Myra Fletcher (Barb)
2:39 a.m., Wednesday, February 5, 2020.
“I finally caught your slippery ass!” Myra Fletcher—or maybe she should refer to herself as ‘Barb’ since they were on a mission—gloated down at one of the Adumbrae enforcers of the 2Ms. “Checkmate, Ichor baby. End of the line.” She trapped him in her favorite move, a giant prison of spikes.
Ichor, fully transformed into his silvery slime body, tried his best to escape the multitude of spikes of various sizes hemming him in, his liquid form easily slipping through the numerous gaps. But he couldn’t completely get away because she had caught his brain, the main weakness of his power.
Myra sneered behind her spiky helmet. Dario was right.
She recalled the tips he gave her after their third encounter with Ichor. He realized that even though Ichor could transform his body into viscous liquid, his brain, or maybe even his entire skull, retained its form. Dario observed how Ichor moved his brain inside his slime body to keep it safe, and told Myra how to catch it the next time they met.
That guy’s really good at fighting, she thought. Unfortunately, they might end up going up against him someday.
Ichor was panicking, flicking back and forth between his solid and liquid forms. His minions tried to free him, emptying their clips at Myra. They even chucked a couple of grenades at her, which she deflected with a wall of spikes.
After all the times they fought, these idiots still couldn't remember that most conventional weapons couldn’t pierce her armor.
But one of them, being a party pooper, brought out a stun pulser. Myra flung spikes at them. She hit most of the grunts, but the guy with the stun pulser managed to remain standing, taking an aim at her.
Fortunately, Johann was there to the rescue, dropping the threat with his excellent marksmanship.
“Thanks, Johann!” she said.
Ichor tried to pierce her, again, forming tentacles and hardening their tips. All of them bounced off her thick armor, again. Next, he tried to find cracks in her armor to get to her body, slime creeping up on her. But she simply shed a layer of her armor to disperse the liquid coating her before it could reach her eyeholes. She hated fighting him because of stuff like this.
“Anytime now, Everett!”
He poked his head from behind a smoldering car and yelled back, “Call me Emcee!”
“We’re going to kill them all, there’s no need for codenames—woah!” Myra felt the extreme heat penetrating through the cage of spikes and even her armor. “Damn, that’s hot as hell.” She breathed a sigh of relief that Everett had recovered enough to use his powers again. He looked pretty pooped after blowing up the thick vine wall earlier.
Sensing his impending doom, Ichor gathered his entire slime body and compressed it, forming an extremely dense and hard casing around his brain.
But it doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t going to protect him because the heat wasn’t coming from the outside. It was going to radiate from a point Everett focused on. And that point was going to be somewhere inside his brain.
Everett always had trouble concentrating energy in a specific area he couldn’t see, more so if it was a tiny spot; he preferred just heating up whatever was in front of him. But he had plenty of practice with Myra’s spike cage, especially targeting the center of it—which was where she held Ichor’s brain.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she hooted as the spikes below her blackened and cracked from the heat. She was madly sweating inside her own armor. “Enjoy getting your brain boiled, you slimy bastard.”
The rest of the surviving grunts fled back into the building after seeing their boss turned to ash.
“That’s enough, Emcee!” Johann said. He jumped out the smashed window of a small store across the street and sprinted over to Everett to check his condition.
Giddy from killing an Adumbrae, Myra did a backflip as she descended from the massive burning spike cage. “Nice shooting, Johann!” He was a technician at the Adumbrae Investigations Unit, not a cop, but his practice with his cop buddies paid off. “And we have another kill, Everett! Hurra—" He didn’t look like he shared her celebratory mood, all wobbly on his feet. “Ah…did you overdo it?”
He took off his black ski mask. His lips were sickly pale, his cheeks sunken. With a trembling hand, he wiped blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. “I’m…I’m fine.” He tipped to the left.
“Everett!
Johann caught him as he was about to fall. “You pushed yourself too much. Here, drink this.” He handed him a can of energy drink.
"Thanks..."
“I also have some food here I got from the store. I know you didn’t have a chance to eat a lot before rushing here.”
