V2Ch52-The Perfect Storm

Mina hovered for a long moment by the doorway, afraid and unwilling to make a decision.

She could feel the presence of the Wendigo that called itself Cara somewhere in the dark room in front of her. It was in the chilled air, in the slight odor of rotting meat, and in a strange, elongated silhouette she could make out on the other side of the room. A dark and imposing shape that loomed over her, although the figure appeared to be sitting down.

She swallowed. Took another step into the room. Then heard the door close quietly behind her. Mina didn’t turn to look back at it or try to escape. Running would be futile. Cara had been stronger and faster than her even in her human form. Now, with Cara transformed into a monster, the speed differential would be even bigger than it had been when Mina was pregnant. In the unlikely event that she managed to get through the door, she would only draw Cara into an area where more people would be killed.

“When did you become one of them?” Mina asked, just to have something to say. Her words fogged the frosty air.

“Oh, Mina.” The weirdly deep yet feminine voice sounded slightly exasperated. “I was the first. You didn’t figure that out?”

Mina let out a sigh that came with another cloud of visible vapor. “No, I can’t say that I did. Honestly, I barely caught you at all.”

“Caught is a word,” Cara replied.

“Okay, I barely figured out that you were killing and eating people, if you prefer,” Mina said, voice on edge.

“Can’t get around that,” Cara said. She sounded tired. As if she had already played this conversation out in her head more than once, and she wasn’t enjoying the repetition.

“Why did you do all this?” Mina asked. It felt like the natural question.

“I feel like I’ve practically told you already.”

“People suck?”

The figure in the shadows nodded. The image of Cara’s Wendigo form was becoming clearer to Mina with every passing second spent in the darkened room, as Mina’s eyes adjusted. It was terrible. But Mina couldn’t look away.

Cara had sprouted to almost ten feet tall. Her hair fell down her shoulders in tangled up knots. Gray-blue skin stretched across her stretched, monstrous visage. Despite her long body and limbs, her frame was as thin as ever. Her armor still fit. But with the added height, she looked emaciated.

“So they deserve to die?” Mina forced herself to keep talking despite feeling profoundly afraid of the figure that sat staring down at her. Despite the increasing certainty that she wouldn’t leave this room alive.

“Deserve. I didn’t care about deserve. When a god offered me power and introduced me to the Wendigo, I jumped at the chance. All I had to do was kill some humans. Malsumis hated humanity as much as I did.” When she spoke, Cara’s long sharp teeth caught the light reflecting off of the snowflakes falling outside. They glinted an unsightly yellow. “I’ve felt powerless my whole life. Somehow I can’t imagine you’d understand.” Her voice trailed off with those words, and for a few seconds, the only sound was the wind whistling outside. Then Cara resumed, “I know you don’t like me assuming things about your life story, or how people have treated you in the past. But you’re smart. Beautiful. Educated. I bet your husband worships the ground you walk on.”

“Is that why I have to die?” Mina couldn’t keep the tremble from her voice. She thought of her baby who was about to become an orphan.

James, take care of him. Yulia, help him. I love you all.

Then Cara let out a low chuckle. “Why you have to die. You misunderstand me, Mina. I mention those assumptions about your life, only because I like you. I always liked you. Ever since the beginning. When you decided to share food with the other side after the first challenge, I knew. You were the nicest person here. Probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. And clever too. Remember how I defended you in the maze? And before, I killed Paul. He was trying to turn everyone against you! Remember? I did that for you.”

“I started to wonder about that,” Mina said slowly. “As soon as I realized you were the killer, I remembered that. But Detective DaSilva was trying to protect me, and you tried to kill him too. Yulia saw it.”

Cara shrugged. “DaSilva seems like a decent human being, but I was worried he might be getting too close. I’ve never had the best luck with men anyway.”

“What now?” Mina asked. “You decided to confront me. I guess you didn’t just want to kill me.”

“I want you to join us,” Cara said. “You’re too good to be a human. The rest of them are just food in the long term anyway.”

“Even my sister?” Mina asked.

“We could turn her too,” Cara said, her tone almost placating. “Even DaSilva if you’re really attached to him. Your husband, of course. Humans are on their way out anyway. They were never that great to begin with. You’ll be on the ground floor for the new thing. A species that hunts and eats humans. The world will be full of monsters like us. Once your baby grows up, we could turn him, too.”

Mina let a silence hang in the air for several seconds. “I would rather die than become a monster who preys on innocent people,” she said finally, looking into the darkness where she knew Cara’s eyes must be. “I understand you had your reasons, but I can’t join you. And I can’t condone what you’ve done.”

Cara let out a rumbling groan. “Ugh. You’re really saying no, huh? Well, I almost expected you to refuse. You’re too nice. But why couldn’t you just stay blind? You could’ve told yourself you didn’t know for sure. I never would’ve come after you. Now, what do you expect me to do?” Despite Cara’s terrifying image and voice, Mina detected a genuine conflict.

