There was no immediate answer to my question. At least, none waiting to jump out at us as we sat in the car and talked about it. My head kept flashing to Luciano being a zombie, but that was absurd, right? Sure, Bokor, over on the Detroit Conservators, used what they called zombies, but they weren’t really. He just created duplicates of people he could see and used them as minions. Gloam, one of the Seraphs, was also able to create duplicates of anyone standing in one of the areas of darkness she made and put them in one of her areas of light. But again, they weren’t zombies. Not the ‘climb out of a trash pile and try to eat people’ sort of zombies. So… so… what then? What the fuck was going on? What had happened to Luciano? Why was he lying in that garbage? Why was–what–what? My mind was spinning out pretty thoroughly.
“We need to figure out why he came here,” I finally managed to get out, shoving the confusion into a corner of my mind for the moment. “Which, I guess means getting into that apartment. Or just knocking on the door. Or…” I frowned, shaking my head. “We should scope the place out first. It’s–what time is it?” I managed to dig my phone out, blinking at it. “Almost ten. Okay, let’s find a place to park and wait about an hour, then we’ll see what we can find in there. If someone is living there and they’re a friend of Luciano’s, I’d prefer to take them by surprise rather than just politely knock on their door.” After a slight pause, I grimaced before quietly adding, “I’d kind of like to not have a repeat of the Cup thing. Especially since Way isn’t here this time.”
Nobody else had any better idea of what to do other than wait for a bit, so Fred drove around the block until we found an old fast food place with a spot next to the dumpster so it was out of sight of the main road and we could still see the apartment building itself in the distance. We parked there, Fred and Sierra went inside the restaurant to bring back food, and then we sat in the car eating and watching the building. I had no idea what we expected to see, but none of us wanted to take our eyes off the place.
I spent most of that time quietly thinking while listening to the others talk. Well, mostly Murphy and Sierra. The two of them were having a–call it spirited debate about different types of zombies and other monsters. Sierra insisted that even though she was only going off of what Paige remembered, having fast-moving zombies in something was complete sacrilege and destroyed the entire point of what they were supposed to be. Murphy thought having a few fast-moving ones shook things up and stopped people from getting complacent and bored. To which Sierra informed her that if you were bored in a zombie movie it was clearly made wrong. Murphy firmly agreed, but added that that was exactly why adding in fast zombies was the right way to go. And from there it just went back around in another circle.
I tuned them out for the most part, focusing on eating and watching that building as I tried to think of what could possibly have happened to explain the new Luciano situation. But I had nothing. Through that entire hour, the only things that came to mind were ridiculous explanations I had to dismiss. He wasn’t really a zombie. They didn’t exist. So… what then?
I didn’t know, but hopefully we were going to find out by talking to whoever was in that apartment. Or possibly just by searching the place if it was empty. Either way, a glance toward my phone confirmed it was time. The streets were dark and quiet, with very light rain. Good for keeping people out of the way, hopefully. The last thing I wanted to d–okay one of the last things I wanted to do was run into some random onlooker who thought we were thieves.
“I’ll check the place out with Sierra first,” I started while pushing the back door open. Before Murphy could voice her obvious objection, I pressed on. “We’ll just see if the place looks empty or if someone’s there. As soon as we know what’s going on and have it… handled, we’ll call you guys in. Wait til you see a flash of light right over there on the edge of the roof. If you see one, it means come over. If you see two, it means come fast, we need help. And if you see three, it means get the hell out of here and don’t look back.” Rather than focusing on Murphy and Roald, I looked at Fred himself. “Okay?”
He met my gaze before giving a short nod. Then he added, “But uhh, you might wanna turn on that voice changer before you do any talking to anyone else. Just gotta say, hearing your voice coming out of what looks like a girl is… it’s pretty fucking weird.”
