Chương 128: B2. 18.4 - Trees and Revelations

"If you feel like you're getting taken over," said Deen, "promise that you'll tell me."

"I promise." I was promising Deen a lot of stuff tonight. This might probably come back to bite me in the ass someday.

"I'll call for your mind with my Core. I don't know how it worked the first time, but we'll try it again. We'll find a way for your Core to reverse—wait! Kelsey!" Deen jerked away. I imagined the cogs inside her brain grinding to a halt, and then turning again. I bet a year's worth of supply of croissants that she was going to bring up Kelsey inside my room. That was a lot of croissants. Should be different flavors, savory and sweet. Super sweet.

"Is Kelsey staying with you?" Deen asked. And I won the bet. I'd just buy myself croissants if we could return to the city in one piece.

"Uh, yeah. She's been in my condo since I found her. How did you know?"

"Well… It's obvious. The two of you came together at Marsh Row," Deen said, her voice slightly strained. If Deen wouldn't admit that she had been lurking outside my room, then I wouldn't admit that I knew about it.

"Yeah. It's kind of lucky that I found her before the PCM did. Poor Kelsey, imprisoned underground for a couple of weeks."

"Did you destroy the machine with red lights by the door?" Deen asked.

"The short, columnar object we passed on the way to the PCM laboratory? Did we correctly guess that it kept Adumbrae away from the tunnel exits?" I nodded.

"Generates a headache field, something like Dario's power. Other stuff, too, probably, if it kept Kelsey away. It didn't affect me that much because I'm like a half-Adumbrae, half-Core girl, whatever. But yeah, I did destroy that machine when I passed by it. I blamed Myra so that you guys wouldn't be suspicious of me."

"That explains how Kelsey escaped. Where did you find her?"

"At Overdrive's place. She attacked it and killed the PCM members who had taken it over—a long story, the PCM fighting the gangs-thing. And by 'she', I mean the Adumbrae inside Kelsey. It wasn't Kelsey the human killing people." I'd just keep to myself that I knew about Kelsey killing her parents.

"But Kelsey is… Kelsey currently has control of herself, doesn't she? I assume so. Otherwise, you wouldn't have accompanied her, and she wouldn't care about saving Myra. Unless it's all an act?"

"It's not. I'm, like, almost a hundred percent sure. Remember my transformation during the fight at the PCM lab? My mannequin-like body that linked with you?"

"Your Core power, yes."

"It's another of my Adumbrae transformations. There. No more keeping secrets."

"What do you mean? You transform into Blanchette and—""And also, that mannequin body," I finished. It'd be easier to pretend to Dario that the mannequin form was my Core power if Deen would back it up. And I couldn't hide it from Deen for long anyway because the second mask also came from my palm.

"It's not from my Core."

"You… You saved us with your Adumbrae power?"

"Don't think I'm infecting you or anything," I said.

"You're not getting seeded… I hope. My Core is counteracting stuff. That's what actually happened with Kelsey. I linked with her and—""You linked with her?" Deen's voice rose as she drew her full height while sitting.

"I was trying to save her." The hell was Deen's problem?

"While I was trying to search her mind—" Deen glowered down at me; the shadows cast by her Core made her look extra angry.

"You entered her mind, too?"

"That's how my link-power works. You know that."

"Why did you do it?" She leaned forward, her nose an inch away from me.

"If you'd let me finish my story." I pushed her away.

"Please and thank you. Anyway, as I was saying, I wanted to save Kelsey. I thought of looking for her human mind inside her, uh, mind. You know what I mean. So, that's my plan. Yeah, there's the risk of Adumbrae Kelsey, I don't know, going into my mind. But I'm sure that the Core will protect me." I didn't add that Spooky Erind would also defend me.

"And it worked…"

"More than worked. The Core emitted this energy stuff that traveled through our link and somehow pulled out the consciousness of human Kelsey. She told you that some of her transformation reversed, right? That did actually happen." Deen gasped.

