REND

For a few seconds, Deen and I processed the battle in front of us. I had seen on TV how Corebrings, or even BID agents wearing ComExo power armors, fought up close and personal against fully transformed Adumbrae. It was a whole different thing witnessing with my own two eyes a fight between a superhuman and a monster.

My heart raced as I wondered if I could do this too, visualizing myself in Dario’s place. Increased physical capabilities wouldn’t count much if I didn’t know how to fight. An honest assessment of myself, I was only able to…massacre…those dumbfucks at the docks because I luckily turned into the giant werewolf monster. I had no idea how to do it again.

What if I was the one facing off a monster? What if I fought Myra now? Without the Suppressor, she'd cut me to ribbons.

Deen and I looked at each other. I raised my brow at her then cocked my head at the two fighting, wordlessly asking if this was what she wanted to get into. Her brows furrowed, determination flashed on her face, and she gave me a nod. She stepped forward to get a closer look. Perhaps it was also to show me her bravado and psyche herself up.

“I strongly suggest you don’t come close to them,” Everett said. He sat up straight and shrugged. “Or actually you can, but not too close, then come back here.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You’ll get in range of Blank’s power. I’m not good at estimating how far its reach is, but the outer edge should be near us. It's good to experience some of it though.”

Deen continued walking forward so I followed her. Information is power. I was a fish out of water. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even a fish anymore but definitely out of the water, and even more clueless than a fish on dry land about this new world I was dropped in. Learning about their powers may lead me to learn more about mine.

Half a dozen steps forward, I realized my head started to throb, signaling the beginning of a bad headache. Pressure gradually built up in my ears like I was flying on an airplane with a bad case of a cold and I wanted to pop my ears but couldn’t. It wasn’t that awful of a feeling, the time I got a hangover in high school after getting drunk at our graduation party was worse—that was also the time I swore never to drink again.

Was this one of Dario’s abilities? A field around him that made people feel sick? We were pretty far from him, about the distance from the uppermost seat of the lecture hall of Professor Gallagher’s class to the teacher’s table.

“Come on, let’s get closer,” Deen said to me. I didn’t realize I stopped walking, deep in thought about Dario’s power. She held my hand and pulled me. “Don’t be scared,” she said, totally assuming the wrong thing.

The sickening sense increased and my vision got slightly hazy at the edges. What made it worse was that it wasn’t bringing full-on pain but more a needling sensation of discomfort that I couldn’t identify, as if someone was scratching a chalkboard with their nails inside my head.

I tried to focus on what Myra and Dario were doing. They were at the second landing of the huge skeletal staircase. Myra sliced at Dario, alternating her left and right blades, mixing in slashes from blades that suddenly spurted out of her elbows to catch him off guard. He easily parried the attacks with his bare hands like some kung fu master in those old Chinese movies Dad used to watch, redirecting swords with their palms.

I recalled Dario said when we first met that he was physically weaker than Myra, which was pretty obvious now with her monstrous form, but he didn’t seem to break a sweat even when she was attacking him seriously.

“I think this is enough,” I told Deen. Memories of my hangover episode were coming back, and I absolutely detested being reminded of the stupid decisions in my life.

“Sorry,” she said with concern in her voice. “You might be feeling worse than me with your normal body.”

I grimaced. “It's not a good feeling, that’s for sure.”

We returned to where Everett was lounging on his lawn chair. A red cooler was beside him with a paper bag on its lid. He stood up and offered the paper bag to us, or more specifically to Deen. “You want some food?" The smell of beefy goodness and sweet onions filled the air as he opened the bag. Splotches of grease covered the bottom of the pouch. Deen struggled not to recoil from it. “It’s some burgers, you can get one,” he said.

“Thanks,” Deen said, uncertainly peering inside.

“This is our go-to meal. We’re usually in a rush to get here because it’s so far, so we just buy some burgers from a drive-thru before coming here. We can’t exactly have pizza delivered to this place.”

