Chapter 8 - Shadow

Closing her eyes in despair, Bo questioned why on earth anyone would have sent a viper and a centipede after her, as if either of them was not terrifying, or capable, enough.

Bo had to bite back her scream when the centipede jumped on her and climbed up along her body swiftly. The way its legs brushing against the side of her arms creeped every living essence out of her.

Yep, this is gonna be it. She told herself. This is how I die, eaten by two monsters that don't even belong to this world.

She held her breath and waited with her eyes tightly shut, for the last thing she wanted to see before death was herself being eaten by a snake or a centipede.

She waited for that pain, but it never came, so she pried her eyes open and took a peak.

She was shocked to see that the centipede was sinking its fangs into the back of the viper. The viper, in pain, hissed and let go of Bo.

Bo collapsed to the floor. The impact punched the air out of her lungs and gave her knees a crushing pain. She struggled to stand up and jerked herself to the side, just in time to dodge the swinging tail of the centipede.

The viper and the centipede were in an intense fight. The two of them coiled together like two threads of a yarn skein, with their fangs out and their mouths wide open, with lots of hissing and spitting.

Bo tried to escape through the window that was broken, but she barely moved when the viper girl grabbed her and pinned her to the wall.

"Where is the file?" She growled at Bo.

"Trust me, bitch, if I knew where that file might be, I'd already spilled the beans when your damn snake licked my face!" Bo hissed.

With all the strength she had, she arched her back and smashed her forehead into the girl's face, knocking her back.

Bo ran to pick up the fire poker and swung it at the girl, but missed.

The girl was furious as she stared at Bo. "You have to know. You came here for it."

"No, I did not come here for it," Bo bit out as she jabbed the girl with the fire poker. The girl grabbed it and yanked it out of Bo's hands.

She brandished the fire poker and swung it at Bo, forcing Bo into the corner of the room. Then, she pointed it at Bo's throat and said, "tell me where that file is."

"For the last time, I don't know!" Bo yelled.

The girl huffed. She took a brief look at the two fighting creatures, and let out a smile of victory when she saw that her viper had subdued the centipede and was in the process of swallowing it whole.

"Say bye bye to your spirit companion," she scoffed at Bo as she pressed the tip of the poker into Bo's throat until she saw blood.

"That is not my spirit companion," Bo said in heavy gasps.

The girl narrowed her eyes at Bo and moved the fire poker slightly away from her throat. "What?"

"She said that it's not her spirit companion," a voice came through the broken window. "It's mine."

With that, a girl in her late teens with short dreadlocks jumped in and launched herself at the viper girl with a baseball bat.

The viper girl had to let go of Bo and defend herself. Their fight quickly escalated, with a lot of weapon smashing and name calling.

The viper, who had finished swallowing the centipede, stood up and snapped at Bo again.

Bo picked up the nearest thing - a chair leg - and hit the viper with it, but it was like hitting a wall of steel, and it broke the chair leg in half.

Bo tried to run away, but her legs gave out. She was again captured by the snake.

The snake held her tightly with its tail and raised her to its mouth. Then, it opened its mouth and revealed its two sharp, long fangs.

Just as it was about to sink those fangs into Bo, it suddenly paused and started to twitch, like it was in great pain.

Bo gulped when she noticed that the viper's stomach was contracting and squirming violently.

Her eyes shot wide open when the centipede burst its way out of the snake. The centipede then started to devour the struggling viper hungrily.

With what she was seeing, hearing and smelling, Bo bent over and vomited everything out while cheering internally that she was once again saved.

The viper struggled in futility before it became nothing but a gourmet meal to the centipede. Its owner dropped dead after screaming her last words.

Bo had finally stopped throwing up. She put one hand on the wall and stood up slowly. "Thanks!" She nodded at the girl.

The girl nodded back. "Valhalla sends regards," she told Bo, before she clicked her tongue at her centipede.

The giant arthropod darted at her excitedly, but the girl stepped back slightly. "Ugh ugh, Shower first."

The centipede dropped its head like an upset kid and followed her out through the window.

Bo had finally caught her breath. She went to check on the dead viper girl. It didn't surprise her at all when she found a snake tattooed to her right shoulder blade along with the name "Basilisk".

Bo sighed and walked to Dr. Smith's body. She sat there with the dead doctor for a while, as she pondered what she should do next.

It was then that she heard a rustling sound coming from the window.

Bo immediately picked up the fire poker that Basilisk had dropped and turned to the window.

She was more than relieved (and somewhat happy) to see Tamsin's raven landing on the windowsill.

