The cabin slowly glided down the cable that connected the top of Mountain Vault to Coral Cobble below. Judging by the timeworn dustiness of the clusters of short buildings, Key could tell they were heading toward the Cobble part of the city.
What he could not tell was why Lyra, a furlough superhero with decades of experience, would need his help. Also, from what Key heard over the years, Lyra was a friendly and blithe person. Why was she so mean this morning?
Key opened the Hiker energy bar that Lyra tossed him earlier and took a bite. If Lyra did not force him to come, he would be eating a cheeseburger in the cafeteria instead of this meager compensation for lunch.
Key moved his sight away from the verdant mountain and glanced at Lyra. He searched through her blank visage, seeking answers to both of his questions, but nothing was there to be found.
"What?" Lyra raised her brows and looked back at Key.
"Why can't you tell me why you're taking me to Cobble?"
Lyra cautiously looked around and leaned forward. Then, she answered with a hushed voice, "This is kept secret from the public, so I can't talk about it in the academy."
"What is it?"
"Alt-Evolvers are back."
"'Ow?" Key also lowered his volume.
"We don't think it is the original group since their leader has been dead for years, but their technology must have been preserved covertly."
"But, 'ow do you know it's their tech?"
"We've got five bodies with Alt-Evolvers' modification inside."
"'Oly shit," Key swore without raising his voice. He lowered his sight to the ground in melancholy. There was something especially dispiriting about how these villains just kept bouncing back even after their initial death. There was always a secret successor, a copycat, or a wacky resurrection.
"Yeah, holy shit. I haven't even mentioned the part that now they can even make those abominations without changing their test subjects' outer appearance."
Key raised his head immediately upon hearing the news. His eyes opened wide. He had fully understood what the news meant the moment he heard it.
"Three human males and two human females. None of them has any outside characteristics that can indicate any change inside their body."
Key's mind flew out of his head for a moment before Lyra called him back.
"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention," Key said with his left elbow propped on his thigh and his left hand holding against his forehead.
"It's okay." Tenderly, Lyra put her tiny, fourteen-year-old hand on Key's left shoulder. "I know what you've been through. It must be traumatizing for you."
Key, finally pulling his mind back into the cable car, looked Lyra in the eyes and said, "You don't need to worry about that. I don't 'ave a trauma."
"Good, 'cause I do not have the time to console you." Lyra packed up her geniality, drew her hand back, and reclined against the seatback. Her words seemed more like a genuine response than a bitter jab, yet Key could only hear the latter.
"I'm older than you."
"Sure."
"And you need to stop talking to me like I'm a kid." Key raised his voice a bit.
"And when did I ever do that?" Lyra replied without breaking a slouching tranquility.
Key opened his mouth and failed to recall an example to back up his accusation. He then shut his mouth and chose silence.
Lyra said, "As much as you want to deny it, Alt-Evolvers did leave a scar in your heart."
Key increased his volume again. "I'm not angry about Alt-Evolvers. They are nothing more than some criminals."
Lyra looked at the mountain beneath them and said, "Loter is so much cuter than you."
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Ocelot. The car for you and your family.
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As they arrived in the evening, a dark-skinned man exited his old Ocelot sedan. He scurried onto the terminal platform with two wads of tin foil in his hands. His leather jacket had no sleeves. Decorative chains tightly wrapped across his shoulders and loosely hung before his abdomen.
"Lyra, here," the man said in the empty terminal as a way of greeting. He tossed one wad to Lyra and the other to Key.
As Lyra walked toward the man, Key followed behind and opened a tiny slit in the hot tin foil. He peeked inside. A small grin appeared on his face as he saw the beef burger inside.
"Key, this is Ros, Rolling of Seas. Ros, this is Key Rayth, the kid who was once EEG." Lyra stood beside the two and did a simple introduction.
Smiling, R.O.S. reached out a hand and added, "If you don't know me already, I'm Loter's mentor, and I'm currently working with HUCC and CAPD."
"Thank you for the burger." Key put the wad on his hanging cast and shook the man's hand.
"I suppose Lyra has already told you about the situation?"
"Yup." Key nodded with his improved emotion.
R.O.S. beckoned them to follow him into his car. As soon as he got to face away from the kid, he silently sighed and dropped his smile. There was nothing for him to be happy about.
