What a weird tableau: Dario lecturing a tree monster covered in blades how to fight. As they approached us, he pointed to various blades jutting out of Myra’s armor and made motions in the air demonstrating how to perform certain moves. It felt so surreal that it made me wonder if this was all a dream. Or maybe I did die and my soul was trapped in the limbo dimension of SpookyErind?

Standing equal to the tallest NBA players, her blade-feet extensions contributing the most to her height, thorny tree monster Myra presented an imposing form. The full-face helmet of bark-like material covered in spikes made her head look disproportionately bigger compared to the rest of her body. The especially thick helmet was obviously for protecting her—or maybe I should say ‘our’—most vulnerable part; if something happened to our brain, we can say goodbye to our regeneration. And powers.

Tiny slits for eyeholes meant her field of vision was limited. A thick collar grew out of her body armor, protecting her neck, but also somewhat restricting the movement of her head. When she turned to face Dario, I noticed dense overlapping plates running down the center of her back. Did that mean it wasn’t only the brain I should protect, but the spine as well?

Myra retracted the blades on her wrist, elbows, and knees. Even though she could grow blades anywhere on her body, I assumed she chose to do so on her joints for easy and comfortable usage. But I would have to watch out in case she grew a blade out of her ass or somewhere unexpected to sneak a hit in. Her dagger-tipped fingers unraveled, her arms shortening to their normal length as the bark was reabsorbed into her skin.

Bite her real arm, I jotted down.

She wobbled for a moment as the blades on her legs softened, untangled themselves, and receded into her soles, bringing her feet down to the floor. The blade extensions meant longer strides, and with cadence far surpassing a normal human’s, her running speed would be insane.

My first thought was to zigzag if she were to chase me because the blades were rigid and it would be hard for her to turn or stop, but if she could control their flexibility then that plan might not pan out.

Oddly, she didn’t throw any spikes at Dario. Was it because she had a limit on how much of this bark-like substance she could produce and maintain at a time? If that was the case, it made sense if she'd rather concentrate on making all of them into armor to protect herself and keep some backup to repair her armor if it was chipped away; throwing spikes would be throwing away her own protection. Or the likelier reason was she didn’t want us, specifically Deen and I, to recognize her as the same person who attacked us at the mall.

Probably a combination of both reasons.

I squeezed the buns of my BeefGalore burger, pushing down the patty into the wrapper. I had to eat the buns first. I turned away from Deen so she wouldn't notice the way I ate burgers, although the wrappers covered the weird shit I was doing. She hadn’t touched her burger. I also didn’t really care for a burger, but I figured eating what was offered to me showed goodwill and a sense of belongingness, like an explorer eating the food offered by an indigenous tribe to foster good relations.

“Hey, guys,” Myra said, as the last pieces of her armor disappeared. Barefoot with only a black sports bra and matching black cycling shorts covering her fairly toned body, she looked totally out of place in an abandoned building.

Not that her monster form was a better fit in the setting.

Dario unzipped his jacket and took it off, revealing a grey tank top that showed off his muscles. “Hi, Deen, Erind, did you guys enjoy the show?” he said half-jokingly.

Why was everyone so fit around here? I should also start working out. But how?

When I used to religiously maintain a routine at the gym, I used twenty-pound dumbbells, which wasn’t much, I know, but hey, they did their job. With my current situation, however, I could probably juggle twenty-pound dumbbells…if I knew how. Really heavy weights might do the trick but a short petite girl curling a fifty-pound dumbbell would surely draw inquiring stares.

“We enjoyed the show. Sure beats anything on TV,” Deen said.

I simply nodded and peeped a small, “Hello.”

Dario wiped his body with a towel he tucked in the waistband of his pants. “Emcee, can you give me something to drink?” Everett threw him a can. When he twisted his body in Everett’s direction to catch it, I noticed he had a huge tattoo on his back, with parts of it stretching across his rear delts and up the nape of his neck. I couldn’t quite make out what it was because most of it was covered by his tank top.

“How’s your leg?” Everett said.

“Fully healed. As if it were never cut off.”

Myra folded her arms. “And here I was thinking to hold back because of your injury.”

