REND

Deen didn’t look surprised. “This is because of Vanessa, isn’t it?”

I nodded. Sure, let’s go with that.

I didn’t meet Big Marcy through Vanessa. Rather, it was because of Domino’s nonsense with Jeffrey. Though Vanessa did plan to introduce me to Big Marcy and join their side, so Deen’s guess could’ve been true in another timeline. When Deen and I parted with Vanessa after destroying the Tea Party base and rescuing Mom, Deen thought Vanessa helped us as her own thing, without the 2Ms knowing about it. Not a stretch to then assume Vanessa eventually talked to her boss who wanted to recruit me.

“I’m going to work backward here,” Deen said. “So Big Marcy told you about the transport boats hidden inside the cruise ship, that’s why you easily found them. That’s suspicious.”

I opened my mouth to explain, but Deen raised a finger to shush me.

She continued, “Sharing information meant he’s trying to get on your good side. This also meant that, for some reason, Vanessa told Big Marcy instead of Mark about you. Analyzing this will give us the answer as to why Big Marcy is helping you reach Red Island, which is detrimental to their business—there’s a conflict between Big Marcy and Mark, and Vanessa is on Big Marcy’s side. Big Marcy wants Red Island destroyed because that’s his hated brother’s domain, am I right?”

“That’s… right.” Amazing how fast she deduced the situation. She got close to the truth in seconds. Her crazy psycho antics made me forget she had higher grades than me in law school; she was definitely not the dumb blonde in movies. “Big Marcy told me he knew only that those fake fishing boats would leave for Red Island on the last night of the cruise, which is tomorrow. Mark didn’t tell him the exact time. Doesn’t trust him for reasons. Completely justified, it turns out.”

“Big Marcy could be lying.” Deen tapped my nose. “I’ll play the devil’s advocate. The tale of sibling rivalry is fake. It’s a ploy to increase his trustworthiness in your eyes by making Big Marcy appear authentic. His true goal is diverting you away from Red Island.”

“He could just not tell me anything if that’s the case,” I said. “Or immediately tell me the wrong direction instead of concocting a fake backstory. I wouldn’t know any better.”

“What if this is an elaborate ruse to kill you on Red Island?”

“The Red Island is extremely dangerous without Big Marcy doing anything,” I said. “He could make Red Island more dangerous, I suppose, knowing that I’m coming. Still, it’s a life-or-death just the same. You seem to be enjoying this brainstorming thing.”

“I’m taking it seriously that you chose to reveal this to me,” she said with overboard sincerity it made me feel awkward. “I’m not simply guessing for fun’s sake.”

“Oh… um, thanks. Since we’re guessing possible ill motives of Big Marcy, assuming he hates his brother, there’s a very large chance he’d try to get rid of me after I, uh, dispose of Mark.” That’s what I’d do in his shoes, I wanted to add, but that wasn’t who I was in Deen’s eyes. I didn’t even use the word ‘kill’. Premeditated killing was different from killing an asshole like Theo who attacked me. “I don’t need to worry about that happening because you’re with me.”

Deen suddenly hugged me. I didn’t have time to react. She tightened her arms hard enough to grind a normal human skeleton to pieces. Then she lifted me off the floor while cheerily humming.

“Hey, stop that,” I furiously whispered. “Don’t treat me like a kid, and no using superstrength in public. You made that rule.”

She set me down, though her arms were still wrapped around me. “Thank you very much for being truthful and for trusting me,” she said teary-eyed, her voice cracking. “I know you want to carry the burden by yourself and spare me your sufferings. Know that you don’t have to do this alone. That’s what friends are for.”

“For suffering together?” I struggled to control the urge to push her away and throw her off the balcony and into the sea. Or the ocean, since this was the Pacific Ocean. What was the difference between a sea and an ocean?

Deen laughed. “Suffering is a bit more bearable with friends. We’ll find you a cure, I promise.”

“Let’s do some shopping for our nighttime water infiltration,” I said, keen on avoiding any cure talk.

“We need to go somewhere before that.”