"You're the cure! This combination of your Adumbrae and Core sides can cure seeding. Astounding news!"

"Just a partial cure," I said.

"But I can return the human mind, which is kind of important, I suppose."

"In time, if you cultivate your Core, you might completely turn back into a human. And you can save other Adumbrae as well. We have to trick Dario into giving us more pills." Best friends think alike.

"But what's the actual ability granted by your Core? You should have it by now, right? Does your Adumbrae body hamper its development?"

"I think my Core power has merged with my Adumbrae power." I then explained how I turned into Golden Blanchette at the docks and escaped after. I kept reminding Deen that I wasn't keeping any secrets from her. Telling impactful truths bolstered my claims, allowing me to more easily tell lies. So far, I didn't have any currently active major lies. Dammit.

"You're a very strong person, Erind," Deen said.

"I thought I was having a hard time adjusting to my new life. But compared to you, the challenges I've faced are child's play. I might… I might just lose it if I were in your shoes." Yeah, I'm superior to you, I jeered in my head. It felt good to one-up Deen. Many one-ups, because I had been through so many fucking ass situations. Several-ups.

"What else do you want to know? No secrets." If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"The gangs. How did you become their leader? I can't wrap my head around it." Thankfully, an opportunity to lie. A tiny consolation. Admitting that this all started when I wandered into Marsh Row to test my newly-acquired superstrength after turning into an Adumbrae was a no-no. It kicked off a string of events that didn't fit the Erind persona that Deen knew. As much as possible, I'd stick to my timid face and blame all my acts of violence on the Adumbrae 'influencing me'.

Instead, I told Deen the same thing that I told Kelsey—we were looking for information about Kelsey, and I met the gangs. I decided to become their leader in case I needed to go underground someday. Deen hesitantly laughed, unsure if it was appropriate.

"You planned to leave your life and become the boss of a criminal organization?"

"If my transformations became too difficult to hide? Yes, I'll have no choice. Much better idea than what Kelsey did after the Adumbrae train attack."

"You could've approached me. I'll hide you. Not in my house. Somewhere abroad. I don't know yet, but we'll figure something out if it comes to that. Just… just don't go with criminals." We're technically criminals already, I thought.

"Don't worry. I won't return to Marsh Row, especially now that the BID will be investigating the PCM bunkers and maybe the gangsters, too. The news will be insane in the next few days. Or maybe not? Can the BID keep everything hush-hush with so many PCM members they'll have to interview and stuff like that?"

"We'll see. They wouldn't want the whole city to panic. Furthermore, this string of—I don't even know what to call this. It's a massive embarrassment for the government." I grinned.

"Maybe everyone in La Esperanza isn't human, if the trend continues."

"But I'm more worried about the anti-Adumbrae equipment that'll fall into the hands of BID agents."

"Given your Guardian Angel's urgent warnings, it seems that the BID agents can kill me just fine even without those machines. Whether they have those or not, BID agents are plenty scary already. The actual problem is where the PCM got them from—this Euphonia. Another Adumbrae. A group of them? They might visit me next. The 2Ms, the PCM, this Euphonia person. So many people!" I threw up my hands in fake exasperation. Or maybe not so fake. It was kind of annoying that the world wouldn't stop bothering me.

This was practically a license for me to bother everything back.

"It seems that you're more popular than me," Deen said, chuckling.

"Just kidding. It's a very serious situation, but we can't continuously stress over it. Know that I'll always be here with you."

"Do the 2Ms know about Euphonia?" With some space to think, I puzzled over the implications of the PCM's dealings with Euphonia.

"Probably, right? But for some reason, Euphonia didn't sell her inventions to the 2Ms, or they would've used those against me at the docks."

"It's best that we don't know and don't find out about Euphonia," Deen said.

"Our focus is on lying low. No investigations. No missions. We stick to our normal lives."

"Right, right… What about Dario?"

