Since this is filler to keep the chapter name centered...Why can you never tell a joke about an emotional teenager? Nobody understands them. Mood ruined.
Chapter 20
Be Careful Who You Trust
"There we go! Finished!" I exclaimed, sitting back from the laptop. Chaos turned to me from his desk.
Chaos turned to me from his desk. "What did you do?"
I spun around to face him. "I finished the Bonus Chapter that reveals the truth about Cece. It's ready to be posted."
"You aren't going to post it, though, are you?" Chaos asked.
I scoffed. "Of course not! I wanted it done in advance so that I'd have a good idea of how to work up to it." I turned back to the laptop, looking over the chapter again. "If I posted it now it'd be a huge spoiler."
"So why are you talking about it now?"
"What do you mean?"
Chaos looked up absently. "Aren't most of our conversations recorded in the chapters?"
I was barely listening as I scanned the Bonus Chapter for typos. "What's your point?"
"Wouldn't this conversation be recorded on Chapter 20?"
I sat up straight. Backing out of the Doc Manager, I went to Chapter 20 that I had in progress. Sure enough, the text cursor was ticking away, recording my thoughts.
"Sure enough, the text cursor was ticking away, recording my thoughts," I read, mashing the Backspace button on the keyboard. "And I can't even delete any of it."
"As usual," Chaos called as he went back to his work.
I scowled at the screen, willing as hard as I could to get the text cursor to stop moving. "You know what bothers me the most about this?" I said without looking away from the blinking line.
"Mmm?"
"If this is somebody writing, they have the gall to write from my perspective, in first person," I said sourly. "Some weird dude out there is pretending to be me and it's creeping me out."
"Then start writing Chapter 20," Chaos advised. "These narrative things stop once the chapter itself keeps going, right?"
"Who are you?! What did you do with Daphne?!" Adrian wrote angrily.
"I did nothing, as per usual," Mabel replied calmly. "To avoid being bombarded by a slew of questions asking about what my motives are, I'm going to attempt to answer as many as I can before you get the chance to ask them.
"My name is Mabel. I am the eighth and final personality contained within the body you seven - well, six - have taken to calling Cece. Like you, I have been here since the beginning. But unlike you, I decided that having eight people fighting over control of a singular body was a disaster waiting to happen. So I thought I would do my part to lessen the impact, and I simply stood back as the rest of you sorted yourselves out. I have only done two things of consequence. I accidentally drank whiskey on the Daybreak, and I helped keep David calm as he escaped Facility-Wide. I have been forced forward other times as well, but nothing of importance happened during those times. The most important thing to remember is that I am not against you.
"As for what happened with Daphne...I did not do anything. It was the six of you that caused this. But to tell you what happened, you have to understand something. What we have here with eight people in one body is not normal, as you might have gathered. We suffer from two mental disorders. The first is a very severe case of retrograde amnesia. I say severe because in normal cases of retrograde amnesia, one forgets only a certain period of time, and most often, they regain the memories after a certain amount of time has passed. This is not the case for us. Not only does it seem to be permanent, but we have forgotten our past lives. We have forgotten our family, our home, even our species.
"Some of you might have been ready to ask an angry question at the last point. To circumvent the inevitable query, I'll explain what I mean. A while ago, some of you were wondering how you knew what things like 'hands' or 'necks' were. You, of course, had seen these before, in humans. And yet, they had never told you the names of these body parts. So how did you know that they were called 'hands'? We certainly don't have any. Though it seems farfetched, I have concluded that we must have been a different species before becoming a puffball, one that does have hands and a neck. This explanation, though out of the blue and seemingly irrational, is the only explanation I readily have.
