Chương 78: Right Under Our Noses

Past the finish line, Ella found herself in a hallway lined with many stalls on both flanks. Puddles of water dripped at her feet as she entered one such stall. There, a wall lined with powerful fans blew her with hot air while she struggled to tame her messy hair. Minutes later, with a barely satisfactory hairdo, she went past the next door into a large break room filled with many chairs. Dispensers and vending machines hugged the back wall, while large screens depicting different views of the ongoing obstacle course took over a significant portion of the front wall.

She spotted Vincente sitting next to Kylara—who waved her over—on the second row, engaged in conversation as they viewed the many superhumans displayed on the screens.

Kylara jumped up to hug her when she reached them. "You always seem to unravel another spectacular ability. Truly impressive!"

Her cheeks flushed slightly. "Why, thank you. Though it's you who's truly impressive, finishing in time to watch me on the big screen—beer in hand, no less."

Kylara giggled before taking a sip from the chilled can.

She shook Vincente's hand, then sat across the speedster with Kylara in the middle. Then the trio gazed at the screens. One view centered on Moreau, who had just passed the water stage, his fur shrunken to reveal his lean, rope-like muscles as he sauntered into a drying stall. The next superhuman furthest in the obstacle course was surprisingly Sasha, who floated at the surface of the pool while her pink energy-based arms extended all the way to the floor, rummaging for the puzzle pieces. Sasha looked relaxed, her eyes squinting in concentration. Further down was a black man, or teen, as he barely looked a day older than sixteen with a faint mustache, just venturing into an entirely separate pool. That confirmed that there were many such pools, the complexity of the holohabitat incomprehensible to her.

After resurfacing to gain his bearings, the man descended again. He swiftly found the recess in the wall, then the stones beneath. His next actions piqued her interest. He grabbed a handful of the stones from the waterbed, squashed them together as if they were clay, and shaped a wide shovel from the material. With the shovel, he flung piles of the stones upward, then easily spotted a puzzle piece hiding amongst them.

"So enlighten me," Kylara inquired. "What is the extent of that ability you showed? Is it a blanket shape-shifting ability?"

"What do you mean by a blanket shape-shifting ability?" she asked. "Are you asking if I can change into anything, including humans?"

Kylara nodded, a glint of intrigue in her eyes.

To that, she said. "Don't think so. Though I've never tried it, come to think of it." Then she gave it some further thought, willing herself to be shaped into the image of another human. Aunt Darcy, perhaps. However, she received no feedback or even an acknowledgment of that request. "Scratch that. I just tried it. I can only assume animal forms."

"Interesting. If I were to show you an animal from my world, would you be willing to attempt it? Not now, of course, considering the level of exertion we just underwent."

"Screw that. Let me at it. I'm just as curious."

"Okay…" Kylara stared into the beer can in her grasp for a few long seconds. "To do that, I will have to project my thoughts into your mind. I promise not to read anything while in your head, but I cannot definitively say that I will not see your thoughts."

She narrowed her eyes. "I thought you already probed my mind today."

"Uh… yes, but as I mentioned earlier, I only caught a glimpse of your surface thoughts, typically just base emotional states. I apologize for the intrusion, but I cannot switch off that aspect of myself."

She took the alien woman's hands into her grasp. "It's okay, Kylara. You apologize way too much. Like a bodega cat who just knocked over a whole display of Snapple. You know, they're all 'meow, meow' and kinda sorry, but they'll be back for that juicy mango if you blink too long."

A wave of confusion rippled across Kylara's face. "What?"

"You know… mean tomcats and their love for… uh, never mind. Now hit me with the image of that animal you spoke of."

All signs of hesitation drained from Kylara, her eyes glowing red. A chilly gust invaded Ella's mind, whispers so biting and unfamiliar. If she were to equate the feeling; it seemed similar to that time, over twenty years ago, when her father took her to a produce market in Nigeria. It had been her first time stepping on that continent. The cacophony of alien sensations that accosted her that day—from the spicy smells wafting about, to the armies of buzzing flies locked in an eternal battle with the merchants, to the wet, brown mud beneath her feet gouged with deep tire marks from the roaring tricycles—revealed to her how sheltered she was and how little she knew of the world. Then as she gazed upon a brown dog, unhealthily thin, scavenging from a pile of refuse, her yearning to help it birthed her interest in animals.

The sensation invading her mind brought with it an image she saw clearly as if it were from a recent memory. She nearly gasped from it, the brutish monstrosity stretching her love for animals to the bream. Gray-colored with spots of rust, it resembled a centipede, if only the arthropod were super-sized to epic proportions. Its head alone—spotting four red eyes grouped in pairs, spaced far apart on its round face—was bigger than her entire torso. Its mouth was lined with rows of hook-like teeth and also carried many prehensile mandibles. All along its armored, segmented body sprouted long tentacles where centipedes had their legs.

Kylara's voice, slightly ethereal, accompanied the image of the animal. "We call it the far-seer. It typically lives inside mountains that it turns into complex cave systems. Still willing to give it a go?"

