It was not a fun road trip.

I was wrong to assume there'd be fewer cars around this hour. We were stuck in traffic, as expected, but it seemed to be as heavy as during the daytime. Hmm, daytime? I looked at my phone. It displayed, "2:23 a.m."

Was two in the morning considered daytime? Or was it considered night because it was still dark? Well, not that dark because the massive floodlights dotting the sidewalk and the center islands lit up the entire road as if it was a sunny afternoon. The searchlights of the drones patrolling overhead were rendered redundant by how bright everything was.

I was about to type ‘Can morning be dark?' in my phone's search engine when I stopped myself, thinking, what a dumb question. Boredom was getting to me.

I was usually fine if left alone with my thoughts even if for hours on end. My thoughts were awesome. The problem was if I was stuck in an irritating situation—like sitting in this traffic under blazing lights, feeling like I was food on a buffet left under heat lamps. The windows of Deen’s car weren’t that heavily tinted. I was tempted to ask Deen about my stupid question just to mix things up, maybe joke around a bit. However, she was still talking to the cop checking our car.

This was the third time police officers had stopped us during our mind-bogglingly snail-paced journey out of La Esperanza. Just routine stuff; they didn't single us out for being sketchy or whatnot.

And all they did was ask questions, check documents, and cursorily search cars. I knew why they weren’t doing anything that could specifically expose an Adumbrae intent on hiding himself—or herself, in my case. This was more to assure the public and maintain order, maybe also to pick out suspicious people for the BID to further examine up ahead.

Each cop could have a pin and just poke everyone here—okay, that was unconstitutional in the first place—but if that was allowed, what would they do next if there was an actual Adumbrae? That was why they left the actual Adumbrae detection to the final checkpoint up ahead where the BID opened only a few lanes. A buttload of agents and ComExos were waiting to swiftly eliminate any Adumbrae caught by their scans and tests.

A chokepoint and a killzone.

And, hopefully, not my grave.

"Everything appears to be in order," said the cop. I clutched the folder containing my test certificates, ready to whip them out if he gave a sliver of a hint that he suspected anything was wrong. Deen and I hadn't yet taken the Suppressor because we weren't sure how long it'd take until we reached the ginormous BID scanners. He adjusted his sunglasses and took one last look at our IDs before giving them back to Deen. "Thank you for your cooperation, Ma'am."

"Just doing our part, officer," Deen said with a smile. There was a bit of relief in her voice.

"Thank you for your service," I chimed in. The fuck? Such a random ass thing to say. Was it okay to say that phrase to police officers or was it reserved for military personnel only? Maybe I should’ve stayed quiet.

The paunchy cop took a small black flashlight from his belt and shone it into the car. "Just going to have a quick look, Ma’am, if you're hiding any bodies," he jokingly said. "I hope you don't mind the bright light."

"Which one officer?" Deen replied, humoring him. "The flashlight or the sun outside?

He frowned as he peered into our backseat. I thought he had found something wrong, but he was just as pissed as we were of being here. "Sun? Right you are, Ma'am," he mumbled. "These blasted lights are—"And we didn’t hear the rest of his sentence.

Booming rap music, mumbling unintelligible words that wouldn’t be out of place in a demon summoning ritual, drowned out his voice. The bass was so fucking loud it shook the car’s windows and my heart inside my ribcage. It also signaled that the night, or day, was about to get more annoying.

"It's them again," I groaned. Deen couldn't hear me, but her deep sigh of exasperation showed that she shared my sentiments. I thought these bastards got stuck way back, a couple of blocks away, because they got into an argument with a couple of cops. Too bad the fuckers weren't arrested.

An expensive-looking muscle pickup truck—a good indication of the minuscule genitals possessed by the guys riding it—stopped in the next lane, right beside our car. Four rowdy frat boys sat in the back of the truck, drinking beer. They waved and howled like animals in a zoo to get our attention. Well, probably not my attention, but rather Deen's. Animals were probably better behaved than them.

"Wooo! We caught up to you, girls! Woohoo!"

"Hey, ladies!" a ratty idiot sporting a goatee pushed away his friends and leaned over the side of the truck. "Want something to drink? Come over here!" He chucked an opened can of beer at the side of our car.

