Chương 41: The F***ing Monster

Disaster has struck University 11 yet again! Less than a year removed from their Dungeon debacle, there has been a terrorist attack at the University, with each of the factions accusing the other of plotting, while The Freeks have also been mentioned in passing as the organization responsible. The search for the culprits is on. - An article by The Times of Area 11 As they swam away with her pod of bottlenose dolphins surrounding and obscuring them, Clara Bottlenose held a mix of emotions.

As the Deputy Head of Freeks on Earth, she had some responsibility toward their organisation. Just going to University 11 had been one of the bigger risks they had taken in recent times - and during their flagship event no less, with the Chief of the Task Force and several of the most powerful individuals on Earth in close proximity, including Shanks himself. With Ghilim though, they had felt confident enough to try it. He was as even-tempered, rational and cautious as they came.

Not to mention he could probably play hide and seek against the entire planet and still win. She still remembered the day he had arrived out of nowhere in their hideout. She had been so embarrassed that someone had snuck up on her so easily that she had tried to kill him that very night. Oh boy, did she regret it. Two weeks of food poisoning and randomly tripping and stubbing her toes wherever she went later, safe to say she had never tried again.

She hadn't been the only one who learned that lesson in the first few days of his arrival. She knew him a lot better now, and she would be able to get him if she really tried. Probably. Not. She was a whole grade above him at this point, but it was Ghilim. She still did not know the full limits of his abilities, and she was not in a hurry to find out. He too probably had countermeasures against her. In their business, it paid to know how to deal with each other, and also to have protections in place.

After all, killing humans still gave the much needed energy for progress, so sometimes when members went without a kill for long enough, someone would go missing. It was just how things worked. That was how she herself had become Deputy Head. She had not been, when Ghilim arrived.

But one day, while the then Deputy Head, Ghilim and herself were out on a mission together - one of the riskier ones, high reward, high chance of not coming back - she had killed the Deputy Head while making it look like Ghilim and the enemies had done it, should anyone come to investigate. It would jeopardize the mission, but so what? High risk missions were high risk for a reason.

And yet, not only had she managed to kill the Deputy Head, they had also managed to kill the Regional Task Force Chief and blown up their data and supplies stored there, which was more than the mission called for. She had ended up receiving most of the accolades for that, having delivered the finishing blow on the Regional Task Force Chief, and being the senior most member of the team alive. The dead had no use for accolades. But, she knew better.

After she killed the Deputy Head during the mission, she had assumed Ghilim would reject the rest of the mission. It was simply too risky, attacking one of the regional strongholds of the Task Force. Any sane or even moderately insane person would if they valued their life. The Fucking Monster. Till date, she had no idea how he had pulled it off, without even killing anyone no less.

Literally all she had done was walk in while everyone in the building was already unconscious and deliver the killing blow on the Regional Head of Task Force when he had already been incapacitated. And then they had escaped safely, without anyone even knowing they were there until it was too late. She was fairly sure he had known what she did to the previous Deputy Head. He had not told anyone. She supposed it did not matter anymore.

Everything in the Freeks was earned by merit, and she had advanced to F grade not long after, and now no other Freek on Earth was a match for her except the Head himself. And maybe Ghilim, grade differential notwithstanding. But she and Ghilim were best friends now. Well, she liked to think so anyway. Hard to really tell with him. Since she had become Deputy Head, they had been taking on bolder and bolder missions, and she had been accompanying him on all of them. They made a surprisingly good pair.

She was Strength and IQ focused, very good at planning, less good at execution. Ghilim was the opposite - not great at planning, flawless at execution. She was the bright light - her attractiveness, her cheery nature, the charm she used like a tool - and Ghilim thrived in the large shadow that created. The perfect pair. He did not seem to mind that she took most of the credit either. He had a strange value system.

He would never torture or kill anyone himself, but had no objection at all to her doing it, which she found convenient and faintly amusing in equal measure. In return, she gave him all the freedom he wanted, which he seemed to appreciate. And then this happened. She had been the one to push for this mission under the cover of intelligence gathering, though everyone involved knew it was really them doing Ghilim a favour. He never asked for much. When he had shown interest in this, they had been happy to indulge.

She had strong-armed her way into being his only accomplice on the grounds that more people meant more risk, which was true, and also that she wanted to attend the University 11 flagship event, which she had not said aloud. With just the two of them, and especially with Ghilim around, nobody had expected anything to go wrong. Nobody had expected much of anything at all from this mission.

And somehow they had launched what she was sure would be described as a large-scale terrorist attack at a prestigious University's flagship event. She could already picture the headlines. On the bright side, they had confirmed the Task Force Chief's Earth-based abilities, so technically it was a successful intelligence mission. Chaos and information. Could have been worse. She was still pissed though.

They had almost been caught by the Council Chair - Narak Tamba, she recalled, fast and sharp in a way that had caught her badly off guard. She had pulled out one of her bombs as a threat. But honestly, she suspected that was not why they had been let go. Narak had seen Ghilim, and something in his expression had shifted in a way she could not fully account for. She was hovering somewhere between recognition and dismissal, unable to commit to either. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road.

If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. The larger point, though, was that they had almost been caught at all. And it was because of Ghilim. What on Earth had gotten into him today? He had been completely off his game. If he had been operating at even half his usual standard, combined with her, she was certain they could have walked out of there without Narak ever getting close, without needing threats, without any of it. Instead they were swimming away from a University festival like they had robbed the place.

She also hadn't been able to take the whip. That still stung. They reached an island, more of a rock with ambitions, small enough to be on no map anyone maintained. She checked her nav. Clean. She waited another thirty seconds to be certain, then surfaced properly.

