REND

When Dad was still in the land of the officially alive, we used to have his and Mom’s friends over for a barbeque on Saturdays. One of them, Auntie Carla, was obsessed with watching a documentary series about serial killers and she made all of them watch at least one episode each time while waiting for the food.

Pretty little me, running all over the house, watched it sometimes as well, but I didn’t really pay it any mind. A vague feeling of understanding was all I had of the people featured in it. Eventually, Mom got hooked and watched stuff like it even after Dad was gone. Murder mysteries, crime scene investigations, unsolved cases, Mom used to love them.

Maybe they reminded her of the simpler times when Dad was still around.

These shows were my first exposure to other...not-so-normal people. And they were very interesting. Oftentimes, the shows included studies trying to explain their minds, mostly conducted on the prison population, more like solely conducted on prisoners. I guess, they were most accessible—they weren't going anywhere. Also, I doubted if people like me would go to a psychologist of our own volition.

Why would we? There was nothing wrong with us.

I know, I know. The definition of 'wrong' was highly debatable.

One thing these shows didn’t highlight or even understood, was that they were only able to “spot” these people because they had no more interest in keeping their masks up. Yes, I say ‘masks’ because they took it off eventually.

A ‘face’ was never taken off, because there is nothing underneath, duh.

A ‘face’ was the truth to the person it was made for. If twenty individuals knew me by such particular face, and only I was aware of what was underneath, then who cared that that wasn’t the real me? Twenty to one: the societal truth was my ‘face’.

Which was why it irritated me to no end whenever I saw a face taken off. At that point, the face becomes a mask. It was like when you see your friend, who had said she was dieting, binge eat a bucket of fried chicken. Like, girl, what are you doing?

Irritating.

 

---

 

When a waiter came over, Bianca was back to the friendly and joyful persona she used for her show in a snap. She ordered sandwiches for us and asked us what drinks we wanted. I requested a drink that was on the fruity side with little alcohol content.

After the waiter left, Bianca leaned back, crossed her legs, and said, “Xaz? How are they?” Xazary simply shook her head in response. “Awesome,” she said clapping her hands. “I hope you’re not offended that I had Xaz scan you for wires and bugs. You can never be too careful.”

“Oh, you didn’t need to do that,” Deen said, nonchalantly waving it off. “If we were with the BID there would be no point for doing this at all.”

I crouched a bit, with my shoulders dropped as low as possible, making myself small. We already made contact. This was the time for Deen to be in control. Be front and center. If I continued butting in, Bianca’s attention would be turned to me. Right now, she was fixated on Deen. She had no reason to mind me. I was a nobody in her eyes.

“Really?” Bianca said.

“The Panderton Act. The BID is just too powerful with it.” Deen gave a dramatic sigh. “I know someone, who I’d rather not name, he disappeared and a week later his family was gathered up for testing.”

Bianca nodded slowly with her eyes in slits. “That is true. I think I've heard of that.”

I told Deen to prepare this answer while we were waiting to meet Bianca. ‘How could I trust you?’ was the question I anticipated Bianca to ask. This was close enough. Remembering my brief conversation with Ramello about the Panderton Act, I told Deen how to answer it. And it was true. The BID would just nab suspected people whether rich or poor. Deen’s story about knowing someone that was taken was a nice touch. Vague enough that Bianca was likely to have heard about something like it.

Bianca’s logical choice was to believe that we were with the 2Ms. She wouldn’t know about Dario’s gang because she was new here, and I didn't think the 2Ms would have told her about us. How many people were running around the city with illegal powers anyway?

More likely than not, they would be connected with the criminal underground of Adumbrae experimentation. At least, that was what Bianca would think.

“And…let's say I was with the Corebrings. Then you'd be dead,” Deen said.

Bravo, I thought. I didn’t tell her to say that, but it drove home her point.

“That is also true.” Bianca was unfazed and kept on smiling. “It’s good I met you. I must confess I'm anxious about the operation. After seeing your demonstration, it seems worth it.”

“It is,” Deen said, eagerly nodding. “The sensation is something hard to explain. Like you're a new person. Strength and energy you've never experienced before.” I assumed Deen was truthfully speaking about her own experience.

“I must ask you, though. How did you know about me? Like you said, our identities are kept secret from each other.”

