Trepanner spiritedly swung her legs as she sat on the railings of a footbridge, the empty street about four or five meters below, the flickering light from the barely working lamppost on the right end of the overpass scarcely reaching her. One of the thirteen Beads from her CoreQuip, the ‘Giant Necklace of Trepanning’, scuttled restlessly beside her, its small hands pitter pattering on the steel rails.
She clicked her tongue—stopping herself short of making gurgling noises—peeved that some cheese puff crumbs lodged themselves into the threads of her denim shorts when she tried to brush them off.
Whatever, she thought as she dove into the bag for another piece of that salty, crunchy goodness, plopping it into her mouth.
She didn’t usually eat this kind of stuff—despite her superhuman body with healing abilities, she still kept her habit of eating healthy foods—but spending the better part of a week controlling seagulls who had a penchant for scavenging through trash cans and dumpsters—one seagull especially having an extreme desire to eat junk food, even snatching them off the mouths of beachgoers—somehow affected her tastes. She couldn’t resist buying the huge bag of CheesyBlitz, the cheese puffs variant, displayed on the window of a QualityMart she passed. Fortunately, the store was open even with the news of Adumbrae attacking the city; the bored cashier looked like she didn’t care about what was happening.
This weird craving will wear off, she assured herself as she adjusted her earphones. For now, she was celebrating this wonderful day with junk food.
While waiting for the prospective Corebring to pass this way, she listened to her annoying teammates argue with each other because their team was suspended after they killed a Titan Adumbrae on American soil without any request from the United States government.
“Man, this freaking blows,” Yeo said, his voice echoing. They were still inside that stupid cavern.
Trepanner doubted if their target was still there, but Boss Delirium told them to continue searching the caves outside the city as sort of a ‘punishment’ even though he himself allowed them to kill the Adumbrae. Lucky for her, she was assigned to stay behind in La Esperanza to keep an eye on things. She did send three Beads to accompany the team. Exploring caves sucked; she’d been to a lot of those missions before she became a Corebring.
“We have this cool thing going for us,” he continued, “but now we’re getting recalled back to the Hive. When we go into Deep Sleep, we’re going to be stuck there for Mother Core knows how long, so I want to enjoy the outside world as much as possible.”
“I didn’t notice you’re already a full Corebring,” Jaron sarcastically commented. “Deep Sleep isn’t something we should worry about right now. Getting suspended at the Hive is a small sacrifice to save people. You should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”
“Tons of babies are born every minute; tons of people die every minute,” drawled a silky voice.
“Jeez, Everglade. Don’t reduce people into numbers.”
Trepanner chuckled at their continued bickering. Although it didn’t sound like it—all of them did have differing views on being ‘heroes’—they got along with each other just fine. If they were seriously bothered by this, they would all be blaming Clive because he put them up to it.
No way they’ll do that.
Their team was a weird bunch, but she was growing fond of them even though she wouldn’t admit it to their face.
She herself didn’t care for the penalty of suspension. She was the most junior of their group so she wouldn’t be affected that much. Time resting at the Hive was fun; she could hang out with all of her friends from before she became a Corebring—those who were still alive anyway.
“How are you there, Pan?” That was Clive, of course. He was the only one who called her ‘Pan’, despite her insisting not to shorten ‘Trepanner’. “Awesome save earlier,” he said.
The others quieted down. They didn’t exactly respect Clive even though he was their de facto leader if Boss Delirium was absent, neither did he demand respect from them—he was, after all, just an Initiate too. But he was the only Initiate they knew who had met Nanny, the High Overseer taking care of all the slumbering Corebrings, and went into Deep Sleep.
They didn’t know how that came to be because only full Corebrings were forced into Deep Sleep, but that meant Clive should be way older than he looked and has participated in at least one off-world mission.
Which was weird—Initiates weren’t allowed to go past the veil. Hence, Clive was a sort of legend among the Initiates, and it was a no-brainer to listen to him if they wanted to live long enough to become a Corebring.
