Chapter 18: A Villainous Thing

An entirely new building was built after the first was knocked down, but the basement may still exist, buried beneath the new structure. I admittedly don't remember ever finding a basement in my first few years of life, but I also wasn't looking for one. Just like last time, I pry open a manhole cover, and look for an unused pipe. Sure enough, I find one, but my claustrophobia is already getting to me. No. Not now. There's too much I need to know.

I squeeze through the tight fit, as usual, and end up... somewhere. It's deep, too, it has to be at least twenty feet underground. I send out my shell, along with a small flashlight, and start pointing it around.

What the hell happened to this place?

Large chunks of concrete litter the area, and everything is caked in a thick layer of rock dust and ash. Broken glassware and burnt papers litter the ground, with massive scorch marks painting the walls. Desks and office chairs are singed, but seem to have survived mostly intact. There's no sign of life here, not even insects, as I start to look around. I feel my shell getting dizzy... there's no oxygen. I return my shell to my core once again, and start producing as much oxygen as I can.

After half and hour or so, the air is safe to breathe, and I send out my shell once again. I start to look through the rooms down here.

The room I found myself in was clearly a laboratory of some kind, as is the conjoining room. This first lab is far more damaged, with sections of the concrete ceiling having collapsed and exposing old piping above. Notably, I find the source of the blast: a large and circular platform of metal. A sigil takes up much of the circle, though it's wholly unfamiliar and inert. I take a picture of it to show Mirka later.

Away from the explosion site and the lab I entered through are a pair of executive offices, a large storage room, a bathroom, and a small break room. Time to start searching more thoroughly.

I ignore the sigil lab for now, due to it being mostly ash and partially melted metal. Instead, I begin searching through every drawer, cabinet, and surface in the entry lab. Melting shards of glassware, the remains of burnt paper, and ancient skeletons of early computers are most of what I find. One desk, though, seems miraculously untouched by the flame. I start looking through the drawers, stuffing every intact piece of paper I can find into my void. It's mostly meaningless data, but there might be something in there that can help.

The bathroom has nothing, as expected. The executive offices, though, are exactly what I need. Inside the larger of the two is a wall safe that seems intact. I retract my shell, and with patience, bore through the metal just as I did the stone with the lizard people. Tedious work, but the safe's door is relatively thin, and I'm through in no time. I absorb the contents of the safe into my void as well, before exiting the safe and extending my shell once again. So many documents inside this place that I have to read...

The break room also has an ancient elevator shaft, but it was completely filled in with concrete at some point, which spilled out over the break room floor. There's nothing of interest here, either, only carbonized food and unsalvageable appliances.

The last room is storage. It seems to have been largely shielded from whatever happened, thankfully. There's so much here that I need to take pictures of. Scientific instruments, t-shirts, distilled water, a few closed wooden crates and cardboard boxes, and barrels of various chemicals that I borrow from to replenish my own supplies.

I start with the cardboard boxes. Inside is nothing of note, only a handful of personal belongings, antique candy bars, and more glassware and instruments.

The three wooden crates prove difficult to open. The first simply contains more barrels. The second, though, is depressing. Inside is a metal cage, with the bones of something non-human still clutching at the bars with long fingers. I can't imagine what that must have been like for it...

The third one is actually empty, disappointingly. At least there wasn't another dead creature in it..

I go ahead and start cracking open the four barrels inside the first crate. One of them has... radioactive waste? I assume it is, anyway, judging by the fact it's all depleted uranium. Concerning, but starts to explain what the hell happened, I think. The second barrel is full of more distilled water, and the third...

I don't know how to react to what I see. All I can do it is stare into the abyss.

Somewhere in the world is a magical beast out there with a name I've forgotten, who as a defense mechanism, can give someone a vision of their own death. It's a fabricated vision, of course, and doesn't actually tell the future. It doesn't matter, though, because when people are confronted with their own death, they cease acting rationally. I never understood it before now, but now I see it's because there's no rational way to act. All things seek to survive. It's a fundamental property of life.

