“I can hear something,” I stopped crawling. Deen accidentally headbutted my butt. I clamped the urge to kick back like a spooked horse. “Shhh, quiet down a bit,” I hissed at Deen.

There it was again—smatterings of what sounded like gunfire. I could hear better if I turned into Blanchette, but then I couldn’t talk if I did. A muffled explosion, and then it was silent again. I resumed digging, intentionally shoveling dirt back at Deen.

Deen said, “We must be—bleargh!” The beam of light from Deen’s phone wildly strafed our cramped hole like we were at a rave party.

“What were you saying, Deen?” I asked, trying not to laugh. With the dirt cleared, I shifted rocks out of our way. The light steadied and focused in front of me.

“I was saying,” Deen said, punctuated by coughs, “we must be close to an area that hadn’t collapsed.”

I rolled a rock aside to reveal a small hole the size of my head. “Hand me your phone.” I had no idea where mine went. My phone probably fell out of my pockets when people lugged my unconscious body around. Time to buy a new one. Fucking again. How many phones had I lost? I didn’t expect turning into an Adumbrae would be this expensive.

I listened for a few seconds. The people shooting at each other had seemingly moved away. Then I poked the phone through the hole and examined what was on the other side. Other than some rubble here and there, the tunnel was mostly intact. There were also a couple of dead guys—one crushed by fallen debris, the other half-eaten, likely by a parasite monster.

“Here.” I handed Deen her phone back. “All clear. We’re getting out of here.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Gabe!”

How would I have fared on my own without Deen and her prescient pet? I might have dug into China if I didn’t know where I was going. Could I die from starvation? I could eat and regenerate my flesh if I was desperate. As for water, I could drink… I’d rather not think about that.

Thank you, too, Gabe, I guess.

I leaned my back against a concrete slab, careful not to get skewered by the jutting rebars bent in odd angles, and positioned my feet flat on a boulder. Then I pushed with everything I got. It had been ages since I went to the gym, but I bet this was heavier than the last setting on the leg press machine. I felt the soles of my sneakers get squished like dough as my feet cracked the surface of the hugeass boulder.

The tiny hole to freedom widened inch by inch.

“Erind, are you okay?” Deen asked. “I can help—"

“Go! Go! Go!”

Deen dove under my knees and squeezed through the hole. It became dark again.

Okay, so how do I get out of here? I didn’t think this through—if I released this stupid rock, it would roll back down. I hoped it wouldn’t continue dropping and squishing my cute self.

What other option did I have? I’d slowly lower this, and then Deen and I could gradually widen the hole by digging from both sides. I was going to be pissed if Deen’s Guardian Angel told her to leave me behind.

“Don’t drop it!” Deen furiously punched the wall and scooped out the debris.

“The boulder?” My quads burned. My joints strained. I couldn’t hold this forever. Should I transform?

“Yes! Hang on, I’ll get you out!”

My tiny burrow brightened bit by bit as the hole to my right widened. Deen suddenly grabbed my arm with both her hands.

“Huh? What are you—? Hey!” She yanked me out of the hole. We stumbled on the ground. Without me holding it up, the boulder fell back into place with a loud crash and a slight quake. “Ow, ow, you should’ve warned me.” I massaged my shoulder. “Feels like my arm was going to pop right off.”

“Sorry!” Deen helped me to my feet. “I was concentrating on Gabe’s voice. Really super sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’ll heal in a few seconds.” I looked at our exit hole. The boulder mostly covered it now. I chuckled. Deen looked at me with a puzzled face. “It’s like in the movies,” I explained. “Those traps in ancient tombs? Big rolling boulders? And then the heroes will always narrowly avoid getting turned into pancakes right at the last second.”

“Ah… you’re right.” Deen nodded with a confused smile. “The boulders, yeah.”

“You know those movies where there’s a treasure and—never mind. What’s important is that we’re alive.” Even more important was that I nearly got squished, not Deen, solidifying my position as the main character between us.

“Oh, Erind!” Deen hugged me, bending down to put her head against my neck. I felt her warm tears as she sobbed.

I rolled my eyes and hugged Deen back because I was the bestest friend in the world. And she did save me—which meant I wasn’t the main character. Fuck.

Deen continued to cry. I reached up to pat the top of her dirty head. Such a drama queen.

Getting buried alive wasn’t too bad.

Actually, I had fun—a sense of thrill I couldn’t experience riding roller coasters or getting shot by guns. There was something about the situation, something with helplessness, something with giving up because there was no way out. I was so close to finding the secret ingredient of despair. Someday, I was going to feel that emotion.

The threat of death wasn’t doing it for me anymore. It was like spice tolerance or maybe drug tolerance. I needed stronger stuff to have fun.

“It’s okay… It’s all going to be okay,” I told Deen. I gave her a good squeeze and dropped my hands. “We made it out alive.”