“It felt to me like the Titan Adumbrae knew how your power worked,” she replied, ignoring his praise since they were supposed to dislike each other.
“You’re right, I suspected she did. She immediately shot in the direction where my line of sight should be.”
“I’m sure there are interest groups which have info about your ability on a database,” Jaron said. “You’re one of the more famous Initiates.”
“It is quite distinct, yes.”
“Because of what you did at the mall yesterday, the Adumbrae in this city probably expected you to intervene if they did something.”
“Very likely.”
“No worries because I reestablished the line of sight quickly,” Trepanner said. “While one of my seagulls was watching the Adumbrae on the laptop of a girl through the window of her home, I already sent the rest to the place in case something happened and our view was cut off or the live stream got delayed.” It was one of the weaknesses of Clive’s power: his view of his target should be as accurate as possible for his spear to teleport. Sometimes live broadcasts weren’t really as ‘live’ as they seemed.
“Good thinking,” Clive said. “It is so much better using my power when connected to your Beads. Really uncomfortable though.”
“I imagine having a hole bored through your skull by Trepanner’s CoreQuip is more than just uncomfortable,” Jaron said with a hint of disgust. He and Everglade were the only ones who hadn’t been poked by the Beads yet. Jaron was probably okayish mindwise; Trepanner wasn’t too keen on linking with Everglade. “I’m not going to let that touch me,” he said, “no offence Trepanner.”
“None taken. I sometimes have to use it on myself, so I know it’s painful.”
“Pain is negligible,” Clive said. “It’s—”
“I know,” Trepanner interrupted. “I don’t like connecting our minds either, but we need to.” Linking their minds was somehow the perplexing way to bypass the limits of Clive’s power that he could only teleport his spear to a place he could reach if he actually threw it. Granted he could throw his spear very far, but he was outside the city right now. Sharing the same eyeballs as the seagulls who were actually watching the scene unfold was a huge plus and way better than any live broadcast.
“A Titan Adumbrae just popping up when we’re here,” Everglade droned. “Fishy.”
“Agreed,” Clive said. “High chance it’s connected to our target.”
“But we’ll never know,” Yeo said with a groan, “because we’ll be sent back to the Hive later.”
“Don’t get so down, Yeo,” Clive said. “Just listen to Pan chilling. She was just munching on food while you guys were arguing.”
“Because we should really be happy,” Trepanner said.
“Why?” Everglade said, her creepy voice unnerving as usual. “Oh, the new Corebring.”
“Yeah, you guys should be more excited. He’s Called by the Mother Core.”
Clive snorted. “Are you really excited to meet someone’s who’s Called? Or you’re just happy you were given clearance to get the prospective Corebring no matter what.”
“Both,” Trepanner said with a giggle. “I personally don’t know anyone who was Called compared to, you know, the usual tests and application like we did, then being presented to the Mother Core for acceptance or rejection.” She suspected Clive might’ve been Called too, but she didn’t say it. “Being able to let loose is just icing on the cake.”
“Do be careful,” he said.
“Yeah, whatever,” she said, nonchalantly brushing it off. “Oh! He’s coming this way. Talk to you guys later.” Before they could say anything, she already pulled her earphones off and stuffed them in the small pocket of her shorts.
She watched the car her target was in through the eyes of the seagulls following it. A police van followed by a patrol cruiser. Weird. Was this guy a criminal? They were coming up the road from behind her.
Her Bead climbed her back. Here we go again, she thought as she willed it to puncture the base of her skull and connect her mind…to her own. She closed her eyes as she started to peer into herself.
Concentrate!
She might get into a trance again like the first time she did this, stuck in an endless loop of herself looking at herself. She normally wouldn’t risk doing something like this without any of her teammates nearby to snap her out of it if she lost control, but she didn’t have a choice right now. This wasn’t a simple matter of grabbing someone off the streets. She needed to get juiced up in case of danger.