The clank made Deen grip the stirring wheel tighter. Then she released it before she could bend it out of shape in view of a cop. She kept looking forward, but I could see the frothing infuriation in her eyes. She tightly pressed her lips together until they were pale—paler because she wasn't wearing any lipstick.

"Yow, blondie!" yelled a moron with a bad haircut. "Blondie, how about you look over here?"

"Show us your pretty face!"

"Where are you girls going?"

The cop turned around. "That's enough!" he barked at them. He picked up the beer can on the street and threw it into the bed of the truck, splashing the four jerks sitting there. All of them yelled to complain, trying to be louder than each other. "Move along! Move along!" The cop knocked on the pickup's roof. "Get going, move on up, you rascals."

They didn't budge an inch. The window of the pickup rolled down to reveal a buff asshole with a skull tattoo on his shoulder sitting on the passenger's seat. He took out a camera and pointed it at Deen. "Lookie here, blondie," he called out. "Give me a pretty pose!"

The police officer blocked his view. "That's enough, young man!"

"Oh, come on! What the hell?" yelled Skull Tattoo Bro.

The cop faced us and bent down. "Ma'am, move over there," he said. Probably? It was hard to tell with all the fucking noisy music. He did point to another lane with an open space for us to merge in. "I'll teach these guys a lesson. You can roll up your windows now. Have a nice day."

"Thank you, sir," Deen said and followed his instructions.

The music's volume turned down a couple of notches after she closed the car windows. But it was still incredibly loud, rattling the car. It faded away as the new line of vehicles we joined slowly moved forward. Or perhaps the cop managed to make them turn it off.

Deen continued to drive in silence. I could feel her seething that I could probably cook an egg on her head from the heat of her anger.

"Are you okay there, Deen?" I said after a couple of minutes of awkwardness. I supposed I should be a good friend.

"What? Uh, yes. Yeah, I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth. "Here's your ID. I forgot to give it back to you."

"Thanks," I said. It was my Eloyce University ID. Fortunately, I was able to get a new one the other day so I'd have something to use—in some situations, an EFU ID, a law student one at that, was better than any government ID. All of my IDs and my credit cards were gone in the torched ruins of my condo. It was going to be a pain in the ass to process a new passport, driver's license, all that crap that I didn't bother because I was a lazy bum. "Are you sure you're okay? Want to talk about it?"

"I've encountered plenty of those sorts of guys," she said. "I've learned that the best way to deal with them is to ignore them.”

I mulled over whether I should say, 'that's because you’re so beautiful you attract unwanted attention'. I hadn't encountered a situation like this before, but I had an inkling it was the wrong thing to say. It was the truth, and I was going to deliver it in a joking way, but I suspected it was insensitive to blame her—' victim blaming' I think was the term. Holding my tongue, I let her continue venting.

“If I give them any attention,” said Deen, “they’d take that as a go signal. Even a clear rejection would shoot just right out of their ears. They’ll think that because I’m talking to them, they’ll be able to change my mind.” She clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“I hope that’s the last we’ll see of them,” I said. “Thankfully, a cop was present.”

"Yes, he was very helpful."

"I hope those...creeps...get arrested." I was about to say 'asshole' but I couldn't recall if I ever used that word in front of Deen.

"I won't bet on that," Deen said.

"Why not?"

"I recognize one of them. The guy with the messy-brown hair sitting beside the one who threw the beer can at us—he's the nephew of the mayor, our new one."

"Wow, you're pretty well-connected to know him," I said. The nephew of the mayor? Didn't I know someone who was the niece of our previous Mayor? Vanessa or something? The girl I barbecued after I escaped from the tunnels leading out of Eve's underground arena. So many people connected with this or that mayor. "Have you met him before?” I asked Deen. “Was it during the event at city hall last Saturday? You should've told him to tell his friends to stop being jerks."

"I don't personally know him. I just remember his face. Adrian pointed him out to me before when he invited me as his plus one to the ACO ball last semester."

"ACO?"

"Alpha Chi Omega."

"So that's what the Greek letters on their shirts stand for. I just know they were members of a fraternity, but not which one. Hang on, a frat ball? That means Adrian is in the same frat as them?"

