REND

I picked at the salmon tartare with my fork to check if there was something inside. I knew it was just salmon bits mixed with herbs and some sort of sauce then shaped into a circular pile, but I’d experienced in the past that some places get all fancy and creative and hide a filling inside a dish that normally didn’t have it. Satisfied that Rule #2 need not be applied, I raked a small mound to the lemon sauce drizzled on the plate, mixed it, then scooped it to my mouth. Super fresh, and I did like the sauce.

Good thing the waiter covered our food when we went away to dance.

Like Deen, I also didn’t feel like eating. I did have something else to eat later if all went well. But we paid so much for the food! Cash, of course. Using a credit card was a sure way we would get found out that we weren’t supposed to be here.

I stared at my phone while eating. Was Deen able to get into the hidden area with Bianca? Her Guardian Angel should be sufficient protection, and she seemed to have recovered her confidence when we parted ways. It'd be worrisome for me if she started to doubt the advice of her Guardian Angel.

My phone lit up and a message popped on the screen. “She’s in,” Emcee said.

I picked up the phone and called him. “Emcee, where’s the entrance?” I said.

“Are you going to try to find it?” he said. “It’s better if we stick with the plan. I trust Amber can take care of herself.”

“I know my part is to stay around here in case something bad happened, but I don’t think I’ll be much help sitting here.”

“It’s going to be hard following her in.”

“I’m not going to follow her. That’s too dangerous. I’ll just check around the entrance if there’s something I can do, like prepare for an escape…maybe?”

Emcee paused to think about it. “Okay then. I’ll put Obe on, he can explain it better.”

There was some rustling before Oberon’s voice came through. “It’s a hidden elevator, Erind. Hard to see shit when I’m on Amber’s hand, but I’m not going to move up her arm and risk Sneak getting spotted."

“Maybe you just want to stay around the level of the hem of Deen’s skirt,” I said, trying to inject some humor into the situation.

Oberon snorted in derision. “Ha, ha, and also ha. Emcee’s here. He'd kill me if I had such immoral thoughts”. Emcee retorted on the other side, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. Oberon laughed. “I’m on serious mode now. The entrance is a narrow hallway from the downstairs bar. The bar for the VIP rooms at the...I guess it’s the basement of the club. The way to the smaller bar is on the map I drew for you, but it’s not complete.” He instructed me how to get downstairs as I examined a picture I took of his sketches.

“Thanks, Oberon. I won’t do anything stupid, trust me. Bye.” I gulped down the red wine the waiter recommended to go with my salmon tartare. “Yuck,” I said, trying to stop myself from spitting it out.

I hurried to the restroom. One woman was inside by the mirror, reapplying her lipstick. She didn’t look at me when I entered. I walked past her while checking for feet under the cubicle doors. One was occupied.

Go out soon, both of you, I thought, entering the last cubicle.

I fished out a small pocketknife out of my purse. I extended the blade and poked my finger with it. Sharp enough. I set it aside. Next, I squeezed my phone and purse into my pockets. A playsuit was my chosen outfit for tonight because this one had roomy pockets. I could’ve worn jeans or pants, but I didn’t have something fashionable enough for this club. And I didn’t want to be labeled the ‘less hot friend’; I had to at least exert some effort to match Deen's level.

The woman in the other cubicle went out and asked for help from the woman by the sink to zip the back of her dress. We girls did have a few complicated outfits that needed a surgical team to get in and out of. Case in point, my playsuit, as well as its cousins, the romper and the jumpsuit. I listened to them chat. Nothing suspicious.

I removed the patches on my palm. The two crystals were still the same size. It was a relief there were no new growths. Game time!

Mesmerizing molten gold oozed out of the crystals and floated above my palm, twisting and snaking into a mask. It formed the shape of the lower half of the face of an animal with an elongated snout and rows of sharp teeth, like that of a wolf's or a similar creature. The golden color darkened and turned into an angry red streaked with deep black as the mask slowly solidified.

Footsteps going out of the restroom made me hold my breath. The door closed and chattering died down.

All clear.

I fixed the mask around my mouth.

And so, the mask became a face.

I suddenly turned into a different person. The floor was further away by a foot or so, and I could see shapely legs that I was sure didn’t belong to my original body. No bone-cracking, flesh-rending transformation like an Adumbrae-infested human mutating into a monster. Neither was there a substance covering me like Barb’s armor.

Just voila, a new body.

I picked up the knife and inserted it in the pocket of my mini cargo shorts before going out.