I swallowed and prayed that Deen could properly answer. This was the other question we were anticipating. We didn't have a good response for this, but I had two plans to sidestep this question.

“Once we are members, yes, it’s very hard," Deen said. "What we did was check the list of people who were going to the Red Island. New people are on a different list, you see. A list that's easier to get.” The first part of our plan was name drop ‘Red Island’ to prove we were in the know.

Bianca was about to say something when the waiter showed up with food. It was a good thing too because he broke Bianca’s train of thought. I nudged Deen with my foot to talk before Bianca did.

Deen continued, “Actually, we had help from someone to check the guest list. She’s way older than me, so we can’t really be close friends. You’ll know her eventually. She looks very young compared to her actual age because of all operations done on her. With her new body, she pushed the limit on plastic surgery. Do you also plan to have plastic surgery after your trip to Red Island? I can ask her for the name of her surgeo—”

“No,” Bianca hissed. Her face momentarily contorted in rage. And it was back to her friendly expression so fast that if someone else saw it, they'd wonder if they were imagining things.

This was my second plan. We knew Bianca had something against any operation on her body, so I concocted this story for Deen to tell and divert the conversation this way to elicit a reaction from her. This outcome was both unexpected and also very much welcome.

“Many people do that, I heard,” Deen said, pushing on, acting as if she hadn't seen Bianca’s outrage. “We have these healing abilities but it doesn’t stop us from aging.” She shrugged. “I mean I can understand the older people wanting to look young again. It also matches the young feeling of their bodies.”

Bianca’s nostrils flared. She inhaled deeply to calm herself down. “I'm not turning myself into… to do that. Feeling and looking young? Nonsense.”

“By the way, thank you for the food and drinks you ordered,” Deen said, sensing it was time to change the topic. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Don’t worry about it. Who knows, we might become close friends in the future? Help yourselves.” Bianca took one of the club sandwiches on the tray in front of us.

“We’ll get to know each other more after your trip to the Red Island.” Deen switched the topic back to rich people's social circle stuff, to which Bianca happily obliged. She probably was trying to fish information from us.

I didn’t dare look as if I was studying my surroundings because I could feel the eyes of Xazary on me. The only places my eyes went were Deen’s face, the food, the drinks, and Bianca’s face. I just nodded once in a while in between sipping my drink while listening to them talk. The sandwich was a no-no for me. A clubhouse sandwich had meat, lettuce, and other stuff in between the bread. Following Rule #2, I had to eat the bread first, leaving the filling for last, and that'd look weird.

“By the way,” Bianca said, “are you going to attend the fight this Saturday night?”

Deen tensed up. She gripped my knee underneath the table. Reacting quickly, I pulled up my phone. “Checking Deen’s schedule,” I mumbled. Bianca’s schedule posted on her site was on my recently visited pages. I scanned it as it loaded. “It’s Saturday night at the Eve, remember?” I told Deen.

The ‘Eve’ was the nightclub I saw on Bianca’s Saturday schedule. Deen had mentioned she had no idea what was inside because it was super exclusive. Putting two and two together...

“You meant that? Of course, I know about it. But I rarely go to the Eve.”

“She’s already very squeamish with cutting herself,” I said. “The sight of blood and violence makes her—”

“—makes me want to puke,” Deen said with a grimace. “You didn’t need to tell everyone about that.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I don’t want to go there if I can help it.”

“All those blood and guts.”

“My Xaz here is going to fight this Saturday,” Bianca proudly said. “It'll make me so happy if you’re able to come.”

“You’re fighting?” I said to Xazary, horrified, with matching hand to my mouth. “Isn’t it dangerous? You might get killed there.” I said in a whisper, “You do know you’re not fighting against humans?”

Instead of Xazary answering, Bianca spoke, “She will fight. I have to show what I’m capable of.”

Establishing dominance in a new environment, I see. Her way though was too direct for my liking.

Zachary, her other bodyguard, approached Bianca and said something to her we didn’t catch. Bianca heaved a sigh and said, “Can’t be helped. I have to go now, duty calls. Or shooting calls.” She laughed and we laughed along with her.

“We understand,” Deen said.

