I immediately snapped my fingers, getting both girls’ attention. “You, weapons,” I said, pointing to Tabby. “You, prep our exit and grab your gear, we may need to move fast.” Without waiting for confirmation that they were on their way to comply, I moved to the door and peered through the eye hole.
“Huh. That’s unexpected.”
“What? Who is it, more rogue agents?” Tabby asked, already holding a rifle to her shoulder. Something about the juxtaposition of her loose pajamas and the assault rifle in her hands was a definite turn-on, but I had other things to focus on for now.
“Nope. See for yourself,” I said, cracking open the door to reveal Euna, the pink slime-girl we rescued from Club Ouroboros and who helped me fight my way through Blitz and Philips.
Euna was completely naked, her translucent pink biomatter just a voluptuous mass of ooey-gooey thickness. She gave a shy little wave and I noticed parts of her seemed to be melting off, like bits of heated wax dripping off a candle.
“Hi,” she squeaked out timidly.
“Oh!” Tabitha said, sounding about as surprised as I felt. Her eyes traced up and down Euna’s curvaceous form. She rested her assault rifle on her hip and smirked a little. “Now that’s what I call room service.”
I cleared my throat and spoke to Euna in a softened voice. “Uh, hi. Two questions. How did you get here, and are you okay? I don’t remember you being this, uh, melty last time we saw each other.”
Euna’s face contorted into a mask of sorrow and she collapsed through the doorway into my arms, weeping uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry,” she cried, “I’ve been trying to hold myself together but it’s just too much! Too much, too much!” Her form solidified slightly as she gripped my arms and made eye contact with me. “I heard this noise, this buzzing, and the next thing I knew I was fighting a group of humans with fancy guns. They stole me from my home. Threw me in a cage. And forced me to kill or die. I…I was ready to give up. Next time they made me fight, I was just going to let the other one kill me. Then you two arrived. You saved me!”
That was all she managed to get out before she melted past the point of coherence.
To say that I was holding her would have been an overstatement. It was more like someone dumped a bucket of syrup all over me that was magically—if only barely—retaining a humanoid shape. I awkwardly carried her over to the couch and let her collapse onto the cushions. She curled into a fetal position and slowly took on the consistency of melted ice cream as she just kept sobbing.
I made eye contact with Tabitha, silently asking for advice. She gave me a ‘no clue’ gesture and went to go put her weapon back, leaving me to gently pat Euna’s shoulder and utter the most classic placating words of all time. “There, there.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” came a masculine voice from the doorway.
My psychic bond with Tabitha flared up as we both reacted in sync. She tossed a pistol directly into the position my hands were going to be as I pivoted and rose, leveling the barrel of the gun right at the newcomer’s head right as Tabitha drew a bead on him with her rifle.
“Blitz? What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded.
Agent Blitz had his hands up at his sides, displaying empty palms to assure us that he meant no harm. He took a step inside the door and leveraged it shut with a foot before he began speaking. “To be real with you? Boris sent me here to kill all of you. Especially you, ‘chosen one,’” he glared at me and scoffed. “That’s what he called you. The ‘champion chosen from beyond the veil’ or some shit. I don’t know anything about all that. But the thing is…he sent me in alone against two clearly above-average agents. Which is pretty much just suicide with a few extra steps. So, Boris just sent me to get myself killed. Not loving that, for me personally. Do you mind if I have a seat?” He gestured to the big armchair nearest to the door.
“Yes,” Tabitha snarled.
Blitz started to sit down anyway, so I fired a round just past his ear.
He straightened up immediately.
“I’ll just stand, then.” Blitz cleared his throat and continued. “On the way over here I thought about what you said, and ultimately concluded that you were right. Monsters are people too. Philips and the other guys under Boris’s command told me something different. Filled my head with all this shit about how monsters and fairies, and humans and pretty much everything else were all just lesser. They said that it was us demons who should inherit all the worlds. I…almost believed them. But then I woke up in that subway to a Bureau medical team. A cyclops saved my life. A centaur carried me out over her back and a talking squirrel lectured me about the dangers of getting electrocuted. They saved me. Monsters. Saved. Me.”
