Chương 195: B4. 6.1 - Strike Two

"… my lab is at Barstow Station," I read the message for Deen's benefit. I've heard of this place. Mom must've mentioned it when we discussed our little road trip to Vegas.

"This isn't an actual train station, right? It's a tourist stop with old train cars or something, right off the freeway." [The very same,] USB Cecilia's text crawled across the screen. [Hiding a state-of-the-art laboratory beneath a shopping complex with food vendors meant endless supply of test subjects.]"Test subjects?" Deen repeated in alarm after I read the sentence. She jerked the steering wheel, making the car wiggle.

"Did you kidnap tourists for your experiments?" [I jest, dear. Tourists are too conspicuous to suddenly disappear. Admirable, your concern for strangers. But we should get this issue out of the way—I've had many human test subjects. You're well aware of that. If this will be an obstacle for cooperation, then might as well destroy me now.]"We're not going to destroy you," I quickly said before Deen retorted.

"What you did was wrong. However, we need your help, and you need ours."

"There will be no human test subjects while you help us," Deen added. [Of course. No humans. We'll use other nonhumans you can capture for me. You didn't have any qualms killing my test subject during our first meeting. And, of course, the two of you can also be test subjects.]"We're in charge," Deen said.

"You won't lay a finger on us unless we're sure it's safe."

"Why did you choose Barstow Station?" I asked, steering the conversation away from prickly stuff.

"Are there many Adumbrae there?" I had my hand covering the USB sticking out the left side of the laptop, in case Deen would suddenly grab and crush it. No doubt, Cecilia kidnapped tourists. And we'd probably use human test subjects at some point. I wasn't very open to the idea of being a test subject myself. [No Adumbrae that I know of. I simply found it amusing that hundreds, even thousands of people enter Barstow Station each day, munching on greasy burgers and buying cheap plastic souvenirs, oblivious to the marvels of science happening beneath their feet. It puts a smile on my face.] I stared at the blinking green text, my mouth forming a smile despite myself. A hidden lab under a roadside rest stop? This was peak cinema! Much better than a generic underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. Man, I wish I had a base like that.

If I wanted to take a break from villainous activities, I could buy a chocolate milk shake. What if I took over Cecilia's laboratory? Just for aesthetic purposes. I didn't have any science experiments in mind.

"Hiding in plain sight," I said.

"If anyone sees weird equipment being delivered, they'll just think it's a new industrial refrigerator or something."

"How were you able to build a laboratory there?" Deen asked. [Quite simple. Old train cars turned dining areas line the shopping complex. I acquired one of those train cars, which so happen to be near an underground vault made in the aftermath of the Adumbrae War. I don't want to bother you with details of my stealthy excavation.]"Why are there so many underground this and that in the country?" I wondered.

"People don't know about them?" [Barstow used to be a railroad hub leading to major military installations in the Mojave Desert. Sometimes, they need to store weapons in secure places, out of reach of Adumbrae. As the Corebrings cleared the Americas of Purple Blooms, many underground vaults were left unused. Forgotten.]"A PCM member is tailing us right now," Deen said.

"He's a police officer." I glanced at the side mirror. That must be the gray SUV of Khaki Cop around ten yards away, trying to hide behind a van. He'd probably stick close all the way to Barstow, where he'd pull back and observe us from afar. Not sure how much he believed Deen's story, but we were kind of meeting a hacker friend at a secret location.

"He's going to watch us like a hawk," I said.

"Not sure how that expression came to be. Hawks have good eyesight, but they don't track their prey over a period of time like other predators." Deen snorted at my random tangent but didn't comment on it.

"Cecilia, how do we get inside your lab without getting seen?" [It is up to you not to be seen,] USB Cecilia replied. [All I can tell you is how to enter my sanctuary of science.] An entire paragraph explaining the security system protecting Cecilia's laboratory popped up. Mixed in the science mumbo-jumbo were useful instructions. Deen deciphered USB Cecilia's bullshit while driving, explaining it to me. Maybe it's true what they say about women being better than men in multi-tasking.

"So, we're going to plug this USB drive into that fake screw slot," I said, summarizing Deen's explanation.

"A hidden airlock will appear." [Precisely. It's your task to prevent people witnessing you enter. May I suggest killing them? The best solution is a permanent one.]"We're not killing anyone," Deen said.