"There's no target, and the BID is taking care of things. Will Dario want us to chase after the 2Ms and the PCM? If he calls for another mission, we'll make excuses. We don't want to leave the city because of law school, and so on."

"We'll see how he'll react if we refuse."

"Since we're in this situation… perhaps we could consider leaving Dario?"

"No way he'll allow that." I touched my Core.

"We're precious test subjects. We'll add another enemy to our rapidly growing roster." Good that Deen was thinking about this. No need for me to convince her to rebel against Dario, but this was also too early to make a move.

"We'll assess Dario's reaction and gauge the threat. The Professor won't immediately send teams to capture us because that'd put an end to their field testing. We have time, and we'll use that time to prepare. Our priority is to increase our strength."

"Kelsey and Myra," I said.

"They'll join us. They have more reasons to hate Dario than we do."

"Why didn't you go with them? I thought that we would group up and escape from the PCM compound together. Gabe can protect all of us." I wasn't going to admit that I initially didn't want to reveal my secret to Deen yet. And if Deen wasn't with me, it was better to be on my own. I had hoped that the BID would track Kelsey and Myra, but they went after me instead. Still, it all worked out in the end. No one needed to know about my silliness.

"Everything happened so fast," I replied.

"After saving Myra, I shooed away Kelsey. Since I was huge, eyes would be on me. I wanted the BID to follow me so that all of you can escape."

"Always so heroic," Deen said, patting my head.

"Now, you can share the burden with me." She spread her arms.

"One last hug before we find our way back to the city?"

"Fine…" I dreaded that there'd be more physical contact and emotional moments now that Deen knew my secret. A few minutes later, we were back on top of the hill, climbing the tallest tree we could find. The good news was that there were no helicopters or drones in sight. There were no explosions, fires, or any unnatural source of light. The bad news was that we couldn't figure out the exact way we came. It was all darkness and trees. No hint of the PCM base. We didn't even know which direction we were looking.

Just two city girls completely lost in the forest. Deen's idea was to wait for the sun to rise to figure out the cardinal directions.

"If we headed west but missed the city, we'll still see road signs and so on."

"The worst scenario is that we'll hit the coast," I said.

"Still would be easy to find out where we are."

"If we continue traveling in the darkness, and inadvertently head east, for example, we might find ourselves in… Lancaster, maybe?"

"It's not so bad if we reach Lancaster or Palmdale. We'd know how to return to La Esperanza from there. The problem is if we miss all the cities and towns, and reach, like, the national parks or something. It's probably better if we go with your—oh, I have an idea. The North Star! It's the brightest star in the sky. We can tell where North is with it."

"But all of the stars look the same to me," Deen said.

"Yeah…" I said, gazing above. I really couldn't tell if this or that star was the brightest among all of them.

"If I remember correctly, the Big Dipper constellation is near it." I recalled this from a movie. The main character was kidnapped and dropped in a forest to be hunted by a psychopath. Fortunately, the main character knew navigation stuff.

"What does the Big Dipper's pattern look like? How many stars?"

"Um, what's a dipper? Is it a fish?"

"It's a ladle, a scoop. You dip it into water. I take it that you don't know how to find the Big Dipper constellation." I sighed. Nothing stands out like a scoop to me among the stars.

"I guess we go with your plan? Find somewhere to sleep?" And that was what we did. We traveled some more for good measure—the BID would most certainly expand their search radius while we slept—and found a comfy patch of dried leaves surrounded by low trees. We bent the branches down and piled on leaves to have a roof. Deen was kind of impressed with my 'survival skills' that I copied from movies I had seen.

"Good night, Erind," Deen whispered beside me. We had light in our little shelter because we removed our sports bras covering our Cores. Deen had already torn hers anyway.

"Good night…" I replied, thinking that I'd stay awake for hours. There was so much on my mind. Plus, there was another person beside me! I didn't even want to sleep next to Mom. But I didn't realize that I had fallen asleep quite fast. Too bad that I didn't get any rest. Wakey, wakey, Erind!