"Master Chief, I'll be back to check on you if EMS doesn't arrive on time."

Augustus nodded and waved her off with a gesture that implied that he would be fine. How he determined that from his present condition, she could not fathom.

Tasìa followed out of the basement behind the brawler by a flight of stairs. She wondered how literal Annebél meant her deadly proclamation.

There venture was shaping up to take a decidedly uglier turn. She wasn't certain what she could even say to prevent the excoriation from happening, or if she even cared to try.

As she grabbed the first baluster on the stairway, Tasìa turned towards the enclosed area in the very back of the long hallway that comprised the greater body of the basement.

She could not see anything inside the back rooms Annebél had searched. Though the light she had turned on saturated deep into the hallway, the broad entrance was around a wall corner.

It gave her the creeps just thinking about what occurred. Tasìa winced.

Whatever Sal did to the girl, the two bullmastiffs had feasted off her remains for the last few days as the corpse rotted.

Annebél's boots trodded like a thunderous warhorse. Things were going to get ugly, and personal.

He deeds, he deeds, basement, he deeds.

Tasìa recalled the plea of the man Annebél executed. As nefarious as his actions were, and seemingly mercenary, there was likely an element of revenge in them.

That name? Martine? She could not place it but she had heard it before. She was too focused on their current circumstance to make broader connections.

Tasìa decided that she was not going to interfere by trying to talk Annebél out of it for the sake of a greasy, evil punk like Sal.

As she reached the entranceway to the second story stairwell, Annebél stopped on the landing above her and turned around.

"You don't have to witness this," Annebél said to discourage her from following any further.

Tasìa frowned pensively before she spoke.

"There are more things up there than Sal."

Annebél paused for a moment and she nodded as she gave it some thought.

"What was it? It was like a drone… but at least somewhat alive instead of being wholly mechanical."

Tasìa chewed at her bottom lip as she nodded.

"That pretty much matches up with my own impression, to the extent that I've got one. One of the spooks told me about advanced tech shit that they have been able to exploit for their own ends - they call it the Resonance.

"Apparently, their lab research experiments in invisibility and optic manipulation done in sync with electromagnetic field manipulation created something in that synergy of the three that is far weirder than the underlying physics would suggest is possible."

Annebél slapped her hands against her hips.

"Well, then. Where did the damn thing go? It didn't interfere when we were up there last?"

That fact bothered Tasìa. She felt that buried deep in her subconscious she knew exactly what that hesitancy in its actions meant.

She just had not put it all together yet. A lot of things seemed just out of her reach. Were mental tricks being played on her, as well?

Tasìa finally reached the brawler's side. Even given her limber and nimble body and gymnastic maneuverability, stairs she considered to be her personal nemesis.

Just plain Hell on this old bitch's knees.

"I think it is still up there, at least, hovering close by. It's looking for an opportunity to exploit as it lies in wait for us. You deal with Sal, sister, and I will stay out in the atrium to keep watch."

Annebél scrunched her face up in an expression that made her lips appear perched even prettier as she stared down at the floor.

"I didn't want you to overhear what I have in store for that son of a bitch."

Tasìa shrugged.

"Fine. Stuff his manwhore maw with a couple of pairs of socks so that he can't scream."

Annebél patted her on the side of the face.

"You know what, mon petite démon? You're all right. You're more than all right."

When they reached the landing for the second-story stairs, Annebél darted a finger at the blue salty ooze that trickled into a puddle down a wall to their left.

The wall paper directly above it bore stains, black and greasy.

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"What do you think it is?"

Tasìa shrugged.

"Blood? Fuel? Lubricant? My guesses about a cryptid's anatomy are no better than anyone else's, even though I have fought quite a variety of them over the past month."

"That's why I am asking!"

Tasìa smiled to herself at her varied resumé.

Master thief, operative, gunslinger, and monster hunter.

Annebél shook her head and chuckled, apparently amused. Tasìa wondered just how self-satisfied she must have appeared at that moment.

"Call me if you need me," Annebél said as she turned away towards the room where they had left Sal.

So, where was it? She chose not to enter the Modality, at least, not yet. She may need it to do battle. Instead, Tasìa decided to clear her mind to see if she could sense anything out of the ordinary when she induced a special meditative state taught to her by Sachmilli Cuervo.

As she started to prepare herself, she got another glimpse of the floating drone creature. It was so nebulous in the impression that it made Tasìa was not even sure of the position in space it inhabited.

It was there. For a slither of a moment, just then, she caught a vision of it but it disappeared, leaving the faintest trace in her memory.

She would have to train herself to perceive it.

Sachmilli called the special state of conscience induced by the exercise the Ocean Within.

You conducted your deep breathing cycle with your eyes wide open; you concentrated all of your attention on your eyes, the physicality of their being, and you did not blink. You did not move them even for an irritation-compelled twitch.

You only advanced in your meditation when the orbs no longer felt either strain or sting.

Once your eyes were enveloped by numbness, you held your breath in. For the whole of another minute, you twitched your eyeballs in rapid succession to the point they vibrated intensely.

