

“They definitely would,” said Johann.

“We… we’ll leave the city,” said Erind-in-distress, my newly developed face. I wouldn't leave the city, of course. It was such a hassle packing stuff. “Yes, that’s it! Wait, we can leave the country if need be. Please…. We don’t want any part in this.”

“Also, we have to protect ourselves,” Dario grimly said.

“Don’t sound so threatening, man,” Emcee said.

“I’m stating facts,” Dario said. “You know who we are. Myra, especially. You go to the same university.”

“I’m not going to say anything,” I said. “I promise that I’ll keep my mouth—”

“I know you won’t report us,” he cut in. “But if the 2Ms capture you again, they'll make you talk. You should come with us, and we will protect you.”

“I don’t… know…”

“Listen to what we have to say,” Dario said in a firm voice. “Make your decision after.”

“Okay,” I meekly said, nodding once. Even if I wasn’t interested in going with them, I couldn’t have refused. “Uh, how long till we get to your base?”

“Around thirty minutes more. Take this time to rest. I know you’ve gone through a harrowing experience.”

And I took the time to plan.

Firstly, I wouldn't reveal I was an Adumbrae. I’m an Adumbrae—admitting it to myself felt surreal. And fun. Did it mean I had to develop a new face? Cute-student Erind, good-daughter Erind, ass-kicking-Adumbrae Erind. It probably does, but back to planning.

Secondly, I'd make up a story about things I witnessed during the Adumbrae attack to make me seem more important. Kelsey, shoo! I was the protag girl here! And lastly, I'd offer to help these Adumbrae bandits. Maybe have revenge as a motivation or something. What could I offer them, though? My mother's connections?

I should think of something. My aim was to get close to this group and learn about this Two Ems stuff too. The ultimate goal was to kick Spooky Erind out of my mind.  

Sorry, Spooky Erind, I thought. I know you know what I’m thinking. But I just want some privacy. Oh, and I wanted to keep my own mind. That was the more important reason.

Minutes passed zooming through nearly empty streets. I eventually realized where we were headed.

La Esperanza had two ghost town areas. The smaller one was Marsh Row. Though it had been mostly abandoned, there were still many people hanging out there. The other one really didn’t have any people, as far as I was aware—New Hope City, the expansive development project of the very wealthy McHunters. It was abandoned when it was revealed that their patriarch was an Adumbrae.

I didn’t follow much of what happened back then. It was a decade ago; I was like twelve or thirteen, doing stupid shit in middle school.

We didn’t encounter any other vehicles or people as we turned down the unfinished six-lane highway leading to New Hope City.

“We chose this area for our base,” Dario said, “because we could easily spot if someone is tailing us.” He was probably just making conversation to ease my fears. A kidnapped victim, getting taken to another place with no one around—that should cause trauma. “If someone were following us, we’ll circle the parking lot of the abandoned mall at the side of the main avenue, and then go back to the city proper via the side access road and pretend as if we weren’t doing anything sketchy.”

No cars followed us, so we continued onwards.

If the heart of La Esperanza could be described as a bustling concrete jungle, New Hope City was a dead concrete forest.

Dug out foundations that have been left open. Steel columns hinting at a building that could have been. Husks of buildings that were never filled grew out of the ground here and there, their empty frames slowly decaying through the years, a testament to the prospects of business and wealth that have gone to waste. Some of the spaces didn’t even have the chance to grow their own dead concrete tree. Instead, they now supported thriving ecosystems of animals, shrubbery, and young trees. 

This would be a good setting for a horror movie.

We reached a building at the periphery of the former development project. Its first floor was partially open, with only the support beams and columns in place in its front half. Ride drove the van inside the building. We weren’t alone. A person was waiting for us, leaning on the vintage motorcycle that looked expensive.

“Look, Obe’s here already,” Emcee said.

“I’m surprised he even showed up,” Myra said. “He’s been chickening out on missions lately.”

“He kept watch on the docks and tailed Jim Ambrose,” Dario said. “He’s contributing. Don’t start a fight with him.”

“That’s so far from my intentions,” Myra looked over the passenger’s seat and smiled at me, her grumpiness evaporating. “It’s going to be hospitality all around. Welcome to our humble hideout, Erind!”