"Why is that every time I see you, you look like shit?" Tamsin snorted as she appeared outside the window.

Neither of them noticed that hint of genuine concern in her teasing voice.

"How is it that no matter where I go, I'm greeted by these damn agents?" Bo complained as she kicked the dead Basilisk's body.

"Well maybe you should stop poking your nose everywhere," Tamsin commented while checking Basilisk's body. Then, she examined Dr. Smith's dead body.

After doing a quick blood swab, her face became a little more serious. "You didn't tell me that the doctor was an Einheri."

"Well maybe that's because I didn't know! Hell, I didn't even know that Einherjar existed until like a few weeks ago! How was I supposed to know that my doctor was one?"

Tamsin turned to her. "Wait…your doctor, you mean, you are also one of her patients?

"Ummm...yeah. I've been seeing her for years. Why are you so surprised?"

"Well…you've mentioned to me that all those dead chicks were her patients, so…we have gone through the files of every single patient of hers. I don't remember seeing your name."

"Oh, I think somehow all the Einherjar, or mutes, or whatever…she didn't keep digital patient files of any of us in her computer system. Probably paper files only."

"I know. I was talking about the paper files. I don't remember seeing yours anywhere."

Bo frowned a little. "Maybe she misplaced it or something?"

She glanced at the dead Basilisk, and continued, "right, speaking of which, she was asking me about some file or something. For some reason, she, and the…Bakeneko, were here looking for a file, and she thought I must have it because she couldn't find it anywhere."

"What kind of a file are you talking about?"

"I have no idea. All I heard was the file, the file, the file. Do you know what it might be?"

Tamsin shook her head slightly as she went through all the drawers, cabinets and everything inside the cabin. She then knocked the walls and the floors to check if there might be a hidden compartment.

After having found nothing, she returned to the secret study and examined the small fireplace. With one knee on the floor, she gently brushed away the ashes inside the chamber.

"The bottom is still warm," she commented. Then, she paused briefly, for she had found two small pieces of paper that weren't completely charred.

She examined them closely. One of the pieces was just blank, while the other one wasn't.

"What's name again?" She asked Bo.

"Ummm, Bo?"

"I mean your actual, full first name."

"Ysabeau."

"How do you spell it?"

"Y-s-a….why?"

Tamsin didn't answer her. She just showed Bo the charred piece that she had found. On there, it read: Ysab, and the rest was burnt.

Bo frowned hard. "You think that's my name? I mean, that could be a lot of things."

"Like what, hmmm?" Tamsin crossed her arms in front of her chest and tilted her head at Bo. "Please, spell me another word that starts with Ysab, capital Y."

"Okay, fine, it's probably my name, so what? She was my doctor after all. Would it be that weird to find my name on a piece of paper inside her cabin?"

"Right, it's totally not weird to find a piece of paper with your name on it here, except that this piece of paper was burnt, your doctor was dead, and two bitches showed up looking for a file."

"Oh wait, I know! Maybe it was the patient list? I mean…we both know that they were after her patients, her Einheri patients, right? Maybe she kept a list of all our names and that was what they were after?"

Tamsin ticked her tongue. "Possible but…if she had to give up her life protecting this patient list, shouldn't she have destroyed all patient files at her clinic first?"

She took one last glance at Basilisk's body, before she said, "you should come to Valhalla with me. They want you to consent to an MRI."

"An MRI? Why?"

"Something about your pheromone or whatever," Tamsin replied simply. "We'll take these bodies back and…well, examine them, I guess."

A little confused, very exhausted and still grieving Dr. Smith's death, Bo returned to Valhalla with Tamsin. Alex explained to her about her unusual pheromone levels and convinced her to agree to more tests including an MRI.

While Bo was lying inside the machine trying to relax, Tamsin stayed with Alex and the MRI technician in the operating room.

As the images appeared on the computer screen, Alex examined each and every one of them thoroughly. She eventually stopped at one that showed Bo's Einheri brain.

"There…" she pointed at a small shadow at the base of that brain part.

"What is it? A tumor?" Tamsin frowned.

"No…I don't think it's a tumor. Tumors are usually bright, but this one is dark…."

"Maybe a small lesion?" The technician suggested.

"It could be, but…the shape is just…so regular," Alex concluded. "I wonder if it's a foreign body…."

She pondered for a while, before she put down her mug and picked up the phone on the wall. "I need a surgical team and I need her prepped…yes, right now!"

Alex performed a surgery on Bo, and confirmed her suspicion. There was indeed a foreign body lodged at the base of Bo's Einheri brain, which she was able to successfully remove.