I reach my hand into the barrel, my shell's hands brushing against smooth, cold, and somewhat slick material. It's a familiar feeling, as expected.

It's full of... me.

Small, black spheres. They're all imperfect in some way: some cracked, some distended, some too malleable, some too rigid. There has to be at least fifty of them, tossed in like trash and left untouched and unmourned.

I decide against pursuing this further, taking a picture, and retreating out through the pipe I entered through. I send out my raven shell, and fly home, waiting until I'm safe at home to think about what I just saw.

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I haven't moved since I got back, sitting on the couch and facing forward into the dark room. I don't know how long its been, but the sun rising behind me is a hint.

Mirka wakes up eventually, stretching and yawning, and saying good morning to me. I can only smile for a fraction of a second in response.

She sits down next to me, hand rubbing the back of my shell, asking me to talk to her. There's no language for the things I've seen, is there?

I just start talking. I feel as though I'm observing my shell, instead of having any control over its speech. It recounts everything: the old building, the fire, everything. Even my shell hesitates as it starts talking about the third barrel, though. I command it to open my phone's photos, and show it to Mirka.

She covers her mouth with her hand, staring at it blankly.

"I..." I choke out, trying to calm myself. "I figured out what I am, it seems, huh?"

"Lena-"

"No," I interrupt. "Let me speak. Just for a little longer. I... I don't know what this means. I don't even know how I feel right now. The only thing I know is that I could really use someone to hold me right now," I plaintively squeeze out, as my eyes start crying.

"Did you want to pull your shell in, first?"

I don't know if I do. My shell is apparently the only part of me that's real, that I created, that I own. Not simply one of dozens of attempts by people who might be dead after decades...

Mirka senses my hesitation, and takes my shell's hand. "Lena."

I turn to look in her eyes, and see their beauty, filtered by held-back tears.

"I love you, Lena. You know that." She tightly holds my shell, as though trying to break it.

"I'm not real."

Mirka flinches back, as though it were a surprising thing for me to say. "What the hell does that mean? You're right here. I can see you. I can touch you. You're as real as real can be."

I shake my head, but slowly stop as Mirka grabs me and pulls me tight again. "Mimi?"

"Everyone comes from somewhere. You came from something fucked up. Lots of people have shitty parents."

I faintly smile to myself, and then share it with Mirka. In a way, she's right. Is there really that big of a difference here? "I guess. At least my adoptive ones are better. Don't tell Shirai I said that though, or he'll never stop with the daughter talk."

"Actually, if Shirai worked there, did he-"

"Timeline doesn't match up. He wasn't working there when before he hit puberty. Thankfully." I take a long, exhausted sigh. "I'm an actual living, breathing homunculus. A fully sapient artificial creature. That's never happened before. Closest is golems who can understand complete sentences... I have a lot of questions for anyone who worked on this particular science experiment. Obviously you can't tell anyone about this."

Mirka presses her head against mine. "I would never tell anyone without your approval. You know that."

"Yeah... I'm gonna tell Shirai and Melo, I think. Not Kapil, Amber, Casey, or Brant though. No offense to them."

"You can tell anyone you want, and you don't have to tell anyone. You're a complete individual with agency, after all."

"Alright, alright, jeez." I playfully push her head away. "I'm over it, you don't have to keep reaffirming my existence. I'm sure I have a lot to unpack here, but it's nice to know what I am after all this time. Plus, when you think about it, this makes me the greatest magical creation that humans have managed." I force a smile, but I'm sure it comes off as hollow.

Mirka laughs, pushing me back. "It's okay to not be okay. Okay?"

"Okay," I joke. "Thanks. Right now, I'm good with you here. Would you mind staying close today? I... don't really want to be alone."

"There's nowhere else I'd want to be. My good girl..." She starts scratching my head, and gently guiding it into her lap. It's funny, almost, how quickly I've accepted this after talking to Mirka. I might be artificial, but I'm a genuine person. I have two thirds of a journal filled out as proof, after all, don't I? And even if I'm not, it just means I've successfully fooled a beautiful woman into falling in love with me. A diabolical move by the evil sphere. I close my shell's eyes as Mirka continues to scratch my head.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

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"Stop. Please stop. I'm going through a lot right now," I plead to no avail.

