It was easy to find where my one and only mutant pal went off to: just follow the screams of people.

I sprinted down 17th Street way faster than my normal self should be able to, making a beeline to the sounds of commotion. Screeching tires pierced my ears. I reached the corner of 17th and Serenade Streets just in time to see a police car crash into the mutant, pinning it against the wall of the Serenade Bazaar.

I didn’t know what possessed the cops to do this; I was sure this wasn’t a tactic in the police manual when dealing with Adumbrae. Were they really pissed that several of their fellow police officers died last Saturday? But they did stop the snake mutant momentarily. Good job.

Angrily punching the hood of the car with its many human hands, the mutant scrunched metal like it was a piece of cardboard.

The police car squealed as the driver floored it, trying to keep the mutant in place. His partner alighted from the passenger’s side and aimed a shotgun at the mutant's face.

BANG!

Its head flung back from the force of the shot, bouncing off the wall. Bits of mutant flesh and flecks of greenish blood flew in the air like confetti. BANG! BANG! The cop didn’t miss his shots.

Were they actually going to succeed in killing it?

The people cheered. Yeah, many people were watching like idiots. La Esperanza hadn’t experienced an incident where an actual Adumbrae went on a rampage in broad daylight so this was a novel spectacle.

I spotted the TV5 news reporter—the one interviewing the protesters earlier—hiding with her partner cameraman behind a parked van on the other side of the street of the bazaar. When they saw the mutant apparently dying, they crossed the street and ran to the building to get a closer view, sneaking behind a thick column. The Serenade Bazaar, a cross between a modern bazaar and a mall, had huge Romanesque concrete columns propping up a heavy overhanging roof at its entrance.

As for me, I went to take over their previous hiding spot and carefully peered from behind the van.

The mutant grabbed the front end of the police car and flipped it.

Okay, it's not dying. But its face was a mess. I couldn’t even tell that it had a human head. It slammed the overturned police cruiser with its tail for good measure just as the cop inside tried to escape through the driver’s window.

The shotgun-wielding cop switched to his pistol and continued shooting, hoping to divert the mutant’s attention. He got his wish as the snake mutant turned to him. Its face had already healed from its heavy injuries. Huh? Was that its face earlier?

The cop rolled across the ground, evading the thrashing tail of the mutant.

It chased after the cop, but stopped mid-slither, shrieking in pain. Something burst out of its back but quickly disappeared. It was something long with a pointed tip.

The cop, along with the reporter and cameraman, continued running, fearful the mutant was still behind them.

It wasn’t.

Instead, it entered Serenade Bazaar, breaking through the automated glass doors before they could fully open.

No more hesitation this time! I summoned the Blanchette face while crouching behind the van, careful not to let anyone see me. I took a deep breath.

Let’s do this!

I instantly felt a surge of power as I placed it on my face. I flexed the muscles of my body, including my favorite jaw muscles. This. Was. Awesome! I would grin in excitement if I still had a normal mouth, but the best I could manage was grimace with my fangs.

Here comes your hero, bitches!

I had no intention of being a hero—if I did, I would’ve transformed way earlier—but anyone I inadvertently saved should be eternally grateful to me and worship me as a hero.

I was about to go out of my hiding spot and run to the Serenade Bazaar's entrance when I realized there was a high chance the crowd of onlookers would record me with their phones. This place has a side entrance, right? I visited this bazaar a couple of times before when I was looking for various brands of tea.

I returned to 17th Street and hurried along the side of the building.

There!

Several people exited the side entrance, pushing and shoving to escape, pitifully scrambling over one another in their single-minded goal to save themselves even at the expense of hurting others. Snake mutant buddy must be wreaking havoc inside. Some dumbfucks still carried their groceries while escaping. I think a person was getting trampled by the crowd.

A huge mess.

Which was good for me.

In their panic, they didn’t notice the strange woman in a cosplay-looking getup with a fanged mask crowd surfing through them. I wanted to growl in frustration because they kept pushing me back, but I kept myself in control. Eventually, I was able to extract myself from the horde without throwing anyone in the air in a fit of rage.