“Are you okay?” Myra said.
Everett snorted “Got or stole?”
“If he can make snide comments, then he’s okay,” Johann said. “I didn’t intentionally steal those, by the way.” He adjusted his own mask. “I may look like a robber, but I wanted to pay. Although, if I left money, it would be easy to trace me.”
"Nice excuse." Chomping down on three granola bars at a time, Everett ate as if he had been starved for weeks, which probably was the state of his body after using large amounts of his power.
“Thanks for doing this,” Myra said. “I know you want to go to Deen first—"
“You make it sound like I want to just forget about Erind because of Deen.”
“No! Come on, man, I didn’t mean that.”
“Just kidding. She’ll be angry with me if I didn’t help her best friend.”
“We’d have no way of busting through that weird wall if you weren’t here.”
“This grenade I got from Dario’s weapon stash won’t be much help,” mumbled Johan. “I don’t think I’ve heard you mention someone with this power?”
“Some fart hiding away in the Red Island that decided to show his ugly face only now?” Myra said with a shrug.
“Thanks for the food, Johann.” Everett held up the crumpled wrappers of the food he gobbled, burning them all to nothingness. “You must get going now. That wall might close up. I’ll be off to find Deen.”
“Take care,” Johann said. “The police will be coming here soon, you might run into them. I don’t think the illusion covering the building masked the sounds of our fight."
"Yep," Myra said. "I bet someone already reported the explosions.”
“You guys move quickly too before the BID arrives. Don’t be bogged down fighting. Get Erind and get out.”
“Why are you staring at me?” Myra said with an innocent grin. “I swear I’m not going out of my way to kill any fucking Adumbrae, especially that jackass, Calder, making this illusion barrier. He should be around here somewhere.”
“Myra…”
“I know, I know.” She held out her fist. Johann and Everett bumped it with theirs. “See you later. Don’t die.”
“You too.”
And they went their separate ways; Everett to a stolen car—their actual “team” car was at the bottom of the ocean; Myra and Johann to the opening on the wall of vines.
Johann checked his gun and changed his clip. “I have plenty of bullets left, two magni-field mines, two flashbangs, one HE grenade. Wasted a lot of the magnis catching Ichor.”
“Just make those count.” Myra increased the size of her armor; it almost felt like she was piloting one of the larger ComExo models. “Stay behind me,” she said as dove through the hole, into the building.
A twelve-foot spiky tree golem, she charged down the ramp that curved into the basement parking area. The floor shook beneath her feet. She intentionally smashed the ticket booth in her way. A hail of bullets greeted her, but she pressed on, chasing the jackasses shooting at her. Killing them one by one as she caught them.
Violently. Very violently.
She zoned out as she started killing. She blocked out their dying screams, the final words that came out of theirs mouths. They deserve it, she told herself. They all deserve it.
The guy charging at her with a heavy stun rod? Sliced to pieces.
Hiding under a pick-up truck? Flattened along with the truck.
Reloading behind the cover of a large canister? Skewered through the canister.
The two running away from her down the row of cars? Hit by spikes that exploded into smaller spikes inside their bodies.
She usually didn’t shoot spikes because it was less material for her armor. She preferred saving the bark she produced, especially after making something as large as the cage of spikes outside. But now…she decided she didn’t care. None of these pieces of shit were getting out of here alive.
She used to hesitate killing them.
Adumbrae were Adumbrae, but these were humans.
These hired goons might have their own reasons for working for the 2Ms, just like she had her own reasons for discarding her humanity and accepting highly illegal powers. She could argue all she wanted that she was a good guy, that she was fighting for the right side, but that wouldn’t matter in the eyes of the BID if she was ever caught.
All of her compassion and empathy fizzled out when Kelsey disappeared.
These people might not even be responsible for whatever happened to her sister if Johann’s suspicions were correct. But Myra didn’t care anymore. She just wanted to kill…kill to forget that she was nowhere closer to finding Kelsey.
A rocket to her chest blasted her to the side of a van, but she stood back up as if it was nothing. She hurled the crumpled van at the large cargo truck used by the 2Ms’ men. Green liquid spilled out as the truck toppled to its side. The last thing she expected emerged out of it.