"Oh my god. It's too perfect. It's just too perfect. I'm literally your dad." Shirai has been having a hysterical fit of laughter for the last five minutes. Melo has been alternating between laughing and displaying bands of color so rapidly that Shirai can't follow.

"You didn't even know those experiments existed until now!"

"Yeah, but time is a human construct. In a way, Next Step is collectively your parent. Therefore-"

"Shut up. Oh my god. This is absolutely agonizing." I bury my head in my hands.

Mirka whispers a "sorry" to me, which makes me perk up to listen as she speaks. "You know, she referred to you both as her adoptive parents earlier."

"I'm going to kill you, Mirka. Figuratively."

Shirai is doubled over laughing now. Even Mirka is joining in the laughs now.

"Still..." I say, waiting for a break in the laughter to speak, "you all took this really well. Like it doesn't matter."

"It matters!" Shirai asserts. "It matters because it upset you. Otherwise, though, why should we give a single solitary shit about it? It changes literally nothing about how Melo or I see you."

I try to object, but genuinely can't find a reason to. All I can do is hold my hands up in resignation. "Fine. Whatever. By the way, I have a bunch of boring technical documents I refuse to read, if you three wanted to help me out."

Shirai and Mirka nod enthusiastically, as I start dumping out all the pieces of paper I took in earlier. Mirka starts looking through them for a few seconds, but gives up quickly. "I don't understand a word. Sorry Shirai, all you."

He nods with a smirk. "There's snacks in the fridge. Lena, did you finish your homework?"

"God damn it!" I snap at him, forcing my hand through my hair. "I get it! Yes, you are my dad, Melo is my mom, but can we please move on before my shell gets a blood clot in the pseudo-brain?"

Shirai doesn't even look remotely intimidated by my outburst, or even surprised. Instead, he sets down the papers, and pulls me over to Melo's tank for another group hug. I don't return it, but Shirai only hugs me tighter to make up for my lack of enthusiasm. "Sorry. I went a little overboard," he says with a low laugh.

"It's fine, it's fine... ugh. It makes me feel better to think of you two as my parents instead of a faceless conglomerate, anyway."

"Good. Because it makes both of us happy, too. Isn't that right, Melo?"

Melo shines in yellow so brightly it leaves an afterimage. At least the light beaming into my shell's eyes give me an excuse for more crying. I really need to fix how often I've been doing that. Maybe just sever those connections entirely. This is getting embarrassing.

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Shirai calls me back a couple hours later, talking before I can even say hello. "LenathereissomuchhereI-"

"Slower."

"Right! Sorry! I've been going through all these files you dropped off. This is weeks of work to sorts everything out, but I have something intriguing for you! A list of 'limitations and potential areas of improvement' A-K-A weaknesses! Wanna hear?"

"I guess."

"Great! It's mostly boring tactical stuff, but it does say two things of note. First, certain sigils written directly on your core can kill you instantly, as can being shot with certain sigil-imbued bullets. Second, your core can take a lot of punishment, but enough direct pressure and it will burst."

Those are both news to me, though they make perfect sense. I'm glad neither are common scenarios. "Thanks, Shirai. Tell Melo I said hi."

"Will do! Okay, someone is bleeding out, I need to skedaddle. Have a good one!" He hangs up before I can reply. Great.

There's still the matter of what we do about Next Step Genetics. My creator. I have so many questions I didn't know I needed the answer to until now.

Mirka and I have devised a plan, but we can't do something on this scale without informing MBR. As such, our infiltration is contingent on one thing going right: me convincing Terrance to give us approval. There's one method that seems mostly likely to work...

The phone rings for longer than I'd like, but he does eventually pick up with a sigh. "Is Meerkat there?"

