The beer in the deep was the best I'd had since St. Louis. It was colder than it should be, considering the limited level of electrics in this place. The lights, the running water, all of it was powered by means I didn't yet understand or even comprehend. I had to keep my mind focused on what was in front of me. In this case it was a young man with strangely tinted blue skin and features that looked near alien. He was drinking a beer and looking around the surprisingly large cavern with an expression that wavered between wonder and curiosity. He hardly seemed to notice me as he studied the ceilings and looked at the people of the deep. They were all a collection of unusual misfits as well. A few looked, well, normal, but the rest reminded me of the early days of SURGE when Genetic expressions suddenly materialized within people giving them strange mutations.
"You're a SURGE victim." I said.
He stopped mid sip. He said, "No. The SURGE liberated me. It allowed me to become who I am supposed to be."
"What is that exactly?"
"I'm a human, like you."
"You're awakened?" I suggested, remembering his aversion to the needles and considering who'd hired me.
"No."
"Then you're a liar."
He grinned. "What I am isn't important. What is important is that I'm safe now. Largely thanks to your distraction."
I nodded, waiting to see if he would say more. When he didn't I said, "My job was to protect you from that situation up there. I did that. I suppose I ought to be on my way then."
"But I'm not safe." He said.
"What do you mean?" I grew tense. I knew this place from the old days, but not well enough and not recently enough that the people here knew me or even trusted me. If he wasn't safe, neither was I.
"The men who wanted to implant that device in me won't stop. They brought me there under false pretense, and once I realized what they were trying to accomplish I ran, but it doesn't mean they won't try again."
"What does it do?"
"Turns me back into who I was."
I didn't ask the obvious question. Instead I said, "So how to we stop them."
Peter Choi said, "You need to get me out of Manhattan."
Some Thoughts:
- New update is entirely wonky in terms of text formatting. Not sure what to do to fix it just yet. More research required… The font ought not to be that small as a basic starting format. Had to use preformatting… Feels like it impacted all of the previous work as well. Bad update indeed…