“What’s all of this?” she whispered.
Monstrous creatures crawled out of the wreckage and attacked the minions of the 2Ms. A few of them saw her. They leapt at her, scratching her, trying to open her armor to no avail. Blades burst out of her armor, slicing the annoying gremlins before they even realized their heads were detached from their bodies.
She stopped to observe just how weird everything was. Complicated boxy machines were set up throughout the parking area. Enormous canisters filled with green liquid being loaded onto trucks. And what were those creatures floating inside the canisters?
Experiments? Mutants?
Where did the 2Ms get them? From this building? Were those residents of this building? What the hell? She thought they only wanted to kidnap Erind and hold her hostage to trap their group when they came to rescue her. But they seemed to have huge operation going on here. She hoped Erind wasn’t turned into one of these monsters.
“The elevator!” Johann said as he ran towards her. “They’re trying to escape!”
A small group of armed men congregated in front of the elevator door, waiting for it to come down. When they saw Myra leaping over the rows of cars to get to them, they panicked and fled in every direction.
“I’m not letting any of you go!” She threw spikes to jam the door to the stairwell.
Déjà vu.
WHAM! A car slammed into her.
Déjà vu indeed.
“Shut up!” she screamed, madly tearing the car apart to stop its piercing alarm.
“Here's some more!” someone said.
A couple more cars came flying towards her. She punched them away.
“You caught 'em. Good for ya!”
That voice with an annoyingly jovial tone. “Slinky? Is that you? Show yourself!”
A man wearing a trench coat jumped on the hood of the car to her left. “What’s up, tree twerp? I can’t have you destroying all of these.” His entire body was covered by bandages, even his head. The strips of cloth wrapped around his arms unraveled, revealing hands covered in scales. His forearm muscles bulged like an inflated balloon, his hands turning into scaly wrecking balls.
“I’m going to kill you, you lizard freak!”
“Freak? That’s rich coming from ya.”
She gathered bark around her fists and slammed it down on Slinky.
He jumped out of the way and countered with a left hook using his massive fist.
So that's what you want? Myra buried spikes from the soles of her feet into the ground, anchoring her in place. She received the flurry of punches from Slinky without giving up an inch. Out of the corner of her eye, through the small opening of her helmet, she spotted Johann somewhere behind Slinky signing something.
No need to worry, Johann. She wasn’t going to get tricked by Slinky again.
She traded a few blows with the lizard idiot to keep him entertained while Johann prepared their trap. After seeing her teammate give her a thumbs up, she grinned. Dozens of spikes erupted from her armor. But that didn’t deter Slinky. He was more than ten feet tall, and still continuing to grow. No doubt seeing it as a challenge, he punched even harder. His blows broke most of the spikes, but some of them buried into his flesh. Those ones birthed more spikes, spreading themselves inside his hands and arms.
With Slinky locked with her, Myra easily grabbed him. More spikes shot out of her chest and held him in place. Laughing out loud, she tackled him like a deranged quarterback, pushing him to where Johann signaled earlier.
“What are ya doing?” Slinky said. His voice became earthier as he changed more and more into a towering humanoid lizard monster. “Tree twerp! Ya know that I’m stronger than ya—”
“See you later, idiot!” Myra cracked a hole on the back of her armor and exited through it.
“Wha? Where ya going? EARGHH!!”
Tongues of electricity licked Slinky’s body as if he was a plasma ball display at a science fair. Johann had activated the magni-field mine. “To the elevator!" he said. "Let’s not waste time.”
“Got it.”
“Here.” He tossed her something. “A mask.”
“You’re always so dependable,” Myra said, donning on the black mask matching his.
“Of course. That’s why Blank wanted me on the team even though I’d never accept a Core.”
The elevator car has already arrived, its doors wide open inviting them in.
“Wha-? Why are there dead people here?” Myra accidentally stepped on one of them. The disgusting smell of burnt flesh went up her nose, almost making her puke.
