I yanked out the spike from the gorilla monster’s eye socket and tried to stab its other eye. It turned away. I missed but did scratch its flat nose. It violently shook its head, whipping me back and forth. I hung on. Keep your joints together!

Thick fingers closed around my chest. I timed another pass at the other eye. Its remaining pupil widened as the sharp end of the insect monster leg pierced it.

“Take that!” I yelled in celebration just before it finally peeled me off its face. I abandoned my arms, my right arm remained inside its mouth while the left still grasped the spike jammed in its eye.

It threw me on the floor—just my head and a torso remaining—and stomped on me. But I didn’t care; there was no way I was going to die with this body. (Doms, where are—), I started my question, but she was already in front of me, slicing at the monster’s legs that were trying to flatten me.

The monster stumbled backwards on the rubble. I rolled my body away from it, freaking hard to do with no limbs.

It swung it arms around, blindly trying to grab Doms, but she managed to duck each time even with her heavy armor. She continued hacking at the monster’s legs, making sure it was never getting up. Then something shiny flew in the air. “My knife!” Doms said.

It broke? “Oh, shit,” I said. (Weapon! Something to cut the spinal cord.) We needed to kill this fucker fast even if it was already incapacitated. The parasite might decide to devour this body and start round two. “Doms, what are you…what is that?” (Hey, I told you not to use the power I gave you), I continued using our mental link, making sure she heard me.

The white bone gauntlet Doms was wearing had extended and formed into a sharp end, like the pointy tip of a giant pickaxe. (See? Weapon), she said to me. She jumped at the back of gorilla monster that was crawling away and chiseled at the exposed vertebrae.

This was one of the abilities of the armor finger?

Cool.

But this presented another reason why it was imperative we finished this fast. I wasn’t certain what the negative effects of the power were, just that it was bad and I didn’t want her to suffer them. Not while we were teammates anyway.

My legs clinked back in place, and I stood up after some awkward maneuvering. (Focus on the spinal cord. I’ll take care of the gorilla.)

The monster spat out a mixture of blood and black goo as my right arm, which it had stupidly swallowed, continued to wreak havoc inside it. It looked like it was trying to puke it out, but I grabbed on to something inside. Maybe the opening of its stomach? Gross when I think about it.

My left arm still hung from the spike jutting out of its eye socket. I called for it with my mind. As it flew back to my elbow, it also pulled out the spike along with it, leaving a fountain of blood gushing from the gorilla monster’s eye socket. Guttural wails of pain echoed in the room.

The monster curled up on the floor, one hand clutching its stomach, its other covering its eyes. The monster’s green hue was beginning to dim. The red color of the parasite was following suit. Props to Doms for her nice work.

We’re not done yet, big guy.

I concentrated on retrieving my right hand from inside its stomach. It shot out of the monster’s screaming mouth, followed by a fresh wave of black goo.

Finally, all my limbs were back in place. I ran to the gorilla monster’s head and, with both hands holding the insect leg, stabbed its ear as deep as I could.

Reach the brain! I encouraged the spike as if it was going to listen to me. The monster shrieked and tried to smash everything in its death throes. It caught me with a downward slap, flattening me on the ground once again.

It tried to push itself upright and roared.

“Seriously? You’re still alive?”

Then it suddenly turned limp and fell on me, its massive body was like a concrete slab pinning me to the floor.

“Get off me! (Doms, help me!)

(Is the parasite already dead?)

Right, forgot about that. (Not yet.) She really didn’t need me to tell her that because I could see the red outline of the parasite through the body of the monster as if I had x-ray vision. It was forming into tentacles, consuming the biomass of its host.

I hoped Doms wouldn’t get incapacitated or something stupid because I couldn’t move the dead monster on my own. I’d be pinned here until the time limit of this face, or even before that if some other monster asshole wound up finding Lizzie hiding with my human body in the janitor’s closet and eat them both. While having this body was fun, I’d rather have super strength in times like these.

Still, this was a fulfilling fight. Especially because I didn’t use super strength to kill this big guy.

Doms was prompt on her job. I could see from her green color interacting with the parasite’s red. She cut off the tentacles as they were just forming. The red slowly faded.

(There. It’s dead), I told her.

“I’ll get you out of there,” she said.