“Hello there, hottie,” was what I wanted to say to my image on the mirror, but it came out as a low growl. I didn’t have the vocal cords and the human mouth to speak words.

The reflection that stared back at me was a woman with a body that could give Deen a run for her money. Which she had a lot of anyway so why would she run for it? I wore an open red hoodie with animal ears over a black crop top that cut off at my mid-riff. Luscious braided golden hair draped over my chest.

If this was my original body that transformed, then I should still have my previous clothes on, including my glasses and my phone and purse in my pockets. It wasn't the case. Only after returning to my original body would I also have my old clothes back. This led me to suspect that this was an all-new body, curiously, with its own outfit, from only SpookyErind knows which dimensions.

Where the fuck did my own body go every time I transformed?

Hopefully, SpookyErind took good care of it. I assumed my original body passed its injuries to this body after I transformed, like what happened when Barb nearly killed me. I haven’t tried the reverse, and I’d rather not.

I gave my powerful jaws lined with shiny fangs a couple of test bites as if clicking kitchen tongs a couple of times before cooking. Using my powerful jaw muscles was almost addicting. I loved the jolt across my skull every time my jaws clamped shut.

Focus. I slapped both of my cheeks.

Oberon’s advice echoed in my head: ‘being undercover is twenty percent disguise and eighty percent attitude’. I wasn’t sure of the accuracy of the percentages on that one, but he made the right point. I strode out of the restroom with as much confidence as I could muster. As I walked down the corridor, a guy coming out of the men’s restroom paused to stare at me. He tried to strike up a conversation, but I ignored him.

I regularly go to this club, I chanted inside my head. Except for my face, I didn’t particularly look out of place with my outfit. Other customers have way more outlandish and exotic fashion styles.

Going down the stairs to the basement, I passed by a couple of bouncers, a waiter, and other employees of the club, as well as other customers. They did notice me. It was pretty hard not to notice with my wicked mask. A couple of drunk guys asked about my mask, but I shoved them away. I continued walking as an employee helped the drunk guys that fell on the floor.

The third corridor wasn’t it? I pictured in my mind’s eye the map on my phone. Down another flight of stairs, past a narrow hallway lined with sketchy doors with weird, raunchy noises coming out of the rooms. Get a room, people.

Oh wait, they were already in rooms. Carry on then.

I finally arrived at the downstairs bar Oberon mentioned. Blue neon lights bordering the walls and the dim glow illuminating the extensive booze cabinet behind the bar were the only sources of light. With just my peripheral vision, I could see outlines of people doing the nasty in the dark corners of the room. Some people here were probably also doing drugs.

Where was the hallway Oberon talked about? Fuck, there was no other path out of this room.

A door was on the left side.

Was that it? Should I ask the bartender?

Oh shit, I couldn’t talk.

Someone walked out of the door I was eyeing. I decided to risk it. I briskly walked to the door before the man could close it. He stared at my face to check who I was, but I pretended I didn’t care about him, my head held high. I grabbed the doorknob from him. He decided to give way.

This corridor was narrower than the one I passed to the downstairs bar. It led into a place that looked like an old, decrepit stock room, with dusty boxes piled to one side, rusty steel cabinets, cleaning supplies, and all sorts of junk. Oberon mentioned something about this.

There were people inside. Two were playing chess at the center of the room and a third was leaning against a cabinet, reading a newspaper. I would've thought they were janitors from their clothes, but their humongous size, barely fitting their muscles in their clothes, gave them away. Bulges under their shirts suggested they carried firearms.

Cabinet Guy put down the paper covering his face to reveal a computer tablet. He pressed something on the screen and seemed to be waiting for me to speak. The chess players looked up from their game. I walked to the man with the tablet and pointed at the cabinet. Then I opened my mouth, revealing I wasn’t wearing a mask at all. I snapped at the air like a rabid dog.

The guard didn’t jump in surprise or even flinch.

Exactly as I expected. Why would he? Plenty of not-so-human people certainly passed by this place when they had an event. And if there was a non-human here, the only conclusion was that I was one of the clients of the 2Ms or maybe someone high-ranking in the organization.

Would he risk his job to contest a person who in all likelihood was a VIP?

I gestured for him to move away from the door. He gazed over his fellows playing chess. They had already returned to their game, not paying any attention to us. Just another monster passing through. He shrugged and opened the cabinet door, revealing another door behind it.

Contrasting heavily with its derelict surroundings, this door was a shiny chrome.