As Bo was waking up from the anesthesia in a patient room in Valhalla's care facility, she saw Tamsin sitting in the corner with her raven standing on her shoulder.

"Okay…so what exactly have they found inside my brain?" Bo asked weakly.

Tamsin dragged her chair to Bo's bedside and showed her a picture of it, since Alex had taken the actual object to the labs for further evaluation.

Bo frowned at the thing in the photo. It looked like a tiny box (about the size of the surface of her index finger's nail) with a couple of very tiny wires.

"What is it?" She asked Tamsin.

"I've asked them the same question and the best they could come up with was it might be a neural implant."

Bo gaped at her. "A what?!"

"A bioelectromagnetic neural implant." Tamsin elaborated. "There are a few microchips inside and those wires are like electrodes or whatever that connect to your Einheri brain."

Bo swallowed hard and stared at Tamsin for a long time, for she had just heard what she thought might be the most absurd thing in her entire life. "I have an implant in my brain? Why? How?"

"So you have no idea how or why you had it?"

"No! I have no idea! Trust me! How…how is this even possible? I should know that I have a brain implant when I have a brain implant, right? These things don't just…appear."

Too shocked, she licked her dry lips and went quiet as she stared at the ceiling blankly.

Everything that had happened during the past few weeks crashed into her: being attacked by monstrous creatures that others couldn't see, the deaths of Laura Davis and other women, being an Einheri, the death of Dr. Olivia Smith, the blood, pain and fear, and now, the final straw, an implant inside her brain that she knew nothing about.

Crushed and completely spent, she fisted the sheets under her as she used every bit of strength she had left to stop herself from sobbing.

"Well…" Tamsin murmured, "if you don't remember anything about it, do you remember like a period of time that you just don't remember anything about then?"

"Like coming home from a bar and then just blacked out on the couch till the next morning? Oh yeah, a lot."

Tamsin rolled her eyes. "No…not like that! This shit is delicate. It's not like someone could just knock you out, stick it in you, stitch you up and then drop you home. It would take them hours to just perform the surgery, and days for you to recover. You should at least remember something."

"But I don't! I don't remember anything and I don't have days of lost memories!" Bo exclaimed.

Frustrated, angry and scared, she took a few deep breaths, before she asked, "do they at least know what this thing does to me?"

"That would be a question for Alex and Rowan once they finish studying it. It's a complex device and they've never seen anything like it before, so I've been told."

"You think there might be a chance that…someone here could figure out who did this to me?"

"They'll try. If they can figure out the manufacturer, they can probably figure out who bought it. It's too niche to be mass produced, and there must be a trail left to follow, trust me."

Bo let out a long, deep sigh and she leaned back in the patient bed.

Tamsin observed her for a while, before she pulled the chair closer and said, "so, about the file that those agents were looking for…."

"You figured it out?"

Tamsin sighed. "Well, here's a thought. The doctor had a file, and those agents were looking for it. They didn't find it at her cabin and the doctor's now dead. Papers were burnt inside the fireplace, which…had your name on. You were a patient of the said doctor, but your patient file had not been found anywhere."

Bo pondered what Tamsin had just said, before she reached the shocking conclusion. "You are saying that…you think that the file that they were looking for was…my patient file?"

Tamsin nodded.

"Why? Why would they be looking for my patient file?"

Tamsin clenched her lips. She took a glance at the closed door to the room, before she answered, "the two agents, and possibly Spinner and Antares, say they were looking for someone, but they didn't know whom exactly they should be looking for. Like, for example, they knew they should be looking for an Einheri treated by the doc, so they went after all her patients who might fit that criteria, but none of them was right. So, they decided to go after the do, and doc, having nowhere to go, had to destroy the file so-"

"So they wouldn't know who Einheri was…" Bo murmured. She swallowed hard as she digested the whole thing. She had to admit that what Tamsin had just said would make a lot of sense, even though it still left a lot of questions unanswered.

She wondered if those agents were really looking for her. She wondered if Dr. Smith died protecting her identity.

That thought brought stingy tears to her eyes. "Why…" she murmured, "why would they be looking for me? What's so special about me?"

Tamsin made a loud throat clearing sound as she waved her cellphone at Bo, reminding her of the neural implant.

Bo bit back her tears and let out a deep breath. "I wish I could remember something. Anything…."

"Don't we all…." Tamsin murmured.

"What you have an implant in your head that you remember nothing about as well?"

Tamsin gave her a big eye roll. She then turned away and bit her bottom lip uncomfortably. Eventually, she admitted, "I only remember things between now and thirteen years ago."