Filled with a curiosity to explore the unknown, she stood up from her seat to create enough space to do the animal justice. However, she didn't have to worry as no matter how hard she tried, her body simply wouldn't change into it. It was as if she lacked the prerequisite knowledge of the far-seer to assume its form. Or perhaps she was limited only to animals that existed on Earth. In the end, she grew disappointed by the entire ordeal, sharing the same sentiment with Kylara.

"Sorry," she voiced after sitting down again.

"No need," Kylara said. "It was a purely unreasonable request on my part. My apologies."

So they left it at that as Moreau walked into the room, still rubbing at his fur ferociously with a towel. The monkey man glanced at them, gave a shy nod, and went to the back to sit. Thirty minutes later, Sasha came in, making a beeline straight to them. Sasha embraced them in a wet hug.

"Ugh," Ella grumbled. "Did you even attempt to wring out your hair?"

Sasha laughed, then shook her head from side to side, spraying them in droplets of water.

Next came the black teen with a cool demeanor, one hand combing his hair with a pick while a large stone that constantly shifted into many polygonal shapes floated on the other. Eventually, the floodgates opened with more superhumans pouring in. Unfortunately, some superhumans couldn't get through the water level. One woman simply refused to venture into the room, her feet rooted in fear. Another man passed out underwater, in danger of drowning. Thankfully, compartments in the pool's walls opened, allowing in dummies propelled by turbines. They collected the man and pulled him into the safety of a compartment.

Afterward, all feeds on the screens before them turned blank, signaling the end of the obstacle course and, consequently, the physical aptitude worth 25%. She had gotten all points available and then some, excited at what was to come. The screens blared alive again, showing the order of the final results.

"What?" Sasha gasped, turning to Kylara. "You came in first. How?"

Then they all swiveled toward Vincente, who they had expected to ace the course with enough time to cook a thick brothy stew and watch a few episodes of Ozark on Netflix before the next person finished.

With all the attention centered on her, Vicente flushed a bit. "I had trouble with the water. And from what Kylara told me, she had no trouble at all."

"So, how did you pass the water stage so fast?" Ella asked Kylara.

Rather than responding verbally, Kylara elected to separate the water clinging to Sasha's hair and twirl the many droplets around them, all with a glow of her eyes. Then to Ella, Kylara said. "That, among many other things, I learned from a far-seer."

The screens shifted once again, revealing the updated ranking index. They had not seen it since the conclusion of the dummy sparring. As expected, Vincente held onto the top spot with 228 points. Ella remained in second place with 205 points. Moreau and Bohdan followed closely behind with 170 and 132 points, respectively. The next name was unfamiliar, but judging by the high score of 115 and the fact that the black teen finished quite high up, he was likely Jaheem Washington. Moving up from the very bottom, Kylara now had 104 points. Sasha had made a significant jump as well, overtaking Jamal by just four points.

After the day's activities, on her way out of the Genesis Empowerment Center, she received a text from her brother.

'Stay safe, E,' it read. 'The city is haunted by demons. Potentially thousands dead with more to come. I've already ensured our cousins and Caleb's safety.'

"What's going on, Ella?" Bohdan asked.

In her effort to read her brother's message, she had stopped by the glass-enclosed bridge leading into a sub-building.

"Take a look." She showed them the message. Their jolly expressions from their earlier success at the obstacle race, Sasha particularly, drained as they took in the words.

Bohdan, grabbing her phone to bring the screen closer to his eye, said. "How trustworthy is this source?"

"He is my brother. He never jokes about these things."

"If this is true, then they never left. The city can not survive another bloodbath."

As she watched their expressions, Sasha brooding and Bohdan neutral with a hint of concern, she noticed Jamal's head facing his feet as he mused over something. When she probed him about it, Jamal stared past them and out through the glass walls.

"About six weeks ago," he finally said, "my uncle went missing along with some of my dad's buddies. They worked at a factory called Sterling Foods Corporation. A few days later, after calling the company and receiving corporate spill, we headed to the industrial district where their factory was located. Turns out, we weren't the only ones with misplaced loved ones. The entire place was sectioned off. We couldn't even get near the street where the factory was.

"I remember my dad, the angriest I'd ever seen him, berating the cops standing guard. As usual, we got no answers from them. Hell, they looked just as clueless as we were. So come sundown, we had to leave along with many other families. Then the answer came the next day. Workplace accident involving an out-of-control worker with the ability to make flesh combust claimed all lives at the factory."

She placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry about what happened."

"No need. My point is, that story stood atop a foundation of rotting fish carcasses then. Now, it don't make a lick of goddamn sense considering the other factories hit. My uncle's was the first that I know of. But there've been many since then, all going out in a similar fashion. They can't all be dealing with suicidal workers with the gift to turn flesh to bomb."

"Did you receive your uncle's body?" Bohdan asked.

Jamal shook his head. "Insurance money and Jack squirt is all we received."

Bohdan handed her phone back, scoffing. "So, right under our noses, huh?"

At home, she tried calling Jalen for further information. But as usual, the call did not go through, as if her brother had gone off planet with his phone.

Or maybe he just switched it off, she thought.