The guard pushed a button, and it slid to the side with a hiss. “Welcome, Ma’am.”

I stepped into the elevator. There was an attendant inside, standing by the floor buttons. I pointed down. “Of course, Madam.” The elevator descended smoothly for a few minutes then slowed down to a halt. “Enjoy the evening,” he said.

I exited into a small room that had a solid rock for walls.

A woman wearing a sparkling black dress with the club logo pinned on her shoulder came to me. She held a box, opening it to reveal a variety of elegantly designed masquerade masks. “Care for one, Madam? Although you probably do not need a mask.”

I shook my head.

“As you wish.” She closed the box and I followed her to the opening of the tunnel that was on top of a staircase cut from the bedrock. “A table for one, Madam? Or do you have company?”

Again, I shook my head and waved her away. She bowed and retreated to her spot by the elevator door.

What the fuck? I made it this far?

That was all impromptu shit!

I let out a huge sigh of relief. I was so giddy with excitement that I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from laughing out loud. Focus, you stupid bitch, I told myself. Time to find Deen.

I followed the tunnel. The sound of my leather boots stepping on the stone stairs echoed around me. The tunnel widened into a spacious cavern, way bigger than the cavern in my dreams when SpookyErind visited me. It was probably twice, possibly three times as wide as my old high school gym.

Like the club above, there were tables and chairs arranged on the outer portion of the cavern. They were on tiers of concentric circles of such a slope that everyone sitting on each tier had a view of the middle of the cavern. Instead of a dance floor in the middle, there was a massive pit lined with a metal fence and glass. It reminded me of a zoo enclosure for like lions or gorillas, and visitors can view them from this sort of gallery.

I went in for a closer look and found that this pit was bigger than a full-sized basketball court - maybe one and a half times as big. I also realized my zoo analogy was incorrect.

Blood, bones and flesh, whole body parts, mostly human and some non-human, scattered across the rough floor of the pit. Three persons—still alive ones, anyway—were at the bottom. One donned a mechanic's overalls, another wore a generic coat and tie, the other one had a sweater. Two of them wielded crude spears while the other was on the ground crying, pleading, and bleeding. They didn’t look like they signed up for this. To me, they appeared to be people plucked from the streets and thrown in here.

“Barty! Pick up that axe!” spear guy one said. I could barely hear him over the excited chattering of the viewers and the soothing jazz music filling the air.

The injured man on the floor who I assumed was Barty cried out, “Don’t let them kill me!”

“Where is it?” spear guy two said.

His question was quickly answered when a flash of shadow darted out a pile of rocks behind them and dove at him. A mutant chomped on his shoulder and dragged him back to the rocks. Spear guy one, instead of trying to save his companion, ran away to the other side of the pit.

This wasn’t a zoo. It's a gladiator ring.

And we were at the part of normal people versus wild animals.

Gross. I averted my gaze as the mutant ate the second spear guy. Weird. I didn’t have problems eating people myself. I guess this was kind of the reverse of a doctor friend of Mom who had no problems with performing extensive surgeries but would nearly faint at the sight of her own blood.

There were many people here, probably more than at the club. How many were Adumbrae? And where was Deen?

After some walking around, I found her.

Although everyone wore masks, it wasn’t difficult to spot Deen. Her pure white dress stood out with the dark cave as background as if she was in a detergent commercial. With her on the same table was Bianca. She had a different dress than the one she wore on stage, but I recognized her graceful olive skin and her unique silver hair styled in a bob cut. A tall woman in a black suit, also wearing a mask, stood behind Bianca—her bodyguard, Xazary, the one who wanted to burn our faces off last time.

They were at the other end of the cave, Deen's white dress like a beacon leading the way.

As I headed to their table, I went through my calculations again. I stayed up all night thinking about various scenarios of how this could go. My success getting here spurred me on. Xazary spotted me going up the stairs. She became wary as I got nearer to their table. Deen and Bianca stopped their conversation. There was a brief moment of recognition on Deen’s face because both Barb and I had described the appearance of my transformed self to the group.

Do your thing you stupid precog pet, I intensely thought as I stared at the space over Deen’s right shoulder. I was sure that it prioritized her safety. The safety of the people she cared about? I wasn’t so sure on that one. So, I had to create a situation where the branching future scenarios might endanger Deen if I got found out.

She blinked rapidly, I assumed the Guardian Angel was talking. She then put on a wide smile, “Madam Blanchette! I didn’t know you were here tonight. Please join us.”