Level Eight Ongoing: Hydrophobia

"Have you decided which option to go with?" Mr. Anonymous spoke out. Our reactions amused him, and I could imagine him smirking mischievously as he looked down at us, even if I couldn't put a face to his voice. That evil, devilish touch to his lips — I just knew it had to be there.

Camdyn looked at me, like I had the answers to his problems. "Mars, what should we do?"

"Why ask me? I wouldn't know! I couldn't!" I explained, my voice raised, but not in anger. Only to get my point across and nothing else. "This isn't for me to decide. If there's something that you want to figure out, then it's you who would know what you would be looking for, and which one you could find it in."

"Mars, I might've been the victim of this situation, but I was just as present as you were. Mentally," he wasn't willing to let this go so easily, and had defended himself by claiming we were in the same shoes here, or that I actually had the upper hand. "But you know, you're his daughter, Mars, and I know you took that entire step not to be known as his child, but by blood and nothing else, you are. You know how he is, I thought maybe you'd know something that I didn't. Maybe there's an instinct in you that would give something away."

"Camdyn, if you're trying to suggest that I share his instincts, that's the most offensive thing I've ever heard," I tried talking gently as if that would help me suppress my anger and not trigger the trio of Blakes so soon. "You spent a lot of time with him too. You'd have as much a chance of knowing something as I would."

"Choose the first one," Blake butts in with a monotone, like all he cared about none of this and was annoyed to put up with any more fragment of time as we argued. Disregarding his irritation, Camdyn and I both looked at him, expecting that he'd explain. He did only when he got that vibe that he didn't have a choice. "Intentions are usually spilled in someone's first attempt. It's where the planning was, and where everything started, so extra thought had to be done. This gets less obvious as they continue to try because they already know their goal and why they're doing what they are. First one holds the backstory."

Camdyn and I shared a shrug, with its accompanying glance, and then a nod that was our agreement that Blake's logic wasn't insane, but pretty logical. Contrary to what we'd be expecting of him recently.

"Option one," Camdyn chose, listening to him. "We choose option one."

"Delightful. The first will be prepped for you," said the person without a face. As he did, the glowing globe that had given us Camdyn'a memories had stretched until it had become much taller than us, still producing light as it's always been. It's edges became more defined, forming a door that was so high up in the air that it was intimidating to enter, and labeled with a '1' as we asked for. I gulped just looking at it, but it got caught in my throat like I swallowed a rock when the voice welcomed itself back to us. "You all may enter."

And we did. Behind it was a whole new world, or it looked like it at least.

"There isn't even a swimming pool here. That trailer is misleading," Blake grumbled, like a child that was too short to get onto an amusement park ride. Along with that situation too, there wasn't anything we could do to console him besides tell him to grow up and wait it out, which is the tactic Camdyn went with straight away.

"Give it a moment. It was you who said we'd get a backstory, right? Well, this is the backstory, in front of your very eyes," he explained. "I thought you'd be rubbing that in our faces, but instead we get you throwing a temper tantrum. I wonder which is worse."

I grabbed his shoulder, getting in between them. "Camdyn. Let's not start this now," I whispered in his ear. "He's going through a lot. This isn't the time that we—."

"Touché," Blake interrupted my whispering that he couldn't have heard, or more as in, I stopped myself and poised myself formally in front of him. Camdyn gave me a glance that basically shouted that that was proof of his innocence, and Blake seemed to for once, lower himself before us in status. "Do go on." He added.

"Thank you," Cams bowed, blowing his hair out of his face when some strands escaped down his forehead. "This is the last memory I have before I ended up in someone's backyard swimming pool. A store in the neighborhood was being relocated down the street, and the old one wasn't destructed yet, so we broke in and would chill in the back room, and have drinks. Chat, gossip, do whatever we felt like. For some reason I black out one of these times, and I don't remember anything else until I ended up at the hospital, as you already know."

"Ssh! They're coming in," I gave a warning to the two, which was heeded by how they sealed their lips, when I saw my dad's hand enter through the broken glass in the door, proof that they've done this several times before, to unlock the lock from the inside. Young Camdyn, naive even by the appearance, was all giggles as he followed him in. They barged through the back door like it was impossible to get caught. They must've been certain nobody would come looking for them and kick them out, and certain that they wouldn't get any consequences.

"So, how are you settling in, Son? New school, new country, new life. It's not as easy as it sounds," Soren started with small talk, his feet already comfortable on some desk stored back there that didn't look to belong, and that I wouldn't be surprised if he brought in himself, as he took a swig of the liquid in the glass bottle. 'Red Horse' the bottle read.

There was another one of them that flung across the table to Young Camdyn as well. When he did, his stomach seemed to churn. He didn't like the look of it. "Uhm," he paused, still giving it side-eyes. It was 50-50 from the bottle to Soren, then gradually led to being out of proportion, until he was looking only at the person. "It's okay. It's not Japan, of course, and the language barrier is so hard. I'm not really used to the Cebuano dialect. My dad didn't speak to me that much in his mother tongue."

It got to me how close they were. I'm his daughter and not very often can I remember opening myself up to Soren, but he did it so easily. I could see myself in his shoes saying that I'm doing fine and ending it there. He's just never been approachable, and I couldn't fully trust him. Not really.