“Take care. Do try to come to my precious Xaz’s fight. We’re new and supporters would be nice.” Bianca stood up and pranced away, waving at her fans, enveloped by her crew.

“Oh my god,” Deen mouthed exaggeratedly with barely a sound. “We’re still alive.”

“The gamble paid off,” I replied. She poked my side, making me jump up. “Hey! I’m ticklish there.”

“Sorry, I’m just really giddy we pulled through. I was getting worried there we'd be caught in our lies.”

“You can escape,” I pointed out. “With your awesome power.” I hoped she'd give me a hint of what it was—I decided to make it into a guessing game.

“I’m more worried about you. I don’t know how I can get you to safety if her scary bodyguards decided to kill us.”

“I don’t think they'll kill us. Too many people here.”

“They can totally do it! One test of my dead body and they’ll have justification. They can say they knew I wasn't human so they killed me.”

“Right,” I said, grinning.

She poked me again. “Don’t treat it as a joke. We could’ve died. How were you so sure that Bianca wouldn’t just report us to the police or have her bodyguards take care of us?”

I shrugged. “She had no reason to doubt who we are. Like I told you, the only logical choice for her given the available information she has was to assume you're truly a client of the 2Ms. It’s natural for people who are part of a secret organization to reach out to each other for connection. That’s why it’s so easy for seeded people to organize cults and dupe their followers into feeding the Adumbrae within them.”

My explanation appeared to be satisfactory to Deen. It wasn’t the real reason I was confident Bianca wouldn’t only refrain from being hostile to us, she'd actually accept us.

Those experts always repeated the same old checklist when trying to spot not-so-normal people like me: grandiose, manipulative, charming, lacking empathy, impulsive, yadda, yadda. That last one, impulsivity, nothing could be further from the truth. I had a hunch that others like me also had Rules they followed. It may not be as concrete as mine, a literal checklist, but we all had Rules.

Keeping things in symmetry.

Dare I say, a universal truth to each of us.

When it came to Bianca, my gut feeling was she also had Rules. She didn’t want any enhancement or augmentation done on her body. Makeup, dyeing her hair, colored contacts, those were fine for her. She’d rather work her butt off exercising than have liposuction to get thinner. Plastic surgery was normal for celebrities, but as I searched the internet, it turned out Bianca was famous for being “all-natural,” just as Reo had mentioned.

Why the fuck would she agree to get turned into an Adumbrae then?

Call it instinct, or maybe relatability, I had a hunch I was seeing part of one of her major Rules. Someone normal wouldn’t have this kind of roundabout behavior. It might even be called impulsive.

It was anything but.

Since it was part of her major Rule, whatever that may be, there was no way she was going to kill us. She’d want to know more information, gain connections, allies, friends, or even pawns—as much help as she could muster to successfully follow her Rules, or at least not break them. Turning us away would be impossible for her.

And I was right.

As we stepped inside the elevator, Deen said, “Finally, we’re out of there. My body's still so tensed up even after they left.” She suddenly hugged me. “You were awesome back there, Erind,” she said. “I don’t think I could've gained that much info from her without your plan. I wouldn't have gotten that close to her at all.”

“I think quickly under pressure,” I said, returning her hug reluctantly with an awkward tap on her shoulders. I hated being hugged; I was fine if I was the one who initiated it though.

“There are still some things I don’t understand. How did you know about what happens at the Eve club?”

“That’s pretty easy. When Bianca mentioned the fight on Saturday night, I checked her schedule on her site and Eve was the only place that could possibly host a secret fight.”

“I get that, but I mean, how did you know what’s going on during the fights?”

“Remember when I got kidnapped?” I said. Deen nodded. “I overheard them talking about something like it. It wasn’t clear, but it sounded like those underground illegal fights. And when they made Ramello fight against the mutant, it clicked that the fights they're holding weren't between humans, maybe only one side is human.”

Deen’s eyes widened. “I see. How clever of you to make that connection. I felt it made her believe our story even more. The Eve is our next lead.”

“Bianca confirmed enhanced humans join these fights. Are they going to fight normal humans? No way.”

“It has to be other enhanced humans too. Or…”

“Or the mutants made by the 2Ms.” A wonderful thought occurred to me.

How about I try getting in the fights? Isn't that free food for me?