Part 5: There's No "I" in Teim... Wait, Fuck

Chapter 5: There's No "I" in Teim... Wait, Fuck



Before heading to the Tower of Nido, we teleported back to Arima and stopped by the weapon store, one of the few buildings that was still intact. Against heavily-armoured Biomonsters, my steel knives just wouldn't cut it (so to speak), so I traded one in for a high-strength ceramic knife. The price was a whopping 2800 mesetas, but I'd killed a whole lot of Biomonsters in Shure, so the commission I'd earned would easily cover the cost. Besides, the money I paid was contributing to the rebuilding of Arima.



And it was a very, very nice knife.



We followed the lake's edge around to the south and east, passing by the Blue Dam on the way. Like the Green Dam, it sat inert at the mouth of the dry lake, floodgates tightly sealed, a sad reminder of better times.



No matter how many times Nei insisted that she was happy to help me, relying on her for healing still felt selfish. On our way to the tower, I focused my mind and mastered the Res technique for myself. If I couldn't talk Nei out of coming with me on my mission, I was at least going to make damn sure I had the ability to protect her.



After a long walk through Biomonster-infested terrain, we arrived at the Tower of Nido, on the east side of the lake. The Tower of Nido used to be a control tower, designed to receive, process and disseminate information sent by Mother Brain. Nowadays there were a number of smaller control towers in every city on Mota, and large isolated facilities like this tower were redundant.



Our path was blocked at the entrance by a steel security door. The Scoundrels had obviously closed the door from the inside, and there was no apparent way to open it from the outside. Would this be the end of our hunt for them?



Not a chance. After all, we had dynamite.

Rudo laid down a stick by the door and set the timer. We stood well back, covered our ears and waited for the fireworks display.



If the security door had been the kind of door that had hinges, it would have been blown off them. Instead, it was just blown to pieces. I resisted the urge to point out to Rudo that getting that dynamite when we did had ended up saving time.

Once the smoke cleared, we walked through the gaping breach we'd just made in the outer wall and made our way deeper into the tower as quickly as we could: any Scoundrels in here would surely have been alerted by the noise of the explosion, and it was best if we found them before they found us.



The Scoundrels had apparently locked a fairly large population of Biomonsters in here with themselves. Not only that, but the Biomonsters they'd locked themselves in with were tougher than the ones outside: the Spitkill had a powerful bite, and could spit a poison that caused its victim to fall asleep. The Scoundrels' incompetence almost made me laugh, until I remembered that Teim was in here somewhere too.



On the second floor we raided one of the Scoundrels' first aid cabinets, but still saw no sign of the Scoundrels themselves. I was starting to suspect that the entire gang had been killed off by Biomonsters, which meant that our chances of finding Teim alive were slim to none.



The upper floors of the tower had just as many Biomonsters as the ground floor. Leechers were horrible in pretty much every possible way: having giant worms vomit acid all over me was one of the less enjoyable parts of being an agent.



The Vortex wasn't quite as disgusting, nor was it as dangerous, but it was frustratingly hard to kill: since it had no vital organs, it just had to be cut into little pieces until it stopped moving.



Amazingly, on the third floor I spotted a girl in her early teens hiding among some old machinery, apparently alive and well. Unless the Scoundrels' recruitment policies were even laxer than I'd given them credit for, we'd found Teim.



The space between us and Teim was too cluttered with various equipment and gadgetry for us to get to her directly from where we were, so we worked our way around it. There were no Scoundrels anywhere in sight, not even a corpse. Either they'd had a sudden attack of common sense and fled to yet another hideout, or their bodies had been completely digested by Biomonsters. My money was on the latter. So far, Teim had demonstrated more survival instinct than all of them put together.



Her survival seemed even more amazing when I encountered the worst of the Biomonsters she'd had to contend with: Blasters. Every agent and hunter had heard horror stories about these things. They were protoplasmic life forms that could survive incredible amounts of punishment, and spewed out acid that would burn through your flesh right down to the bone in seconds. No wonder we hadn't seen any Scoundrels: these things could eat right through a steel wall.

When a pair of the creatures caught our scent and started oozing their way toward us, we had no choice but to try and fight. Running away would only have led to us catching a spray of acid in the back.



 I have to make an OOC comment at this point -- look at the difference in the party's HP between the first and second screenshots. That's after taking one attack from a Blaster. 

I slashed away desperately at them with my knives, trying to ignore the sharp, searing pains all over my body as acid burned holes through my armour and into my flesh. While the larger droplets of acid settled on my body, the finer droplets filled the air with a mist of death, burning my eyes and lungs. Rudo and Nei weren't doing much better than I was: no matter how many times or how deeply we cut into them, the Blasters kept on attacking.

