“What are you talking about?” I said. Was she finally confessing that Bianca saved her from the explosion at Eve? Her story before was she escaped on her own, guided by her power—her pet with limited but very powerful foresight nonetheless, the Guardian Angel. If she decided to tell me the truth now, that meant we were really besties. Yey, I cheered sarcastically in my head. Oh! I’m going to act hurt later that she lied to me.

“I…I didn’t tell you the truth about how I got out of Eve.” She stared at the cars ahead of us moving at a snail’s pace. I didn’t respond; it was more dramatic that way. “I didn’t do it on my own,” she said after a few seconds of silence that really needed a suspenseful background music. “I got knocked out cold because I didn’t follow my Guardian Angel.”

“Bianca helped you?”

“She did.” Deen tilted her head like a confused puppy as she mulled how to convey her thoughts to me. “Now that I think about it, my Guardian Angel probably already accounted for my actions and maneuvered me into a situation where Bianca—actually, her bodyguard, Xazary—could…would save me.”

“Wha—? I don’t understand."

“I suppose if I’m already telling you the truth about Bianca, I might as well tell you everything that transpired in the underground arena.”

“Fights between humans and Adumbrae,” I said. “More of a one-sided slaughter? Then the BID attacked, that’s what I remember you telling me. Something else happened?”

“Erind…”

“Yeah?”

“I can trust you, right?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied without any hesitation. Was this the time to act hurt? Nah. I also thought of adding ‘I haven’t reported you to the BID, have I?’ or something like that. But it sounded preemptively defensive and insincere. I didn’t have much experience navigating these heart-to-heart talks—except probably with Mom, but that's a different situation—so I was treading unfamiliar ground. I hoped I could approximate a trustworthy friend someone could confide in.

“I met Madame Blanchette at the arena.”

“Blanchette? Who’s she?”

“Oh, right. You don’t know. It’s a name I made up for her. I ended up calling her that because I don’t know her real name. She couldn’t talk like a normal person because of her mouth.”

“Eh? Wait…what’s this about her mouth?"

“Remember the woman who saved you at Sanders when you were getting attacked by an Adumbrae?”

“You met her there?” I exclaimed. I was getting good at acting surprised at stuff.

“Yes—”

“That means she is our enemy. I knew it!”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” Deen empathically said. “Why do you think that?”

“I just thought…um, she’s there at Eve and she’s not human. She must be one of them then.”

“I was there and not human too,” Deen said, turning to me because the traffic ground to a halt again, an annoyed expression on her face. “Not anymore. You shouldn’t judge, er, this doesn’t matter.” She sighed. “She…Blanchette—I’ll just call her that until I know her true name—is not our enemy. She saved you from the 2Ms, twice actually.”

“Twice? She saved me from the Adumbrae at Sanders. What’s the other time?”

“I’m getting ahead of my story. This is going to be a long one.” She adjusted her grip on the wheel before driving forward as the traffic moved along. “Okay, so I met Blanchette there at Eve’s arena. She was pretending to be one of the clients of the 2Ms. I didn’t understand at first because she couldn’t talk with her, um, monster mouth, but I eventually got that she was going to attack the place. I told her I'll help her. Then—”

“But why?” I asked. “You trusted her?”

“She saved—"

“She helped me, saved me from that other Adumbrae trying to kill me. Yes, I’m thankful for that. But that doesn’t mean you can trust her because…because she’s an Adumbrae too! We don’t know how they think. Or what they’re thinking about. I always see the evil things they’ve done on TV. But now, after surviving the…after escaping my condo in one piece, I’ve confirmed for myself that they’re truly evil.” Is this good character progression for my face? I was proud of this bit. I should become a writer.

Deen exhaled slowly, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “If you really feel that way…think of it as siding with the lesser evil. Blanchette planned to attack the underground arena. Could be some infighting among the Adumbrae, I don’t know. As for me, I wanted to stop the 2Ms, stop them from killing humans and making more Adumbrae. Or just slow them down. That’s why I agreed to help her.

“But it’s not just that. My gut feeling was I could trust her. Not worth much, gut feelings, I know. I have no idea why I felt that way. Maybe you’re right that we don’t know what they want so we shouldn’t trust them. They are Adumbrae.”

I wanted to joke around with her using the term ‘gut feelings’, but that felt inappropriate in this heavy atmosphere.

She continued on with her story recounting the events of last Saturday’s night at the underground arena below Eve. Stuff I already knew, like how she helped me transform. Stuff I didn’t, like after she helped me, the guards caught her. Luckily, when I started transforming, she found an opening with the fucking cheat ability of her Guardian Angel and escaped her captors.

“The huge wolf monster at the docks was Blanchette?” I said. “I can’t remember much of what happened there besides what Myra, Johann, and Reo told me after they saved me.”