Surprised, Bo tilted her head at Tamsin. After having stared at Tamsin for one full minute and made sure that the Valkyrie wasn't joking, she asked, "what do you mean? You lost all your memories before that?"

Tamsin didn't answer her, not immediately anyway. She petted her raven for a long time and fed him a peanut that she had taken out from her pocket, before she gave Bo a nod.

"How is that even possible? What happened?"

Tamsin swallowed slightly. She was never comfortable enough to share her secrets, but somehow, she found it almost comforting to tell Bo about it, even though they had only known each other for weeks.

"Thirteen years ago, I was pulled out of a lake."

"I don't understand. Like…you drove your car into a lake and then got rescued or something?"

Tamsin shook her head. "I was found at the bottom of a lake in a mountainous area in Norway. There was like this…thick ice layer at the bottom of the lake, like miles of ice down there. I was sealed inside a naturally formed chamber inside the ice."

Bo opened her eyes wide and gasped slightly. "How did you…I mean, how did you even survive down there like that? How long were you inside the ice chamber?"

"I don't know. I was told that I was in a coma-like state when Valhalla found me. They brought me back and tried a lot of things to wake me up. When I finally woke up, I didn't remember anything. I don't remember how I got into the lake. I don't remember who I was or where I was from. Nothing."

Bo pulled herself up a little and leaned in. "Nothing?"

Tamsin shook her head. "Apparently all I did when I woke up was yelling in a language that nobody would understand. They had to find some expert who was able to do a half ass translation job for me."

"What were you yelling?"

"Ancient cuss words?"

Bo couldn't help but let out an amused chuckle. "How ancient?"

"Thousands of years."

"Whoa…wait, are you saying that you've been trapped under the lake for thousands of years?"

Tamsin shrugged.

"So you are like...the real Captain America?"

Tamsin pulled her lips into a smirk. She leaned in and replied, "well, I didn't have to take a super soldier serum to be awesome for one, and I've certainly slept with women before."

Bo laughed. "If you don't remember anything, how do you know you have slept with anyone before?"

Tamsin snorted. "I just do."

Bo let out a few more chuckles, before she inhaled deeply and announced, "I think I'm gonna join Valhalla."

"Don't you already have a life or something?" Tamsin mocked.

"I need answers. I want to know what's going on with me, and with those agents. I want to know who put the implant inside me and what they want. I want to be able to defend myself and …."

"And stay away from your human pet to keep her safe?"

Bo nodded, finding it both weird and comforting that Tamsin would understand her.

"Well then, get some rest when you can, cuz soon you'll be getting ass kicked in your training at Valhalla."

In a meeting room labeled as "CLASSIFIED", Acacia, Alex and Rowan were having a discussion over the device taken out from Bo's brain.

"I think we have figured out what this device does," Alex began.

"Tell me," Acacia demanded.

"This device stimulates the gland that produces Novopiraxin, and it does so precisely so that when her Proxatyl level rises, her Einheri brain would produce adequate amount of Novopiraxin which essentially stops the binding between Proxatyl and the receptor in her system. That's why she had such a high level of both pheromones at this age but still has not had her dawning yet."

"Have you figured out who made this device?"

"Not yet. The technology is…all over the place," Rowan explained. "Some of it is old, while the rest is so…new."

"How new?"

"So new that…we can't find it anywhere," Rowan said hesitantly. "One of the microchips has a serial number that we traced back to a company, which has been out of business for decades. They admitted registering that exact serial number for future products but had barely gone through the preliminary design phase before they were shut down. They did say that a lot of their proprietary intellectual properties were stolen shortly before they went out of business."

"So someone stole their design and made the chips themselves?"

"It's…" Rowan took a deep breath. "We think it's them."

Acacia raised her eyebrows.

"We think Fólkvangr made this device. Only they are capable of such advanced technology."

"Interesting…" Acacia leaned back in her chair and tapped the desk with her index finger. "And how long did you say that this thing has been inside her?"

"Based on the degradation and everything, our estimate is that…she had it when she was a young child."

Acacia nodded along. "Interesting," she repeated.

After a long pause, she asked, "do you expect that her pheromone levels would return to normal any time soon, now that the device has been removed?"

Alex clenched her lips briefly. "I wouldn't say soon, but the Novopiraxin in her system should drop to a normal level in a few months."

"So her dawning would come after that?"

"Yes, but…dawning at this age is…extremely rare and not enough cases have been observed or studied. There is a possibility that due to her age, she'd never go through her dawn, but if she does, it will probably be very overwhelming to her."

Acacia nodded. "We will definitely keep her close."

She then ordered the other two women to leave, while she sat there and pondered alone.