Oh, he had absolutely no idea how weird the situation was. Coughing at the thought, I thanked him and switched my voice changer over from making me sound like a boy to making me sound like a different girl. Then I took a brief moment to inwardly marvel at just how weird my entire life was. And something told me it wouldn’t be getting more normal any time soon. Which was an easy assumption to make considering I was currently trying to find out the truth behind a supposed zombie with the help of a cyborg girl whose body happened to be an identical copy of my own. Add in the fact that she was mentally a twin/copy of a girl who had apparently been one of my best friends before spending years as my worst enemy after my memory was wiped because my mafia-boss grandfather–yeah. It was safe to say that this weirdness wasn’t clearing up anytime soon.
Still, I pushed that out of my mind and tried to focus on the task at hand. Together, Sierra and I made our way across the parking lot to a drainage ditch that ran under the street, through a raised bridge area. Anything to stay out of sight. The two of us were wearing dark clothes and with any luck, nobody would be paying too much attention right now anyway. But just in case, we would probably need to be as quick as possible before cops showed up. Being chased through the streets of this suburb by cops wasn’t a situation that I wanted to get into, to say the least.
The large drainage ditch led all the way around to the back area of the building in question. Sierra and I were able to poke our heads up and look across the small, yet crowded parking lot. We wanted apartment 3C, which was obviously on the third of four floors, and from the layout that Roald had brought up on an apartment rental listing, unit C would be near the far left side, one off from the edge of the building. We had basically been able to see the windows from the car, and no lights had been visible. It was the same story up close. I could see heavy blinds, with no illumination coming through. Unfortunately, the fact that the blinds were that heavy meant not seeing light didn’t necessarily equate to no one being home. We were going to have to get closer for that.
Fortunately, there was a small porch/patio surrounding each apartment. They weren’t very large, barely big enough for a couple chairs and a barbecue on some of them. Or a potted plant. Whatever, they were clearly only meant to allow someone to sit out on the very optimistically titled ‘deck’ and watch the cars on the street below. Probably raised the price of the apartment itself significantly too, having a cupboard-sized patio attached. Not that I had any idea what the price of an apartment like that was. Or any apartment, really. I had no frame of reference for that. Though I was willing to bet that the bedroom I lived in was significantly more expensive.
Shaking that off, I focused on the roof of the building. It looked clear. So did all the windows, with their tightly closed blinds. It seemed like the people around here were mostly keeping it to themselves. Which might explain why Luciano had wanted to stay there, given how much trouble he was in back in Detroit.
I would have painted us straight to the patio in question. Unfortunately, the apartment right next to it was one of the few with its lights on and the blinds up, so I didn’t want to take the risk of going right past them. We needed to get around that place first.
“Here,” I whispered toward the girl beside me. It was easier to ignore just how similar to me she looked while she was wearing that ski mask. “We need to run across the lot to the middle. Stay low behind these cars. Once we’re close enough, I’ll paint us up to that roof and we can drop down to the patio as soon as it looks clear.”
There was a brief pause before the girl murmured in agreement. I adjusted the weird and uncomfortable bra, then we set off in a half-crouch. The two of us used the vehicles in the lot as cover, quickly making our way to that center point, where a small, narrow median with a couple very sick-looking bushes waited. We crouched behind those bushes, glancing to the left at the empty road, then up to the building itself. There was absolutely nothing to see. It all looked clear. Some of the lights in the various apartments were on, but other than the one that was directly in our way, their shades were drawn as well. There was no one visible, no one who might notice us as far as I could tell. It was now or never if we were going to search that place.
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This whole situation actually reminded me of when I had been searching for Ashton. Ending up in his apartment had… well it hadn’t gone that well, obviously. And yet, it kind of had. I’d had my face-to-face meeting with Blackjack, which eventually led to saving his daughter and making friends with Pack. It–yeah. Maybe it just went to show that you never knew how a situation was going to play out. Still, I was going to keep hoping that this one wouldn’t end with meeting another Fell-Touched leader. Somehow, I didn’t see that going so well.