“Did you hold back?”

She grinned. “No…” All of them laughed, and I just added my weak chuckle to the mix. Nice laugh, everyone. I feel so included.

Deen gasped. “Your leg was cut off? I only knew about your arm injury.”

“My arm completely healed when the Suppressor wore off. My leg injury is different. It was during our fight with Jim Ambrose about a week before we met you guys. We tried ambushing their delivery truck thinking it probably held their experiments, but it turned out Big Marcy’s goons were waiting inside for us.”

“But that’s not a problem for you, right? You can knock them out?”

“Normally it’s not, but that was when we discovered Jim Ambrose has an auxiliary adrenaline system.”

“What’s that?”

“AAS, it pumps the blood with a concoction of drugs to resuscitate the user. It has other features, but I’m guessing that’s what happened,” I said. They all stared at me. “My mom is a consultant at Greaves so I picked up a few things here and there.” Everett whistled in amazement. Greaves was one of the big players in the bioaugmentronics industry.

“That’s exactly what happened,” Dario said. “We call it ‘zombie mode.’ I admit it was a huge blunder on my part. Fortunately, my leg was merely cut off, not blown apart. I don’t think I can grow a new one. Barb grabbed my leg as we retreated and I was able to reconnect it with my own regeneration.”

Deen said with a serious tone, “I have mentally prepared myself for the dangers I might face going into this, but hearing about what our enemies are actually capable of… it’s a different matter altogether.”

“Preparation prevents mistakes from happening. While we can’t plan ahead for everything, we try, as much as possible, to discount variables that could hinder us. And we need intel to prepare. Obe relayed to me a general view of what happened. But I'd like to hear from you how the mission went.”

“It went awesomely well,” Deen said. She narrated what we did, praising me for my quick thinking. I acted embarrassed, looking at the floor while sipping my root beer. “You don’t have to be shy,” she said. “I was about to walk right up to Bianca and wing it as we went along, but she would've easily seen through me and not divulge anything.”

“The best lie would have some truth mixed in," I said. "It works even better if the true parts are the unexpected ones.” Then I realized the irony of my statement.

“Amazingly well put,” Dario said. “Going into focus now. We're approaching a crucial portion of attaining our goal of ending the experiments here in our city and catching the Adumbrae in the BID-Division Proxy. Thanks to Deen and Erind, we have a lead on where to go next. This is our best shot at finding the Red Island—”

“—and finding Kelsey,” Myra added.

“Yes, Kelsey as well. We shouldn’t squander this opportunity. When Oberon and Johann arrive, we'll move on to planning. For now, I have something to ask of you, Deen.”

“What is it?”

“Can you help us in our upcoming fights?

Deen’s face lit up. “Yes, of course, I will.”

She answered so quickly that Dario was taken aback. “Wait! Don’t give me an answer so fast. You have to carefully think about it first. Fighting is a very different thing from what you just did with Bianca. Don’t get me wrong, we couldn’t have pulled that off ourselves. But asking you to be in the middle of the battle fighting alongside us is magnitudes above it.

“I wouldn’t have asked you if it were a different situation, truly. However, we have a concrete chance of locating the Red Island. When we do, we are going to attack it. And we'd need all the help we can get.”

“I have thought about it,” Deen said. “I wouldn’t have volunteered for the Bianca mission if I hadn’t prepared myself for this. We have revealed ourselves to Bianca. This means that we're in danger if, in the future, she becomes one of the Adumbrae…clients…of the 2Ms. She can easily find out we were lying and send her people to chase us. Which means we should succeed now. And I'm willing to put my life on the line now.”

Dario, Myra, and Everett were shocked into silence with Deen’s speech filled with conviction, unsure of what to say next, and looking even a bit embarrassed.

Cogs turned inside my head at her statement.

If she already anticipated there was a chance we'd be in mortal peril because we revealed our true identities to Bianca, then…

Wait a minute.

She didn’t even try to stop me when I volunteered to help her! I couldn’t recall she said anything like 'No, Erind this is dangerous, bla, bla, bla…' It was Dario and the others who were hesitant with me joining in the Bianca mission. What the fuck?! Was Deen lowkey strong-arming me into her delusional heroic path?