After a short but brutal fight, the Blasters' bodies finally lay in acrid, purulent heaps on the floor and we could spare a few moments to heal our wounds. My relief was tempered by the knowledge that if there were two of those things up here, there were probably more. I wasn't sure if we could survive another encounter like that; we had to rescue Teim and get out of here immediately.

Rudo wanted to be the one to show Teim the copy of the ransom note and explain to her that her father had turned to robbery and murder to pay the ransom. I was more than happy to let Rudo break that news so I didn't have to.




Teim took it about as well as could be expected.

"Are you sure we need to hide her identity?" I asked Rudo. "Couldn't we just explain to the people of Arima why Darum turned to crime? If they still want to punish Darum for his crimes, I won't object, but Teim isn't responsible for her father's actions."

Rudo shook his head. "Many of them have lost their homes and families. They're scared and angry, and they won't be acting rationally. If they see us travelling with Darum's daughter, we may not have time to explain ourselves."

I thought back to my first meeting with Nei. Darum was at the head of an angry mob out for the blood of an innocent child, who survived only because of my protection. Now Darum and his own child were on the receiving end of that mob's wrath, and Nei and I were protecting them. It was a strange world we lived in where such a reversal of fortunes could happen in the course of less than two years.

"I see your point," I said. "In that case, we should get her back to Darum as quickly as possible."

I teleported us all out of the tower, and we began the long journey back west to North Bridge.



"What are you going to do to Darum?" Nei asked me, as we approached the bridge.

I put an arm around Nei's shoulders, wanting to reassure her but conscious of the fact that Teim was listening. "I'll give him a chance to turn himself in," I said. "If he refuses... then I'm not sure what I'll do. But I don't plan to let him get away with what he's done."

"I don't want you to hurt him, Rolf. I know you're angry at him for trying to kill me, but I forgive him. It's like Rudo said: when people are suffering, whether it's because of humans or Biomonsters, they get angry and lash out. I'm alive now because of you. Isn't that all that really matters?"

"Nei, if it were anyone but you saying that, I'd think you were trying to spare Teim's feelings. Sometimes I don't understand how you can be so kind and forgiving."

I looked over at Teim, staring silently at the ground, and realised that I'd said too much.

"I'm sorry, Teim," I told her. "He's your father; it's only natural that you want to think the best of him."

"No," Teim said. "You're right. He shouldn't just be forgiven for what he's done."



As we walked along the bridge, Teim pushed past us.



She ran up to Darum. He didn't recognise her with that veil on, and demanded her money as he would with any other traveller who came along.

I had a bad feeling about this. What was Teim trying to achieve? Did she just want to see for herself that what we'd told her about Darum robbing travellers was true?



"What the hell do you think you're doing, Teim?" I yelled.



My shout came too late. As I called out her name, Darum whipped out his sword and slashed her stomach open. The veil fell from her face as she collapsed.



I watched numbly, helpless to do anything, as Teim gasped out her last words and Darum stared down in horror at his mortally wounded daughter.



Darum threw off his cloak, revealing a bomb strapped to his chest: I guess he didn't want to be captured alive. With nothing left to live for, he set it off. What was left of Darum and Teim afterwards was beyond help even from cloning technology.



Nei was holding her head in her hands and softly crying, and Rudo was staring blankly at the charred spot on the floor where Darum stood a few seconds ago.

"What am I doing?" I thought aloud. "If I can't even save one girl and her father, what can I do to protect Mota from Biomonsters? What use am I?"

"It's not your fault, Rolf," Nei said through tears. "We all did what we thought was best. That poor girl..."

I hugged Nei. "I'm sorry, Nei. I'm sorry I couldn't help Teim or Darum. And Rudo, I'm sorry to you too. I know that saving Teim meant a lot to you, and I failed."

Rudo didn't respond.

"Rudo?"

A long moment passed before he turned his head to acknowledge me.

"I don't have anything to say that you don't know already, Rolf," Rudo said gravely. "You're right. We all failed today, and there's nothing we can do to make that better. But whether we like it or not, you're an agent and I'm a hunter, and we still have a job to do."



I stepped off the western end of North Bridge with a heavy heart. Rudo was right -- we had a job to do -- but today's disaster had deeply shaken any confidence I had in my ability to do it.



My mind felt disconnected from my body. I walked to the south like an automaton, barely paying attention to my surroundings except to go through the drilled-in motions of defending myself whenever Biomonsters appeared. Eventually we reached the town of Oputa: we could rest and gather information there until I could will myself to continue on.