Could this be the opportunity I was waiting for? I looked at Mom as I stood up with the rest of the hostages.

She met my gaze and said something that could be, 'I love you, sweetie.'

Uncertain of her actual message, I mouthed something gibberish that ended with an apparent ‘Mom’ word. That seemed to work because she nodded at me before following the Greaves’ corporate suits down the stage as one of the Tea Party men beckoned for them with a wave of his gun.

It was a bit disconcerting, but I was concerned about Mom leaving my sight—such a foreign feeling. At the same time, I was relieved that we were separated. I banked on Mom being somewhat important that the terrorists wouldn’t kill her, at least for now.

It would be kind of a huge hassle for me if she died. There’d be plenty of stuff to handle—government stuff, her work stuff, on top of her funeral. A funeral would be annoying as fuck, with all the relatives I didn’t want to see coming.

And she’s my Mom. That’d undoubtedly count as bothering me for Rule #4.

“Walk, walk, walk!” Circus Mustache blared on the microphone. The tails of his magenta tailcoat—are those called tails?­—swished behind him as he marched in place. “Be organized, people! You’re not children anymore. Oh, is that an actual kid over there? Mother Core bless you, ma’am, for taking your boy to an educational event.”

“Move along, miss,” said the man to my left. He gestured for me to follow Deen walking out of our row of chairs. “We don’t want these clowns to get any ideas.”

“Yes, you’re right,” I replied as I tore my gaze away from the stage. I could no longer see Mom because of the wall of people in front of me.

Circus Mustache had just announced they were moving everyone to the other side of the building.

About an hour had passed since the terrorists attacked the Greaves Technology Fair. Before this, we stayed in our seats while the Tea Party assholes carted the various machines on display to Mother Core knows where.

I had caught a glimpse of what they were doing on the other side of the partition walls before they moved the panels back into place and blocked my view. I still heard all their raucous. They might have also taken control of the large ComExo units because there were loud stomps and the floor slightly quaked.

As I was sitting on my ass moments ago, my mind ran through various plans on how to kill these fuckers, simultaneously making sure that Mom wouldn't get caught in the crossfire.

Unfortunately, everything I came up with started with me putting on a mask. That wasn't a great thing to do right here in the middle of the crowd. That’d be a sure way to start a fight while Mom was nearby. Also, while Pino was indestructible, my original Erind body left behind might suffer a very unlucky headshot when the shooting started.

I tried to think of ways I could leave and transform somewhere else. But I came up with nothing. These terrorists weren't born yesterday; they wouldn't fall for a needing-to-go-to-the-restroom excuse. One guy did try that earlier. The terrorists told him to pee on his chair.

Next, I considered stabbing myself, another trick I saw in movies. But these assholes probably wouldn't care if I bled to death. Not that’d happen. I'd regenerate my injuries, exposing myself as an Adumbrae.

There was also the problem of the bombs.

I assumed the boxy metal things they unloaded from the Greaves containers were bombs. What else could they be? If I were a terrorist, I'd bring a bomb or two along as an insurance policy.

But now that we were changing locations, there could be an opportunity to use my ability safely.

Mom was also out of the way. I'd have to save her later, of course. Maybe Deen could get her while I stayed here and be a humongous distraction. Distraction and destruction.

Fuck Pino. I could turn into Blanchette instead and rip everyone—I bumped into Deen's back.

She abruptly stopped walking. Looking over her shoulder, she glared at me, obviously trying to tell me something. Too bad neither of us had telepathic powers.

"What is it?" I asked in a low voice. Did her Guardian Angel have a message?

As we shuffled out of our row, Deen let me go ahead of her and walked close behind me. She tightly gripped my arm and bent down to whisper right at my ear. "Whatever it is you're planning, don't do it. That's what Gabe told me to tell you."

"But I'm not planning anything," I said. Technically that wasn't a lie. I was just entertaining the thought of berserking as Blanchette; I wasn't going to do it because I might lose control and crush Mom if I brought down this building.

"Erind, we're going to save your Mom," she continued. "I promise you that. But now's not the time. We should listen to Gabe so that we'll be safe."

"We? We will be safe?" I questioningly repeated her words, emphasizing 'we'. I was hinting that her Guardian Angel's advice was only for her safety; it didn't include Mom and me. Or the other hostages when it came down to it. I was laying the groundwork for possibly manipulating her later.

"Yes. We," Deen firmly said. I wasn't sure if she picked up what I was implying. "I'm going to make sure that all of us, and I mean all, will make it out alive and well."

Her claim was a tall order even if she had a future-seeing pet. But it was a good thing her 'hero' instincts kicked in. It was easier to push her in the direction I wanted if I could market it as being heroic and selfless.

We followed the stream of people shuffling out of the makeshift hall. The terrorists had removed some partition wall panels at the end of the aisle to allow us to move out faster.