Deen accepted the offer and chose a cheeseburger from the looks of its yellow wrapper. It was from BeefGalore, a place I sometimes went to if I wanted to binge eat, feel good, and then feel crappy afterward, which was usually the case after I was forced to attend a social event I really didn’t want to go to. Always takeout though; I looked weird eating burgers following Rule #2.

From the way Deen delicately picked up the burger from the bag with the tip of her fingers, I got the impression she hadn’t eaten a fast food burger before.

“Have you ever set foot inside a fast food restaurant?” I said.

She blushed. “Yes, I have!”

“Uh-huh. What, where, and when?”

“Errr, Johnny Rack’s, at 22^nd, besides that…um…I think hardware store, about two months ago.”

“What did you eat there?”

“Spicy baby back ribs. Am I being interrogated, officer?”

“Your answers are too specific and too fast to be true. But you’ll be a good witness on the stand.” Grinning, I grabbed the paper bag from her. “Just admit you’ve never eaten at a fast food joint before.” I chose a burger too. “Try these out. These are good.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, you got me.”

“I can call Reo,” Everett hastily said. “See if they can buy pizza or whatever you want on their way here.” He seemed a bit embarrassed about the burgers. “The other thing I can offer you now are drinks.” He opened the red cooler. “Only got root beer and soda though.”

Both of us went for root beer, Deen more of just following what I got. We looked around for a place to seat but there was no other chair and dust covered everything.

“Sorry, I should've gotten the spare chairs from the hideout below. I forgot, really sorry,” Everett said. He offered his chair to Deen, but she declined. How about offering it to me, you fuck? What if I wanted to sit on it? Not that I did.

“It’s fine, we can just sit here,” Deen said, pointing to the steps that lined the perimeter of the atrium. “Erind, do you have a spare paper there?” I plucked out a page from my printouts and gave it to her.

“Are you sure you’re done with this?” she said.

“Yeah, I already finished reading and making notes about it.”

Deen placed the paper on the steps and sat on it. Good idea, I thought, copying her. I would've just sat on the floor no problem and dusted my butt off after.

I put on my fake glasses and flipped through my notes to our next assigned cases for Constitutional Law class. I always printed out the full cases as well as their briefs, reading the case briefs first then skimming through the case in full, lastly, making notes on important matters which I predicted the professors were going to ask. But this time, the notes I took down were about Dario and his team.

“Everett,” I said while nonchalantly pretending to study. “I can call you Everett, right? Or should I call you Emcee since we’re here at the hideout?”

“Everett is fine.”

“Everett then, thanks. Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong, Dario’s power is sort of short-circuiting people’s brains when touching them,” I said, “and then this area around him where we get headaches when we enter?”

“Yes, those are the two forms of Blank’s power. You have experienced the first one. He can control its intensity, but he usually doesn't fully use it."

"Can he fry someone's brain with it?"

"That's what he wants to avoid. He said he prefers to shoot someone than make them lose their minds. He hasn't tried doing it yet though."

"How about the second one?"

"It's more complicated than the first. He has a hard time controlling this invisible field around him, both its range and effects. It used to be only a meter around him and gave a mild headache to anyone inside. As his powers developed—every one of us grew our abilities through time and training—the range got bigger. I’m not sure how many meters is its radius now. And, yeah, the effects also increased.

“It’s still the usual mild headache when you’re in its fringes, but it gets worse the closer you get. It’s like you’re having vertigo if you’re near him. If you’re as close to him as Barb is now, you can add a bad case of migraine to that as well as nausea. Depends on the person.”

“Wow, that’s powerful," I said, nibbling at my pen to act casual. "Especially, if you don’t know about it and suddenly got hit with it.”

