Temple_GD_
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🕑 Added 2022-11-16 02:16:13 +0000 UTCDespite being Ms. Save the Hostages, Deen stepped back into the office and aimed her gun at the eyeball. She projected a sense of disgust I didnât share. How many eyeballs had I stabbed? More than one, for sure. And eyeballs moving on their own? Nothing I hadnât seen beforeâIâd met an Adumbrae who could control eyeballs, though a bit weird to encounter similar abilities.
âDonât waste bullets. Itâs harmless.â I nudged the gunâs barrel to the side. A nice feeling one-upping Deen, even if only in the not-creeped-out-by-eyeballs category.
The tennis ball-sized eyeball had a green outlineâit had a mind I could control? Where the fuck was it keeping its brain in its small body? Didnât feel safe shooting it.
It rocked back and forth like a beckoning hand.
âItâs telling us to follow,â said Deen, echoing my thoughts. âIâm not getting anything from GabeâI mean, I donât think itâs dangerousââ
âThis is dangerous,â I said as pointedly as I could muster with a robotic voice.
âUh, sorry. Of course, itâs dangerous,â she hurriedly clarified. âBut we donât have a choice here. We canât close the door.â She first tried tugging the door and then pushing against it. Didnât work. The creaks of metal, like the mating calls of a whale, proved she wasnât faking her attempts. âThe walls are probably the same. Weâre trapped. The only way is forward. This thing is telling us exactly that.â
âOr we can stay here.â I tapped the tiled floor with my feet. Clearly, Deen was set on going through and looking for the hostages. She didnât want to try punching through the walls for fear weâd break this portal or whatever this was supposed to be.
While weâd probably find the missing people if we went through this tunnel, this was also a trap set by Finlay. Likely that weâd end up captured too. Deen, anyway. Iâd just return to my Erind body and leave her stupid ass behind. On the flip side, if this were the base of the Tea Party, Mom would be here along with the Greaves bigwigs they ferreted away. If this portal closed, weâd have no other way of finding this place.
âWerenât you going to fight the Tea Party and save the hostages?â Deen said. âThatâs why we teamed up andââ
âIâm being cautious,â I cut in. She was rightâI am the hero, Pino. The main character of this whole gig.
The ending of this movie would be me leading the hostages, including my Mom, in escaping this place as it explodes. Then the police would arrive late to the party, and try to arrest me, the suspicious robot. As the ending music played and the credits rolled, Iâd take off my mask and disappear.
Good thing I had a metal face, or Iâd be grinning like an idiot.
âItâs leaving,â Deen said, snapping me out of my daydreams. The eyeball rolled away, diving into darkness before emerging again when it reached the next working light.
Jostling past her, I stepped through the doorway without hesitation to take charge. âLetâs follow it.â Diving into danger without putting myself in troubleâthe benefits of my Pino body.
Nothing happened as my body passed the doorway. The tunnel was ahead, and the office was behind me. Deen followed, pausing for a second as her two feet stepped on the uneven earth. She awkwardly hugged herself, cumbersomely holding the rifle between her thighs, and rubbed her upper arms.
âCold?â I asked.
âVery. Humid too, but thatâs probably just my sweat from the fighting.â
âGood job back there.â I wouldâve showered more praises to ease her distrust were it not for the metal door swinging shut with a loud bang. No need to try opening itâwe both knew that even if we could, the other side wouldnât be the convention center anymore. âOnly way forward, like you saidâŠâ
Uneven walls with rocks jutting along its length looked odd for a tunnel, as if it wasnât dug by a machine. But it looked roundish enough not to be naturally formed. Other than the exposed wires running on the ceiling and the wonky fluorescent lights they poweredâoh yeah, and the metal door behind usâthere was nothing else other than earth.
This didnât appear to be a holding cell if this was a trap, though this could lead to a dead end, and weâd be stuck hereârather, Deen would be. But she mentioned that her Guardian Angel didnât warn her of any danger. Her thoughts were also calm, unlike when she argued with her pet.
Did Finlay make a mistake?
I couldnât shake the feeling that there was a problem here⊠other than the many obvious ones. I was forgetting something. Something important. Or maybe it wasnât important if I couldnât recall it.