“Maybe someone else got here before us?” Johann said. He pressed the button for Erind's floor.
A roar reverberated throughout the enclosed parking area. "Uh-oh," Myra said. "He's coming. I still don't have armor."
"Don't worry. He won't reach us."
Slinky stomped towards the elevator, but Johann triggered their last magni-field mine, locking him in place.
"Eat this!" Johann pulled the pin out of an HE grenade and threw it in Slinky’s direction just before the elevator doors closed. There was a rumble after a few seconds, but they were already on their way up.
“Jeez, man. What’s going on here?” Myra said.
“Beats me,” Johann said. He kicked the bodies to check if they were alive. “Bullet wounds? But the police aren’t here yet. Who were these guys fighting?”
“Whatever’s happening here, it wasn’t what we expected.” She slowly rebuilt her armor, excreting the bark-like substance through her skin, hardening it layer per layer. “This isn’t a simple rescue mission anymore. This better be worth it, Johann.”
“I already told you it’s just a guess,” he snapped.
“I know—.”
“And you’re the one who insisted we do this.”
“Yes, I did. I...I’m just grasping at straws...at anything to find Kelsey. And that thing you told me about Dario.”
“What I suspected about him,” he clarified.
Myra nodded. "I really hope Erind is the way to finding Red Hood."
“I'm sure of it. You first met the woman with that monster mouth wearing a red hood when you were...” Johann didn't complete his sentence.
“In a parking area,” Myra muttered.
“Red Hood was also there at Eve last Saturday night based on witness statements I dug up from confidential BID files.”
“The night Erind lost control of herself again and turned into a giant werewolf. Just like at the docks.”
“There was a ton of security protecting those files, but from what I was able to gather, the BID did encounter the same creature we met at the docks.”
"Red Hood was probably there at the docks too,” Myra said more to herself. “We just didn't see her." They already discussed this before they called Everett to help them bust in this place. But they didn't tell him about it, obviously.
“And most recently, the incident at Serenade," Johann said, referring to a security camera of a store a few blocks away from the bazaar that caught a glimpse of Erind. "Although, I'm not sure about that one."
“Lucky the BID deputized the city’s AIU to help them investigate all of this," Myra said. "Otherwise, you wouldn’t have access—what was that?”
The elevator lurched to a halt.
They looked at each other.
The elevator car careened downwards. Myra turned her armor into thick lances, piercing through the car's walls, burying into the sides of the elevator shaft. Some of them broke from the weight of the car, but most of them were able to stop the fall. “They cut the cables!”
“Or Slinky's pulling us down?”
“Out, out,” she said, forcing the door open with her immense strength, “before they do something else.” The elevator car wasn’t exactly lined up with the door of the floor, about only a fourth of the way, so they had to crawl to fit through the small gap. Johann held her hand and pulled her out even if he didn’t need to. She appreciated the gesture.
“Damn, this is getting insane,” he said, sitting on the floor. “Even I’m hoping that this is worth it.”
“This is going to be shit if after all of this Red Hood turns us down, or if she won’t even show up.”
“She’ll show up for sure. She wants to stop Erind going berserk in her giant werewolf form. Maybe this will be the time she'll finally recruit her...forcefully."
"But will she help us?"
"I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s the next plan?” Myra said. “It looks like Erind hasn’t gone out of control yet, so we have that going for us.”
She felt a pang of guilt thinking about it. Red Hood was the one trying to turn Erind into an Adumbrae; why else was she there at Sanders Mall? But Myra couldn't shake the feeling that she herself was the reason Erind finally became an Adumbrae, the one that pushed her over the edge by nearly killing her.
And now, Erind turned into a giant werewolf whenever she couldn't control her power. Damn it! How was she going to apologize when they met again? If only she hadn't misunderstood Kelsey's note in her locker. It probably referred to Dario rather than Erind.
“Next plan?” Johann said. "I'm not sure if Erind is still in her room after all of this..." He snapped his fingers. “The security room! We could check there. I’ve downloaded this building’s blueprints—is the floor shaking?”
“We just can’t catch a break,” Myra said pulling Johann up. “Let’s run!”