After several seconds, one side of the monster corpse was lifted a few inches up allowing me to scamper out from underneath it. Doms had found a piece of rebar from the wreckage of the destroyed ceiling and used it as a lever to free me.

“Thanks for that. Awesome teamwork once again,” I said with an acknowledging nod. I noticed she had formed a crude bony blade with the armor on her arm. I guessed that was what she used to prune the tentacles of the parasite.

“We should hurry back,” she said.

“Yes, the noise might’ve attracted other monsters. And Lizzie—”

“No, I don’t mean that. You could probably still save the father of those two kids up there.”

“Oh, right.” The monster did fuck him up pretty badly. Since I was a ‘good guy’, I should try to do heroic things. An idea popped in my head. “Of course. I’ll see what I can do. How do we get back there?”

“Let me just absorb this monster to add to my armor then we’ll find the stairs going up.”

I grabbed her hand just before she could touch the dead monster. “There’s no need for that now.”

Earlier, on our way to aid of the survivors upstairs, we discovered that Doms, when linked with the armor finger, could absorb monster corpses to build her armor instead of using her own…um, energy or something. Actually, I wasn’t certain how the bone armor finger worked, except that the first guy I tested it on panicked when monsters were attacking him, subconsciously made his armor extremely thick, and ended up fainting. His armor then fell apart and he got eaten by the monsters.

Perhaps absorbing dead bodies was the correct way of using the armor power. Doms did mention the sensation came to her when we passed the corpse of the insect monster where I got my spike weapon from.

“Why not?” she said. “This corpse will be wasted.”

“I’m going to disconnect my power from you now,” I said.

“Hold on—” she begun to say, but chunks of her armor started falling off and crumbling to dust.

“You’re a normal human,” I said. “I haven’t used this power on a normal human before. It’s usually with fellow Adumbrae when we fight. Oh, I guess I did use it once on an augmented human, but that’s very different from your case.” I was having fun making up a backstory for this face, or whole new body more like. “There’s no telling what will happen if you’re exposed to my power for long periods of time.” I paused to examine her as the helmet covering her face fell apart. “You already don’t look so good,” I said, observing her skin pallor.

“I’m fine,” she said with a shrug. “You can heal me. Who knows when we’ll find a free monster corpse this large without any other monster bothering us?”

“If you increase your armor, you’ll have a hard time jumping back up." I pointed up at the hole in the ceiling. "And yeah, I think going through here is our best bet.”

“But—”

“You’ll be too heavy to jump. If we take the stairs, we’ll probably meet other monsters and will be forced to fight. It’s a waste of time.”

“Just give me more strength. My body will be able to take it. I…I don’t want to be weak again.”

“You want strength to protect your daughter? I understand that. I really do. Don’t forget I’m an Adumbrae,” I said. I paused and looked at her in the eye to give weight to my words. She faltered and looked away, realizing what she was saying.

“Ah…er…I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Anyway, I don’t want to use my powers, be it giving you strength or healing or whatever, if I really don’t need to. It only delays gathering enough energy to use my power on myself. I will need it if we meet the Adumbrae responsible for all of this.” I kicked the gorilla’s head. “This guy is nothing compared to fighting an Adumbrae, especially one that has control of their mental faculties.” A pat on the back to congratulate myself for concocting a believable reason on the fly why I couldn’t continue giving her power instead of, you know, saying that she might go out the same way as her husband. And I even sounded like an experienced fighter.

"Yes, but—"

"And I'd rather use my energy on healing the injured guy up there, who might be already dead because we're taking too long to get to them."

She sighed in a resigned tone. “Yes, you're...right. You're right. Just give me enough strength to jump up to the next floor."

"Throw me up first.”

I left behind my legs and arms so Doms, with minimal help from my strength finger, would have an easier time tossing me back to the 21st floor before leaping up herself. It was a simple matter of pulling my limbs back to their sockets.

I let Doms take the lead in approaching the grieving kids because, duh, it would be hard to…um…introduce myself to them. She was adamant not to lie to those kids about my ‘true identity’ since we'd be taking them in our group.

The two kids, probably high schoolers, were named Paolo and Julie. And I was right that the bald guy was their dad. Unfortunately, they weren’t so accepting of me. Especially when Doms tried to explain who, or rather what I was, to them.