"But I digress. The second mental disorder we have is the reason I am writing in this book in the first place. It is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or more commonly, Multiple Personality Disorder. Though its status as a legitimate disorder is disputed, I'm quite sure we have it, so its medical standing doesn't matter. Don't ask me why I know all of this, because I won't be able to answer you. But anyway. DID is a coping mechanism, which means that the brain created this to help cope with the previously mentioned trauma. We are a result of that, which means that our only purpose is to help cope with said trauma. Or it would be, under normal circumstances.
"Retrograde amnesia and DID are very severe disorders on their own. But when they're paired up, bad things happen. For example, none of us know which one of us needs protecting. Who is the original? We simply don't know. The fact that this body has no obvious way to tell whether it's a boy or a girl deepens this mystery. So we have defaulted to the sole purpose of prolonging the life and health of what you have taken to calling 'Cece', the body. If I were to boil down everything we've done, our main objective is to keep our vessel alive. Say what you will about Daphne, but she tried as hard as the rest of us to keep the heart beating. And you told her she failed.
"Imagine that. You are made for literally one purpose, and are put next to others who share that purpose. As you go along, you begin to trust these people. Then, one day, everyone working there says you're doing your job absolutely wrong, and they would be better off without you. That is what you six have done to Daphne. She's still here, of course. She can't just leave. But as I continue, keep in mind that this is pure conjecture and opinion and is not based on any fact.
"I'm scared. That is why you are hearing from me. I would rather not talk to you; I would rather simply sit on the sidelines. But this is the first time out of everything you've experienced, in which I legitimately fear for our collective lives. Even in Facility-Wide, I was sure David could have gotten out on his own. I simply felt I owed it to him for the drunkenness I had caused. But I believe this might be the most legitimate threat we have faced since coming here. I think the Daphne we knew is gone. In the best case scenario, she might try to change to please us. But I do not want to think about the worst case scenario, though I fear that might be the very scenario we have to face. I will not be so active in the future. ~Mabel"
"Wait, so we're part of a disease?" Mia exclaimed. "I mean...no way! I mean...I kind of guessed that, but hearing it kind of...creeps me out. I mean...how much of us is real?"
"Or which one of us is real," Tristan added.
"Okay, let's not even get into that, please," Alice pleaded. "I don't want another one of us leaving because we're sure we're useless."
"So...what do we do now?" Toby asked uncertainly. "Daphne's gone...can we get her back?"
"I think mabel said she migt come back on her own," David said. "But she said she's scared...and I'm kinda sure that's bad."
"At the risk of sounding heartless," Mabel interrupted calmly. "I don't see how Daphne's absence changes our overall goal. Her being gone does not deter from the fact that we came to Wyvern to find fraternal connections. That does not mean, of course, that we may have acquired another goal along the way, and that goal may have gained precedence to our previous."
"Do you have a shmeckin' thesaurus or something?" Adrian asked dryly. "Seriously. 'Fraternal connections'? 'gained precedence to our previous'? How many of those are actually words?"
"All of them," Tristan quipped. "I checked."
"Right, we're in a library," Alice said. "I almost forgot. So...we're going to keep looking for our family, then? Alright. I'm going to look through any family books I can find. Because I am way too warm to go outside again. Deal with it."
"Do you need some genealogy books, Miss Alice?" Linden said behind her.
"Aah!" Alice yelled, snatching the journal and turning around quickly to face him.
Ohmigod he's cute.
"Sorry, did I startle you?" he asked apologetically. "I meant nothing by it."
Ohmigod he's cute and he has an accent. He's perfect. Okay, Alice, say something endearing. Don't flub it up.
"How...um, I mean, how do you know my...my, uh...ah...my n-name?" Alice stuttered.
I flubbed it up.
"Ah, I was reading over you," Linden said sheepishly. "It just jumped out at me."
Alice nodded dumbly, before noticing something she probably should've noticed earlier.
"Wh-what are you wearing? On your head? I mean body? Or...uh..." Alice trailed off, not wanting to make even more of an idiot of herself than what had already been accomplished.
