“You’re saying that Corebrings are the enemy?” I questioningly tilted my head, my ears flopping to the side. “And the Adumbrae who retained their human minds are working for the Corebrings, making them enemies too?”
I recalled my meeting with Auntie Dora after I trashed the base of the Tea Party of Vegas and killed them all. Auntie Dora, or Euphonia, as she liked to be called, was Mom’s co-worker from several years back that everyone thought had died in an accident. It turned out she was an Adumbrae who maintained her sanity. She might’ve mentioned working for the Corebrings during our meeting, but I didn’t think of much of it then because I assumed she was just messing with me. It was for the good of humanity or something, she had explained. While part of Mark’s story seemed to check out, the rest sounded like bullshit.
“Then why do they appear to be the good guys?” I wondered aloud, translated by Wormy Two. “I mean, compared to what you’re doing here. Kidnapping people to be hunted for sport. For horrible experiments. Releasing those slugs that turn people into monsters. How can you claim to be the savior of humanity?”
Mark laughed. “All those things you have listed… yes, those are villainous acts, I can’t deny that. But the end justifies the means. What’s a few hundred lives to the few billions of all humans?”
“Here we go with the rationalization.” I kept myself sitting straight and serious though giggles went up my flanks. I loved this part in movies where the bad guy tries to paint himself gray.
“We require funds, Erind Hartwell. A mountain of funds for our mission. Where do we obtain them? From the wealthy who fear death and seek power. We sell what they sorely desire—to become an Adumbrae with their minds intact. In making our product, lives have to be sacrificed.”
“Sacrificed for your experiments,” I said, pointing at Mark with a claw. “I may not be a scientist, but I can say that hunting games and pitting innocent humans against monsters in your arena aren’t part of experiments.”
Kind of weird how I was being the voice of reason. This should be Deen’s role.
Mark shrugged. “It is to keep our clients entertained. If they’re happy, money flows. And consider this—we provide an outlet for their basal human instinct of violence instead of letting them go wild in the outside world. Count it as a reasonable sacrifice.”
“Is that why I was kidnapped?” I asked, remembering my gripe with them. It had been such a long time ago. “So far, no one could tell me the reason why I was taken in broad daylight and brought to your base at the docks. Was I supposed to be one of these ‘sacrifices’ to gain funds? A test subject or a prey in the hunt?”
“Ah… that.” Mark covered his face with his palm and started to chuckle, his shoulders shaking as he held back full-blown laughter. “Erind Hartwell, the answer to that is yes… you were supposed to be a test subject. We regularly search the USBID repository for people suitable for our purposes. If I recall correctly, your test results, Eloyce Fields readings, or other detailed profiling, was flagged by our scanners…” He went on to explain technical stuff.
I narrowed my eyes. Professor Deslys!
It could only be that incident. After witnessing Kelsey’s inhuman contortionist act before breaking through the law school cafeteria window and throwing herself into the waters far below, I was sent to be tested at Melchor Hall. Deen and Myra went before me. Unlike with them, Professor Deslys did some advanced testing crap on me and sent the results to the BID database. Regular procedure and whatnot. This should be what Mark was referring to.
Whatever did happen to Kelsey and Professor Deslys? Mark probably didn’t know.
“… our team of scientists saw your readings,” continued Mark, “and requested you be taken in. Now, I don’t know what they saw. I simply approved their request without a second thought, as I did many others. I should’ve given it more consideration, I admit. We shouldn’t have taken an Eloyce University student and risk publicity, eyes drawn to us.” He leaned forward, still chuckling. “Well… it turned out that was the least of our worries, didn’t it? And it was the start of our wonderful relationship.”
“You can’t be serious. I could’ve avoided all the crap I’ve gone through if I didn’t get tested?” Unsure of what my reaction should be, I ended up chuckling as well. It was all too absurd. “Though I’m sure we’ll eventually meet some other way. La Esperanza is too small for monsters not to run into each other. That whole load of nonsense aside, time to tell me about your pitch. What’s this whole saving humanity from the Corebrings thing? Why need all that money? Why would I side with you?”