“You told us a Corebring was helping you!” Paolo swung his broken electric guitar to shoo us away. His sister hugged their bleeding father behind him. “You lied! An Adumbrae? You’re working with it?”

“‘She’, not ‘it’,” Doms said sternly. “And her name is ‘Pino’. The least you could do is call her by her name after she saved you. I also didn’t mention anything about a Corebring. Just that someone with powers was helping me.”

“So, you just left out that it was a Adumbrae?” he retorted. He turned to me, pointing his guitar in my direction. “Isn’t this the work of Adumbrae? Turning people into monsters? Is this your fault?”

“Pao,” Julie, his sister, said, pulling at his sleeves to get his attention. “They did help us.”

“This isn’t my power,” I said. “But I do know the Adumbrae responsible for this. In fact, I’m here to stop them.”

Julie gasped. “Pao, remember that vid I showed you earlier?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“The video of that Adumbrae killing the other Adumbrae at Serenade? The one saving people. Maybe she’s one of them?”

“You're talking about the one with the red hoodie?” I said. Julie nodded. “I know her. I’m working with her to stop evil Adumbrae. It might be hard to believe, but I assure you, we're not all evil. I wouldn't have risked my life saving you otherwise.”

“I…uh…I still don’t trust you.” Paolo said.

“Then let us show you that Pino is trustworthy,” Doms said, pushing his guitar away. “She has a healing ability. She might be able to save your dad.”

Save? Whoa, there. Let's not give them false hope. “I’ll do the best that I can,” I said. “That is…if you let me.”

The siblings looked at each other. Then they had a whispered discussion that turned into heated argument. “I want to save Dad no matter what!” Julie shouted down her brother's concerns. “Dad’s going to die soon!”

Paolo opened his mouth, thought better of what he was going to say, then shut up. He stepped back and put down his guitar. He glared at me. “Don’t do anything funny.”

I nodded then approached the dying bald guy. His green color was very faint, almost turning grey.

His head was on his daughter’s lap. He was missing his left leg, bitten off by the gorilla monster. The kids wrapped the stump the best they could with bandages made of torn clothes, probably with the help of Doms. The guy’s left side was also heavily bleeding, half his shirt was already soaked in blood.

“Can you remove it?” I said, pointing at what looked like the torn sleeves of Paolo’s sweatshirt crumpled in a ball and held against the massive wound on their dad’s flank.

“Okay,” Julie said. She pulled it away as gently as she could. Dried blood made it hard to remove. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, tearing up while her father groaned as the scabs were torn off, sticking to the wad of cloth. “Just bear with it.”

She showed me the large wound, then peeled away more of her father’s ripped clothes to show the true extent of his injuries. Calling it a wound was an understatement. It was like he joined a weight loss program where the solution offered was cutting off parts of your belly. He was missing huge chunks of flesh down the side of his torso. Innards were showing.

So, this was what the gorilla monster was eating? I was surprised this guy was still alive somehow.

I knelt down beside them and quickly connected my healing finger. I wasn’t going to allow this guy to die before I showed my powers. “This does look bad. And I don’t think I can regrow limbs.”

“Just do what you can. Please.” Surprisingly, it was Paolo who said that.

“I will.” I started to transfer my energy through our link. I sensed their dad’s feeble consciousness. It was slowly coming back. Very slowly. I made sure to keep my thoughts to myself so he wouldn’t sense what I planned for him.

Julie clapped her hands. “It’s working! The bleeding is stopping. Oh my god, it’s working.” She hugged her father’s head. “Dad, please don’t leave us.”

"What the...?" Paolo knelt beside me and held his father’s hand. “Yes! His wounds are really healing.”

Flesh was growing, covering the innards. The muscles knitted themselves together, skin crept over and covered them. It was slow, but it was working. No surprises there.

Given my experience with Doms’ husband, Cesar. I already knew my healing power was very…well, powerful. With my strength finger, I pushed my best pal, Cesar, to mutate to an extent where he should just drop dead from the damage his body suffered. He certainly incurred more grievous injuries than this bald guy, but my healing power kept him going, and he took on wave after wave of monsters. The problem was the consequences of this healing power; I had a suspicion of what they were.

I could save this guy. His body wouldn't exactly be normal if my hunch of the side effects of my healing power was correct, but I was sure he wouldn't care too much if he lived in the end.