Blitz shook his head, glancing between me and Tabitha, to Io, and to the weeping puddle that occasionally liked to be called Euna. “The world we live in is a really fucked up kind of whimsical. The kind where terrible shit keeps happening to innocent people and when they try to rise up and stop the terrible shit from happening they get called ‘monsters.’ I don’t want to live in a world like that, man.”
His eyes settled on me and he took a deep breath. “I joined the Bureau because I was angry. Some monster killed my mom. I got told there was a fight to be had and I wanted in. I trained my heart out so I could get revenge but, on my first mission…I don’t know, man. You look into a creature’s eyes as they’re dying and you see the same look of fear and loneliness that was in your mother’s eyes the night she went and…suddenly the fight just gets taken out of you, y’know?” Blitz looked up at us like he was begging us to understand.
“So what are you saying here, dude, are you switching sides?” I asked.
He looked down at the ground shamefully. “I don’t really think I was ever on one side or the other, really. I was broken, grieving, lost. Then I was angry and I focused that anger into my training so I could rise to the top. But then I was just following whatever orders Philips and Boris gave me. Not really actively making any decisions, you know, just drifting from one mistake to another. That’s done now. I’m not going back to any of that. I don’t want to be a bad guy anymore. My mom always told me I was destined for something greater, so I’m choosing to make her proud.”
I wasn't really sure what to make of all that. Tabitha was firmly against trusting him, and I couldn't say I blamed her, but there was something compelling about what he was saying. I could understand his anger, fuck knows what I would’ve done to that other driver in the accident that killed Hannah if he hadn’t died on impact. And the notion of viewing monsters as monstrous was not terribly outlandish at first glance. It was only when you got to know them that you realized they were people the same as anyone else, only capable of doing monstrous things when they were pushed over a certain limit.
This Signal was artificially pushing monsters well over that limit, forcing them to become dangerous enough to justify the Keepers putting them down en masse. Most of them, even Bianca and Derek, seemed perfectly fine with this equation, but others like Tabby and I and now—maybe—Blitz? We could see how wrong it was.
I glanced over at Io, who had a pair of her drones up and hovering over her shoulders while she had her hands poised over her command tablet. “He’s clean,” she confirmed, answering my question before I could ask it. “He’s got some mechanical device in his pocket. Non-functional and non-explosive, but other than that he’s unarmed.”
Blitz pointed to the pocket she was referring to. “This isn’t a weapon. I mean, well it is a weapon, just not one that I came here to use on anybody. Have you guys heard of the Signal?”
Tabitha and I exchanged a wordless glance, Io’s tail rattled nervously, and even Euna solidified—somewhat, she was still looking like melted chocolate— and rose into a seated position.
“Is that what you call the buzzing sound that makes us lose our shit?” she asked.
Blitz snapped his fingers and pointed at the goo girl. “Nailed it. The buzzing sound that makes monsters lose their shit. ‘Signal’ was catchier, I guess.”
“They’d pipe it into the arena whenever they made us fight,” Euna said softly. I could hear the effect of her lower lip trembling just in her voice alone. It spontaneously broke something inside my heart and filled it up with the instinct to protect her at all costs. “Everytime I thought I could just give up and let the next monster have me, they’d start playing it. The Signal. And I’d black out. Next thing I knew I’d be standing over a dead monster. Some of them…some of them were friendly to me up in the cages they kept us all in.”
Before I could reach out and stop her, Euna melted back into a sobbing puddle and oozed off the couch onto the floor. Just the barest hint of her curvy humanoid figure remained amidst all the viscous pink biomass.
Blitz swallowed nervously and slowly pulled out a small round device which looked pretty busted up. Like he had taken a hammer to it. “This was how I was supposed to take you guys out. It’s one of the emitters they use to broadcast the Signal. All I had to do was walk in here and activate it, and Agent Tabitha and Operator Io were supposed to turn on you and rip you to shreds. Or at least that was Boris’s plan anyway. But I made a different choice.”