Eyeball⊠This could be the sensation of being watched. Every roll, it would look at us. Whenever it reached a dark portion of the path, it paused and waited for us to catch up. I could see its green outline, so there was no way Iâd lose it.
The Adumbrae who controlled this eye would have the best-decorated house for Halloween, unlike ours. The past few years, Mom just drizzled a smattering of the not-too-destroyed decorations stowed in the atticâthat was if she wasnât abroad for work. When Dad was around, our family would turn the house into the aftermath of my puppet versus the parasite monsters.
Nostalgia for Halloween. That must be the peculiar feeling I hadâan unexplainable fondness for the eyeball. Like it was familiarâŠ
Our short journey ended in front of another metal door with a bright bulb on its upper left. Was this finally the trap?
Deen stopped behind me, saying nothing but wafting airs of distrust my way. I wouldnât be surprised if she had the gun pointed at my back. She was troubled over my split-second mind control, forcing her to shoot the gun, unsure if it had something to do with me or if her nerves were getting to her.
A takeaway was that there was no immediate danger if she was thinking about me.
The eyeball wiggled in front of the door. I pointed a finger at it, about to shoot. Suddenly, it sprouted several spindly legs. Deen gasped and shuffled back. I didnât move. Memories crawled from the depths of the stuff-I-donât-care-about zone of my brain.
Wait a minuteâŠ
The spider eyeball creature scuttled towards my right foot and looked up, locking gazes with me as if it was trying to tell me something. Up close, I recognized the light blue iris against the black backdrop of its pupil. The way the pink veins spread across the whiteness of the eye was familiar.
Eye familiar! Sheâs alive?
âImpossibleâŠâ I whispered.
âWhat did you say?â Deen tinkered with the door latch. âIs it locked? I can tryââ A click. The door shifted an inch. âOh, itâs open.â The eye familiar scooted through the small gap. She carefully pulled it, ensuring it didnât make more sound than needed. âLetâs go. Careful not to hit the door.â
âYeah. With you,â I absentmindedly replied, still preoccupied with replaying my escape from the tunnels beneath Eves club.
It wasnât that long ago, but I had buried my memories of that night since all of my fellow escapees from Eveâif I could call ourselves thatâdied back then, mostly because of me. That whole Eve bullshit was a done deal, the box closed and tied with a neat string. I deleted it from my mind because nothing would come back to bite my butt.
Contrast Eve with my escape from my crumbling condo building. Up to now, its consequences remained, like that Finlay asshole teleported us to this fucking place for one.
And what was this place supposed to be?
Deen and I exited into a neater tunnel, more like a hallway, with finished concrete floor and walls, bright lighting, and similar metal doors spaced along its length. Pipes lined the lower parts of the walls and the ceilings. Still no sign of a trap. Maybe the eyeball did something to mess up Finlayâs plan.
As the eyeball moved faster with its spider-like legs, more memories returned.
Itâs really her⊠But how? She was super-duper dead!
I watched even after her body was engulfed in flames, only leaving after the garage collapsed from the fire, unlike movie villains who left before they made sure the hero was truly dead. Hang on, was I the villain? After what I did to her, I probably was. I recalled the stench of her burning bodyâfucking gross, by the way, especially burnt hair.
âSheâs goneâŠâ I said under my non-existent breath. She had to be.
Though some of her familiars mustâve survived the Skitter carnage. This little guy had a green tinge, so it had some semblance of a mind. They could probably continue existing without the main body. This didnât mean that she had survived the fire.
False alarm.
There was still the question of why we were following this thing.
âCamera.â Deen cocked her head upward as she adjusted her mask that was part of Praying Manâs coat. As we turned left, a fisheye security cam was at the corner of the ceiling. âWeâre on a timer.â
âYes,â I said. âWe need to find the hostages soon.â So that I can get a new puppet.
The eyeball stopped and turned to us. It tapped the ground with its front legs, then waved it left.
âLetâs hide,â Deen said, pulling me to the door nearest us. She tapped the button, and it opened to a regular storage room full of boxes. The door whooshed shut as we heard another door open.
âYouâre good at interpreting what itâs saying.â It was probably her Guardian Angel telling her what to do, but a compliment didnât hurt.