Once I was as certain as I could be that things were clear, I shot a bit of black paint at the roof, then added some to Sierra and myself so nothing would make noise. Then I used red paint to pull the two of us that way. We both hit the edge of the roof silently, keeping ourselves low to avoid showing our profiles to anyone who happened to glance outside from one of the other buildings. It was dark, but not that dark. We needed to get down off the roof and into the apartment in question as quickly as possible.
The balcony directly below us looked clear. I leaned over and peered at the sliding glass door intently. I could barely make out a dark living room, though the light appeared to be on in the adjacent kitchen. From the sound of things, someone was in there cooking. Which meant they weren’t going to see us if we were quick. First, I sprayed the metal railing there with black paint so it wouldn’t rattle and give us away, before the two of us hopped down. Then I clambered over and lowered myself toward the next balcony down. This was the apartment we wanted. Hanging from the fourth floor railing, I carefully glanced toward the lit-up place next door. Yeah, there were definitely people in that one. None of them were glancing out the glass door, and I was pretty sure it was too bright in there to see us in our dark clothes out here very easily. But still, I didn’t want to screw around and risk that for very long.
So, I sprayed the railing of this apartment black and activated it before dropping down. Sierra joined me, before the two of us silently clambered over the railing and stayed low on the porch. We were clear so far. I quietly turned toward the sliding door and leaned in close to peer through a corner where the heavy blind didn’t quite cover. Nothing, the whole place was dark. Quietly murmuring that to Sierra, I tried the door just in case. Nope, it was locked.
Well, I didn’t want to do this, but we didn’t have any other choice if we were going to get in there and see what was going on. We had just come to this area in the first place to find Luciano so Murphy could have some closure. But now there was obviously something pretty bad going on. Even worse than her whole situation. We had to find answers, and the only clue to those answers we had was that he had wanted to come to this apartment. It was this or nothing.
So, I sprayed a black circle just above the door handle. Then I put purple and orange stars across my fist, before punching the circle I’d made. It knocked the glass out there silently, and I was able to carefully reach through to unlock the door from the inside. Listening intently, I slowly slid it open. Nothing untoward came to my ears. I could hear the television in the apartment next door very faintly, as well as some chatter. We would have to stay quiet, but it sounded like no one had noticed our break-in so far.
We both stepped into the apartment. Like the one right above and the one next door, the patio door led to a living room. It was a tiny place. Definitely smaller than my bedroom. I was pretty sure you could barely fit my actual bed in here. Maybe not even that. Not comfortably, anyway.
There wasn’t much in the way of furniture in this place. Just a small tv on a card table, an old couch, a recliner that was falling apart, and a half-full bookshelf with DVDs rather than novels. Nearby, I could see the open kitchen with a table that looked older than my parents, a couple wooden chairs, and a counter with a few odds and ends. There was also a short hallway to the right leading to what looked like the bedroom and bathroom.
Quite frankly, it was downright eerie to be standing here in this dark place after everything I’d heard about Luciano supposedly jumping out of the trash to attack those people. He’d literally ripped two people’s throats out with his teeth! He murdered them, he–yeah. It was a thought that made me shudder. I felt like I was in the middle of some sort of horror movie. I really had no desire to be in here right now, but there was no choice if we were going to get answers.
First, however, I moved back to the open sliding door and shot a bit of white paint against the railing. Looking both ways to make sure it seemed clear, I triggered the paint so it would light up for a few seconds, then canceled it.
Turning back around, I found Sierra coming out of the hallway leading to the other rooms. She was shaking her head, voice low. “Nobody’s back there. This place is empty.” After a brief pause, she added, “Maybe whoever lives here is at work, or just out. Not like there’s a curfew up here. Or–”
“Or maybe nobody lives here and it was just a place for Luciano to lay low,” I put in flatly. My head nodded toward a framed photograph on the wall next to the television. “I’m pretty sure that’s him right there, with some older woman. His mother, or aunt, or someone, maybe?”
