[REND] B2. 11.1 - A New Roommate

It’s still here… I shone my flashlight on the metal parts I took from Cecilia’s fake body.

I had hidden them amongst the clatter of rusty pieces at an abandoned car repair shop. Did this mean that they didn’t have any trackers on them? Or else the PCM would’ve retrieved them by now, right? I didn’t disturb their hiding spot, not knowing what to do with them yet.

I exited the shop and hurried to the van. I had left Kelsey with Overdrive for only like half a minute. It was kind of risky that I did that, but it was also a test if she was really unconscious or not. Overdrive looked overjoyed when I returned.

“Okay, let’s go to the city proper,” I said, hopping into the van.

“Copy that, boss!”

After our meeting had adjourned earlier, I ordered Overdrive to be my chauffeur again. I needed someone to drive Kelsey and me back home.

Yep. Home. As in, my condo unit.

Like, where else could I keep Kelsey? I couldn’t leave her with the gangsters. And I wasn’t going to hole up in some other abandoned building while trying to turn Kelsey back to human. It was going to be a long process, and I wanted my bed!

If Adumbrae Kelsey resurfaced, I was betting that she’d have a more diplomatic stance knowing what I could do. I had this crazy idea of enticing her with croissants, given that she loved experiencing human senses.

Since it’d be a huge hassle lugging my Kelsey burrito while jumping on top of trains—my usual ride to and from Marsh Row—I thought we should take it easy and have Overdrive drive us in a van. Double drive. None of Overdrive’s subordinates wanted to come along. I intended to alight several blocks away from the condo building so Overdrive wouldn’t know where I lived. Just jump across rooftops and climb up to the twenty-second floor of my condo building. No biggie.

But before leaving Marsh Row, we made a detour to its other side, near the bunker the PCM had taken over. We discretely passed by the road leading to the bunker, speeding away when we saw some lights in the distance.

“The PCM? What are they doing here?” Overdrive had asked me earlier. “I thought no one was using that bunker.”

“Recently moved in,” I replied. “They’re keeping the Adumbrae they captured underground. I visited this place earlier.”

“Those bastards! Why here? This is my fucking kingdom! They should’ve picked New Hope for—hang on. No bunkers there. Yeah, I guess it’s best to keep Adumbrae underground. They, uh, you guys can destroy buildings, right?”

“Sure can,” I said, remembering the building we demolished at New Hope. Had Tower Cop found it already? All the more reason to send him chasing after the PCM.

We headed to the abandoned car shop, and, from there, we were on our way to my condo. Not so near my condo, technically.

“Boss, is it alright to ask what you were checking in that shop?” Overdrive asked.

“I had set a trap for the PCM. No bite. I’ll check it again next time.” I decided against giving the metal parts to Overdrive because that mad scientist might personally come to get them. Overdrive and his men might not fare so well against half-monster, half-human jigsaw puzzles. And I didn’t want my minions to needlessly die for random shit I didn’t care about. I’m such a good boss.

“Got it, boss. Another question. I hope I’m not prying too much, but here goes. Are we bringing that Adumbrae you captured to… the city?”

I glanced at Kelsey burrito. Still not moving. “Yep.”

“We’re not dropping her elsewhere?”

“Nope.”

“We’re going to the city? Where there are lots of people?”

“It sounds like a dumb plan, doesn’t it?” Because it certainly did. But if nothing bad happened, then I was a genius.

“I’m not saying anything like that, boss!” Overdrive looked over his shoulder to bow at me a couple of times before facing the road again. “Just that this Adumbrae did quite the damage to my castle.”

“She sure did.” Too bad I couldn’t stay back at the base to see the gangsters’ reaction to the aftermath of the fight. I had to leave with Kelsey.

Some of the gangsters would probably vomit after seeing the bodies that Kelsey had squeezed. Then they’d go downstairs and find the huge crater on the basement wall. I bet they’d imagine an insane battle upon seeing it. Something way cooler than just me getting repeatedly pounded. That sounded wrong.

Hang on. Could a crater be on a wall? Like, sideways? Or were craters only on the ground? Probably was named something else if the hole was in the wall.