On top of Linden's head was what looked like a visor. It was white in color, with a flat white band stretching across his back. A protruding section over the right eye had a large red cross on it, and over the left eye was a long antenna with a blue tip. It looked really high-technical, and Alice had absolutely no idea what it was.
"Ah, this? It's the headgear for my Copy Copy Ability," Linden said, removing the headgear and placing it on the table with a metallic clang.
"Copy Ability? Ash mentioned those, I'm pretty sure..."
"You aren't familiar with Copy Abilities?" Linden asked as he withdrew a large book from a shelf. "To keep it short and simple, Copy Abilities are abilities exclusive to puffballs. Most of us can only use one, a rare amount can use two, but only one can use every Copy Ability in existence. That was Kirby. He had an ability also called the Copy Ability - yes, they're the same name - that allowed him to absorb the essence of his foes and convert it into a specific type of energy that he could use against them. Most of the time, this energy came in the form of some type of power endowed hat or headgear. These headgear, when worn by a puffball who is familiar with the methods to use it, grants the same abilities Kirby would have used. In most cases."
"Oh," Alice said, her mind racing to comprehend everything Linden had said. She had spent the first three sentences or so lost in his eyes, and she struggled to catch up. "So...um...what do you mean by 'most cases'?" That sounded like she was listening, right?
"I mean this Ability, Copy," Linden said. "Usually, it would grant Kirby another Ability in the same way he always did. But since I do not know how to use any other Copy Ability, it's rendered useless for me. With...a few exceptions. You see, this was an alternate method Kirby used in juxtaposition to inhaling. It left the enemy intact, and rather than absorbing its energy...this headgear absorbs information. So it does prove quite useful to me."
Small alarms began to sound in Alice's head. She ignored them. "Useful how?"
"As I said, things I scan provide information," Linden repeated. "Did you know I've technically read every single book in this library with this headgear? I am, of course, prone to forget, but a two second scan grants the information again. I've read every book here...except one.
"That one."
Alice followed Linden's line of sight until it connected with her journal. The alarms didn't seem very small anymore. She protectively brought it against her body, not sure exactly what that was going to accomplish.
Linden gave a short laugh. "I was making a point, madam. I'm not going to delve into it. Unless, of course, you want a demonstration of the Copy Copy Ability?
Don't do it, Alice thought. Don't let the absolutely gorgeous puffball do what he says he's gonna do.
"What kind of demonstration?" she asked uncertainly.
Linden nodded at the journal. "I know nearly none of the contents of that book, barring the one passage you wrote. If you'll allow it, I'll tell you something about the first few pages. I swear on my honour I won't read past them. Is there anything important in the first few pages you would not want me to read?"
Don't do it. Don't do it.
"Ah-no. I don't re-uh...remember anything," she said cautiously. Attractive people aren't evil, right? He seems nice. He's not bad. He isn't going to do anything bad, right? He's nice.
"Alright. May I have the journal? It's easier to control how much information I get if I'm holding the object myself."
DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT
"O-okay..." Alice stuttered, handing him the diary.
Linden slipped on the headgear, and almost instantly, a blue beam shot from the red cross and darted to and fro on the diary's cover.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT YOU'RE TELLING HIM EVERYTHING but he said he'd only read the first few pages BUT PEOPLE LIE
The blue beam disappeared.
"You walked all the way here from Wayford?" Linden asked with wide eyes as he gave the journal back. "That's quite a long way."
It's too late..
After stuffing the diary into her sack, Alice looked up at him with a sheepish grin. "Yeah...I'm pretty sure we nearly died on Mount Leftalon."
What, giving him the journal wasn't enough!?
"Oh dear," Linden gasped. "Well, madam, I'm happy you seem to have made it out alright."
A bell rang, signaling someone entering the library. Alice turned to see Liz. Her eyes went from her to Linden.
"Hello, Liz, madam," Linden bowed, placing the Copy headgear gingerly back on the table. "To what do I owe your presence?"