I couldn’t even get angry at her because I was just so amazed at her thought process. I did want to find out where the Red Island was located for my reasons, so no harm done. She wasn’t like me; I was sure of that. I could barely put myself in her shoes to figure out what was going on inside her head—which I was very good at with both normal people and others similar to me. Was she a different species altogether? Fascination crept into my mind.

Dario cleared his throat to break the awkward silence after Deen’s speech. “Then we will teach you how to fight.”

“I was already going to ask you to teach me. And I also want to try out my powers.”

“Your powers? It was some time since you melded with the artificial Core. But we didn’t ask you about it yet because I feel it’s a personal thing. Your powers might have weaknesses that you wouldn’t want to share, and we wanted to wait until you trusted us enough to share them on your own.”

Deen bent down to remove her gladiator-style, high-heeled, summer sandals. “If it’s not too imposing, can we have like a mock battle? Do go easy on me. You can try to guess what my powers are.”

“Uh, sure.” Dario shrugged reluctantly. “Do you have any experience fighting?”

“I took up taekwondo lessons when I was a kid because my mother was adamant a girl should know how to protect herself. But it was just a casual thing, and I hated those lessons so I made every effort to miss them. I pretty much stopped in high school. To answer your question…I emphasize, please go super easy on me.”

Dario moved away from us then beckoned Deen to come attack him. She approached him, walking cautiously, and stopped a few feet from him, sizing him up. She held up her fists in front of her, unsure of what to do. “Go ahead,” he said.

She aimed a kick to his torso before he could finish his sentence. He made a tiny hop backward to avoid it, but she stopped mid-kick and pulled back her leg. There was no need for him to get out of the way. Deen lost her balance a bit with that bizarre maneuver, but she quickly put her foot back on the ground to stabilize.

She lunged at Dario, awkwardly swinging her left fist. He almost lazily put up his hand to catch it, but she didn’t finish the punch, twisting her body to pull it back and then throwing her right fist instead, which Dario easily avoided with one step back.

“What’s up with that,” I heard Myra mutter.

Although it was obvious that Deen presented zero threat, Dario’s eyes were wide in amazement. He still had his hand up, the one which was supposed to catch her punch, as if he was in shock. Deen pushed forward with amateurish kicks and punches, which made me cringe internally so much that I thought my stomach was already putting the burger I ate back together like a jigsaw puzzle. What made it even more painful to watch as she kept on stopping and pulling her punches and kicks, and doing weird moves like ducking even when Dario wasn’t doing anything.

“Come on, attack me,” Deen said, backing up. She held up her hands. “I would just like to qualify my statement that it wasn’t meant as an arrogant challenge, but as it's your turn now to attack.”

Dario chuckled then I felt a wave of an invisible force that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I felt clammy, my skin rubbery, and my brain and stomach were doing somersaults.

Fuck! It was Dario’s power, and he was near me. The disgusting feeling disappeared. Deen was kneeling on the ground with a stubborn frown on her face. It might have been my imagination, but I think she knelt down before the blast came.

Hopping on the balls of his feet, Dario closed the distance to Deen and gave her a light jab. She stepped to the left, about to meet Dario’s other fist, but she ducked down and it passed harmlessly over her head. Everett cheered her on. We all knew Dario was just playing around, but I must admit it looked cool when Deen evaded his punches.

Dario’s attacks steadily became faster and faster. Deen didn’t even try to hit back anymore, concentrating on evading them, stepping back continuously, giving ground to him. “What? I don’t understand,” she exclaimed. She attempted a half sideways jump while ducking, got her legs tangled up, then fell on her butt.

“Are you okay?” Dario said extending his hand.

“I give up,” she said with a laugh as he pulled her up. “I’m just too slow to keep up.”

“If my guess is right, you have a powerful ability.”

“What is it?” Myra asked. “Does it have something to do with her weird movements?”

Before Deen could explain, Dario cut her off. “Deen earlier said we should guess. I have a good idea of what it is, let's hear yours.”