Key went into the back row of the sedan, and Lyra sat on the passenger seat. Before she could close the car door, R.O.S. said, "You can't sit here."
"I'm sorry?" Lyra shut the door forcefully and stared at R.O.S. with a faint irritation in her slightly squinting eyes.
"The law said kids below sixteen can't sit in the front row."
"No one will notice."
"Everybody will know."
"Fine." Lyra opened the door with an unnecessary amount of strength and slammed it close as she went into the back row.
With the awkward atmosphere filling the entire sedan, R.O.S. stepped on the gas pedal, driving forward.
The street of Cobble was no different from the day Key first entered the academy. It was the same even before Key got kidnapped. People with the same brown complexion as Key walked by the two sides of the asphalt road, flooding and completely blocking off streets with popular food stalls. No sidewalk would ever be built, and nobody complained about it. They would even laugh at the tourists and visitors when they got scared by the cars dashing beside them.
The familiar view put a blunt unease in Key's chest. On the one hand, he felt nostalgic. On the other, he had nothing to miss. His parents died during his kidnapping, and nobody would accept a monster like him, anyway. Key believed that those two factors were partially why he was put into HueCam Academy.
With the ambivalence unresolved, Key spread the tin foil and bit into the hot beef burger.
Minutes after Key finished the food, they arrived at the headquarters of the Cobble Area Police Department(CAPD). The building was gray, with about six floors, almost undistinguishable from any other governmental facilities.
Before R.O.S. drove to the parking lot, Lyra exited the car. Key asked her why, and she answered she would be in the cafe across the street.
Only after Lyra closed the door did R.O.S. say, "Her current appearance is a bit inconvenient, so she prefers to stay outside."
Key nodded, saying nothing in return. He could relate to this feeling, the feeling when nobody sees you without either fear or curiosity in their eyes.
As R.O.S. parked into one of the few empty slots, he suddenly asked, "By the way, how's Loter doing? I know he's in Haban. He told me about it, but how about before that? Is he blending in? Did he make any friends?"
"'E is, and 'e is in 'aban with another two students. That must mean they are 'is friends."
"Yes, of course." R.O.S. unbuckled his seatbelt and asked, "How about you? Are you close with Loter? I know you are in the same squad with him and the other two students."
Key hesitated for a second and answered, "We are close. I've done some shitty things, but 'e has forgiven me."
"That sounds just like him."
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The bunker under CAPD's headquarters was built a hundred years prior to the police department itself and was almost entirely disjointed from the building above, except for the vertical shaft and the ladder attached to it.
Inside, there was a central lobby with several doors and hallways leading to different rooms, big and small. Back in the day, the facility was used by the military. Now, CAPD and the Hero Union in Coral Cobble(HUCC) used it for supernatural investigation and superhero-related stuff.
Despite its age, the old bunker did not seem to be worn. Its metallic tunnels, pipes, walls, and platforms were still gleaming under electric light. A sparse amount of people were in the lobby. Some were guards with ballistic armor and guns. Some were researchers heading between labs in their white coats. Others were officers waiting for science people to produce the results and pacing as they pondered their brains out.
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R.O.S. and Key walked past every single one of them, sticking to their own business. Their designated room had filing cabinets aligned by the wall and several officers arguing loudly. They pushed their fingers onto the whiteboard and the papers on the wide table. Meanwhile, a white machine with a gray helmet sat quietly in a corner.
The room did not immediately fall silent when R.O.S. entered. However, most of the contention did pause itself.
Some officers introduced themselves to Key one by one, and others did not bother. They summarized the whole situation with the new Alt-Evolvers and somehow managed to give less information than Lyra.
Key pointed at the five X-ray images on the whiteboard and asked what they were. One officer answered that those belonged to the victims of the new Alt-Evolvers. All five images appeared to be identical to those of normal people. Not a single one depicted anything abnormal about the skeletons.
What they actually needed Key to do was pretty dull, even more boring than Key's worst expectation. They asked Key to sit by the white machine with the gray helmet on. He fainted directly after they activated the machine.
When Key woke up again, R.O.S. was already taking him out. He explained that they needed Key's consciousness turned off to access the modification in his brain so that they could track down the signals of other Alt-Evolvers' victims. Key's modification contained this function since he was once the brain of the Ever-Evolving Grosteque(E.E.G.), and the function was required to connect different parts of the monster.