"Just me today, ol' buddy, ol' pal. Guess what we'd like authorization for?" I feel bad for what I'm about to do, but if I don't want him asking questions, I should probably keep him from speaking.

"No. Just tell-"

"We have evidence of illegal magical beast experimentation from a small genetics company. Next Step."

"I've never-"

"So what do you say?"

I hear a loud bang from the other end of the phone, as though he dropped something heavy on his desk. "Could you-"

"Is that a yes?"

"Fuck! Yes! Now stop bothering me!" He slams the phone down.

I wink at Mirka. She solemnly nods and takes my hand. We share a short kiss, and go to the car. It's time to settle this.

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The plan is simple. I enter through the tunnels to the basement, Mirka through the front door. She's being backed up by a handful of normal cops, too, after she called in a favor to her former police chief.

Ideally, they sweep the top three floors, while I hold down the fort below until they can reach me. There's a lot riding on me to do my part alone, since I'm the only one who can make it to the basement by surprise.

Mirka parks us in a nearby garage. Before she gets out, I grab her arm, and look at her with intent.

"What?" she asks, frowning.

"I don't know what these people can do to me. I... may have to use my gun, if needed."

She closes her eyes, deep in thought, before nodding. "If you have to."

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I get lucky on my first guess of which pipe to take, and end up in the basement bathroom. I crack my knuckles, and hype myself up.

I'm uncharacteristically nervous. I can't let it affect me here, though. I remove my emotional connection to my shell, letting it return to a state where I have full control. Much better.

I send a text to Mirka, as planned, to let her know we can go.

I open the door, and after walking down the hallway I'm let out into a main room. I immediately take stock of the situation, scanning every inch. The first thing that strikes me is how large the place is, compared to the last one. The room is a large and circular, with hallways aligned with each cardinal direction. Between each hallway and inset into the wall, like aquarium fishtanks, are captive magical beasts in cells with a thick glass window.

The second thing I notice is that there are at least a dozen scientists here, all of them focused on either a computer or on the captives.

I start producing more zip ties. I didn't expect this many. Still, no issue.

I raise my badge in one hand and my gun in the other, and shout. "MBR! Everyone hands up, and move to the center of the room! Try to run, and I will shoot!"

Every scientist freezes in place, looking at me blankly like goats. I fire a round from my gun into the ceiling to sell my point, which makes them all immediately comply. I bind them all, before taking a hallway at random. Soon, and alarm starts blaring. Mirka's team must have gotten started.

I came from the south hallway, so I take the west one next. Instead of a break room, there's a whole barracks here. Two dozen beds, and a small cafeteria with a very scared cook. Nothing worth pursuing. The north hall leads to what I was most worried about: five researchers, all with their hands up before I even walk in, and the most painful sight I've ever witnessed.

In the center is a large glass tube, connected to the floor and ceiling and rigged with dozens of wires and a familiar sigil at the base. I mistake the tube as empty at first, until I get a closer look. Floating inside is a tiny black sphere, barely a quarter of an inch at its widest, inert and cracked down the center. A monitor hooked up to the base reveals the stillborn's name as Test B-1: Failure.

I bind every one of the scientists, as I did with the others, before taking the final hallway. I try to keep moving, not letting myself dwell on what I saw. Just keep going, and I'll make it through this. The hallway terminates in a single room with a locked wooden door that I immediately break down. Inside is an older white man, easily in his seventies, within a wood-paneled executive office and behind a gold-inlayed name plate reading 'Lester Pittman, Director of Research.'

He raises an eyebrow at me. "I was wondering if MBR would ever catch on. Tell me, how did you get down here?"

"I have questions of my own."

"And I have no answers. I'll wait for my lawyers, then." His smugness is enough to crack make me lose what little composure I had.

I stride up to the desk, and gently make my shell smile. "You've been with the company for a long time, haven't you?"

"Fifty years," he says proudly.

"Good. That makes this next part so much more cathartic." I retract my shell for a brief moment.