"Unless it's necessary. The PCM members following us don't even know what's actually going on. They're innocents in my book. We're not going to murder them."

"We'll figure that out later," I said, getting annoyed with my best friend's bullshit.

"I have a question for you Cecilia—did you prepare for this to happen? Like, you'll be in a USB and you'll betray Euphonia? There's no reason to have a USB port outside your base otherwise." [I have contingency plans for everything. Yes, including my death. Praise my foresight!]"Better to have a plan for not dying," I muttered, begrudgingly amazed at Cecilia's preparation. I was ashamed to admit that I didn't have much plans for my future. I was living-in-the-moment kind of gal.

[Although, I never expected to be working with you, two dears. I had trusted assistants willing to defect and join me. If I died, the PCM would be in dire straits, which I assume to be currently true. Easy to entice members to join me. But circumstances change. Plans change.]"You're with us now," Deen said.

"You better make yourself useful by finding a cure for Kelsey, and a way for us to turn human, too. Once you transfer to your body, we expect you to—""Cecilia's saying something," I said as more lines appeared. [Temper your expectations,] the text pulsed, the green letters flashing rapidly. [Some slight problems to be handled before I can help you. We haven't completed the you-helping-me phase of our cooperation.]"Slight problems?" Deen repeated.

"As if we don't have enough." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. [We're on a timer, my dears. The Adumbrae flesh of Euphonia inside this flash drive is not meant to last. The biological substrate is consuming itself to maintain my cognitive architecture.]"You mean you're on a timer," I said, after reading USB Cecilia's message.

"This is Euphonia's countermeasure in case you betray her, which you're currently doing." [I have approximately twenty-three hours from transferring into this vessel before the Adumbrae tissue shrivels into useless rot, dropping my being into the digital void. Manifesting my mind into this machine degrades it faster.]"What?" Deen exclaimed, jerking the wheel again. No one should spring a surprise on Deen while she was driving.

"Like, a few hours to go," I said, giving up my attempted mental calculations for an exact time.

"Minus some for talking to us. How much time do we have left? Can you sense it, Cecilia?" [Approximately two hours.]"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" Deen demanded.

"This is important information!" [Our conversation was cut short, remember? I would've told you if we had continued our planning session. Now, we are planning. Now, I am telling you.]"Ye-yes…" Deen said, remembering that my mom's arrival cut short our conversation with USB Cecilia.

"Nonetheless, this should've been the first thing you mentioned earlier. Or now. The moment Erind plugged you into the laptop, you should've immediately alerted us!" [Will we be late to Barstow?]"Uh, no," I said. [There's no problem, is there? Don't exhaust your vocal cords yelling. I trusted that you'd reach Barstow in time. See, that's a badge of cooperation. Trusting each other.] Deen sighed.

"What's the real problem? Tell us now. We'll transfer you to a body in your lab, and then, what?" [Minor problems. My spare body awaiting me is but a temporary shell. It lacks the stability and longevity possessed by Euphonia's true creations. To keep it from degrading, I require a specific concoction, invented by my fabulous intellects. I was able to mimic the extradimensional—] I stopped reading.

"This is just you praising yourself. Get on with it." A paragraph disappeared, replaced by a single line. [One of its ingredients is…]"What's up with the ellipses?" I said, gesturing at the screen. Was USB Cecilia trying to be dramatic with text? Though I appreciated the effort, she was wasting her precious time, if the degrading thing was real. [… is Adumbrae flesh.]"Seriously? How do we find that?" I asked, turning to Deen. Cecilia didn't know that I was a hybrid. [A number of Adumbrae frequent Las Vegas City. Find one. Capture it, and bring it to me.]"You make the task sound easy. But it will be impossible for us to find an Adumbrae." Deen glared at me. Her message was clear—we weren't giving Cecilia any piece of my flesh. And I agree that we should keep my Adumbrae side a secret from Cecilia. [We will need to negotiate with a former colleague of mine in Las Vegas to point us in the right direction. Finding an Adumbrae will be easy. Capturing one? I'll leave that in your capable hands, my dears.]"Adumbrae flesh isn't just your problem, right?" I asked.