“Ye-yeah, we did.” Deen got the message and released me. Her tears, mixed with the dirt on her face, turned into a mud mask. The light from below—Deen’s phone on the floor—cast creepy shadows on her face. Add in her hair that was an absolute mess. For possibly the first time in Deen’s life, she appeared ugly.

"You look awful,” I said, wiping her face. “You don’t want to get mistaken for a monster when we find other people.”

“I look awful?” She smirked. “That’s impossible.”

I grinned. Then we both broke out laughing. “I’m glad you’re back to yourself.”

“Thank you for saving me,” she said. “I don’t know how I would’ve survived if it wasn’t for you.”

For one, you could’ve followed your Guardian Angel, I thought.

Deen’s pet must’ve told her not to look for me. If Deen had listened to her Guardian Angel, she would’ve been safe. And I would still be digging my way to China. I wasn’t an ungrateful bitch—only sometimes—so I was going to help her stupid rescue mission as payment.

But before that.

“Deen… the guy who teleported me here…” I hesitated. Promise, just a dash of emotional abuse. I really couldn’t help myself. “I don’t know if this is true, but he told me Mom’s here. That’s why I went through the door. Have you seen Mom?”

If only I had my phone to take a picture of Deen’s face. Streaked with mud and absolutely shocked, she looked hilarious!

Deen slowly shook her head. “No, I haven’t. I checked all—I mean, I tried to check all the hostages. Your Mom would be easy to see if she’s here. Like her white hair is very, um, I can’t say I’m completely sure she’s not… bu-but…”

SpookyErind, if you’re listening, please give me the power to read minds. I’d willingly give up sweets for an entire year—no, that’s too much; a month should be fine—to know what was going through Deen’s head right now.

I think I had a good grasp of Deen’s thoughts.

She released the captives. The parasite monsters got out and attacked the hostages. Whether the monsters accidentally escaped or were intentionally released by the Tea Party didn’t matter—it was technically Deen’s fault either way. In Deen’s mind, if Mom was here, she was likely inside a parasite monster’s stomach.

Deen continued to rapidly stammer, “I really haven’t seen her. I made sure, I tried to make sure, I wouldn’t—"

“If you haven’t seen her, then she’s not here,” I firmly said. That was enough fun. “I’m sure Mom is safe back at the convention center.”

“But the man said—”

“He’s an Adumbrae; he can’t be trusted. Well, I’m an Adumbrae too, but you get what I mean. He was trying to mess with our heads.”

“You’re right,” Deen said. Her tone indicated she didn’t believe her own words. “We’ll find your mother once we get back.”

I thought of letting it stand here, but I didn’t want a distracted Deen in case of a fight. I shouldn’t have messed with her in the first place. It was just so funny, though.

“The man who teleported us is with the 2Ms,” I said. “I’ve fought him before. But I’m not the target of the 2Ms in Vegas. We planned to go to the Tech Fair only a few days ago. The 2Ms people are helping the Tea Party with their evil plans—it doesn’t have anything to do with me.

“The man with teleporting powers saw me—could be the security cameras—and recognized me. I don’t know how they knew Mom was with us, but it’s not hard to guess with her surname ‘Hartwell’ on the program list. That man was bluffing to bait us into wherever this place is.”

Not exactly a good explanation—it had many holes, actually—but Deen seemed to accept it. Anything to lessen the guilt in her mind.

Deen nodded. “You’re right, you’re right. He was just bluffing…”

“Now then,” I said, “let’s go save other people and escape this place.”

I opened my right hand. Golden liquid rose out of the crystals on my palm. It might be fine by now to turn into Blanchette. I had yet to determine if I had to rest in between transformations. Mental note: experiment with my powers and learn more about them.

“Erind, don’t do it.” Deen grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t do what? Transform? I can control myself… or I think I can.” I didn’t want her to know it was a hundred percent my consciousness doing the killing and other nasty stuff. I needed the ‘Adumbrae excuse’ if I ever had to do something evil in her eyes. “I didn’t, um, eat you. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I trust that you won’t eat me. But you might eat the—what would the other people think when they see you? They’ll assume we’re the bad guys.”

“It’s for safety,” I said. “There should be plenty of enemies around here.”

“Transform only when it’s really necessary,” Deen said. She held the bottom of my right hand. “I got Gabe. And we’re pretty strong girls, right?”

I nodded, closing my hand. The golden light disappeared, and the tunnel darkened. “Will we go with the people we’ll save all the way?”

“All the way where? We’re not going to abandon—”

“Like all the way to civilization or something. Until the police find us? Until we get rescued?” That was usually the end of the movie, and the credits will roll. But for us, that’d be the start of the next set of headaches.

“I’m not sure.” Deen looked at the ground pondering our situation. “Probably not all the way. We’ll get checked for injuries. Medics might notice something wrong.”

“Might? They’ll definitely notice something’s wrong. We look like this with zero injuries? Given what we've been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get tested for Adumbrae seeding.”

“Here’s what we do: we’ll help survivors escape to the surface,” Deen said. “We’ll make sure they’re safe. We’ll make sure the authorities are contacted. And we’ll leave only once we see the police are coming.”