âHuh? Uh, yeah,â she distractedly replied, pressing her ear against the door. âPeople outside.â Several seconds after, she said, âScratching⊠I think itâs the eyeball telling us itâs okay to leave.â
âWhy are we still following it? How about we go our own way?â
âItâs helping us so far. But yeah⊠it isnât safe to trust it.â Her thoughts were clear that I was more untrustworthy than the eyeball. âI donât know why this eyeball is saving us, but we take what we can get. Weâll stick with it until we find the hostages. Letâs just watch out for danger and react accordingly.â
With the eyeball as our ready guide, we traversed more passageways and dodged other guards. One time, the eyeball provided a distraction for us, revealing itself to a couple of dudes in sweaty clothes lugging crates on their shoulders. Were they Tea Party grunts? Maybe men of the 2Ms? They did have pistols strapped to their belts, and it seemed like they were doing illegal stuff.
Or Iâm assuming the worst of people. Deen and I hid behind more crates, listening to their conversation to gather information.
âHey, itâs that eye spider,â one man said.
âYeah, itâs her pet,â the other guy replied. âDonât mind that thing.â
âSheâs really hot, isnâtâow! Why did you hit me?â
âDonât let it hear you talk like that!â
âThatâs an eye, not an ear, you fuckface. And good job for making me nearly drop my crate. You donât want slugs up our ass, do you?â
âJust be mindful of what you say with Adumbrae around.â Fading footsteps and another whooshing door told us the coast was clear.
Deen snorted. âThat wasnât helpful at all.â She rounded the stack of crates and went after our eyeball guide.
Not helpful in finding the hostages, but those bozos confirmed that she somehow survived getting roasted. How? Could she have regeneratedâno, that wasnât important. I should first decide if we should continue following the eyeball familiar. It was leading us to her, specifically me.
Just a guess⊠a slight hunch⊠I bet she was angry as fuck at me.
We stopped in front of yet another door. âDeen, we should splitâwhat are you doing?â
She crouched by my right, holding the butt of the rifle up. âStand still,â she said. âThe door is going to open.â And it didâthe power of foresight and all that.
What she didnât tell me was that there was a guy on the other side.
His mouth gaped as he saw me, the cigarette in his mouth teetering on his lips. Deen hit his chin with the gunâs end, shutting his mouth before the cigarette could fall. âArgh!â he grunted as he retreated, trying to unsling his own gun. Deen kicked his stomach. He fell on a metal grating.
âCome!â She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the door, hitting the touchpad to shut it. Then she bashed the guyâs head with the gun a couple more times. He stopped moving.
Yey! A puppet forâmy thought was cut short when I looked around. âWhat theâŠâ It was my turn to gape. The door didnât lead to another boring hallway. Instead, it opened to a steel walkway high above a cavern that was as large as the underground arena of Eve.
âThey have the hostages!â Deen hissed like an angry snake. She dragged the unconscious guy to the end of the bridge and motioned for me to stick to the door, hunkering beside it so that we wouldnât get spotted. âSo many⊠Theyâre all here.â
Leaning over the railings, I saw throngs of people and formerly peopleânow parasite monstersâheld in rows of transparent cages. They were those that disappeared from the Greaves convention center, and there were more of them than I had estimated. Perhaps, while we were held at the convention hall, those in the side buildings were already whisked away.
Dozens of clay men carrying guns, not wearing any clothes or body armor to hide their true nature, patrolled the cages. Vats and machines like those Stella set up in my condo littered the ground far below.
I was wrong. The parasite monsters werenât for a diversion for the Tea Partyâs escape. They have already escaped! And they were helping the 2Ms with their experiments, probably trying to summon an Adumbrae Titan again like the giant mushroom in La Esperanza.
âIs Momâis Erindâs mother there?â
âNot sure,â Deen said, kneeling and peering through the slats of the bridge. âCould be.â
âHow can we findâŠ?â I turned left, looking at the eyeball. It was tapping the walkway, trying to get our attention. I could just ask her where Mom was. I wouldnât be surprised if she kidnapped her as revenge. âDeen, we should split up,â I continued what I intended to say earlier. My best friend shouldnât meet my former best friend.