Mark didn’t immediately talk. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
His attendants waiting by the trees pushed the shrouded objects on wheels to the clearing.
“A demonstration?” I was on alert, flexing my claws. I couldn’t smell what was hidden under the cloth. All I could tell was that the three objects were cylindrical. Containers for Adumbrae prepared to ambush me? But if that was Mark’s intent, he could’ve parked an army of monsters right where I would pop out after teleporting. Or just boobytrapped the place with bombs to avoid fighting me.
“It is, yes,” Mark said, standing up. He walked to the leftmost container and pulled its covering, revealing a canister large enough to hold a person inside it.
And it did contain a human… or something that was once human.
Floating in the green liquid inside was a mutated woman, half her body turned into tumors upon tumors—an obvious victim of those parasite slug thingies. If it was any consolation to her, half her head appeared to have been blasted away. She didn’t last long in this state, dying before her transformation could progress her further as a monster.
“Those slugs that turn people into monsters,” I nonchalantly said, leaning back on my chair. “You say that the Corebrings are the bad guys, yet you have shit like this going on.”
“It does appear so. But things aren’t apparent at the start. Erind Hartwell, are you aware of the hierarchy of the Corebrings?”
“Huh? What are you—? Fine. There are Initiates, then the regular Corebrings, the Overseers, and the High Overseers. That’s what everyone knows, and I’m included in that. You’re going to tell me something new. Hurry up with the dramatic reveal.”
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“Yes, the High Overseers are the most powerful Corebrings. Do you know any of them?”
“Some of the popular ones, I guess. There’s Isolde of the Flying Fortress. She has that floating island of death or something. What’s the point of—?”
“Do you know of Thirteen?”
I shook my head. “Is he a High Overseer too?”
“Thirteen is the strongest Corebring… in terms of combat. That statement has to be qualified given how his power works. Each time he is defeated, he returns ever stronger. The number Thirteen on his head counts down. I’ve heard that at number Two, he could take on several High Overseers. And he has, for he rebelled against the Hive at one point.”
“I haven’t heard of anything like that,” I said, interested in the story despite myself.
“Of course, you haven’t. The Hive won’t advertise any hint of weakness. Thirteen defeating a number of Overseer level Corebrings brings shame to the Hive and displays the possibility of internal divide that governments, such as ours, may try to exploit to bring the Mother Core to heel.”
“Hmmm, makes sense. So, what happened to Thirteen? He’s the strongest Corebring in a fight, you said. I’m assuming a Corebring who’s strongest not in a fight dealt with him.”
“Indeed,” Mark said. “Do you know of the Nanny?”
“Doesn’t she take care of Corebrings rest when they aren’t needed?” I have read and heard about her but not much.
She wasn’t popular because she was simply a custodian of sorts, staying in the Hive and never revealing herself. Though it is well-recorded that Corebrings do enter some sort of stasis—it was the self-regulation of the Hive not to have too many super-powered beings around—it was an urban legend that there was this ‘Nanny’ guarding them in their Deep Sleep.
“So, does she exist?” I asked. “I suppose she’s the one who stopped this Thirteen guy?”
“It is as you say,” Mark replied. “You may be wondering why I’m telling you about them. Thirteen and Nanny are two of the three top High Overseers of the Corebrings. And the last one—”
“Is the boss,” I finished his sentence. Auntie Dora mentioned something like working for the ‘head honcho guy’ of the Corebrings. Was this what she was talking about?
“Correct, Erind Hartwell. The leader of the Corebrings.”
“Who is he? I thought the High Overseers vote on Hive affairs, operating as a council and being more or less equal. That’s what most people know of them anyway.”
“I wouldn’t call their leader a ‘he’, though he is one, or two, or three. More and more every day. He can also be a ‘she’. He can be your neighbor and he can be me.”
I wrinkled my snout. “What kind of bullshit riddle is that?”
