Chap 109: Broken Chandelier

The light wave from the red glowing eyes that had dashed out of the telegram emitter room vanished. But that wasn’t what made Tee and Kie’s hearts skip a beat. It was the heavier footsteps right behind it.

Standing in the middle of the hallway, they were fully exposed. What the hell could be inside their living complex at Primus’s top-secret HQ? Worse, they didn’t have their summoning gloves.

Tee didn’t even blink to snap a quick glance with her foreseeing ability. The hand that yanked her to one side was too fast, and the hallway slipped from her sight. In the next breath, she was plunged into near-complete darkness.

She shifted her eyes to the crack of the ajar door, where the only light from the hallway shone through. It made her realize she’d been pulled into a room and the pounding chest close to hers was Kie. Their racing heartbeats made it clear that was not a romantic moment.

With eyes peeled, they stared at the light through the door crack. One minute passed, and nothing rushed by. The only sounds were more breaking and crashing coming from the kitchen.

A refreshing fragrance hit Tee’s nose, and she inhaled deeply. The room Kie had pulled her into was the cleaning supply closet.

Dish duty was the only chore she did—and intended to keep it that way. She had no idea where that room was and didn’t want to. That night was quickly turning into a nightmare. All that remained was for the monster to pull the door open, eat Kie, and tell her to start scrubbing the floors.

Kie sighed. “Why couldn’t I be dreaming?”

Tee imagined him pinching himself. “I’ll scan to see what we’re up against,” she whispered.

Her vision zipped through the small crack in the door and down the hallway toward the kitchen. The lights were on. A dark creature crouched beneath the center table, popping out like the moon in the night.

Tee’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest—but the yellow patches on the creature couldn’t belong to a XenoSapian. Her vision steadied, and she realized it was Zod. He was hunched beneath the table in his black-themed pajamas with yellow bat designs.

Zod straightened slowly, raising his head above the table. His dark green pupils darted as if searching for flying leeches. Tee caught only one glimpse of the brown skin below his rolled-up sleeve before a blue light from his hand stole her attention.

Zod’s right arm remained stretched over the table as he fired a small energy beam from his palm. The critter—half his height, with glowing red eyes—darted past his legs and out of the kitchen. That moment convinced Tee that Zod was blind. How had he not seen it? And what the hell was that thing?

She moved her vision out of the kitchen to follow the fast-moving blur down the hallway. The critter hadn’t yet passed the storeroom she was in when she noticed the dark, flowy ends of a dress.

It was Saeda. Her nightgown blended with her hair, making her yellow face stand out. The yellow cage she held in one hand kept her from looking like a ghost. She walked with half-open eyes, oblivious to the critter that had bolted past her legs. Tee blinked out of her foreseeing vision.

Kie felt Tee pull her arms away, but the sudden light in his face hit him hard. The loud slam of the door drilled through his ears, confirming she had kicked it open.

Saeda jumped back as the door, camouflaged with the wall, swung open with force. The precious creature in her cage shrieked and scrambled. Her chest flattened, and her eyes narrowed when she saw Tee and Kie exit the storeroom.

What were they doing in that cramped space, and why were they so sweaty in the middle of the night? She grimaced and blinked away the unsettling thoughts that flashed through her innocent mind.

“Don’t mind me, I was just passing by,” Saeda said, continuing past them.

Tee kept her eyes on the ground. “How did you not see that small monster rush by you?”

Kie raised an eyebrow. “A monster? Tee, I’m telling you, it had to be—” He glanced at the critter shuffling in Saeda’s cage. The thing that had bolted by them was too large. “…Oh.”

Saeda stopped and turned to Tee. “A monster?” she asked, her eyes barely open.

Tee faced them both. “Yes, a monster,” she repeated. “And it’s way uglier than Snickers.” She focused on the small critter in the cage, its body hidden in the dimness. Only two white orbs shimmered from its beady eyes.

Zod had stopped searching the kitchen corners. Hearing noises from the hallway, he bolted in that direction. His hand blasted energy before his eyes could focus on what lay ahead.

Saeda opened her mouth to speak, but the bright light from the kitchen forced her, Tee, and Kie to shift aside in an instant. The energy beam slammed into the wall by the stairway, sending chunks of concrete crashing to the ground. They turned their heads toward the source of the blast.

A sharp pang hit Zod’s heart as he saw three of his teammates staring at him with knitted brows. The loud shuffles from Saeda’s cage broke the awkward silence. Kie’s dark red eyes stayed locked on him and he knew it was too late to run. Zod swung his right arm behind his back and approached, furrows creasing his forehead.