Myra Fletcher (Barb)
2:39 a.m., Wednesday, February 5, 2020.
“I finally caught your slippery ass!” Myra Fletcher—or maybe she should refer to herself as ‘Barb’ since they were on a mission—gloated down at one of the Adumbrae enforcers of the 2Ms. “Checkmate, Ichor baby. End of the line.” She trapped him in her favorite move, a giant prison of spikes.
Ichor, fully transformed into his silvery slime body, tried his best to escape the multitude of spikes of various sizes hemming him in, his liquid form easily slipping through the numerous gaps. But he couldn’t completely get away because she had caught his brain, the main weakness of his power.
Myra sneered behind her spiky helmet. Dario was right.
She recalled the tips he gave her after their third encounter with Ichor. He realized that even though Ichor could transform his body into viscous liquid, his brain, or maybe even his entire skull, retained its form. Dario observed how Ichor moved his brain inside his slime body to keep it safe, and told Myra how to catch it the next time they met.
That guy’s really good at fighting, she thought. Unfortunately, they might end up going up against him someday.
Ichor was panicking, flicking back and forth between his solid and liquid forms. His minions tried to free him, emptying their clips at Myra. They even chucked a couple of grenades at her, which she deflected with a wall of spikes.
After all the times they fought, these idiots still couldn't remember that most conventional weapons couldn’t pierce her armor.
But one of them, being a party pooper, brought out a stun pulser. Myra flung spikes at them. She hit most of the grunts, but the guy with the stun pulser managed to remain standing, taking an aim at her.
Fortunately, Johann was there to the rescue, dropping the threat with his excellent marksmanship.
“Thanks, Johann!” she said.
Ichor tried to pierce her, again, forming tentacles and hardening their tips. All of them bounced off her thick armor, again. Next, he tried to find cracks in her armor to get to her body, slime creeping up on her. But she simply shed a layer of her armor to disperse the liquid coating her before it could reach her eyeholes. She hated fighting him because of stuff like this.
“Anytime now, Everett!”
He poked his head from behind a smoldering car and yelled back, “Call me Emcee!”
“We’re going to kill them all, there’s no need for codenames—woah!” Myra felt the extreme heat penetrating through the cage of spikes and even her armor. “Damn, that’s hot as hell.” She breathed a sigh of relief that Everett had recovered enough to use his powers again. He looked pretty pooped after blowing up the thick vine wall earlier.
Sensing his impending doom, Ichor gathered his entire slime body and compressed it, forming an extremely dense and hard casing around his brain.
But it doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t going to protect him because the heat wasn’t coming from the outside. It was going to radiate from a point Everett focused on. And that point was going to be somewhere inside his brain.
Everett always had trouble concentrating energy in a specific area he couldn’t see, more so if it was a tiny spot; he preferred just heating up whatever was in front of him. But he had plenty of practice with Myra’s spike cage, especially targeting the center of it—which was where she held Ichor’s brain.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she hooted as the spikes below her blackened and cracked from the heat. She was madly sweating inside her own armor. “Enjoy getting your brain boiled, you slimy bastard.”
The rest of the surviving grunts fled back into the building after seeing their boss turned to ash.
“That’s enough, Emcee!” Johann said. He jumped out the smashed window of a small store across the street and sprinted over to Everett to check his condition.
Giddy from killing an Adumbrae, Myra did a backflip as she descended from the massive burning spike cage. “Nice shooting, Johann!” He was a technician at the Adumbrae Investigations Unit, not a cop, but his practice with his cop buddies paid off. “And we have another kill, Everett! Hurra—" He didn’t look like he shared her celebratory mood, all wobbly on his feet. “Ah…did you overdo it?”
He took off his black ski mask. His lips were sickly pale, his cheeks sunken. With a trembling hand, he wiped blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. “I’m…I’m fine.” He tipped to the left.
“Everett!
Johann caught him as he was about to fall. “You pushed yourself too much. Here, drink this.” He handed him a can of energy drink.
"Thanks..."
“I also have some food here I got from the store. I know you didn’t have a chance to eat a lot before rushing here.”