“What if she wakes up?” Overdrive asked, interrupting my philosophical musings. His voice had a slight tremble to it. He adjusted the rearview mirror to check Kelsey. “What if she’d go on a rampage. We wouldn’t want her wrecking downtown. A lot of people are going to—I mean, that’ll attract the attention of the BID.”

Did Overdrive care about possible casualties? How amusing. He must be going crazy thinking of how to dissuade me from bringing Kelsey downtown. He probably expected news of another Adumbrae attack tomorrow.

“She won’t do that,” I simply said. And I was certain of it.

I wasn’t an expert on diplomacy, but I might be able to broker a peace treaty where Adumbrae Kelsey and Human Kelsey could sort of coexist. Adumbrae Kelsey wasn’t all about destroying humanity and stuff, judging by the little we had interacted. To me, it seemed like she just wanted a body on this plane, as she put it, to have fun. Maybe different Adumbrae had different goals.

If it were possible for both sides of Kelsey to have shifts, then that’d be a neat solution. But if Adumbrae Kelsey would play hardball, then I’d repeat my Bonsai Exorcism Treatment. I need to come up with a better name for it.

I was fairly confident that even if Adumbrae Kelsey could wrest control of the body, she wouldn’t start shit at my condo. Overdrive was right—the BID would come if she wrecked stuff. Adumbrae Kelsey’s priority was survival. It was in her best interest to hide.   

Overdrive focused on driving as we left Marsh Row, leaving me to my thoughts.

I glanced at Kelsey’s horns scratching the van’s ceiling. The top of the cloth wrapping her had rolled down, revealing the side of her face. Her scales caught the yellowish light of the old street lamp posts we passed. Her eyes were closed.

I learned a lot from you today… tonight.

A lot that I didn’t understand. What was that about Adumbrae being the original, while we were the reflection? Didn’t Professor Bansa muse about something like that during class? Real creepy.

Personally, I didn’t care if the truth was that Spooky Erind was the ‘real person’, and I was a mere echo of the universe or something. Delete me. Collapse my dimension. Whatever. I’d just live my life until then. If I only existed in a ‘movie’, such that I was gone after the show ended, then so be it. That was how I viewed my life anyway. I was existential-crisis-proof.

Adumbrae Kelsey also mentioned ‘playing on this plane’. Maybe my movie analogy wasn’t accurate. Did Adumbrae view humans as characters in a game? Would explain why they destroyed buildings and killed people. I’d do that too if a game allowed it.

But I wasn’t a player. I was a character in the game that was getting fucked by the players. Shouldn’t I boot them out to protect the game world? Wouldn’t I be the hero in that case? I should be!

After all, I am the main character.

The streets we passed were mostly empty. It was the early hours of the morning. Barely any time for sleep, if I could even sleep. Still not sure what to do with Kelsey.

I also had school later. Guess I’d have to cut classes for the first time in my law school life. In my entire life, actually. I was a good student throughout my life as part of the various faces I had worn. Things were really changing.

“Boss? Sorry for disturbing you. About informing the BID… How will we go about this?”

I hadn’t given much thought to the specifics of my plan since it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. But I knew one thing for certain. “I’ll do it.”

“But you’re an Adumbrae! Let me do it, boss. Got contacts at the police. We’ll make a very credible tip that won’t be traced back to us. Then we’ll sit back, stick to our own brand of illegality that doesn’t involve monsters, and wait until the BID finishes cleaning up.”  

“Remember my assignment for you? Investigate a cop named Sgt. Jeremiah Hall?”

“Some of my boys are on it,” Overdrive said. “We need more time, but so far, we’re sure that he’s part of the newly-formed task force investigating the docks incident and the Adumbrae attack last month. The BID is in charge, of course. Our guy is a sort of liaison officer between the BID and the local police.”

Oh, shit. I didn’t expect Tower Cop to be this close to Adumbrae stuff. He probably had his own corkboard. Or maybe a whiteboard full of notes, connected by lines made with a red marker. I bet I’d be in some of his notes.

Did he suspect me of being an Adumbrae? No way, right? I was as human as could be before the Adumbrae attack.