“Where?” I asked, frowning. “I’m sensing I don’t want to go there.”

“To a salon!”

---

 

I threw myself in bed, bouncing an inch above the high-quality mattress, before settling comfortably, my arms and legs splayed wide. I was exhausted after the end-of-the-day group meeting with the hero-wannabes. My hair tortured into braids wasn’t helping. The clock told me it was twelve minutes past ten in the evening; this hair curse had been inflicted on me for a little over seven hours already. I didn’t have the energy to untie it. I wasn’t tired as in tired; my superhuman body regenerated fatigue away in seconds. Just so many things happened today that my give-a-fuck batteries were drained.

After the salon—I didn’t know they offered braiding—Deen and I went shopping. She got me two pairs of sandals, acting like a mother. She would’ve bought more, but I reminded her we’d be abandoning our clothes on the cruise ship when we’d leave for Red Island. Not like we could sneak around with our luggage in tow.

Would Big Marcy send my left-behind stuff home? If he did, I’d give him a quick death when I’d get to killing him someday.

Our shopping continued to those suits divers wore. Plenty of those on Catalina. We’d have regular clothes beneath the diver skinsuits. Once we reached Red Island, we’d unzip them, revealing our outfits inside and easily blending in. It’d be like that one spy thriller movie where the main character infiltrated a high-class beach party through the water, and he had a tuxedo inside his skinsuit. Smooth unzipping and reveal.

We also bought waterproof bags to store survival stuff like flashlights, ropes, energy bars, and a few bottles of water. Deen’s idea. Me, I was fine attacking Red Island in shirt and shorts, but sure, whatever.

Returning to the cruise ship, everyone gathered for more stupidity.

Not surprisingly, Dario didn’t show any sign he had new information about me. Jubjub was wearing her blank expression, as usual, not giving away that she was sympathetic to my cause. She wasn’t also giving away if she had betrayed me. And I still had no clue what was up between her and Imani. Could I wriggle that in as my next project before the Red Island trip?

Dario explained why he thought the fake fish ships would leave tomorrow night. Johann told us that he accessed publicly available satellite imagery to search for suspicious islands in this area.

“Free images range from months to years old,” Johann explained during the meeting. “Oftentimes on the years-old end. There are sites where you can order recent images. I used the free sites to check which islands were interesting and then ordered specific pictures of them. And I found—”

“Nothing,” Myra said. “We found nothing. I helped him because this cruise is just not my thing. Bored out of my fucking mind here.”

“Er, yes. Myra helped me.”

Possible that Dario put Johann on this assignment, despite knowing the answer, so he could organically communicate this information to us. The group shared ideas about where Red Island could be and how it was disguised. The illusion theory was brought up first. Deen suggested teleportation, probably remembering our Vegas shenanigans with those bullshit doors. I found it funny she was seriously contributing to the discussion.

“You guys talking about powers,” said Myra, “but you forgot the strongest power of all—the power of lots of freaking money. Red Island could be an underwater facility or something.”

I wished Myra was right. Big bad guys needed underwater lairs. Think of the action scene in such a setting. Destroying a place like that would be an explosively fantastic ending to a movie.

Reo thought we were complicating it. To him, the simplest explanation was that Red Island was very far away from here, probably somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He was worried the trip would take days. We couldn’t hide in a small space for so long.

Dario scattered hints that we might not push through with our Red Island trip if it became too difficult. To learn more, he was sending Deen and Jubjub for the next infiltration mission. I was surprised at the pairing. At that point, I prayed to the Mother Core that the cracks in Deen’s brain wouldn’t widen and her wild logic would lead to a dead Jubjub.

Deen was tasked to carry Jubjub in her shadow form as near to the transport boats as possible, likely up to the scanners. Deen’s Guardian Angel would tell her which were for humans and which allowed Adumbrae to pass.

Jubjub would continue and hide cameras, microphones, and trackers to collect data. 

“I pressed a lot of zeros,” said Reo, when Dario asked him to recall how we got to the secret floor. “Erind pressed some buttons too, so I’m not sure what triggered the elevator to go there.”