The building had three floors full of stores with skylight roof-covered corridors traversing it in a grid-like pattern. This way, shoppers could see the stores on the upper levels from the ground floor. Ample sunlight filtered in for the lush plants. It would be more accurate to describe it as a small town of three-story shops connected by bridges under one huge transparent roof.

I went up to the second floor and headed to the front part of the building hoping to find the trail of the mutant. Luckily, I spotted the reporter across the circular atrium lobby with her ever-trusty camera guy. She seemed to know where to go.

Bridge. Where was the bridge to get to the other side?

Damn it! I descended back to the ground floor, ran across the lobby, then went back up the second floor to look for them.

Straight down the row of stores selling rolls of fabrics; all of them were empty, everyone having wisely run away to somewhere not fucking here. I came upon a small square garden at the middle of the intersection of the bazaar’s corridors.

“Help!” a despairing plea echoed in the uncomfortable silence of the usually bustling marketplace.

The snake mutant was beside the fountain at the center of the garden. It had captured a couple of people, its body wrapped around them, slowly squeezing. Another body was beneath the end of its tail, squished flat. A woman covered in blood was trying to hide behind a lush fern at the edge of the garden.

“Please help us!” cried the people constricted by the mutant, struggling to breathe.

It didn’t stop tightening the coil…

I snarled in disgust.

That wasn’t a good sight. Like squeezing peas out of a pod. Except the pod was a human body and the peas were blood, bones, and guts.

As I instinctively turned away, I spotted the TV5 people. I bent down and hid behind the floor railings—not a particularly good hiding spot. They were a floor above me on the other side of the garden. I could cross the bridge to get to their side. Should I go over there and destroy their camera before going down to fight the mutant?

I was sure this place had security cameras which already captured me running around. But those were blurry, shitty footage. It was another thing to be broadcasted on the news. I’d rather not want that, thank you very much.

My heart pounded in anticipation.

This was the first time I used my power since the fight at the underground arena. Would I be able to control myself now? I swear I can stop myself from eating too much, just limit it to the snake mutant. Also, I should finish before more police and BID agents arrived. I might not be able to control myself if reinforcements kept coming. And if it came to that, I'd have no choice but to keep on eating them to survive.

I wanted to avoid killing normal humans if possible. I wasn’t a monster.

Ok, I am. But I was still a human in my head.

“Stop that!”

A cop? A BID agent? Were they already here? No, it was a security guard of the Serenade Bazaar based on his uniform.

Seriously? I almost felt sorry for the guy that I considered jumping in now before he stupidly got himself killed. Yet, a part of me wanted to see this one play out.

“Stop!” the guard yelled again. He had a taser in his hand.

The mutant didn’t heed his call. No surprises there. It glided to the woman by the ferns. The woman made no attempts to escape. Perhaps injured, perhaps frozen by fear.

Showing an amazing display of courage, the guard went up behind the snake mutant and shot the back of its head with his taser. I almost clapped my clawed hands to cheer for him.

A normal human hit by a taser would’ve seized up and hit the floor, convulsing. A normal Adumbrae hit by a powerful electroshock weapon like a Skitter’s would also end up convulsing, barely able to control their powers like what happened to Rob. An Adumbrae, or a mutant, in this case, hit by a normal taser would do...nothing. If it connected. The prong thingies of the taser just bounced off the scales of the mutant.

It raised its tail.

Folks, we all know what’s coming next. A pancaked security guard.

But the tail didn’t slam down on the poor guard going way above and beyond his pay grade. A pole-like object erupted out of the mutant’s tail and embedded itself to the floor, nailing the tail to the ground. My eyes widened. What was that? A spear?

I looked around to check. No one threw a spear or anything. On the third floor, the TV5 crew didn’t seem to notice what had happened. Where could it have come from?

Hold on…The spear didn’t skewer the tail.

It came out of one side of the tail, the side towards me. The news people couldn't see it from their side. As the mutant tried to free itself, I saw there was no entry point on the other side of the tail, the other half of the spear was nowhere to be seen.

It fucking grew out of the tail!

Was it the same thing I saw earlier?

This had to be a friggin’ power. Sufficiently advanced technology may seem like magic, but I didn’t think the BID had developed the technology that could make spears just grow out of the body. This is some supernatural shit. It reminded me of the time Myra nearly killed me. One of her fucking tree bark-like spikes grew out of my body. But that was because a splinter got lodged inside my stomach.