“Have you heard the name Pando?”
“You know that I don’t know who that is.”
“Pando means ‘I spread’ in Latin,” Mark said. “And that is what Pando does. They started as an individual when the Mother Core came. Each day after, a few people realize that they were Pando all along. Man and woman, young and old. People wake up one morning and know that they are Pando. Their bodies remain the same biologically, with the only way to know they’ve become Pando is through reading their minds… which comes with its complications, as you may imagine. This only happens to normal humans, as far as we can tell. Pando can’t take over a Corebring or an Adumbrae because the mind is already occupied.”
“Wa-wa-wait a bit. Back up. Rewind to that each day thing. People get jacked up to a hivemind?”
“Every. Single. Day.” Mark paced in front of the other still-covered containers. “We don’t know for certain how many humans Pando takes over daily. A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? It’s been over seventy years since the Corebrings have started to appear.
“The influence of the Corebrings spreads far and wide. The cashier at the convenience store might be Pando. The senator you’re voting for might be Pando. We’ve come to believe that the number increases as time passes. If this is true, every single human in the future will be Pando. It is only a matter of time.”
“That’s… wild.” I stared at the people on top of the buildings looking at us. This wasn’t what I came to Red Island for. The hell was happening? I turned to Mark. “Okay, let’s say that your insane story is true. What’s your plan to stop the Corebrings? Like, how? You can’t even tell if someone is taken over by this Pando guy.”
Mark unveiled another canister. Another dead human is inside. But this time, the corpse wasn’t mutated. Not that I could see, anyway.
“Behold, a body that was taken over by Pando,” Mark said. “When an XR-series parasite—”
“Those slugs, you mean.”
“Yes. You see, Erind Hartwell, a slug can’t take over the body of Pando. It’s already occupied. It can’t be transformed into a… proto-Adumbrae.”
“A mutant monster, you mean,” I said, snorting through my snout. Wormy Two captured the derision in my growl. “Let’s just call it what it really is.”
Mark ignored me, continuing with his explanation. “Though the XR-series parasite can’t accomplish its purpose, it does something greater—it kills the Pando-controlled human. Perhaps, there is no way to save them. Removing them from the population is the next best option. As for humans not yet controlled by Pando, they will be ‘occupied’ in a sense by the parasite, thus saving them from such fate. Do you understand our plan?”
“What I’m hearing is that you want to turn people into monsters so that they won’t be taken over by the Pando hivemind. That doesn’t make things any better.”
“You forget the rest of our goal,” said Mark, wagging his finger. “Remember that we can cause a person to tap into the powers of an Adumbrae, and yet retain his mind. Combine our two… products… Do you see our aim, Erind Hartwell? Once we perfect our parasite, we will spread it to all the world, forever saving everyone from the Corebrings, while granting them superpowers. We will usher in the evolution of humanity!”
“Evolution of humanity? Such a villain thing to say.”
“And we’re not too far away from success.” Mark unveiled the last container to reveal a person with minor mutations, patches of purple scales here and there, and horns growing out of his temple. “Fairly decent development from this—” Mark pointed to the first container “—wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately, the test subject killed himself, not wanting to evolve. Nonetheless, success is success.”
“This is messed up… which is saying something, coming from me.” Too much information.
Half of me wanted to ask for the way home and forget about all of this. I just wanted to destroy Red Island, not join the fight for the existence of humanity. However, it seemed that no matter which side won, humanity would be gone. Not that I should care much since I was no longer human.
“This is the result of using our new ZY-09 parasite,” Mark said. “The other independent-thinking Adumbrae joined the Corebrings. But if you would discern that we’re the winning team, I’m sure you’ll side with us. A little demonstration of the latest iteration of our project.”
“You’re not going to test that on me, are you?”
“I dare not attempt anything of the sort,” Mark said, laughing. He pointed behind me. Far away, the rest of the Adumbrae goons carried the yellow crystal with Frizzy Detective. “Bring him here!”