Dario turned to me. “What buttons did you press, Erind?”

“I-I really can’t remember,” I told him with a distraught face. The bastard was messing with me, so I repaid him with obvious fakery. “Super-duper sorry. I was so surprised that it happened. Reo was being annoying because he wanted to go the pool and forget—”

Reo cleared his throat. “It was just a joke that we should forget about our mission.”

“Deen’s power would tell her which floor to go to,” I said.

Dario nodded. “There’s a future where Deen would press the correct combination, and her Guardian Angel would simply lead her to that outcome. That settles it. As for the rest of us, we also have work to do.”

Deen got a lot of names from Yara—passengers who were the 2Ms’ clients and very likely to go to the Red Island. We were grouped and given assignments on who to look for and tail to maybe get some more intel.

I preferred to shower for hours but didn’t have a good excuse to leave. I got teamed up with Reo and Everett.

Wasn’t so bad. They mostly ignored me and chatted between themselves, with Reo non-stop bitching about staying behind because he didn’t want to die. I thought he’d talk to me more. I could be imagining things but it was like he was avoiding me. We did get closer during our mission, so I didn’t understand the change. Did I do something wrong? Or it was not cool to talk to me when someone else was around? Everett did try to include me in their conversations.

Deen and Jubjub’s mission succeeded. We all had a late dinner and some drinks to celebrate, plus another meeting to prepare for tomorrow. Dario dropped a few more lines that he’d study what the cameras and trackers would capture to decide whether the Red Island journey was a go or not—Reo was going to get his wish tomorrow.  

I was no closer to figuring out Dario’s game. Big Marcy theorized that whatever was going on was so much bigger than us. Different criminal organizations pitted against different hero wannabe groups. Who was pulling the strings? To what end? Was Dario aware of the bigger picture or was he just a pawn?

So many questions to think about while in the quiet of my room, my sanctuary of solitude.

I stared at the ceiling.

“It’s game time tomorrow,” I said, feeling my heart race with excitement. Impossible to sleep in this state. Tired but raring to go. This sucked.

Facing left, I stared out the window. Darkness.

So much happened today, and it was just one day. Many main character moments for me—the restaurant scene, fighting Theo, confronting Jubjub. Fun, fun, fun.

The faces I wore were usually timid because standing out was disadvantageous when manipulating others. However, being the center of attention brought about a different kind of game.

I reached for the ceiling with my right hand.

Deen had given me a new fingerless glove. Yellow and black stripes, like a bee.

I opened my palm to the ceiling, stretching my fingers wide. Nothing particular in mind. Just thought it was a cool move. What wasn’t cool was the lack of sensation in my palm, like it had fallen asleep. Opening and closing my hand made some weird sounds, like grating metal. Sounds flesh shouldn’t make.

“This is… a problem,” I whispered the obvious.

I could keep the glove while sleeping. When I wore it earlier, I had my palm down. I didn’t want to see it. But I was also curious. It was like wanting to peel off a not-so-completely healed scab, knowing it was still nasty beneath. Even more curious about how my hand would look like after I’d eaten a bunch of monsters at Red Island.

Once it became a full gauntlet, would that be my end? Would SpookyErind take over my body?

Would I find a cure before then? Probably not. Even if I could find the cure, I wasn’t sure if I’d take it.

What if I just dropped this and went someplace far away and lived on a small farm or something? No eating Adumbrae, no using powers, just be peaceful and boring. And not fun. I want to have fun. But I also didn’t want this fucking piece of metal in my hand!

“It’s not like I can cut off my—!” I gasped.

After I became an Adumbrae, a small crystal grew on my right palm. I tried to dig it out with a knife. Painful as hell, though I wasn’t used to pain back then. I didn’t succeed because the growth was attached to my bone. I could’ve continued. I could’ve broken my bone to get the stupid crystal out. My hand would’ve regenerated.

And then what? Would the crystal return too? Maybe I could’ve gotten rid of it way back then if I wasn’t a wuss. Now, this golden crap had spread. I couldn’t dig it out.

But maybe if I cut off my entire arm…