As the icy liquid pumped into her system, she felt herself grow stronger.
The police van was coming nearer.
One…two…three…go!
She jumped off the footbridge.
BAM! Her feet dented the roof of the van. She bent down, stretched her arms, and grabbed the sides of the van to keep herself steady. Then, she arced her body back, ripping the roof off like opening a tin can. She threw the roof away and was met by cops pointing their guns up at her. They opened fire, their bullets barely penetrating her flesh, her body strengthened through paranormal trepanation.
She dove in with a huge grin on her face. Time for some fun before getting suspended!
Finlay viewed the ruins of the building that claimed the life of his brother through binoculars. Its center and left wing had collapsed, the right wing only partially so.
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We should’ve gotten out sooner, he thought with a heavy heart. He only got out because of his secret ability to switch his real body with any of his puppets.
Calder dying wasn’t part of the plan at all. The building collapsing wasn’t part of the plan either. He still didn’t understand how it happened. The rapidly spreading fire—which was mostly due to him disabling the building’s sprinkler system—couldn’t be the sole reason. Bob, that big idiot, and the charcoal giant probably took out part of the building’s core support.
The charcoal giant…an interesting specimen. An unexpected mutation, one he was sure Mister would be interested to study. Unfortunately, it wasn’t realistic to get a sample with BID agents congregating on the site.
“This is way messier than I expected,” he said.
“What?” Slinky said, yelling to be heard over the noisy rotors of the medevac behind them. “Ya gotta speak up.”
This bastard somehow survived, Finlay mused. He would’ve gladly traded Slinky’s life for his brother’s. He waved his hand, indicating it was nothing, and then pointed to the medevac from a local hospital their group partly owned; very spacious and inconspicuous in the midst of this chaos, the perfect escape vehicle. “We’re going now.”
“We done with everything here?”
“Yes, we are,” said Finlay. Mister informed him the meeting with the Supplier went smoothly; the Corebrings weren’t able to find them because they were distracted by this huge mess.
He couldn’t help but marvel at the genius of their boss, Mark. They were alerted to the fact that Corebrings were in the city because of the incident at Serenade Bazaar the day before. In that brief moment as they watched the news, Boss Mark was able to formulate a plan with multiple objectives.
The attack on the condominium was, first and foremost a distraction, which worked out splendidly. Thank you, Stella, for offering your life to the Corebrings. It was also to field test the XR-series, although that one didn’t go as well as they envisioned. They did gather plenty of data and specimens but lost a lot of men and equipment in the process.
They could’ve tested it in any other residential place; there were much better choices. But Boss Mark decided to do it where Erind lived. Finlay mentally jotted down he should check whether the mayor's niece was recovering. She was in an awful state when she told them about Erind.
They still didn’t know why the Supplier wanted her kidnapped a couple of weeks ago; he didn’t bring it up again. Boss Mark, however, wanted to make her pay for what she did to his operations. If they could get the wolf woman too, it would be an added bonus; she seemed like she would be a splendid specimen for experimentation.
And that wasn’t all that their boss planned. Last but not the least, he tasked Finlay to get rid of the key men…and women…loyal to his brother, Big Marcy, namely Stella and Dekano. Big Marcy himself was not long for this world.
All in all, Finlay could say it was a mostly successful operation. He even found what he suspected to be a true Adumbrae. He turned to Ramon. “Come on!”
“How about Lizzie?”
“The girl?” he said. “I told you, my men have her. Nothing bad is going to happen to her. I promise you that.” His phone vibrated. More orders from Boss Mark?
“Shouldn’t we wait for them?”
“They are…” Finlay stopped speaking to read the message. It was from the cops working for them tasked to get the other specimen, the girl. He narrowed his eyes. What was this? They failed him? They were supposed to be part of the Anti-Adumbrae Response Team of the LEPD. How hard was it to get a little girl? He was going to deal with those idiots later.