She really doesn’t want to hurt me. How can I take advantage of that?

“I had no way of knowing that you wouldn’t come after me, or my sister, or the Detective.” It was all Mina could think to say.

“Fine.” Cara seemed to reach a decision. Her body shrunk down to its normal size. Her skin and hair returned to their normal color and length. Her armor resumed fitting her comfortably instead of hanging off of her Wendigo frame like an ornament on a Christmas tree. Mina had a wild thought. Maybe now I could take her.

But Cara didn’t seem to see her as any sort of a threat. She got up, turned her back to Mina, walked to the window of the room, and opened it.

“What are you doing?” Mina asked.

“I’m leaving,” Cara said. “There’s nothing more to be done here. You don’t want to join us, okay. I don’t want to kill you, and you’re much too weak to kill me. So I’m just leaving.”

“Just like that,” Mina whispered in disbelief.

“Well, there’s nothing more we can do for each other. Nothing you can do to me or my kind.”

“What about the other Wendigos?” Mina asked.

Cara was perched on the window sill now, and the thick tufts of snow were settling lightly over her body as she sat looking in at Mina. But she clearly didn’t mind the cold. She smiled.

“A storm is coming,” Cara said. “I think you’ll find, when it hits, that it’s best if you remain safe and warm inside. When it’s over, we’ll be gone. Along with some food to go. If we need anything else, we’ll come around the settlement again. Otherwise, we’ll be in the wild if you need us.” She opened her mouth and bared yellowed teeth that had somehow not transformed back. “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me. But if I see you in my woods, I might not be so nice the next time we meet. Good luck with the rest of Orientation.”

Cara leaned back and dropped off of the window sill and out of sight.

Mina had stared, frozen in her tracks, as Cara moved across the room. But with her fall, the spell was broken. Mina rushed forward, grabbed the window sill, and leaned out to see where Cara had gone.

There was no sign of her. Just an increasingly large volume of snow falling from the sky and the whistle of the wind.

Mina slammed the window shut and latched it. Then she ran downstairs, to where DaSilva and Yulia sat waiting for her in the common area.

“Mina, I thought you were changing,” DaSilva began. Then his face took on a look of alarm. “Is everything alright?”

Yulia looked up and caught sight of Mina’s face, which was twisted in a look of fear.

“Thank goodness you two are alright!” Mina exclaimed. “Cara—she was in my room, and—”

A System announcement interrupted her.

[Attention all mortals! You may have observed the slowly escalating snowfall in your environment over the last ten days. The System has not been moderating the weather since you arrived, although we have kept the paths between important locations in the human settlement navigable. Please be aware that we detect a violent snowstorm brewing in the area of the settlement right now. This snowstorm is likely to arrive in the next half hour. We recommend remaining indoors for the duration of the storm. Our data indicates that many of your fragile human bodies would be endangered by exposure to this level of cold.]

Mina tried to detect any hint of emotion in the audio of the announcement, but the System voice seemed to communicate with the same neutrality as usual.

“Wow,” DaSilva said. “A snow storm is hitting. That’s pretty inconvenient.”

“This seems strangely convenient—for the Wendigos,” Mina said.

She explained the contents of her conversation with Cara.

“So they’re getting out of Dodge,” DaSilva said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“You don’t think the proctor is trying to help them, do you?” Yulia asked. “She’s always seemed like she’s just trying to do her job so far to me.”

“I tend to agree, Yulia,” DaSilva said slowly, “but we don’t know what the System actually wants to achieve here, do we? Maybe it’s preparing the world to be conquered by monsters.”

“I don’t think the System is trying to hurt humans,” Mina said. “The Wendigos are associated with cold, so I could easily believe producing this storm is a Wendigo power.” Part of her questioned whether this was motivated reasoning on her part. She desperately wanted the System to be pro-human, or at least benevolently neutral. They had enough enemies to deal with, and the proctor had her son.

“That would make sense,” DaSilva agreed. “If the System was really trying to make more Wendigos and feed them, I don’t think it would’ve helped us level up so far. But I’m not sure it’s on our side so much either.”

“What do we do?” Mina asked. “The snow is only getting worse. If we want to try and warn people about the danger, we don’t have much time now.”

“We might have no time,” DaSilva said. He gestured to the door. “Who’s to say we can even get back here if we try to leave?”

Mina found herself nodding along with him. “I don’t think we can go anywhere else, unless we’re willing to be trapped there for the duration of the storm. And the Wendigos don’t mind the cold, so we’d just be targets if we walked around outside.”

“So we’re just going to sit here and let them do what they want?” Yulia asked quietly. She sounded uncomfortable.