"Just a book on auditory sciences and another on general anatomy, please," Liz said curtly. "Oh, Cece. You might want to come with me."
"Wh-what? Why?" Alice asked, concerned. It had not escaped her that this 'Liz' was a surgeon.
Liz's eyes flitted to Linden, as if giving her a signal. Through her teeth, she said it again. "You might want to come with me."
Alice looked back to Linden, who was sorting through the shelves with a rather large book in hand. When he turned around with a second book he smiled. "Here you are, Liz. Oh, erm...Cece, are you going with Liz?" he asked. "Well, it was nice talking with you. Feel free to come back any time you like."
Alice turned back to Liz, whose manner of desperation had all but disappeared. "Come on, then," she said before she turned to walk out the door. Alice, with no other option, followed her.
"Goodbye, Alice," she heard Linden say behind her as the door clicked shut.
It was the afternoon now. Grey clouds lined the sky as small white specks coated the ground. A low whistle accompanied a slight pushing force that chilled Alice past uncomfortability. She shivered.
"You were talking with Linden," Liz said simply.
Alice gave a small nod, still not sure what Liz wanted with her. "Yeah."
"How was it?"
"What?"
Liz stopped and turned to face her. "What was it like talking to him? What did he do?"
"He, uh..." Alice stopped. For some reason, it was hard to remember. What had happened? He was really cute; she remembered that. Didn't he say something about Liz? Or was that Ash?
After a long silence, Liz closed her eyes. "You can't remember, can you?"
"Not really, no," Alice affirmed. "Why?"
"Did he show you his Copy headgear?"
"...I think so...?"
"Alright. He showed you his headgear. He asked if you wanted to see a demonstration, and whether you wanted to or not you said yes. He took something personal of yours, promised he wouldn't read too much into it and scanned it. Then he told you something about the part he said he would read." Liz began walking briskly again, leaving Alice to catch up. Once this task was done, Liz faced her again as she walked. "Is that about what happened?"
"...Maybe."
"Listen to me, Cece," Liz said somberly. "I have seen very grisly things in my lifetime. I'm a surgeon. I regularly perform operations that could mean life and death. I hold lives in my stubs on a weekly basis. Over the years, I have learned to desensitize myself to these stressful thoughts. But Linden scares me. Don't think too much about something you don't want anyone to know. You may stay with me again tonight if you wish."
Alice wasn't sure what to think anymore. She vaguely remembered something about the situation Liz had described earlier, but it could've just as easily been something she had read in a book. She had been in a library, after all. Maybe Liz had read the book too. That was what she was talking about, right? A book? Right. They'd been discussing books.
"Or do you have somewhere else to stay tonight?" Liz asked, the tone in her voice unchanged.
Alice jumped. "Huh? Oh, no. I'd appreciate it if I could stay at the clinic again tonight."
"Granted," Liz stated as she walked up the steps and unlocked the door. "I won't be back until morning. Please don't lock yourself out again, Cece."
"Okay, I won't," Alice said, the back of her mind questioning what one of the others had done to warrant something like that.
Alice sat down at the patient's table, ready to start writing her update. She fetched her pen from the sack and opened the diary. Out of curiosity, she decided to flip to the back of the book to see if David had drawn anything new. She flipped through the pages, idly looking at the disturbing drawings, until something caught her eye.
"Cursive...?" Alice squinted at the graceful, nearly uniform letters on the page. None of them wrote cursive. Not even Daphne, when she was here. But what did it say? Alice tried to decipher the long sweeping lettering.
"Wyvern is...deception...?"
Rather short chapter. Sorry, guys.
I said Linden had an accent. Based on the hint I've given you, see if you can guess what it is. Yes, it's one singular hint, and no, it's not referenced in anything he says. The accent is subtle, and you can't write subtle accents. So see if you can guess what accent Linden has! Winner gets a lifetime's supply of chain mail protection until tomorrow!