But saving him wasn’t my intention.

My first goal with this charade was to show I was a ‘good guy’ to these kids.

Now, onto my second goal.

“Poison? He’s poisoned?” I whispered. “What the…”

“What did you say?” Julie said.

“He’s poisoned!” I repeated with as much concern as I could muster with a metallic sounding voice.

“Poisoned?” her brother said. “You’re saying Dad is poisoned?”

“The monster earlier that attacked him…its bite has something. Some corrosive substance. I’m not sure what it is. It’s inside your father’s bloodstream and is destroying him from the inside.”

“Oh my god,” Julie put her hands to her mouth.

“Wha—what’s going on?” Paolo said. “He’s already healing, isn’t he?”

“I’m doing my best to counter it.” I placed my hands over their father’s wounds as if doing that would make my healing better. Theatrics. But I did increase my healing power. By a whole lot. I was starting to feel him wake up. “Look at his flesh. I’m healing it, but…” I let my words trail.

“It’s…falling off,” Doms said. She squeezed in beside me. "How?"

The flesh did heal at a rapid rate. However, his skin dried and broke just as fast, the surface of the exposed flesh was flaking, then breaking down. This happened to Cesar as well. I thought back then that he looked like a slow cooked brisket with flesh falling off the bones. A mild form of that was happening to this guy.

I continued pumping my power into him. All the progress I had healing him was getting undone.

A lightbulb lit up in my head. Could I use this power as a weapon?

Anyway, my second goal was to check the consequences of using my healing power on the target’s body. I guess I’m done with that. Let's finish with the last goal.

(Can you hear me?)

(Am…I…dead?)

(No. Not yet.)

The bald guy's eyelids moved a bit. It caused Julie to cry more. Her tears fell on his face that was twisted in agony. (So much pain…whoever you are…please…)

“I can’t do this…” I said with hesitation. “He lost too much blood. And the poison…Dammit! It's stopping my healing!”

“Please, please, please,” Julie was crying her eyes out. “Please save him.”

“No! Dad! Don’t leave us like Mom!”

(Please…help my kids), their father said in my head. He sent me memories of his family. I could tell these were the happy moments in his life. Was that his wife? Then there was a funeral. These two were very young when their mother died.

Come on, dude, I don’t care about this. I ignored his thoughts and forced them back. I told him, (Don’t go yet. Say goodbye to your children. You can do it.)

His eyelids opened a bit.

“Dad!” Paolo and Julie said at the same time.

“He’s not going to…stay…for long,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t save him. The most I can do is give you time to say goodbye.”

“Pao…Jules…” their dad said. “Come closer.”

“Julie!” Paolo said. “Record what Dad is going to say!” His sister hastily took out her phone and held it against their father’s mouth.

“Kids…take care of each other.” The dad-soon-to-be-dead-guy droned on for a bit with cheesy, emotional shit I just couldn’t relate to.

Annoying.

In times such as this, like in funerals for example, I usually shut off my brain because I couldn’t understand it—if I didn’t, I might unconsciously roll my eyes. However, I forced myself to listen to the bald guy's dying words just in case he said something like ‘don’t trust this Adumbrae.’ But he didn’t mention anything of the sort. I wasn’t sure if he was even aware of what was going on; he just knew that he was dying.

I steadily increased the flow of my power, and his body broke down more, a puddle of his blood formed around us.

He ended his final message with, “I’m going to where…ugh…Mom is…now”

And he closed his eyes.

Phew, that was dramatic as fuck.

Paolo, who was trying to put on a strong face this entire time, finally crumbled and broke down. He hugged his dad, ignoring the blood painting his clothes, and said his goodbyes. The daughter bawled her eyes out. I hoped there was no monster nearby that would get attracted by the racket they were making. I stood up and moved back to give them space.

Yeah, I’m not paid to deal with this.

A minute or so of this emotional nonsense passed.

The son turned to me, his face full of rage. “You said you know the Adumbrae responsible for this.”

I nodded.

“And you’re going to fight them?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“I’m going to join you,” he said, his teeth gnashing in hatred, tears streaming down his face. “I’m going to kill them all. I’ll do anything to kill them all!” His eyes told me he meant everything he said.

Anything? Good.

And with that, my last goal was completed.

I extended my hand to him.

He accepted it.

Welcome to team Erind.