“I also don’t know what the monster at the docks looked like, but a giant werewolf is quite distinct,” she said. “The guards at the arena seemed familiar with her, so it must’ve been really her who attacked the docks. Indirectly, she saved you.”

As the traffic picked up pace and we were finally able to merge into a main road, Deen narrated my fight against the men of the 2Ms, their weapons, their ComExos, all the monsters unleashed from the holds of the arena to stop me. It was very surreal hearing it and knowing it was me, yet barely remembering any of it. Also, very enjoyable. She left all of this out when she first told me about what happened that fateful Saturday night.

“And then the BID attacked,” she said.

“I remember you mentioned one of them was the guy we ran into at the club?”

“The large man who shooed away those perverted jerks. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad he got caught in that explosion. His body is probably pulverized. If he survived, looking for him to wipe his memory would be a hundred times harder than getting to Julie.”

“That’s an understatement. What happened next? How did you get knocked out?”

“I led Bianca, and Xazary to an escape route thanks to my Guardian Angel. But I returned to help Blanchette—” She held up a finger at me. “Before you say anything, consider this first. She’s an enemy of the 2Ms. ‘The enemy of my enemy’ whole deal. She saved you twice, so we owe her.” I noted she used ‘we’ not ‘you’. “And, again, I trust her. I…I just trust her. Maybe she’ll be a powerful ally someday.”

“Fine, I’m not arguing with you on that anymore,” I said. “But I’m sure your Guardian Angel told you not to do it, right?”

“I didn’t listen to it. It's not the boss of me."

“And how did you help her?” This one I was interested in knowing.

“I’m not sure what happened there. I remember deciding to intentionally put myself in harm’s way to force my Guardian Angel to react. I was hoping it would pick a future where Blanchette and I could escape.”

“That’s crazy!”

“I was desperate, okay? My memory’s all fuzzy, but I think I touched my Guardian Angel and Blanchette at the same time. I’m not sure why my Guardian Angel told me to do that. I fainted right after.”

I see...The Guardian Angel’s plan became clear: shock me back to sanity to stop me trampling Deen, then wait for Xazary to jump in and save her. In that brief moment the three of us were connected, we shared our minds and looked into our futures. Lucky that Deen didn’t remember much of the visions. I didn’t either. “Were you able to really help Blanchette?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Deen replied. “I admit I was reckless there. I hope my Guardian Angel didn’t make me hurt her in order to save me.” That flipped a switch in my mind. In an unfortunate future Deen discovered my secrets, I could tell her she nearly killed me that time even though she really saved me. She went on with her story, “Bianca brought me to my house and waited for me to wake up. Apparently, Xazary is skilled at accessing databases to find my address.”

“I guess you told her everything then?”

“Yes. Everything. About our group—she already knew we impersonated her crew. About the source of our powers, the artificial Core. I also told her you were human.”

“You’re just trusting people—"

“I know her secret; it’s only fair she knows about mine,” Deen replied.

I’m not sure that’s how it should work, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.

“I can already see it on your face,” she said. “Bianca saved me. And don’t forget she also saved you too."

"Zachary did protect me when the fighting started," I said, "and he escorted me to your house afterwards. But at that time, you didn’t know if Bianca was telling the truth. I’m just not so sure about telling her everything.”

“Well, I already did,” she said with an edge in her voice. “And I did that to convince her to be on our side. She’s human, not an Adumbrae, so she can still back out of this whole Adumbrae matter. She said she’s going to think about it because her family is involved in the illegal Adumbrae underworld. Who would’ve known? After all of that, I finally get to what I said earlier about our lead to finding Red Island. We should try to contact her. It’s probably our only option.”

“Um…”

“Are you angry I only told you about this now?”

“No, I’m not angry at—”

“Or do you think I shouldn’t have trusted Bianca after all that she did for us?”

Heh, loaded question. Spoken like a lawyer. If she wanted to go that way, then so be it. I timidly said, “What if….” We stopped by a red light, right in front of the intersection. The streets were less crowded now that we were moving away from downtown. “Never mind, I’m probably overthinking it.”

“What if what?” She locked eyes with me, daring me to continue what I was going to say. She wore a stubborn face I’ve never seen before, ready to defend her actions from my complaints. Very uncharacteristic of the Deen I was used to.

“What if Bianca reported us to the 2Ms?” I said slowly in a hushed tone as if I just realized something, being as melodramatic as I could without being over the top. "Then that’s why they attacked us to take revenge…”

She stared at me, blinking rapidly several times.

“Oh, I’m not saying that’s what actually happened,” I hastily clarified. “Just something I thought of. I’m probably wrong.”

Then she stared ahead, her eyes out of focus.

“Deen? Are you—?” Blaring horns made me jerk. I exaggeratedly jumped to mimic a normal person getting surprised, adding in a belated high-pitched yelp. The light had turned green and our car wasn’t moving forward, holding back the narrow lane. “Deen! We have to go.”