Packed crowds irritated me to no end, so I tried to entertain myself by people-watching, or rather hostage-watching. I hadn't been in this situation before; it was interesting to see the different reactions of people.

Most had gaunt faces, heads bowed, and shoulders slumped. Others had blank expressions, probably shocked at the misfortune that had befallen us, their eyes staring into nothingness. Some looked like they had been crying, with runny makeup and puffy eyes. A few stood tall, striving to appear confident and unfazed.

"Look, there are others," Deen said as we exited the hall into the wider event area.

It turned out that we weren't the only ones taken hostage. Smaller groups from other parts of the convention center merged with ours, swelling our numbers to more than two hundred.

This telegraphed that there were more than just a dozen or so terrorists. If they had to guard all these people in different locations for the past hour, there had to be at least twenty of them, likely more.

"What do they need so many hostages for?" wondered the woman in front of me.

"Shut the hell up," someone rebuked her.

Her voice cracked as she started to get hysterical. "They must be planning something bad for us!" she insisted. That was already obvious, but I knew she meant that the Tea Party might have something worse in store for us than simply holding us hostage. "When are the police going to come and save us?"

"Quiet down, lady," barked a gruff man. "I don't want to get fucking sprayed with bullets."

The woman's friend, probably her boyfriend, calmed her down.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

She did have a point. The more hostages, the better for bargaining with the police, but it'd also be harder to manage.

Speaking of managing hostages, why were these dickfucks transferring us? Wouldn't it be better to lump us all together in the middle of the convention center, surround us, and just shoot whoever stands?

"Mother Core, in our time of need…" The middle-aged man sitting beside me earlier was mumbling a prayer while holding beads. I didn’t take him as someone religious. “Be our guide, our strength...”

"Oh my god, Jeff!" cried out a girl. Her voice sounded young; I couldn't see her because she was further ahead in the crowd. And I also didn't know who Jeff was. From the wailing and shouting, I'd say he was one of the dead bodies.

We passed several of them. It was easy to tell if a corpse was coming up because there'd be a wave of murmuring. Next, the mass of people would push against each other, parting to give a wide berth to the corpse.

Deen tapped my shoulder. I raised a brow at her.

She pointed to a corpse lying in a fetal position behind a table. It appeared that the man tried to hide behind it for cover, but it wasn't as bulletproof as he'd like. The shot was pretty lucky, blowing away a quarter of his head off—well, the terrorist was lucky, not him.

I was about to ask Deen what was up with this specific corpse when I noticed he was wearing a University of Nevada jacket.

"There's another guy with a UNLV jacket,” I said, pointing to a dead body splayed on the other side of the table. It only came into view when we passed by it.

“Yes…I think that’s them,” Deen said. She didn’t need to explain who ‘them’ was.

If this was the same guy bothering her earlier, then let this be proof that an ancient curse would fall upon those who'd hit on Deen while I was around.

It was surprising how calm Deen was seeing all of these. After pointing out the dead UNLV guys, she continued walking and didn’t say anything else. Compared to when we were at the Eve underground arena, she was highly agitated seeing innocent people getting fed to the mutants. I was expecting her to get stressed in this situation and fixate on how to bring these terrorists to justice.

She had more control of herself now. Good for her.

But I might have been premature with my assessment because I felt her clasp my arm again.

She had an edgy look as she murmured through clenched teeth, “Don’t react to anything that’ll happen. Just stay calm and keep walking.” This must be her Guardian Angel’s instructions.

“Um, okay,” I said. “What’s going to happen?”

The world immediately replied to my question. Shouting erupted about a dozen paces behind us. “Fight them! Let’s all fight together!”

“Go back in line if you don’t want to die!”

“Rise, you sheep!”

“Be brave. We can take them on!”

“You’re asking for it, brave guy!”

Loud voices layered on each other, and I could no longer understand what was happening. I just knew that someone was going to get hurt soon. Sure enough, gunfire put an end to the racket. Deen’s grip on my arm tightened, and it was beginning to hurt slightly.

I turned to her to tell her to cut that shit out, but I noticed she had closed her eyes. She was chanting to herself as if that would drown out the shooting and cries of pain. This was the Deen I was familiar with. It was kind of nostalgic, bringing back memories of our Eve shenanigans.

From what the terrorist was yelling, it sounded like a few people attempted to grab their weapons. And when that didn’t work, some tried to make a run for it.

“I know you want to help the people too,” Deen passionately whispered. “But now is not the time.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, not me.

“Okay,” I replied, pushing down the urge to giggle. Her Guardian Angel told her not to blow our cover, and she shared the message with me as if I was the one who might cause an issue.

“We’re heading to the conference rooms, right?” she said.