Glancing that way curiously, the biolem girl stepped over to examine the photograph. “Yeah, yeah that’s definitely him. So this place is either his or the woman in the picture’s. But uhh–” She glanced around the sparsely decorated apartment. “This sort of screams ‘guy’s apartment’ to me. A guy who isn’t doing much with it and just wanted a place to stay out of sight for awhile.”
The two of us stepped closer to the patio so we could watch for the others. While we were waiting, Sierra glanced toward me and paused before speaking softly. “This whole thing is probably pretty fucking weird for you, huh?”
The question made me snort despite myself before I turned that way and raised an eyebrow she wouldn’t even see. “Pretty fucking weird for me? You mean you looking like that after everything that happened?” A heavy sigh escaped me. “Throughout this entire situation, I didn’t think that the whole bit with Paige and you could get any weirder for me. Finding out my memory was wiped and that I was friends with Paige, and that she was a cyborg and–yeah, I was pretty sure the bar for how weird I could feel about the whole thing couldn’t get any higher. But…” With one hand, I gestured to encompass her new body. “Somehow, we managed to surpass the previous level of weird by entire lightyears. I’m not even going to try to say that this is as weird as it will get, because I just know that somewhere out there, the universe will hear me and get offended.”
Audibly snickering just a little, Sierra shrugged. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Trust me, it feels weird from this side too. Probably not as weird as it feels for you, but still. Remember, I was supposed to kill you. That was the plan, my program. It was what I was built for. Well, one of the things, anyway. And now, here I am. I’m wearing this body, helping out with your whole thing here, and planning out how to fuck over my… father so I can save an older sister I’ve never met and who literally knows nothing about me. So yeah, it’s pretty weird from over here.”
We were both silent for a few seconds then, running all that through our heads while watching the lot below. Then she spoke again, her voice even softer that time. “Look, I know from all those Paige memories that you feel like your body isn’t… right, like you aren’t feminine enough.”
My eyes widened and I choked a bit, head shaking. “Oh boy, is this not a conversation I want to have right now. Or ever, really. But right now especially.”
“Not a whole conversation,” she assured me. “I just–speaking as someone who didn’t have a body of my own at all until last night, you should always be glad that you’ve got one that works. You’ve got all your fingers and toes, all your limbs, your senses work, you’re in good shape, it’s… yeah. It all works the way it’s supposed to. And…” She hesitated, sounding a bit uncertain for a moment before pushing on. “And speaking of someone who is literally wearing your body right now, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Sure, you’re not like… voluptuous or whatever. But you don’t have to be. Look at how much you hate having that bra on with the… you know. Because it’s not you. This body we’ve got, it’s not bad. It’s yours. It’s ours. It’s–you know what I mean. And believe me when I say, we’re cuter than you think. Not everyone needs some big honking… honkers.”
Coughing as the blush on my face threatened to burn through the mask, I pointed toward a couple of small, dark figures running closer across the parking lot. They were staying low to avoid being seen from the road. “There they are.” Then I paused before putting a hand on Sierra’s arm. My voice was low. “Thanks. I just–thanks.”
That was all I had time to say before the others were below. Murphy and Roald waited as I leaned out to send paint down to pull them up. But I never got the chance. As I was leaning out, someone came bounding out from behind the nearby parked car. They were… human but kind of loping along like an ape or a dog or–or something. The person literally threw himself at Murphy and Roald, taking them to the ground with a furious snarling sound, like a wild animal.
Sierra and I exchanged a quick glance, our eyes wide. We knew who that was. I’d gotten just enough of a glimpse to recognize his face before he tackled Murphy and Roald. Luciano. It was Luciano. Together, the two of us launched ourselves off the third floor balcony, plummeting down toward the man.
I just hoped we would be fast enough to save the other two, before Luciano could add to the count of people he had murdered.