The Tea Party goon and the clay man headed in our direction, stopping when they found the corpses. The actual human squatted to check his dead friends while the clay man stared at the ceiling, seemingly examining the broad streaks of black.

Finlay could hear and see through his clay puppets. If I wasn’t mistaken, he could also teleport to their bodies —that was how he came to help Auron the time I fought them as Erind.

“Tell me what they’re doing.” I slid down out of sight. Better to have Deen keep watch because her Guardian Angel got her back. I preemptively raised my fingers, ready for some pointing action. “Are they coming here?”

“They’re done checking the dead guys,” Deen whispered, bobbing by the bottom of the window. “But they’re not coming here. They’re going to the right.”

“Right?” They don’t know about us two lurking around? I scanned the hallway for security cams; I had spotted one by the earlier bend. This could signify that the Tea Party was packing up, or they’d still be watching the cams. So, what were these two still doing here?

“I think they’re following the trail of blood.” Deen took one more peek to confirm it before stooping to my eye level. “We should attack them now.”

The Tea Party might’ve spotted us but prioritized Imani’s group. She mentioned they fought the tech gang a few times—they must’ve gotten recognized when Jubjub used her powers. However, these two idiots would be a joke trying to stop someone with an artificial Core.

When one of Finlay’s dummies finds Imani, I bet he’d switch to fight them.

We should get to them first. I wanted to be reunited with my precious body before… my body! Imani’s group wasn’t their target.

It’s me.

The Tea Party was bound to observe the rooms with hostages on the security cameras. They even had cameras inside each room.

It was probably hard to spot me, as Erind, among the crowd because there was no way they’d just let me go with the other hostages—Finlay knew I was an Adumbrae. But Imani’s group separating from the rest of the survivors would’ve drawn attention to them. And a body dragged around like luggage was super conspicuous. That should remind Finlay of the first time he saw my Erind self.

A bunch of reasons why the Tea Party would go after me despite the police and BID knocking on the door.

I fought the 2Ms the two times they released the parasites in La Esperanza—the Tea Party assholes would rightly assume I was why their plans were going awry. They might even think I was working with Imani’s group to fuck them up. In a way, I kind of was.

Finlay, for one, would want to have his revenge for his jaw that I removed, though he should’ve regenerated it by now.

Since the Tea Party was connected to the 2Ms, it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume their group was also in contact with the Supplier—Stella had mentioned it was that mysterious bastard who ordered me kidnapped in the first place.

“The moment we open the doors,” Deen said, “they’ll know we’re coming for them.”

“I’ll go first.”

“No need. I’m fast enough—”

“It’s not about the bullets. You’re safe with this.” I tapped her chest plate. “But I’m detecting an Adumbrae.”

Deen’s forehead wrinkled. “Like, who do you mean?” (Erind… Mean Erind…?)

I rolled my lone eye at her thoughts. “There’s another enemy Adumbrae here,” I clarified. No point hiding about Finlay. But explaining to Deen why I—supposedly a Greaves android—was at her best friend’s condo the night the 2Ms attack was going to be a bitch. Best if we didn’t meet him. Just immediately destroy all the clay dummies we find and move on.

“Another Adumbrae?”

“Yes, I’m picking up faint anomalous brain waves from one of those men. I go first. When they shoot at me, you attack the man I point at—he’s probably an Adumbrae. You need to hit him as hard as possible. Do it quickly before they can react.”

“But—”

“Let’s go!”

I barged through the double doors and turned right, down a row of cubicles. Deen had no choice but to follow me. The two guys were at the far end of the sea of workspaces—the human stopped when he heard the noise. We bent down below the level of the partitions as we zigzagged through the maze, hurriedly shuffling our feet.

“Who the hell is there?” shouted the Tea Party asshole.

Deen grabbed my arm and led me past a water cooler. Gunfire strafed our previous location. There was pinging as the bullets hit filing cabinets. A computer also got hit and fell where I would’ve been.