My eyes drifted over to the ladies and I could not help picturing them both turning on me. Considering how I felt about them both, I would find it difficult to fight them on even terms. But if they went Feral, neither of them would hesitate to tear me apart.
Well, Tabby might hesitate actually. I managed to control her transformation back in the apartment complex after all. But Io or Euna? No way.
“Well, thank you for not waltzing in here and assassinating me,” I said, being genuine. “But I’m guessing you have a plan? Some sort of insight on what Boris and Aleksei are planning next, perhaps?”
“Guys,” Io warned.
“Can I see that?” Euna said suddenly, her voluptuous form rapidly solidifying as she strode towards Blitz. Her hand was pointed at the emitter and her pink biomass was looking a few shades closer to red than it had when she walked in—and she was still naked, which had Blitz looking mildly uncomfortable.
“Give her the emitter, agent,” Tabitha backed her up.
“Guys! We have bigger problems right now!” Io shouted, drawing all of our attention onto her. With a furious swipe she threw up a copy of what was on her tablet that one of her drones picked up and projected over the coffee table. It showed a 3D image of the hotel we were staying in with five blue dots sitting in our hotel suite representing Io, Tabby, Euna, Blitz and me. There were also hundreds of yellow dots scattered throughout the rest of the massive building, presumably staff and guests of the hotel.
But what caught my eye was the dozen-odd red dots swarming toward our position from multiple areas. A squad was coming up via the service elevator that linked to our private garage. Another squad was clearing out the suite above us and preparing to drop down from above. Worst of all there was an attack helicopter masquerading as a news chopper that was swinging around the far end of the building and preparing to get a bead on us through the massive glass windows that dominated the eastern-facing wall.
Judging by how far down the elevator was, how slow the upper-level team was moving, and how hard the helicopter was trying to make it appear like they were flying casually, I estimated how much time we had left before they went loud.
“Everybody grab your shit and get set, things are about to get dicey!” I commanded. “Tabby, guns. Io, electronics. Euna…collect yourself as best you can and help the others out. We have ninety seconds, ladies!”
Rounding on Blitz, I pointed the gun back at his head. “You led them here. Intentionally or otherwise, doesn’t matter to me, only the bottom line. They’re here because you are. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t decorate these walls with your brains.”
Blitz thought about it for only a second. “I am not going to try and change your mind. Kill me if you feel it is what you must do. I have been honest with you and I have made my choice. I would rather die by your hand than live beneath Boris’s regime. Here,” he handed the emitter to Euna, “please find all the other ones like this and put an end to these nightmares.”
Euna nodded solemnly and dissolved the emitter into her hand, swelling almost imperceptibly as she added the raw materials to her biomass. She was still dangerously close to red, but thankfully was no longer a puddle at least. By contrast her features almost looked fierce as she watched the device dissolve and then looked back at Blitz.
“Don’t worry. I will. Now that I know what they’re made of, I can find the others. All of them.” Then she split into five skinny copies of herself, shrinking her main body to half her usual thickness, and sent all of these copies to help Io and Tabitha with whatever they needed.
Damn. She’s cute, fuckable, and has some pretty useful tricks. Maybe I should take Tabby up on her offer and let Euna join the crew…
Blitz bowed his head slightly and turned to me. “I’m ready. So long as Euna completes her quest, I can go to the afterworld knowing that I made my decision. I can’t take back the horrible things I did under Boris’s commands, but I can leave this world knowing its future is in safer hands.”
Remembering the incoming hostiles, I made a snap decision concerning Blitz.
He caught the pistol in his off hand. A flash of surprise crossed his face.
“You’re not killing me?” he asked.
“Not yet. Don’t make me regret that decision, and we can talk about it again later. Consider this a probationary period of trust. Prove to me you want to be a good guy, and we can consider extending that trust a little bit further. For now, you have one shot. Literally,” I held up the pistol’s magazine to show him what I meant. “I pulled the mag, so you’ve only got one round in the chamber. Use it wisely.”
Without sparing him another glance, I turned back to the crisis at hand and prepared for the incoming wave of hostiles.