“Main disadvantage is that friend and foe alike will get affected. Our solution is we have to train inside it to get used somewhat to the negative effects. ‘We’ being mainly me and Barb. Sometimes we can force Oberon to try it, but he hates it and he likes to stay away from the action, his fairies as his proxy. To be candid, I also hate being inside Blank’s field. I sometimes vomit when I’m next to him.”

“Myra is right beside him now. She seems to be doing fine. Her armor protects her from the effects of Dario’s power?”

“Not one bit. That’s sheer determination for you. Lately, she’s been insistent to practice with Blank. For long periods too. Normally, ten minutes and she had to take a rest, but right now they’ve been going on for nearly twenty minutes already.”

“Probably because of Kelsey,” Deen said.

Oh yeah! Myra’s sister was the start of this shit I was in. I hadn’t thought about her at all, but that was because I didn’t care about whether she was still alive or not. She was likely dead, smashed up against the rocks below the cliff or something stupid like that. But her body should've turned up somewhere. Waves wash up dead bodies ashore, right? I’ve seen that happen a few times in the crime scene documentaries Mom and I used to watch.

“Yes,” Everett said. “We still don’t know where to find her. There’s a large chance she’s at the Red Island. That’s why Barb is practicing fervently now. We should all be prepared. This is the closest we've gotten to finding Red Island.”

“Does Johann practice with Blank too?” Deen asked. “Would it be more awful for normal people?” She turned to me, “I’m very sorry, Erind, for dragging you inside.”

“I don’t think there’s going to be much difference between us and normal humans when it comes to Blank’s power. From my understanding, we still have human physiology, even Barb under all her tree armor, so we can get headaches just the same. We could get stunned too. Fortunately, Barb’s armor does protect her from stun guns and other electroshock weapons.”

I scribbled some notes about the case I was reading because Deen peered over what I was writing. “I see. The 2Ms crew will have lots of stun weapons because they're dealing with mutants and their Adumbrae experiments.” Rofirio and his goons did have stun batons.

“Electroshock weapons are the most effective in dealing with Adumbrae, the regular-sized ones anyway. Guns wouldn’t do much against super-fast healing unless you have plenty of high-powered firearms, armor-piercing rounds, exploding rounds. At that point, you’re just trying to kill them faster than they can heal. A gun could also work if you could land the perfect headshot. But if the goal is to control them, then shocking is the way.”

“Isn’t it something with the brain being the way Adumbraes manifest in our world?”

“That’s the main reason why shocking them is preferred over shooting. If you can blow off their head, sure, go ahead. If not, better to shock them to interfere with their powers, which does include healing. And then you can shoot them or restrain them.”

Don’t get electrocuted at all costs! I wrote right beside the paragraph where the Supreme Court examined the history of the Bill of Rights. In the next paragraph, I randomly outlined some sentences then wrote: Buy a stun gun? Would stun guns available in online stores be enough? I knew I had to get permits if I was to try to buy something stronger, something that could probably kill a person.

Deen said, “Isn’t Barb impervious with her armor on? I recall someone saying that her armor is bulletproof. Stun guns won’t work on her either. If she keeps her armor up, doesn’t that mean that nothing can stop her?”

“Bulletproof against normal bullets,” Everett explained. “She’s not as durable as a tank or the armor of ComExos. There are guns made to shoot through those, and they could shoot through Barb's armor for sure. Specialized electroshock weapons can also incapacitate her. The 2Ms had an enforcer augmented with something that could shock Barb through her armor. We barely escaped with our lives that time.”

My ears perked up. “You said ‘had’. Past tense?”

“He’s dead now.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No. He was there at the docks when we rescued you. The Adumbrae that went on a rampage ate him.”

Oh, that guy. Everett probably meant the guy with metal arms that packed quite a punch and then exploded. He gave Myra a hard time? I just tore him apart. “One less problem for us,” I said. Everett nodded in agreement. Deen suddenly stood up beside me. “What is it?” I asked her.

“Blank and Barb finished fighting. I’m going to ask them to teach me.”