“Fuck this shit! I’m outta here!” A man cried out, followed by hurried footsteps.

“He’s getting away!” I stood up. The man ran for the double doors while the clay man remained. Finlay’s stupid creation started shooting at me. I ran forward, staggering from the impact of the bullets while looking at Deen and pointing the other way.

She nodded and took the opportunity to charge from the other side, sprinting with an inhuman speed that she caught up with the human, kicking him back before he could reach the exit. He sprawled into a stack of documents and got covered by a shower of papers. She picked up the gun he dropped, hesitantly raising it.

“Shoot that guy!” I pointed at the clay man.

Deen pointed the gun at the clay man’s head, thinking that this was the Adumbrae I was referring to. But then, she shifted to holding it like a club—she just wanted to knock the guy out. Bothersome turmoil in her mind was there again. Was shooting too brutal for her?

“Just hit him—it! Hit it!” Oh, Mother Core, please give me a different best friend! I was already shifting the moral blame to me if she hurt the guy, but she still didn’t follow me. Was her Guardian Angel telling her something else? That fucking pet!

The clay puppet dropped its gun and faced Deen, raising its hands. That made me raise a phantom brow. This thing was up to no good.

“Attack now!” I yelled. Before Finlay thinks of coming here, I added in my head. “It’s not a human!”

“But he’s surrendering!” Deen yelled back. “We can ask him questions.”

She misunderstood what I meant. To be fair, her plan to interrogate the guy was a good one if the circumstances were different. I ran to her. “That’s just a dummy! It’s not going to answer any questions! Shoot it—”

“Calling me a dummy?” the clay man suddenly spoke. No, not a clay man. He took off his goggles and pulled down the mouth part of his balaclava, revealing one of the top ten annoying faces I’ve ever encountered. “That’s not very nice of you.”

A green outline that wasn’t there before. “Finlay…”

“Hello, there!” he cheerily greeted me, twirling his hand in the air. “Pino, am I right? How’s it going, my friend?”

My eye flicked to Deen. Her mask covered much of her expression, but her brows furrowed. Fuck, her suspicions of me are rising. Taking the conversation’s steering wheel into my hands, I demanded, “What are you planning to do here? The innocent people you’re turning—”

“Blah, blah, blah!” Finlay loudly interrupted me. “Hey, Pino buddy. Did you know that my brother died?”

“Your brother?” I could only remember that they were twins with different powers. He could be messing with me, buying time until other assholes reached us.

“Yes, my beloved brother from… the same mother. The same fertilized egg, actually, since we’re identical twins.”

“How’s that related to what’s the Tea Party doing here?”

“Nothing,” Finlay said with a shrug. “Just thought you’d want to know of his passing because you’re one of his friends.”

“I’m not his friend.”

“He died in that stupid condo building,” Finlay talked over me, pretending to sob. “Couldn’t even give him a proper burial.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “He got covered by rubble? Not my fault.”

Behind Finlay, Deen was frozen with the gun held high in a baseball player’s pose, bullshit thoughts in her head.

My best friend was distrusting me to the max with Finlay’s ‘friends’ talk that I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d suddenly bolt and leave me behind. The mention of a condo also troubled her—she grasped what we were talking about.

(Condo… Erind’s condo…? Parasite, enemy, Adumbrae? Pino, enemy?) Deen was starting to piece the puzzle together, and I was sure she’d get the wrong picture. Much doubt and plenty of missing information from her perspective. I was too untrustworthy in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, Pino, my friend,” Finlay said. “I’m not blaming you. It was mainly Stella’s fault.”

(Know each other… Pino keeping secrets… Enemy… Who?) Deen was inching back to the double doors behind her, unconsciously lowering the gun as her mind raced. (Erind… save… priority.) She was finalizing her thoughts of ditching me to look for Erind.

And her plan might be for the best.