Keep your focus centered. Roll your eyes once up while in mid-vibration, slowly; roll your eyes once down while in mid-vibration, slowly. Imagine your focus as a wave echoed to the furthest point you can perceive before, on its own accord, it rippled back into your minds eye. Hold in place what you perceive.

Now stop and breathe.

If executed correctly, the world around would come through like waves of liquid perception. Hidden things that caused the waves to ripple back were always revealed where they had previously lay outside of one's awareness.

That was the nature of using meditation to obtain a greater sense of the reality around you. Matters that purposefully lay comfortably ensconced in the fabric of existence were forced to reveal themselves.

Muffled noises came from the room Annebél had entered a few seconds earlier. She assumed the brawler was taking pains to dampen the sounds of her actions so Tasìa shoved her awareness of the noises to the side and she began her meditative state.

With inner certitude, Tasìa knew she just needed two minutes to alter her perception and get in the right frame of mind to reveal the Resonance frequency being manipulated around her.

She assumed there to be a corollary between the two. The Ocean Within, and the Resonance that Petro described as if it were another dimension in a Dreamland place and time.

Her eyes stared straight ahead. Even as she began her breathing exercise Tasìa felt its menacing presence grow around her, but she had no indication that it inhabited a definitive space near her.

It was there.

What was she not perceiving that she should be perceiving? Her eyes went into an ultra-twitch mode. Side to side, narrowed focus, she upped the rate of vibration in the orbital twitch of her eyes with each breath that she took.

The ritual was almost complete when a smacking explosive noise ripped through the air. It was followed by a succession of four more explosive, crackling noises popping off from behind her.

She turned her head towards the door Annebél had entered. Lights flashed from within the room, narrowed into pure shadow before they cast out spectacular light show fashion. A cascade of red and sepia beams rained down upon her vision.

As she shook her head and blinked something that hovered above caught her eye. A monochromatic-in-cyan reflection moved across the surface of the glass panes.

As she sprinted towards the door, a cacophony of buzzing sounds erupted once more from the room.

Sal yelled, "Crazy, crazy bitch!"

Tasìa cocked the Vaquero, ready to take Sal out as soon as she caught sight of him.

He stood at the French doors that opened up to the balcony. Two pairs of socks covered in vomit at his feet. The small drawer, to which he was clamped, he held firmly between his arms as he lumbered through the entrance.

Tasìa readied her revolver to take his head off when a tangle of tentacles in cyan camo appeared over Sal's head.

Before she even thought to react, Tasìa emptied the chamber into the drone-beasts center. It sparked with smoke and blue ooze splattering out before disappearing.

As Tasìa swiped in a fresh moonclip, Sal leaped over the side of the balcony, yelling, "That even crazier bitch!"

Dumbass never even saw the drone, Tasìa thought but then realized her mistake.

His escape was coordinated.

She turned to check on Annebél. Annebél lay writhing on the floor as she grabbed at her eyes.

"Annebél!"

"I'm alright. Fucking flashbangs! I was about to cut off Sal's toes one by one when that drone thing appeared on the balcony and it chucked flashbang grenades at me.

"Sal was in communication with it. He knew to cover his eyes."

Tasìa shook her head. It was coming together. Her intuition tried to warn her. Sal was the spook's man on the inside in the planned demise of the Javierra crime syndicate.

That nasty bit of business they did to his bum was an internecine grudge and not a punishment meted out to a hated enemy.

Then it clicked.

Martine? The conversation with Jún-Jún in the bathtub came back to her. Yes, it was personal. Martine was the name of the kidnapped girl's brother.

He had to be one and the same.

How would Annebél feel about it if she were told?

Tasìa decided she would go to her grave with it. Annebél didn't need it on her conscience.

Tasìa approached the balconinwith caution n case the drone-beast returned to attack again. A sleek, black driverless Lamborghini pulled up into the lawn and opened up its hatch-like passenger side door.

The drawer lay split apart on the concrete. Freed from it, a highly bruised Sal jumped into the car.

"The fucker is getting away!"

Annebél yelled as she shouldered her carbine.

Two bullets grazed the side of the Lamborghini but, as Tasìa already knew from the matted bulk of the valance panels, the car was bulletproofed.

A sniper rifle had a chance to shatter through the proofed layer but not a .38 caliber bush gun.

Tasìa turned towards Annebél as the brawler gave up her efforts to kill Sal.

"I noticed you put his pants back on."

Annebél shook her head with a squeamish wince in her expression.

"Yeah. I had to cover that bit of nastiness up. Seen too much ugly shit today . . . but that gape pooting like a red balloon with every scared shitless breath he took, and those . . . needled beads stuffed up his cavity just randomly dropping out . . . and blood seeping out as I am working my blade, trying to ignore it.

Gonna have to drink myself into oblivion to forget about it tonight."

Annebél shook her head something fierce.

An EMS hovercraft was closing in from above the golf course. Tasìa pointed it out.

"Heads up. I don't think those drone aberrations stayed around, lying in wait for us. They are here for Augustus."

"More than one of those fuckers?"

Tasìa nodded her head as she checked her load out and pinned the next moonclip to her wrist band.

"Most definitely."