“Are you okay?” Myra said.
Everett snorted “Got or stole?”
“If he can make snide comments, then he’s okay,” Johann said. “I didn’t intentionally steal those, by the way.” He adjusted his own mask. “I may look like a robber, but I wanted to pay. Although, if I left money, it would be easy to trace me.”
"Nice excuse." Chomping down on three granola bars at a time, Everett ate as if he had been starved for weeks, which probably was the state of his body after using large amounts of his power.
“Thanks for doing this,” Myra said. “I know you want to go to Deen first—"
“You make it sound like I want to just forget about Erind because of Deen.”
“No! Come on, man, I didn’t mean that.”
“Just kidding. She’ll be angry with me if I didn’t help her best friend.”
“We’d have no way of busting through that weird wall if you weren’t here.”
“This grenade I got from Dario’s weapon stash won’t be much help,” mumbled Johan. “I don’t think I’ve heard you mention someone with this power?”
“Some fart hiding away in the Red Island that decided to show his ugly face only now?” Myra said with a shrug.
“Thanks for the food, Johann.” Everett held up the crumpled wrappers of the food he gobbled, burning them all to nothingness. “You must get going now. That wall might close up. I’ll be off to find Deen.”
“Take care,” Johann said. “The police will be coming here soon, you might run into them. I don’t think the illusion covering the building masked the sounds of our fight."
"Yep," Myra said. "I bet someone already reported the explosions.”
“You guys move quickly too before the BID arrives. Don’t be bogged down fighting. Get Erind and get out.”
“Why are you staring at me?” Myra said with an innocent grin. “I swear I’m not going out of my way to kill any fucking Adumbrae, especially that jackass, Calder, making this illusion barrier. He should be around here somewhere.”
“Myra…”
“I know, I know.” She held out her fist. Johann and Everett bumped it with theirs. “See you later. Don’t die.”
“You too.”
And they went their separate ways; Everett to a stolen car—their actual “team” car was at the bottom of the ocean; Myra and Johann to the opening on the wall of vines.
Johann checked his gun and changed his clip. “I have plenty of bullets left, two magni-field mines, two flashbangs, one HE grenade. Wasted a lot of the magnis catching Ichor.”
“Just make those count.” Myra increased the size of her armor; it almost felt like she was piloting one of the larger ComExo models. “Stay behind me,” she said as dove through the hole, into the building.
A twelve-foot spiky tree golem, she charged down the ramp that curved into the basement parking area. The floor shook beneath her feet. She intentionally smashed the ticket booth in her way. A hail of bullets greeted her, but she pressed on, chasing the jackasses shooting at her. Killing them one by one as she caught them.
Violently. Very violently.
She zoned out as she started killing. She blocked out their dying screams, the final words that came out of theirs mouths. They deserve it, she told herself. They all deserve it.
The guy charging at her with a heavy stun rod? Sliced to pieces.
Hiding under a pick-up truck? Flattened along with the truck.
Reloading behind the cover of a large canister? Skewered through the canister.
The two running away from her down the row of cars? Hit by spikes that exploded into smaller spikes inside their bodies.
She usually didn’t shoot spikes because it was less material for her armor. She preferred saving the bark she produced, especially after making something as large as the cage of spikes outside. But now…she decided she didn’t care. None of these pieces of shit were getting out of here alive.
She used to hesitate killing them.
Adumbrae were Adumbrae, but these were humans.
These hired goons might have their own reasons for working for the 2Ms, just like she had her own reasons for discarding her humanity and accepting highly illegal powers. She could argue all she wanted that she was a good guy, that she was fighting for the right side, but that wouldn’t matter in the eyes of the BID if she was ever caught.
All of her compassion and empathy fizzled out when Kelsey disappeared.
These people might not even be responsible for whatever happened to her sister if Johann’s suspicions were correct. But Myra didn’t care anymore. She just wanted to kill…kill to forget that she was nowhere closer to finding Kelsey.
A rocket to her chest blasted her to the side of a van, but she stood back up as if it was nothing. She hurled the crumpled van at the large cargo truck used by the 2Ms’ men. Green liquid spilled out as the truck toppled to its side. The last thing she expected emerged out of it.