She should meet up with Imani’s group while I entertained this jackass, Finlay—not sure how I would keep him here, but that should be doable. Then later, I could remove my Pino mask and poof to my original body.

“Hello there, Pino’s friend,” Finlay said, injecting his voice with a fake surprised tone as if he had just noticed Deen. The moment he faced her, I shot his back with a finger. “My name’s Finlay. I’m also Pino’s friend. By extension, you should be my friend—”

“Go now!” I shouted at Deen. “I’ll hold him!”

Deen gave me a nod before turning around. There was no hesitation because she had already made up her mind to leave us two sketchy as fuck people. But before she went through the doors, Finlay shouted something that made her stop.

“We have Erind’s mother!” Finlay declared.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“That’s right, we know Erind’s here, and her mother too. White hair, those weird eyes—we have her.”

Holy fuck! Only now did I realize how the Tea Party knowing I was here would also affect Mom. ‘Hartwell’ wasn’t a common surname at all. From just another Greaves person to the mother of their Adumbrae enemy—did that make her safer or not?

Finlay said, “Back away from the door, blonde girl. All of us should be friends.”

“Where is she?” Deen demanded. “Where’s Erind’s mom?”

“I was right that you’re Erind’s friend too,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Too bad Erind didn’t want to be friends with me.”

“Tell us!”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me? But since we’re friends… I can lead you to where she is.”

“Lead us to a trap, you mean?” I weighed my options. We could ignore this bastard, find Imani and hopefully the rest of their gang, and then try to save Mom later. Or we could play along with Finlay into an apparent bad end.

But there was another option! If they had Mom hostage, we could hostage Finlay too. Hopefully, my link with him would stop him from escaping.

“Trap?” Finlay smirked. “Not like the trap you’re planning to set for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your fingers.” He wiggled his own. “You’re doing something weird with them.”

“You’re insane—” I began to say as someone tackled me straight into a cubicle. “What the fuck?” I tried to shoot his side, but my threads wouldn’t come out.

“Adios!” Finlay yelled. “Follow me if you want to find Erind’s mother!”

“Pino!” Deen said.

“Get off, you—huh?” No head? It was the headless clay man we saw with the dead guys. It was still working, and Finlay used it as a distraction.

“I got you.” Deen kicked the dummy off me, breaking its body into two large pieces and many smaller ones. She thrust her gun into my hands as I sat up and then carried me on her back before I could say anything. “Hold tight, I’m going to catch him.”

“Okay,” I said, hugging her neck as she zipped through the cubicles.

The double doors from where we had entered were still swinging. Finlay hadn’t gone far. I had thought of stopping his movements with our link earlier, but I didn’t want to ruin the element of surprise. I probably had only one shot with it, and I wanted to use it when it counted. He wasn’t going to teleport away because he’d like to play games with us—fucking over people was his whole thing, even his teammates.

I was betting on Deen catching him before he could reach whatever trap he prepared. Her Guardian Angel wouldn’t allow her to be in harm’s way.

True to her word, we found Finlay. Deen chased him down the hallway we had passed before. We would’ve noticed if there were traps here. We were three rooms behind him. Two. Finlay entered an open door.

“Huh? He’s cornering himself?” I blurted. We were in the center of the building; no windows for escape. And there appeared to be no danger because Deen followed him inside.

We entered a smaller room that was somebody’s office. Finlay jumped over the oak table and stopped when he reached the wall at the end of the room.

“End of the line!” I was so focused on capturing this bastard that I forgot to cringe at my generic one-liner.

Finlay raised his hands again. “Such a friendly reunion we have here,” he said, still facing the room’s far wall.

“Not so friendly as you might think,” I replied, climbing off Deen’s back. I didn’t return the gun to her, instead marching forward and taking charge of dealing with Finlay.

“Congratulations for cornering me,” he said, slowly turning around. His stupid grin made me wary; he wasn’t worried about his predicament. “Are you planning to trade me for Erind’s mother?” he asked, correctly figuring out my intentions.