I would’ve been fine with just step one of her plan. “Too bad we don’t have a Suppressor,” I said. “It will be easier if we get rescued along with everyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where is this place? Are we still in Nevada? Or even in the US? What if we’re in a different country? If we’re overseas, it’s going to be difficult returning home without passports and stuff.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Deen said. “People here speak English, so I hope that means we’re still in America, at least.”

“I hope so too.” I raised a brow. Deen was tearing off the bottom of her shirt. “Crop tops are the trend nowadays, but this doesn’t seem like the right time to—”

“I’m making a mask, silly.” Deen tied the strip of cloth to cover her mouth.

“You could’ve asked for a piece of my jeans.” I bent down to rip my pants. I felt Deen poke my lower back. “What are you doing?”

“There’s blood. Were you wounded when I pulled—no. It’s dry. This looks like a neat hole, not a tear. When did you get shot?”

“I don’t know,” I truthfully answered.

This brought Imani back to mind. I hadn’t decided on what to do with her. Was she going to keep her mouth shut? Likely not. If she told Jubjub, they’d ask the Supplier and know I didn’t have an artificial Corebring. I should rope in Deen and see what her suggestion would be. There was only one correct answer here.

“Must be when I was unconscious,” I said. “No one shot at me when I awoke because I immediately transformed to fight. When I got teleported here, I was already in Blanchette form.”

“Who was with you when you woke up?” Deen sternly asked, realizing the problem.

“Imani, Tesh, his wife or girlfriend or something. Other survivors too.”

“Do they know you got shot?”

“Yes, they do.” I gasped as if I had realized the problem just now. “Imani asked me how I felt when I woke up and was surprised when I wasn’t in pain. I think she knows I’m not… normal.”

“Okay, that’s a problem we’ll have to deal with when we get back. Did Imani say anything else?”

“Nothing. She didn’t act like someone discovering an Adumbrae. That’s why I only thought of Imani’s weird reaction now.”

“It’s because she didn’t think you’re an Adumbrae. She thought you had an artificial Core like me,” Deen said, coming to the same conclusion I did.

“But she’ll eventually know that’s wrong,” I said.

“We’ll have to—” Deen stopped talking.

There was scratching nearby.

I picked up Deen’s phone and pointed it toward the weird noise.

“An eye?” I said. Vanessa’s familiar! I must remember I hadn’t seen it before.

“It’s that eye again!” Deen exclaimed.

“You know what it is?” The eye raised itself on its insect legs and swayed its body. “A small parasite monster?”

“I don’t know, but it guided Pino and me when we got here. It’s on our side. Or at least not an enemy.”

“Looks creepy,” I said. “What is it doing?”

“Signing we should follow. It did this last time too.”

The eye familiar scampered down the tunnel.

“Should we follow it then?”

“I think so.”

Makeshift masks secured, we jogged after Vanessa’s eye familiar. Turning around the corner, we ran into dead guys entangled with dead parasite monsters. This must be the fighting we heard earlier. Further ahead, there was one monster ripping a corpse with its tentacles and shoving body parts into its beaklike mouth.

It tried to grab the passing eye familiar, but I caught its tentacles. More tendrils reached for me. Deen slammed them all down with a rock. Then I leaped over Deen, kicking the monster’s head. Deen tossed the rock at me. I caught it and brought it down on the monster so hard it broke apart.

The whole bit was wholly unplanned, but it turned out pretty cool.

“Gross!” I examined my shirt, stifling the curses on the tip of my tongue. “Slime got all over me—”

Deen pulled me. “Let’s go! We might lose the eye.”

Vanessa, sorry for scaring you to death, I thought while looking at her familiar, by trying to cause your death.

Was she angry with me? What could she be thinking after what I did? There was a chance this eye thingy was leading us to a trap, though Deen’s Guardian Angel would be our counter. I confirmed that Vanessa didn’t betray me when I heard cries for help.

Survivors!

Under a sputtering light bulb, a group of people who had seen better days huddled at the corner. In front of them stood a tall, shirtless guy wielding a gun like a bat, warding away a couple of parasite monsters. He was one of Imani’s friends. He looked like he should be at the back of the group instead of the front.

Tall Ginger—I forgot his name—lost one of his augmented legs. He leaned on a hastily-made crutch made of pipes, with his shirt padding the fork at the top. His gun ran out of bullets.

Another of Imani’s friends was in the middle of the room, fighting the bulk of the parasite monsters. He had an artificial Core, displaying bursts of super strength and speed, vacuuming chunks of flesh into his hands—someone with an artificial Core. Let’s call him Vacuum Hands.

“They look familiar,” I said, remembering I only saw them once as Erind before the fucking Tea Party showed up.

“They’re Imani’s friends!” Deen said. “We should help them!”

Really? I thought we were going to take out Imani. I figured it was better just to let her friends die. But Deen had already joined the fray.

Whatever.

I picked up a sharp rock and charged the nearest tentacled weirdo.