“What’s all of this?” she whispered.
Monstrous creatures crawled out of the wreckage and attacked the minions of the 2Ms. A few of them saw her. They leapt at her, scratching her, trying to open her armor to no avail. Blades burst out of her armor, slicing the annoying gremlins before they even realized their heads were detached from their bodies.
She stopped to observe just how weird everything was. Complicated boxy machines were set up throughout the parking area. Enormous canisters filled with green liquid being loaded onto trucks. And what were those creatures floating inside the canisters?
Experiments? Mutants?
Where did the 2Ms get them? From this building? Were those residents of this building? What the hell? She thought they only wanted to kidnap Erind and hold her hostage to trap their group when they came to rescue her. But they seemed to have huge operation going on here. She hoped Erind wasn’t turned into one of these monsters.
“The elevator!” Johann said as he ran towards her. “They’re trying to escape!”
A small group of armed men congregated in front of the elevator door, waiting for it to come down. When they saw Myra leaping over the rows of cars to get to them, they panicked and fled in every direction.
“I’m not letting any of you go!” She threw spikes to jam the door to the stairwell.
Déjà vu.
WHAM! A car slammed into her.
Déjà vu indeed.
“Shut up!” she screamed, madly tearing the car apart to stop its piercing alarm.
“Here's some more!” someone said.
A couple more cars came flying towards her. She punched them away.
“You caught 'em. Good for ya!”
That voice with an annoyingly jovial tone. “Slinky? Is that you? Show yourself!”
A man wearing a trench coat jumped on the hood of the car to her left. “What’s up, tree twerp? I can’t have you destroying all of these.” His entire body was covered by bandages, even his head. The strips of cloth wrapped around his arms unraveled, revealing hands covered in scales. His forearm muscles bulged like an inflated balloon, his hands turning into scaly wrecking balls.
“I’m going to kill you, you lizard freak!”
“Freak? That’s rich coming from ya.”
She gathered bark around her fists and slammed it down on Slinky.
He jumped out of the way and countered with a left hook using his massive fist.
So that's what you want? Myra buried spikes from the soles of her feet into the ground, anchoring her in place. She received the flurry of punches from Slinky without giving up an inch. Out of the corner of her eye, through the small opening of her helmet, she spotted Johann somewhere behind Slinky signing something.
No need to worry, Johann. She wasn’t going to get tricked by Slinky again.
She traded a few blows with the lizard idiot to keep him entertained while Johann prepared their trap. After seeing her teammate give her a thumbs up, she grinned. Dozens of spikes erupted from her armor. But that didn’t deter Slinky. He was more than ten feet tall, and still continuing to grow. No doubt seeing it as a challenge, he punched even harder. His blows broke most of the spikes, but some of them buried into his flesh. Those ones birthed more spikes, spreading themselves inside his hands and arms.
With Slinky locked with her, Myra easily grabbed him. More spikes shot out of her chest and held him in place. Laughing out loud, she tackled him like a deranged quarterback, pushing him to where Johann signaled earlier.
“What are ya doing?” Slinky said. His voice became earthier as he changed more and more into a towering humanoid lizard monster. “Tree twerp! Ya know that I’m stronger than ya—”
“See you later, idiot!” Myra cracked a hole on the back of her armor and exited through it.
“Wha? Where ya going? EARGHH!!”
Tongues of electricity licked Slinky’s body as if he was a plasma ball display at a science fair. Johann had activated the magni-field mine. “To the elevator!" he said. "Let’s not waste time.”
“Got it.”
“Here.” He tossed her something. “A mask.”
“You’re always so dependable,” Myra said, donning on the black mask matching his.
“Of course. That’s why Blank wanted me on the team even though I’d never accept a Core.”
The elevator car has already arrived, its doors wide open inviting them in.
“Wha-? Why are there dead people here?” Myra accidentally stepped on one of them. The disgusting smell of burnt flesh went up her nose, almost making her puke.