“Finlay, where’s Lizzie?”
“They have a different escape route. We all can’t fit here.” He walked to the medevac. “Time’s running out.”
Ramon followed him. “If you say so.”
“You have nothing to worry about. She’s safe. You’ll meet her soon.”
“Bye!” Trepanner said, waving a bloody hand at the retreating cop car, its tires squealing in its haste to escape. "Now that that’s taken care of,” she said, pulling back the hood of the small person Called by the Mother Core. “Hello, I’m Trep—woah!” A trembling girl looked up at her. Girl, yes. Human? Debatable. Actually, probably not.
The girl's eyes lingered at the blood covering her.
“Oh, this.” Trepanner hid her hands behind her back, a sheepish grin on her face. “Oops. Were you scared? I guess that was a bit excessive. But you saw they were shooting me, right?”
She slowly nodded.
“My name is Trepanner. Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”
“Lizzie.”
“Well, Lizzie. You’re not exactly what I pictured,” Trepanner said. “I was thinking like a big burly guy. I assumed you’re a cop or a criminal they arrested. But you’re…” She gestured wildly, unable to form her thoughts. “A kid? I haven’t seen a kid accepted as an Initiate, but I also haven’t met anyone Called before. And why do you look like…wait, I’m not sure if this is tactful to say—”
“I’m a monster,” the little girl replied.
“Oh! No, that’s not was I was going to say. You’re just different looking, which isn’t a bad thing. You look very beautiful actually.” And Trepanner meant it. This kid’s eyes were mesmerizing, her scales shining like jewelry, her silky white hair flowing like a river of milk. “There are plenty of Corebrings who don’t remotely look human. But that’s after they turn into Corebrings. I was just surprised you look like this now, that’s all.”
“Were you the one calling me?”
“It’s the Mother Core.”
“Mother…Core? Mommy…” Lizzie sniffled. “Why…tears not coming out?”
“If I have to guess, that’s because you have snake eyes? Snakes can’t cry.”
“I...I want to cry.”
“Oh boy, this isn’t really how I planned things to go. I was thinking of giving a cool speech. Like you’re chosen to protect our reality, our world and other worlds from Adumbrae, yada-yada. And there’s a bit too about harvesting the Mother Cores of worlds we can’t save. I haven’t memorized the whole thing they say when someone becomes an Initiate. Never mind that. Now, things are just awkward.”
The girl wasn’t listening to her. She was furiously rubbing her eyes, trying to force tears to come out.
Trepanner picked her up. “It seems you’ve been through a lot,” she said, softening her tone. “I don’t know what that is, but you can tell me. I’m your new friend.”
“New friend?”
“Yes. You see, I’m a Corebring. An Initiate. You’re going to be a Corebring too. You’ve heard the Call.”
“Corebring? The superheroes? Mommy said Corebrings help people.”
“Your Mommy's right. In fact, we’re the ones who killed the giant monster. Did you see it walking around? It’s gone now because of us.”
“If…if I’m a Corebring, I could’ve saved Mommy.”
Did her mother got stepped on by the Titan Adumbrae? Trepanner brushed back Lizzie’s hair and wiped the blood off her face. “Let’s get out of this mess first. All these dead bodies are icky with their yucky blood.”
“The voice calling me…tell it to wait.”
“Huh?”
“I have another friend…he told me to wait for him.”
“What are you talking about? You’re Called. You have to come.”
“I should tell him firsshh…” Her words slurred as she fell asleep.
"Sorry, Lizzie. It's time we go." She looked around at the carnage she caused. These police officers didn’t seem like bad guys; they didn’t deserve to be torn to pieces. But it was their fault they kept on trying to kill her. The BID would assume an Adumbrae killed them.
Kids like junk food, right?
Maybe Lizzie would feel better if she ate some CheesyBlitz when she woke up.