“Why are you guys up so late?” Zod asked, his pupils darting to the corner of his eyes for the fast-moving beast that might appear again.

Kie gripped Zod’s right shoulder to get his attention, and Zod jumped. When another chunk of wall hit the ground, he swallowed hard.

“What was that?” Kie fumed, pointing at the huge dent in the wall. He grabbed Zod by the shirt below his neck—not hard enough to lift him off the ground. “Have you forgotten that as team leader, I have to report all the crap you guys do to the boss?”

Tee bit her lip, knowing Kie’s statement wasn’t entirely true. He often kept her misconducts from the Commander. He was such a sweetheart. Still, one thing was clear—he wasn’t as righteous as he liked to seem. His corruption was slowly starting to peek out.

Saeda walked off toward the room with the couches, where she planned to spend the rest of the night. But her feet didn’t make it past the doorway. She shrieked at the sight inside.

Zod shifted his eyes toward Saeda. “Wait, don’t—” was all he managed before realizing it was too late. She had already seen the mess.

Kie released Zod and rushed to see what had frozen Saeda. His jaw dropped when he saw the room. Tee and Zod exchanged glances before rushing there.

“Tee, don’t!” Zod’s hand grabbed at the air behind her.

The holes in the walls, the torn sofas, and the shattered glass table could have been the aftermath of an epic party—or sheer idiocy. The chandelier had been ripped from the ceiling, leaving exposed wires dangling. It flickered out for a moment, casting the room in darkness.

“I can explain,” came Zod’s voice from behind them.

“Please tell me this is a nightmare,” Saeda said.

The loud gasp from a fifth person behind them made their hearts skip a beat. They turned to see a green face with two large brown eyes. The long pink gown beneath made them sigh in relief. It wasn’t another monster—it was Miko, wearing an organic face mask.

“Were we robbed?” Miko asked, her hands pressed to her chest.

Tee realized everyone was forgetting the seriousness of the situation. “Worse,” she said. “There’s a monster lurking about.”

Miko blinked twice before squeezing herself between her four teammates. Her body trembled, and her lips quivered as she spoke.

“No.” Her wide brown eyes looked ready to pop. “Are you saying there’s a XenoSapian here?” She twitched and turned to Zod. “But Zod, didn’t you say you never saw anyone with crests here? How’s that possible?”

Zod blinked, wincing from her shriek. The lights flickered off, then on again.

Tee’s lips twitched as she looked away. Miko wasn’t scared because of the monster—it was the possibility that there were Xeno-victims inside her so-called No-Xeno-victim sanctuary. Watching that terrified Xenogenist tremble was almost unbearable.

“It’s not that type of monster,” Zod said, scratching the back of his head as all eyes turned to him. “Wait till you see what it did to my room.”

Miko sighed in relief.

Kie blinked, trying to process the logic—or lack thereof—in Zod’s words. He remembered he’d been training with Tee all night, far from their living quarters. He didn’t want to imagine what kind of chaos Zod had caused beyond that room, especially since their rooms were right next to each other.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a deep breath, he asked calmly, “What happened to your room, Zod?”

Zod figured the sooner they knew, the sooner they could work together to kill that monster before it caused more damage.

“My room isn’t important… well, not as important as what I figured out,” he said, raising a finger with each point as if reading from an invisible notepad.

“First, I brought back a cool pebble from our Leak mission and placed it in my drawer. Later, I woke up to strange scratching noises coming from it.”

His eyes widened as he shouted, “I opened it—and something jumped out with a loud shriek!”

He clenched one fist and slapped his other hand over it. “It was about the size of my hand at first. I tried to catch it, but it was too fast—and sometimes it just vanished into thin air.

“When I looked back in my drawer, the pebble was gone. Instead, there was a thin plastic bag with the same markings that were on the pebble.”

Zod nodded to himself, rubbing his chin. “My guess is the pebble wasn’t actually a pebble—it was some kind of creepy egg. That’s where that monster came from.”

Silence. The knitted brows said it all. No one was impressed by Zod’s theory.

Kie barely heard Zod’s voice anymore. He massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to calm the steam rising in his head.

“Wait,” Tee said, struggling to picture a creature that size fitting in Zod’s drawer. “How big was this pebble?”

Zod dropped his hands, then shoved them into his pajama pockets. “Tee, you weren’t listening, so let me clarify. That monster grows several inches every hour it stays alive. It’s only a matter of time before it’s towering over us.”

Their eyes widened.