“Maybe someone else got here before us?” Johann said. He pressed the button for Erind's floor.
A roar reverberated throughout the enclosed parking area. "Uh-oh," Myra said. "He's coming. I still don't have armor."
"Don't worry. He won't reach us."
Slinky stomped towards the elevator, but Johann triggered their last magni-field mine, locking him in place.
"Eat this!" Johann pulled the pin out of an HE grenade and threw it in Slinky’s direction just before the elevator doors closed. There was a rumble after a few seconds, but they were already on their way up.
“Jeez, man. What’s going on here?” Myra said.
“Beats me,” Johann said. He kicked the bodies to check if they were alive. “Bullet wounds? But the police aren’t here yet. Who were these guys fighting?”
“Whatever’s happening here, it wasn’t what we expected.” She slowly rebuilt her armor, excreting the bark-like substance through her skin, hardening it layer per layer. “This isn’t a simple rescue mission anymore. This better be worth it, Johann.”
“I already told you it’s just a guess,” he snapped.
“I know—.”
“And you’re the one who insisted we do this.”
“Yes, I did. I...I’m just grasping at straws...at anything to find Kelsey. And that thing you told me about Dario.”
“What I suspected about him,” he clarified.
Myra nodded. "I really hope Erind is the way to finding Red Hood."
“I'm sure of it. You first met the woman with that monster mouth wearing a red hood when you were...” Johann didn't complete his sentence.
“In a parking area,” Myra muttered.
“Red Hood was also there at Eve last Saturday night based on witness statements I dug up from confidential BID files.”
“The night Erind lost control of herself again and turned into a giant werewolf. Just like at the docks.”
“There was a ton of security protecting those files, but from what I was able to gather, the BID did encounter the same creature we met at the docks.”
"Red Hood was probably there at the docks too,” Myra said more to herself. “We just didn't see her." They already discussed this before they called Everett to help them bust in this place. But they didn't tell him about it, obviously.
“And most recently, the incident at Serenade," Johann said, referring to a security camera of a store a few blocks away from the bazaar that caught a glimpse of Erind. "Although, I'm not sure about that one."
“Lucky the BID deputized the city’s AIU to help them investigate all of this," Myra said. "Otherwise, you wouldn’t have access—what was that?”
The elevator lurched to a halt.
They looked at each other.
The elevator car careened downwards. Myra turned her armor into thick lances, piercing through the car's walls, burying into the sides of the elevator shaft. Some of them broke from the weight of the car, but most of them were able to stop the fall. “They cut the cables!”
“Or Slinky's pulling us down?”
“Out, out,” she said, forcing the door open with her immense strength, “before they do something else.” The elevator car wasn’t exactly lined up with the door of the floor, about only a fourth of the way, so they had to crawl to fit through the small gap. Johann held her hand and pulled her out even if he didn’t need to. She appreciated the gesture.
“Damn, this is getting insane,” he said, sitting on the floor. “Even I’m hoping that this is worth it.”
“This is going to be shit if after all of this Red Hood turns us down, or if she won’t even show up.”
“She’ll show up for sure. She wants to stop Erind going berserk in her giant werewolf form. Maybe this will be the time she'll finally recruit her...forcefully."
"But will she help us?"
"I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s the next plan?” Myra said. “It looks like Erind hasn’t gone out of control yet, so we have that going for us.”
She felt a pang of guilt thinking about it. Red Hood was the one trying to turn Erind into an Adumbrae; why else was she there at Sanders Mall? But Myra couldn't shake the feeling that she herself was the reason Erind finally became an Adumbrae, the one that pushed her over the edge by nearly killing her.
And now, Erind turned into a giant werewolf whenever she couldn't control her power. Damn it! How was she going to apologize when they met again? If only she hadn't misunderstood Kelsey's note in her locker. It probably referred to Dario rather than Erind.
“Next plan?” Johann said. "I'm not sure if Erind is still in her room after all of this..." He snapped his fingers. “The security room! We could check there. I’ve downloaded this building’s blueprints—is the floor shaking?”
“We just can’t catch a break,” Myra said pulling Johann up. “Let’s run!”