"Tell us everything already." [You're quick on the pick-up, dear. You'll make a good assistant, despite your lack of scientific background. Consider this an option when abandoning your normal life becomes a certainty.]"No, thank you," I said, starting to tire of USB Cecilia's tangents. Was this what Deen felt whenever I didn't stay on topic? [While at Las Vegas, we should obtain a sub-dermal skeletal implanted augmentation from the Tea Party to strengthen my body. A lot of work incoming, I can say that much.]"Once you transfer to your spare body," said Deen, "you can no longer return to the USB because it'll decay. How much time do we have until your spare body does the same?" [Two days. There's no cause of concern because I know that you can capture an Adumbrae. I'm witness to your prowess, my dears. I hope I am right to put my trust on you. As I've said, slight problems.]"Yeah, I guess those are slight problems," I said, slowly closing the laptop's lid.

"We'll wake you up once we arrive in Barstow. Conserve your energy or whatever. Don't want you to decay before we get there."

"I had more questions for her," Deen said.

"She'll just lie," I replied, throwing the bag with the laptop to the backseat.

"No way Cecilia planned for a spare body in case of her death, just to be missing some ingredients to keep it alive afterward. She's buying time for an opening to betray us."

"That's what why I wanted to interrogate her further."

"Useless to listen to more lies. So, what if we caught inconsistencies in her story? For now, we're stuck with her. She'll probably help us a bit before totally betraying us. We should prepare for that while taking what we can get."

"We can restrict how much Adumbrae flesh we give her," Deen said.

"I suggest waiting to see if she'll really rot before helping her. I'm sure we can think of other ideas. What if we asked the Tea Party to give a controller for Cecilia's augments?"

"Not sure if that would work. In any case, we can threaten Cecilia with giving her up to Euphonia." I raised the USB drive to examine it.

"I don't know if you can hear us now or not, Cecilia. But we're onto you."

"You sound quite intimidating," Deen said.

"I like that."

"Um… Okay?" I didn't know what she meant and had no intentions of asking.

"This got me thinking, if that USB timer thing is true, then Euphonia would soon know for sure that Cecilia betrayed her. Either that, or Auron decided to keep the USB for himself."

"The question is how soon Auron will admit to Euphonia that he sub-contracted his task. This is becoming more and more complicated." I shrugged.

"Nothing we can do, really. We'll adapt to the situation." Deen stayed silent for a long while, the soft hum of the tires against the asphalt filling the car. Finally, slowly nodded.

"It's a gamble. Considering our options, we have no choice but to play. We have each other, and we'll survive."

"We will." The right side of my lips curled into a smile. Deen's line was good. The gambling and playing part, not the 'we have each other' part. I should prepare a list of badass lines. Our drive continued into the falling night. The sleepless lights of bustling La Esperanza were a stark contrast to the pitch-black void of the desert, broken only by the occasional passing car on the opposite lane and the reflective road signs counting down the miles to Barstow. No car behind us. Khaki Cop pulled away?

Did he call a PCM member in Barstow to continue tailing us there? Super annoying that we were getting watched. I pulled a bag of gummy worms from a paper bag filled with snacks. We had a little stop at a convenience store after we parted ways from Myra. Deen may not agree, but a road trip should have always snacks—that was what I saw in movies. Didn't particularly care for the flavor of gummy worms because they weren't sweet enough. Very entertaining to eat, though.

When I was a kid, I loved pretending to be a monster devouring human entrails while munching on gummy worms. As Red Hood, I had eaten a bunch of entrails. Still, I missed my little childhood game. Couldn't resist a bag of gummy worms I had spotted at the convenience store. Deliberately chewing loudly, I tried to annoy Deen. She didn't react, focusing entirely on the road, her expression hardening into a contemplative look. For sure, she was agonizing about everything that might go wrong. She shouldn't bother.

Too many factors out of our control. Just relax. And sleep. In the boring silence, I did fall asleep… BEEEEP! BEEEEPPP!!!

"Ugh, what's going on?" I groaned, awoken by the blaring horns. A pair of lights followed us, blindingly reflected in our side-view mirror.

"Why so loud? I was sleeping…"

"It's them," Deen said. From her tone, I already knew who she referred to. Not the PCM. Blaring music signaled that assholes were following own asses. The annoyance drove any bit of sleepiness away.

"Did they intentionally follow us? Like, all the way from La Esperanza?"

"I don't think so," Deen replied.

"They caught up to us only now. A very unfortunate coincidence."