"WHY DID YOU STOP ME FROM TAKING THE TASK FORCE CHIEF'S WHIP?" The question had been building for the entire swim. Ghilim did not respond, which she had expected but had hoped against.

"Do you know how valuable that whip is? Do you know how many of our members have been caught by that very whip? Just stealing it would have been our biggest accomplishment since we took out the Area 7 Task Force Chief." Still nothing. He was staring at something that was not the ocean. She let the argument go, because she could see it was not going to land, and looked at him properly for the first time since they had cleared the perimeter. For the first time since she had known him, he looked vulnerable. Sad.

Frustrated. And she had seen him truly angry today, for the first time ever, when the gorilla had grabbed that kid - the tusked one from the SDC - and something had snapped in him in a way she was still trying to place. Was it the kid? She turned it over. No way such a weak kid would have a direct connection to Ghilim. He didn't look anything like him either. So was it just his soft side, triggered by an innocent being grabbed? But she had seen him around innocents in worse situations. It didn't add up.

For once in her life, she found herself wishing she had put more into EQ. Whatever it was, she had seen a side of him that he had shown nobody else in the Freeks. She felt, somewhat against her better judgment, closer to him for it. She took his head and placed it on her lap, embracing him lightly, while keeping her threat response running at about sixty percent in the background because she was not completely naive. She half expected a knife at any moment.

It was a testament to how unsettled he was that he simply accepted it, neither leaning in nor pulling away. She took it as a win. This was turning out to be a very successful mission in her mind. Ghilim was feeling depressed. He had spent the last year holding himself together with the understanding that he was doing what he was doing for his parents and his brother. That had been enough.

It had been enough when the work was difficult and the methods were things he did not look at too directly, and it had been enough on the days when he was not sure what he was becoming and preferred not to examine it. He had found out through the Freeks' network that his brother was not only alive but at University 11. Their information reached further and faster than anything he had encountered before. It was one of the reasons he had joined them, that reach, and days like today justified the cost.

He had not planned to approach Kara. He was not foolish enough to think a direct approach would be anything except a risk to his brother, and he had promised himself something closer to the opposite - observe from a distance, confirm what the network had reported, leave without being known. He had watched the Chase from the perimeter, which had been extraordinary. Something like that had not happened during his time at University. Must have been Shanks' doing.

Out of everyone present today - Council members, Task Force Chief, Area Heads - the one they had been told to be most cautious around was Shanks. His powers were one thing. His connections and his reputation were something else entirely. The PfP were everywhere, and the stories about what happened to people who ended up on Shanks' bad side were the kind of stories that made even long-serving Freeks go quiet. He had been content to watch from a distance. He had been managing it.

And then the gorilla had grabbed Kara. Something had broken open inside him that he had not known was under pressure. He had moved before he had decided to move, which had never happened to him before, and the hand gesture had come out of some part of him that had been waiting for an opportunity without asking the rest of him for permission. The family signal. The one their mother had taught them when Kara was small enough to treat it as a game. I am here. I see you. Kara had frowned.

He had been turning the frown over since the moment he saw it. He could not tell if it was non-recognition, or recognition that had not yet resolved, or something else. He did not know. He had been trying to know and he did not know, and not knowing was the part that sat in him heaviest. Did that mean Kara was angry about how he had handled things with their parents? Had he heard about the Freeks and formed an opinion? A thousand questions and none of them with answers he had access to.

He had thought he was doing the best he could, considering his situation. But if that was how Kara felt looking at him, then maybe the right thing was to leave. Maybe Mars, once he hit F grade. Start over somewhere his recent history was not the first thing in any room. He would not show himself to Kara before then. There was no point if that was Kara's reaction. He opened his eyes. It took a moment to recalibrate.

Clara was looking down at him with an amused expression, close enough that he could see the tiny mole under her eye. He blinked. He shot up, a knife in his hands, glaring at Clara.

"Is that what I get for babysitting you for the past three hours?" she glared back, not moving an inch from where she was sitting, clearly having had his head on her lap. Ghilim lowered his knife. What on Earth was he thinking, leaving himself so vulnerable as to lie in one of the Freek's laps? Granted, he and Clara had been doing quite a few missions together of late, and they could loosely be called accomplices, but still, letting one's guard down in the presence of a Freek meant almost certain death.

He'd witnessed it firsthand, with Clara as the offender no less. And yet… Not only was he alive, as much as he'd hate to admit it, she had actually taken care of him and given him some modicum of comfort when he needed it. Why though? And the worst part was, now she probably knew his weakness. Then again, knowing her… She probably hadn't been able to figure out the connection with his brother.

"Oh, just put your knife away already. You and I both know you're not going to hurt me with that. And don't worry, I'm not gonna tell anyone about what happened today. Not that anyone would believe me either way. Oh, but did you know how cute you look when you have that worried look on your face," she said, barely able to contain her giggle. Oh dear. He was definitely going to pay for letting his guard down, though not in the way he'd first thought. He supposed he was in her debt now for this.

Something that she no doubt knew and would use as well. He wished she didn't always tag along with him though. The murderous glances he got from the others. Not that he could blame them. She was sinfully attractive and super talented, having reached F grade already. He didn't know her exact age, but from whatever he had heard and knew about her, he wouldn't put her much older than him.

"Come on, let's get going. We're late enough as it is. They could be onto us any moment now." He also thought, as they slipped back into the water to resume their escape, that he would not approach his brother again before F grade. He would go to Mars. He would start clean.