Here, I didn’t spot anyone, or anything, that could’ve been the source of the spear.

I crouched lower and started to crawl towards a post to better hide myself. There must be an Adumbrae somewhere around here. Maybe someone from the 2Ms’ organization. However, why would an Adumbrae want to kill this mutant? To cover their tracks?

What if this wasn’t an Adumbrae? What if...it was a Corebring?

The snake mutant grabbed the spear with its many hands and attempted to pull it out. It should’ve been easy for it to dislodge given its strength, but it couldn’t uproot it from the ground. Unsure of how to free itself, it lunged at the guard who was still in striking distance. The spear went back into its tail, freeing it, but the mutant suddenly stopped, shrieking in pain.

At first, I didn’t understand what happened. After I changed my position to get a better view, I realized that the hocus-pocus spear emerged beneath it, out of its belly, as if someone speared it from above but only the half of the spear that passed through the mutant’s body was visible. Yet again, it was stuck in place, held by the spear. Its arms, inches from grabbing the guard.

Amazed at his luck, the guard went around the monster and rushed to the aid of the survivor by the ferns. What a swell guy.

The mutant pushed on the floor, struggling to free itself. The spear held firm. It pounded on the floor in anger, cracking the tiles. Suddenly, it was free again! It was able to move several feet as the spear went back in its body, only to emerge out the bottom of its jaw. I didn’t need x-ray vision powers to know part of the spear was inside its head.

Game over? That thing’s gotta be dead. Its brain was done for.

The spear disappeared. It didn’t recede into the mutant’s body as it previously did. It simply vanished. The monster fell to the ground. Motionless.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the pair from TV5 had left their spot. They were probably going down to get a closer look at the dead mutant.

I should probably make my escape now to avoid the same fate as my snake mutant buddy. No way I could fight whatever this was that killed it.

As I turned to leave, an angry bellow echoed. The mutant was back up again?

It raised the upper half of its body to scout for danger, seeking its attacker. How did it survive having its brain destroyed? As its head swept in my direction, I got my answer.

It had a different face.

Either its brain wasn’t inside its head, or it had multiple brains. What a dumbass I was to assume monsters would have one brain, or that their brain would be in the same place as a human’s.

The TV5 reporter emerged on the second floor, having gone down the stairs. The cameraman looked over the floor railings and pointed his camera at the mutant.

And then the spear appeared again.

It shot through the mutant’s flank, towards my side as before. It got absorbed back into its body and immediately emerged out of another place but still towards me. It kept on repeating this like a grim whack-a-mole, the spear being the mole. Brownish-green blood from the mutant coated the tiles. The mutant dragged itself across the floor with its arms as the spears continued to go in and out of its body, slowly killing it.

My prey!

I assumed whoever was doing this was looking for the brain inside the mutant’s body.

Wait a minute…the camera…

When I first saw the spear, it was outside Serenade Bazaar. That time, the camera guy came nearer for a better shot. The spear appeared on the side not facing the camera. Then it disappeared—vanished, instead of just going back in the mutant’s body—when the cameraman ran away.

Now, the spear appeared on my side, the side opposite the camera. It disappeared when the cameraman went down from the third floor. It reappeared when he pointed the camera once again at the mutant.

Was someone spearing my snake buddy through the camera?

Holy fucking shit.

I made a dash to the bridge that to the other side of the garden, keeping my head below the floor railings. I had to destroy the camera before my monster pal died.

The reporter and the cameraman didn’t notice me coming over. They were perplexed at what was happening to the mutant, keeping the camera trained on it. Don’t point that thing at me, I prayed as I made a mad dash toward them.

At the last moment, perhaps hearing my frantic footsteps, the cameraman turned to me. Focused on the line of sight of the camera, it was as if the entire world slowed down. I bent low, dove at it with my claws out, and swung wildly.

“What the…” the cameraman said as I smashed the camera out of his hands. He fell on his butt. The news reporter screamed at my sudden appearance and threw her microphone at me.

I didn’t mind them. I jumped over the railings to my snake buddy, to my prey, to my food.

Snake buddy! Don’t die before I can eat you!