But Tower Cop did think something was up with me. Keeping it a secret that I was present during the Adumbrae attack was kind of excusable. But I was also connected to Reo, and he stupidly displayed some signs of inhumanity. From there, Tower Cop might’ve uncovered more suspicious things about me. I had to throw him a bone, and a very big one—the PCMs. Two birds with one stone kind of plan. I was on a roll with these expressions.

“You’re right that we can’t buy him off,” Overdrive continued. “He’s famous for being morally upright. Is he onto you, boss?”

“A result of my very public appearance at the docks.”

“Why specifically him, though? Aren’t there a lot of cops… on the case?” Overdrive’s voice trailed off towards the end of the sentence. Then he loudly said, “Let’s kill him!”

I blinked. By marking Tower Cop, it meant that he was closest to discovering my ‘human identity.’ And saying that, I’d tip the BID about the PCM confirmed that. Oopsies.

Overdrive must’ve just realized it, and he was pretending he didn’t. I could kill him for discovering such a clue about me. Not sure if it had also dawned on him that the fact that I hadn’t killed Tower Cop yet meant that he had gotten close enough to me that his death might make the situation worse for me.

“He’s just a human,” Overdrive said. “You got the monsters, boss. Leave the killing of normal people to us. They won’t trace it back to you because I’ll make it very clear that it’s the work of a gang. I’m sure this Hall dude made lots of enemies back in his heyday.”

And Overdrive basically admitted that he realized that Tower Cop had gotten close to my ‘human identity.’ Did he have a motivation, some kind of incentive to betray me? Not now, probably. But when his life would be threatened, he’d have no problems selling me out.

That was the game of the criminal underworld. I could install someone more trustworthy as the leader. What about Teflon? He was ready to die for my sake. But how to do it? I had no experience with schemes of this magnitude.

“I’ll tell you when to kill Sgt. Hall,” I said. “Let’s head to 4th Street. Then you go left at the car dealership and…”

I gave directions where Overdrive should drop me off—a small park in between two mid-rise buildings. They were offices that didn’t operate at night. No people other than sleeping guards. Since they were old buildings, there weren’t that many CCTV cameras either. I bet there were none at the park. It was just a tiny space, probably for compliance with city regulations about green zones, and nobody really frequented it. Especially not at this hour.

After leaving some last-minute instructions to Overdrive, I hopped out of the van with the Kelsey burrito on my shoulder. I rushed through the park, encountering no one. I jumped over a ten-foot-high wire fence in one go.

“Oh? I managed to do it,” I mumbled under my breath as I headed to the back of the building. I thought I couldn’t clear a fence that high. Having a superhuman body was great. My resolve to find a cure wavered.

But I couldn’t spare the headspace to think about that now. I had to reach my condo quickly.

The back of the office building faced the back of another building behind it. Just a few windows and a narrow, zigzagging staircase that was probably one of the fire escape paths. I didn’t go up the stairs. Too loud.

Instead, I grabbed the edge of each flight and launched myself to the next level. I was like a monkey given the ease with which I climbed the building. Not even twenty seconds, I was already on the roof, with Kelsey burrito still not moving. Transferring buildings was easy enough. The challenging part was clearing the streets in between blocks.

But I had mapped this route before, anticipating that I might need to pass here someday. I chose streets that were just a couple of lanes wide. Easy enough to traverse in one jump.

Good job, past me. Rare moments where I displayed prudence and foresight should earn me an award.

“Almost there,” I said, observing my condo building from the top of its neighboring building. “Let’s see… One, two, three…” I counted which floor I was. “Okay, that one. Two up from the window with lights. Three left from the open window.”

I’d need both hands free for climbing so I wore Kelsey burrito like a backpack, strapping her onto me with the chains. Her scales felt rough and cold despite the cloths wrapping her.  

“Here goes…” I jumped off the edge of the roof and onto my condo building.

(Author's Notes: Bringing an Adumbrae into her condo? Erind wouldn't even let Deen stay there. Things would get interesting in the next chapter with Kelsey and Erind. We're now at 37 chapters for Book 2. I have an idea for the last act for this book, after the short break of Erind's Mom visiting, but it's probably too big an event and would need significant buildup. I'm pushing it to Book 3. I'm asking for help brainstorming what would be a good, satisfying end to Book 2 for you? Just throw around ideas. I can come up with something crazy. Many thanks for your help and support!)