“That’s right. So, just come with us.” I aimed the gun at his ugly head, positioning its butt correctly against my shoulder.

His jaws again? Should be his lower head—an injury that was serious but wouldn’t kill him. No mistakes this time. Only one chance to paralyze him and get the shot to knock him out of commission. Then Deen could bind his hands with something sturdy we could find, like what she did to me before.

Deen approached me, her hands outstretched, obviously planning to take the gun away. “Careful. You might kill him,” she said as if this was the first time I had taken someone hostage.

“Yeah, listen to her,” Finlay chimed in. “Don’t kill me, my friend.”

Ignoring Deen, I followed it up with another staple from the movies. “Finlay, we can do this the hard way or the easy way.”

He chuckled at my cheesy sentence. “Pino, come on. I’m not going to—”

(Don’t move!) I mentally blasted him.

His eyes widened. With sights lined up, directly covering his gaping mouth, I pulled the trigger.

“No!” Deen shouted. She dove for the gun and yanked it from me.

“He switched out?” I let her have the gun as I hurried to Finlay, or what was once his body.

Instead of blood and flesh, ceramic shards scattered. The body slumped against the wall had a shattered head, its holes showing the dark emptiness inside—no Finlay around here. My power couldn’t stop him from teleporting out—our link disappeared the moment a clay man took his place.

I rummaged through the pockets of the clay man to see if there were any clues on where the Tea Party took Mom. A phone with messages? A map or something?

“Wait, what happened?” Deen approached me.

“The Adumbrae switched with this dummy,” I explained. “There’s nothing here. Let’s go back to find the others.”

“Hello!” someone called behind us. “Looking for me?”

A Tea Party member was outside the door, doing a little tap dance. He didn’t need to remove his mask because we could tell from his voice that it was Finlay. “I’m supposed to get Erind Hartwell,” he said, closing the door, “but before that…”

(Shoot him,) I ordered Deen.

“Huh?” She pointed the gun’s barrel at the door and pulled the trigger. She fired a few rounds before she fought for control of her body.

I relented. The door had already closed.

“What just—? Pino, wait! Something happening. The sound?”

I ignored Deen, rushing past her to the door. I ignored the weird ringing noise. I ignored the door looking weirder. The world was bothering me to the max, and I was nearly done tolerating it. I grabbed the huge doorknob and pulled a heavy metal door lined with bolts.

“Wha-what?” I stepped back in surprise. Instead of the bland hallway we had just left, I opened the door to a dim tunnel with flickering fluorescent lights. “This door? Eh?”

“Pino! What did you do?”

“I don’t know!”

Deen waved her hand at the doorway to check if it was an illusion. “It must’ve been that Adumbrae,” she said. But her thoughts paraded her distrust of me. She didn’t bring up her involuntary movements even if that was front and center on her mind.

This wasn’t the time for a fight between us. “A trap,” I said as if it couldn’t be more obvious. “Some kind of teleportation power.” I tried closing the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. No way we’re going through here. I stepped back, examining the room. “Deen, can you break the wall down? We might be able to pass through back to the Greaves Convention center.”

She wasn’t listening to me. Her left foot passed the doorway and stepped on uneven earth on the other side. “I think this is where they’re keeping the hostages.”

We don’t have time for nobodies! “But your friend. Erind’s her name, right? If we go there—”

“Her mother might be here.”

“That… is possible.” If this was where the Tea Party was taking the parasite monsters and people, then, yes, Mom could be there. Should I trust Imani with my Erind body and explore this place to find Mom? I had Deen with me. And in an emergency, I could return to my body by taking off the mask. “Let’s think about—wait, what’s that?”

Something was rolling down the tunnel toward us.

“I-I don’t know,” said Deen.

It stopped directly below one of the light tubes.

I questioningly tilted my head. “An eyeball?”