The car lurched forward and we sped to the precinct where Johann worked.

Deen didn’t speak a word for like five minutes.

Whoopsie.

Did I overdo it?

I was mulling over whether to get angry at being lied to, or blame her for the attacks yesterday. For the record, I had no idea why the 2Ms did that. I couldn’t even say for sure if Bianca had a part in it.

Although acting hurt was a good reaction to Deen’s revelation, I realized that if she ever discovered my secret, she could throw that back at me because I also kept a lot of secrets from her. Far weightier secrets. I’d have no moral high ground in that encounter.

That's why I went with the second option. I could guilt-trip her when needed. I could hold this over her if I do decide to tell her the truth someday. The scene was clear on my mind: I’d tell her I needed to keep it a secret because the 2Ms were hunting Blanchette. As proof, I was going to point to the attacks and blame her for telling Bianca everything about us.

Of course, this would all fall apart if Bianca decided to side with her and told her otherwise. Bianca, however, was already on my side…until that bitch got what she needed from me.

Let’s just see where everything goes.

For now, I had to tone it down a bit because I might have caused a bit more mental damage to Deen than I intended. “Deen…I was just guessing when I said that.”

Still nothing.

“I mean, Bianca wouldn’t have saved you only to betray you afterwards.”

“Mhmm.” She slowly nodded her head.

“There’s a lot of other possibilities. Maybe someone tailed you guys as you escaped. Or the 2Ms questioned her and she had no way of refusing.”

“Yes….you’re right,” she mumbled, trying to convince herself. She was probably blaming herself in her head. Time to bring out the big guns of emotional manipulation.

“It might not even be connected to her,” I said. “What if it was me? The 2Ms kidnapped me before. Then someone recognized me at the club and pieced it all together. And that’s why they targeted us for revenge. It makes it my fault then…” My hand went to my mouth at the horrific realization. Very dramatic, mind you.

“What?” Deen said. “No! How did you come to that conclusion?”

How? Flipping shit was my specialty. I should work at Cindy’s flipping burgers and I’d be employee of the month in a month. Because it’d be weird if it happened in a week. What the fuck is my brain thinking? I told her, “Maybe this is really all my fault? My neighbors…dead.”

“Erind, don’t be like that.”

“I’m the cause of so much death. All the people in my condo—”

“Erind!” Deen honked the horn of the car. “Stop that. Don’t blame yourself for what the 2Ms have done. We don’t know why they did that, or what their plan is for turning people into monsters."

And just like that, she was fine again. Expectedly, she was going to jump at the suggestion that she wasn’t at fault. Normal human behavior. "It's not my fault?" I said, on the verge of tears.

"No, it's not. Believe me, when we ask Bianca, she'll tell us about the real reason...and I'm sure it's not you.”

"Okay then..."

“Bianca will also be the key in finding the Red Island. And we will make the 2Ms pay for all the innocents they murdered.”

I said, “You’re sure we can trust her?”

“Yes.”

“I may not trust her, but I trust you.”

“Thank you.”

Maybe I should try to contact Bianca first.

 

---

 

“Let’s finish this quickly before someone wonders why I disappeared during my shift,” Johann said. Deen connected her phone to the car’s speakers so we could better hear his voice; it was echoing, the connection a bit choppy because he was hiding in a stairwell. “Erind, don’t forget the story why you came to our office instead of going to the headquarters which is closer to Deen’s place.”

“I don’t want any media attention so I decided to avoid the headquarter,” I said. “But I think I got a better story. How about I just make the protests and riots downtown my excuse?”

“That’s a very valid reason to avoid going to LEPD main office,” Deen said.

“A way better fake excuse than what I came up with.”

“It’s not even fake.”

“Good point, let’s go with that,” he said. “Where are you guys now? Erind, don’t forget to drink the Suppressor before coming here.”

“We’re parked in front of the donut shop across the street of your precinct. I think I’ll go inside their restroom after taking the blue stuff to check myself if there are any side effects or something.”

“There shouldn’t be any, right?” Deen said. “It doesn’t have any effects on normal humans?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Johann hurriedly said in a loud voice. Then he tried to play it off nonchalantly. “We’re having Erind drink it as a precaution.”

“I’ll be inside a police station. Even if this doesn’t do anything, drinking it will calm me down and make me feel safe.”

“If you’re not comfortable, we can—”

“Deen, I said many times I’m fine. I want this done now.”

“I agree with Erind,” Johann said. “Better to get this over with as soon as possible.” He then quickly ran through the tests they’ll perform on me. Standard physical tests, some bioscanners and shit, the helmet test, all of which could be beaten by the blue vial. He assured me that their office didn’t have the egg pod test that I detested; it was at their headquarters.

Deen clapped her hands. “It sounds like we have no problem then?” She smiled reassuringly at me.

“Not exactly," Johann said. "We might have one problem.”

“I spoke too soon.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.