“I think so.” I hadn’t visited that part of this vast building. Mom went there earlier for a meeting. She told us when she returned that several function rooms of various sizes were there, from meeting rooms for a dozen people to something for a modest wedding or birthday party.

“If so, they’ll split us up.”

“Unless they’re planning to cram us all into one small conference hall or something,” I pointed out.

Deen shook her head. “If they only wanted all the hostages in one place, they would've stayed back there,” she explained, echoing my thoughts. “I’m not sure what they’re planning, but I'm fairly confident they will split us. They didn't even gather all the hostages before this.”

“I hope so,” I said. It’d be a nightmare for me if they were going to pack more than a couple of hundred people in a place meant for half that. I might just decide to go with my berserking Blanchette plan and say ‘fuck this’ to the world.

“Dividing the hostages equals fewer guards per group,” Deen said. "Or no guards at all. They can just put us in rooms and lock it.”

"And just leave someone to watch the corridor?" I wondered. "They'd free up manpower for their plan, whatever it is." It was a plausible reason why these fuckers wanted to move the hostage horde elsewhere.

"If my hunch is correct, it's going to be our chance to—"

The tall man in front of me suddenly turned and bent down. Deen and I jolted in surprise. I tried to stop myself from punching him.

While walking backward, he talked to us. “You girls planning to escape?” A neatly trimmed full beard covered his face, and he wore a fitting dress shirt that emphasized that he was jacked to the max. He also had a Greaves employee ID.

“Um…yes,” I said to the eavesdropping fuckface. It wasn't like I could deny it. We weren’t as quiet as we thought we were.

“I think most people are thinking of escaping,” Deen chimed in with steel in her voice. "It's only normal." I sensed she wasn’t too keen on this man and was probably trying to make us appear less serious with what we were talking about.

“Me and the missus want to join.” The man jabbed his thumb at his chest and then pointed to the woman with curly hair beside him.

“Tesh, what the hell?” said his wife. “Face front if you don’t want to be obvious about it.”

“Sorry, ma'am!” he said as he spun around.

“Might as well paint yourself neon green if you want to draw attention to yourself.”

"I'll frigging do just that if we get out of here in one piece." He continued our conversation over his shoulder, "Stay close to us, got it? We'll aim to be in the same group if they do split up everyone."

His wife added, "I'm Kiera, and my hubby is Tesh. Just say we're relatives. I'll have a mega-crying sesh about losing my nieces if they try to separate us."

"Okay, we will," I wasn't going to refuse them—fodder for me. I gave Deen a sidelong glance, asking for her thoughts.

She furrowed her brows. I shrugged. After a couple of seconds, she tilted her head, giving me the go-ahead. However, she was making apparent her displeasure, or possible distrust, of working with these people.

And I found that extremely weird. Shouldn't she be happy that we have teammates in our quest to be heroes and save people? Her Guardian Angel didn’t appear to have said anything, so this must be a good choice.

"I'm Erind, and this is Deen," I told the couple of prospective puppets. Fate must be on my side for sending them for Pino to use. In some ways, the world must be done with fucking me over. "Let's see what we can do."

Tesh gave us a thumbs up, while Kiera simply nodded.

The turtle's pace of the crowd—were there any fast turtles?—slowed to that of a snail's. The choke point was the wide double doors leading to the function rooms. The terrorists seemed to divide people into groups before sending them in, causing heavy traffic.

Deen and I looked at each other, our eyes glinting in celebration.

But others weren't as happy as us. Some were worried that the Tea Party was making smaller groups of hostages to execute us efficiently.

That was kind of dumb if that were the case; they could've just released some hostages if we were too many to handle instead of making this elaborate setup just to kill people. So far, we also hadn't heard any gunshots or cries of pain. If they were really killing people, I could just fight them.

"Eighteen, nineteen, and twenty," said the terrorist at the door. He blocked the way with his gun like a parking lot gate, those swinging arm thingies. The twentieth guy in the line followed the rest of his group through the doors. "Next!" the terrorist called, and he began counting again.

In my estimate, Deen and I would be part of this group.

The middle-aged man with the prayer beads suddenly cut the line in front of Tesh, becoming number fifteen. Tesh and Kiera followed as sixteen and seventeen, respectively. Deen and I stuck close to them, jostling other people away so we'd be counted next. Fucking Praying Man almost separated the two of us.

"Short girl, you're nineteen," the terrorist said, even though I wasn't that short. Unfortunately, he wore a balaclava with a visor covering his eyes, so I couldn't note his appearance to 'shorten' his life later. "Next—"

"Wait for me!" The familiar female voice made me turn. Imani dove out of the crowd to reach me. "I'm their friend!" She unceremoniously pushed back the next person in line and took his place. "We-we're friends. Ple-please don't separate us. I'm going to have a panic attack if—"

"You're twenty," said the terrorist to her. "Shut it and go."