âWhy?â
âItâs hard to make out faces from this distance, but some people look familiar. I suspect the other hostages we had saved were caught again. Imaniâs friends who went with them might also be there. Boojum and that other person? You find a way down and try to save them.â
âAnd what will you do?â
âIâll make a distraction for you,â I said. âPerhaps, by following this eyeball, Iâll get deeper into this facility and find their control room. I can hack into the main frame and destroy what I can.â
âThat doesnât soundâ"
âLook! Theyâre turning more people into monsters! You have to stop them. Iâll do what I can on my end to help you.â
Deen nodded. A determined but curt âOkayâ was her only response before going through the door.
With my finger, I shot the guard with the bloodied face, took his gun, and went to the other end of the walkway, trailing the eyeball. Behind me, my new puppet got on his feet.
------
The eyeball looked at me, then at the door. The message was clear.
Time for a confrontation. My link to Deen had severedâshe was too far away. Could also be dead, but that was very unlikely. But I had a new puppet. He stayed behind the corner of the corridor, far enough that the eyeball wouldnât spot it but not too far that Iâd lose control. I was beginning to pump him with power.
I opened the door and entered a dark room, with only the light from the corridor illuminating part of it. I didnât close the door behind me. In the shadows, I could make out a figure moving.
âHello, Rachel,â a female voice said. The sound of heels tapping the ground echoed as a woman at the end of the room approached. âOr should I say⊠Erind?â
âVanessa,â I said, calling her name before she stepped into the light, demonstrating that I figured out her plan, even though I had no idea what was happening here. Rachelâthat was the fake name I gave when she and her two friends found me in the tunnels below Eve club after I survived the BID agentsâ self-destruct bullshit. No one but her group should know about that name.
A brunette woman stood in front of me. Vanessa Minnows, the niece of the former mayor. Phew, itâs really her. It wouldâve been so fucking embarrassing if I had been mistaken.
There was something different with the way she carried herself. Gone was the anxious and frightened girl who faced the gun barrel before I pulled the trigger. Now, she was full of confidence, thinking she had control of the situation. Her much longer hair tied in a high ponytail added to her poised look.
She wore a black sleeveless shirt. Easy for her familiars to move in and out of her bare arms. I caught a couple of eyes on her left arm, staring at me before closing tight and blending into her skin. Her right arm was a curiosity. Overlapping metal rings covered it like armor but with locks as if she wasnât ever going to take them off. Scared of using her mouth familiars?
I adjusted my grip on the gun I stole from my puppet. My finger was on the trigger, but I didnât aim it at Vanessa. âWould you believe me if I told you Iâm not Erind?â
She chuckled. âNope. I saw your metal body emerge out of your face. My familiar was peeking through the grates of the central air conditioning.â
âI suppose youâre after revenge.â
âRevenge? For what? Iâm just happy to meet my friend.â
Comments
Temple (REND)
Thanks for the help proofreading! - Pino also has an eyeball, lol. - It'll be hard to realize Pino is Erind because for her Blanchette is Erind, and it's difficult to consider that she has more than one "secret identity." - You mean Vanessa? Erind never introduced her Blanchette part to her. If she's spying on Erind all this time, she should know about her different forms though. - Hey, Vanessa is still alive. No harm done from the headshot, lol.
OmniHumanist
Typos: The spider eyeball creature scuttled towards my right foot and looked up, locking gazes with me as if I was trying to tell me something -> The spider eyeball creature scuttled towards my right foot and looked up, locking gazes with me as if it was trying to tell me something --- Her thoughts were clear that I was more untrustworthy than the eyeball. -> RIP Erind is less trustworthy than an eyeball. âIs Momâis Erindâs mother there?â -> Imagine if Deen realizes Pino is Erind. She chuckled. âNope. I saw your metal body emerge out of your face. My familiar was peeking through the grates of the central air conditioning.â -> Would she still believe Erind is Red Hood? I wonder how she will reconcile this new information. âRevenge? For what? Iâm just happy to meet my friend.â -> True friendship is when you shoot your friends in the head Thanks for the chapter!.
Temple (REND)
Thanks for linking it! Reading it now brings back memories.
Flying Goat
Link to A Dragon Gnawing its Tail, if anyone else is curious: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/2797/a-dragon-gnawing-its-tail/chapter/25801/chapter-1