Once I send it out again, I can see his eyes have gone wide, with his eyebrows quaking between raising and contracting. All the blood has left his face, as he stammers out, "Now wait, wait just for a moment, let's be reasonable, I didn't think any of the experiments actually worked. If I did, I would have looked for you, I promise! The last one caused a massive explosion, how could I have know?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Okay. I'll answer whatever you want, just stay calm." His hands tightly grip the arms of his polished walnut chair.

"What am I? Let's start there."

He drops his hands down. "You, uhh... well, we were trying to create a magical beast, using DNA from a dozen or so different ones in different forms, uniquely developed rituals, a lot of trial and error, and a special sigil."

"Why?"

"Well, our money came from trying to fight the Soviets, of course, and the idea of undying soldiers who never slept and barely ate was too good to pass up... you can understand. After it collapsed, we were so deep into the project that we just kept going until our funding got pulled. There's always another war."

"And why are you trying to make more of me now?"

He glances off to a painting in his office for a moment. "Well... we were contracted to."

"By?"

"I can't-"

I draw my gun, pointing it directly at his head. "You should know that if you wanted to make a perfect soldier, it worked. I won't feel the slightest hint of remorse for killing you."

"It... it was Counter-Magic."

I fire a round into the corner of his chair, narrowly missing his shoulder. "Try again. I'm not that stupid."

"Fucking Christ, I'm sorry, it was the Scions! I swear!"

I snort. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it? Okay, now you're going to give me every single document, file, and other shred of evidence that you're not bullshitting, and we can call it a day."

He doesn't move, besides his quivering hands. "...you're going to kill me after."

"Kill you? Now how could you testify against them if I killed you?" I slam a fist on his fancy desk hard enough to crack the wood. "Right?"

"Y-yes. Whatever you say."

"Then if I were you, I would start collecting all those files of your's. Better yet, we'll let MBR do it. Come on. I'm sure you know the elevator passcode."

He nods rapidly.

I look over at the broken door, and check my phone for any of Mirka's messages. "You'll probably have to-" I feel a bullet hit the corner of my head, neatly deflecting off my skull. I scoff as I reach over over, snatching the tiny concealed gun he used from his hands, and pushing him back. It's enjoyable to watch him tumble to the ground along with his chair.

Wait. I could do it. Mirka gave me permission to defend myself. I could kill him right now. A classic revenge story, right in front of me. He even knows the sigils that would kill me, probably, so I'm completely justified here...

There is one small problem: Mirka might make that disappointed and stern half-frown thing she does. I don't really want to see that.

What a shame.

I toss his gun aside, and drag him by the leg to the elevator. I'm sure the rugburn he's getting is pretty unpleasant, so I suppose that'll have to sate my bloodlust.

Right as I go to call the elevator, I see the doors open, and the police all aim at me until Mirka quickly explains that I'm the one who snuck into the basement level.

She looks at the elderly man I'm dragging by the ankle with one hand, and back to my bleeding head. "Lena..."

"I didn't kill him. See? He's fine." I lift him up like I'm posing with a fish I caught, his shirt falling down over his head as he tries to squirm free. For a near-octogenarian, he's pretty lively.

Mirka's restrained laugh as I shake him around a little is all the reaffirmation I needed.

We stand by the elevator and watch the police go about their business for a while, as they mill around arresting everyone without a fuss. It's not like they have anywhere to run to, after all.

"You okay?" Mirka asks me, as we watch them take away the final person into the elevator.

"Not really," I admit. "It turns out I exist because of this company being paid by a country wanting to prepare for a war that never happened with a country that no longer exists. I'm made of some kind of ritual, a sigil, and God knows how many parts of at least a dozen magical beasts."

"The best parts of them," she says, trying to lighten the tension.

"Uh-huh. Anywho, I've certainly had a day, haven't I? If it's all the same to you, I think I want to go home and get ready for my interrogation. I'm sure MBR is gonna have questions for me..."

"That's later. For now, let's just take a breather. Okay?"

Her smile is a villainous thing, and carries some kind of hypnotic effect that makes me agree with anything she says. At least, that's what I tell myself. "Yeah. Okay."