"ACO is huge in our university. Most of their members are undergraduates like those guys, but they do have members in Cresthorne Law. Adrian is one, Carlos too. If I recall correctly, the mayor's nephew is a first-year engineering student, so he should be a new member of their fraternity. Could be still applying. Even if I knew him enough to talk to him, I don't think the more senior members would listen to him."

"How are things with you and Adrian, by the way?" I nonchalantly asked. I recalled Deen was slightly interested in him. On the other hand, Adrian was mega interested in her; no surprises there. It'd be bad news if she was secretly telling Adrian about our secrets or something.

"There's no 'thing' with me and Adrian," Deen said, raising a brow at me. "He does message me from time to time to check how I am, especially after the Adumbrae attacks. But so do other friends. I just tell him I'm fine. Like what I reply to all other friends."

"Oh, I see."

"Why do you ask?"

"Nothing. Just curious."

"Are you jealous or something?"

"No, I'm not." Obviously, I wouldn't admit I was weighing the chances of her betraying me for a guy. I had seen too many movies, across multiple genres, where that happened.

"I'm not going to leave you."

"I know," I replied, in the sincerest way I could say it. "Thank you."

"At this pace, we probably have half an hour until we reach the scanners and the ComExos. Try to get some sleep. I'll wake you up later so we can drink our Suppressors."

----

"Here you go," said Deen, handing me a yellow box cutter.

"We don't need to do this if you don't want to," I told her, understanding why she was handing it to me instead of doing it first. She still hadn't gotten over her squeamishness? Didn't she fight against the parasite monsters as well as the mushroom folk last Saturday? "I can already feel I've gotten weaker. And I also easily get hurt." I pinched my arm and showed her the reddish patch of skin.

"We just need to make sure," she insisted.

I tried to stop my eyes from rolling as I took the cutter from her. Annoying that she—okay, calm down, Erind. I had been annoyed by the asshole fratboys, but I was once again annoyed by my sudden weakness. I shouldn't take it out on Deen. Maybe a bit more on the jittery side. I also experienced this when I took the Suppressors for my tests at the police station. I hope I don't act weird like when I wore that stupid new face, I thought as I pressed the blade against the skin of my palm.

Deen leaned closer. "Be careful."

"I'm cutting my hand. What do you mean, be careful?"

"Hey, don't give me sass," she said with a nervous giggle.

"And move back a bit. You're covering the light." I put some strength into pushing down the blade until I felt a tiny snap as it broke the skin. Then I pulled it down. There was a small line. And then it became red. Droplets of blood formed and slid down my hand. "There. No problem." I didn't only mean that the Suppressor was working well, but that I was mentally fine. No issues wounding myself, no bizarre reactions to pain, just no-nonsense normal me.

Deen, quick with a piece of tissue, wiped away the blood. She then put a band-aid over my wound. "Now, can you cut mine?"

"Fine," I said with a sigh. Whatever, Deen. I grabbed her wrist, holding it in place. The blade of the cutter hovered half an inch over her skin. "Calm down, okay? I'm just going—" And I nicked her hand while I was talking to her. "—to do that."

"Ow!" She tried to pull her hand away, but I held it firmly. "Why did you do it so suddenly?"

"It's like pulling out a tooth. You just have to surprise the person."

"Well, I was surprised." She watched me put a band-aid on her wound in turn.

"And we're good to go."

"Let me see your hand," said Deen. I presented my left hand. "No, the other one. Your right hand. I want to check the crystals."

"They're hidden," I said. "Kind of. It's really hard to conceal them now with how big they've gotten."

Deen ran her fingers over the crystals. Despite covering them with several pimple patches and heavy makeup, they remained conspicuous. Even from afar, it looked like a had a huge welt on my palm. At this point, I should probably just cover it with band-aids and claim I had an injury. She observed, "They don't disappear even with the Suppressor?"

"I guess not," I replied. I hadn't thought about that before. If I could get my hands on more blue vials maybe I could experiment with trying to remove these.

The cop in front of our car holding glowing sticks signaled for us to move into the lane with cars lined up to pass through the BID scanners. A block further on were the biggest ComExos I had ever seen.

There was ringing in my ears and tingling in my hands as adrenaline rushed throughout my veins. I hate being weak. I took a deep breath and said, "Let's do this."