“I don’t think we have a choice, unless we’re willing to throw our lives away to maybe save some strangers,” DaSilva said. Every word he spoke sounded painful as it passed through his lips. “I know you guys probably think I’m very brave, and I like to imagine I am too, but courage should recognize limits. The Wendigo that used to be Cara didn’t think Mina was any threat to her at all. That was one on one. And I suspect that the three of us combined would not pose much more of a threat than Mina does alone with her magic. And out in that storm, they have the upper hand. They would gang up on us. I think we’d just be serving ourselves as a meal. I don’t think we could do any good. Whether we survived long enough to warn other people would be a matter of pure luck. And we’d be guaranteed to die. That’s not a heroic choice, it’s just suicidal.”

Mina nodded.

Yulia let out a long breath and put a hand over her face.

Finally, she said, “Yeah, okay. I don’t want to die.” She got up and practically ran up the stairs back to their room.

“Yulia,” Mina said softly. She thought about going after her, then decided against it. No, I think she probably wants to be alone for a while after resigning herself to this decision. That’s almost how I feel. But we’ve done all we could, right?

“She’ll be okay,” DaSilva said quietly, gently placing a hand on Mina’s shoulder. “How about I go and see if Alba’s awake? I have some chocolate in the supplies I brought when we got whisked away to this place. I’ve been saving it. Maybe you and Yulia can sip some hot chocolate by the fire while we wait this night out. I don’t think any of us are going to sleep.”

Mina nodded silently. She thought she might have used up more than her quota of words for the day. More than that, she felt as if everything inside her had drained out. She had nothing left.

DaSilva got up and moved toward the stairs, and Mina turned to face him. She realized she had one thing she desperately wanted to say.

“Thank you, Detective. If you hadn’t pointed out how dangerous it was out there, Yulia and I would’ve run to warn people without question. Then who knows if we’d have survived the storm?”

“Mina, after all the three of us have been through, you don’t have to thank me for anything. Ever. You and your sister have done so much for me, even at times when I should have been protecting you. She saved me from being pulled into a river of lava. You solved the murders that I was supposed to unravel. Really, I should be thanking you.” He broke into a smile. “And you can both call me Leo.”

“Leo,” Mina said, as if the word was in an unfamiliar tongue. “I’ll have to get used to it.”

She didn’t point out the many times that he had looked out for her and Yulia. It wasn’t a contest. But she was happy to be on a first name basis. Leo felt like he was almost family by now.

I guess little James has an uncle now, she thought.

She sat staring into the fire for a while. She barely noticed when Leo came back with Alba and a group of others. Her ears did prick up slightly when she realized that Leo was explaining what had happened with the Wendigos to the other residents of their inn.

“Mina’s the hero here. She discovered the monsters, and the leader confronted her. They decided to leave after that,” Leo murmured from the edges of her hearing. “They seem to have created this storm to cover their retreat.”

Well, it makes sense to inform people. We don’t want them to trust the people who have turned into Wendigos any more. Laying it on a little thick calling me a hero, but I guess I won’t say anything. I really don’t feel much like talking.

A few more minutes passed, and she basically tuned out the hum of conversation. Leo had asked them to give her a little space, and the others in the room complied with his request.

Then there was a gentle murmur right beside her. Mina almost jumped in her seat, but when she turned her head, she saw it was just Leo.

“Sorry to startle you,” he said. “Alba’s serving the chocolate, and I wanted to let you know so you could get Yulia. I knocked on your door when we came down earlier, but she didn’t answer, and I didn’t want to be too insistent.”

“Oh, sure,” Mina said. She forced herself to smile. “Hot chocolate can only make things better, so I think she’ll appreciate the invite.”

Mina walked up the stairs and over to the room.

She knocked gently.

“Yulia, it’s me!” she said.

Silence.

Mina pulled the door open. A small pile of snow had formed in front of the open window.

I thought I closed that, was the first thought that passed through Mina’s mind.

Then she rushed forward into the room.

“Yulia?” she called out. She crouched to look under the beds, knowing it was futile. Her sister wasn’t here.

“Yulia?! Yulia!” Mina yelled her name repeatedly at the top of her lungs.

Then she strode over to the open window.

Her sister must be outside. That was the only explanation. How long had she been gone?

“It doesn’t matter,” Mina muttered to herself. I have to go after her.

She threw on her warmest coat and then thrust her head through the window. She was looking for any clue to where Yulia was. The only thing she really noticed was how much worse the storm had become while she’d been sitting by the fire downstairs. The whole world was white now.

Snow came down in a never-ending torrent, like a white waterfall. The sight brought a shiver down her spine.

How would a teenager navigate through that? Survive that?

Mina never saw the chunk of ice that hit her. She felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of her head. Then she fell and knew no more.