"You'll get the hang of it. Look at me, I don't have Filipino blood in me at all, but I'm semi-proficient. You're a smart kid, and your friends will help you out too. I'm sure your classmates will treat you kindly," my father smiled at him reassuringly, and it was contagious enough to get a small one out of the boy. "Have you met anyone at school yet?"

"I wouldn't say that," Young Camdyn went shy. It's hard to keep in mind that that used to be the person he was. New boy in a new country was bound to be shy, I guess, but somehow we got to know each other, and things changed. I forgot that he has timid bones in his body. "There was this one girl that showed me around. I think she's a first year, but she seems to know her way. She mostly keeps to herself so I don't know if we'll see each other much, but it'd be nice if we could. She was sweet."

Soren has his hand on his chin, thinking, but he had that look on his face that he already knew the answer to whatever he would ask. "Oh really? Who was this girl? Maybe I know her."

I wanted to gasp. That was me. I was the girl who showed him around the school. That's how we first met, and with only a few words that Young Camdyn used to describe who I was, Soren already knew that. His expression definitely gave it away, at least to me. Not so much to the boy.

"Saturn Marie I think was her name," he had said.

"Saturn Marie Matalines?" Soren laughed a fake laugh. It was the most hypocritical kind out there, but the naivety of the child wouldn't know any better.

"Why, Mister Kobayashi? Do you know her?"

"Oh yes, for sure. I've seen her around," he answered awkwardly, but as casually as possible. Why, yes, he's 'seen me around'. It's not like it's his sperm that made me or anything.

His laugh stopped abruptly, and his eyes made his entire head tilt at the bottle that Young Camdyn hasn't touched. He then began pouring another drink into a glass from a fancier, taller bottle from beneath the table, where the boy couldn't see. In it, he snuck in five tablets of something I couldn't recognize. The glass flung across the table, spilling a few droplets, and the kid was distracted by it enough that Soren could change the subject. "Why aren't you drinking the bottle? Do you not like it?"

"I'm not used to drinking alcohol, Mister Kobayashi. As you'd know, the legal drinking age in Japan is twenty. I'm only eighteen."

"Well. That's not a thing here. Try this one. It's champagne. I'm sure you'd like it," Soren insisted, pointing at the second drink he'd passed to him, and the child felt pressured. Trying to put them aside, already aware of his fate, I squinted down at the box of tablets he had used that had fallen down to the floor. Camdyn at my side, must've been way ahead of me, because he got the answer I was looking for.

"It's Rohypnol."

"What's it for?" I had to ask. Even with the answer I was still at a loss.

"I heard about this in one of my cases as an officer. It's for treating terrible insomnia I think, and it assists with anesthesia."

"So you're saying he tranquilized you?"

"Evidently," Camdyn replied, pointing my attention back at Soren and his younger self. He had passed out fast, and had fallen out of his chair, sprawled out across the floor. My father had the smallest panic of a run in the small room, to gather some of his things together, but he wasn't in a hurry at all. He kneeled down to his body that was so vulnerable and helpless, and just stared at it there, speaking to it like it was up and running a full life.

He liked him passed out the best. It was a person to talk to that he knew couldn't hear him.

"You've met my daughter so soon, have you? Why are you so heart-eyed? What is that supposed to mean? Are you two destined for something? That would be too bad. I thought you were a good kid, but if you get tangled with my child, you couldn't be because she's not on my side anymore. She's up in line to take the power I was supposed to have forever, and if she gets happily in love with some new bish that shows up at her school, it'll be harder to keep what's mine, or if it comes to the worst, take back what was mine. Love and happiness, when you're the sun, seems to lock everything in place, and I don't exactly have that. Something about this is fishy, Camdyn Matsumoto Sacar. Something surely is."

He then threw his body over his shoulder like carry-on luggage, and made a dash to the front door, much more discreet compared to the way he came in. Harshly, and with no sense of compassion for the body whatsoever, the Young Camdyn was trapped in the trunk of his car with all else he already had back there, and he didn't even know that he should be screaming, loud from the top of his lungs for help.

He couldn't have known any better, and man, did I have to think of everything besides it to not feel guilty and turn this level into hell all over again, but that doesn't change that it was by my name that things went sideways, and that without it, things would've been fine.

That name, Saturn Marie has always been a curse.

__ __ __ __ __

The car pulled to a smooth stop in an alleyway, in more richer of a neighborhood. Soren had gotten out, leaving the kid alone in the back of it, as he searched the surroundings a little bit better. While he was gone, the sound of running-water couldn't be missed, and I could see him from the fence he jumped, prepping that water for the swimming pool in some person's backyard, that I think is safe to say neither of us knew.

Even with the noise, there was nothing suspicious about water running, and I hated that thought; how so much in just our near surroundings could be going so extremely wrong, and how we could've been in distance to have stopped terrible things from happening, but during it, we had not a single clue. We'd go on with our daily routine, get out of bed, brush our teeth, eat breakfast, head wherever the heck we need to be, without feeling funny.

"Shyet!" Soren cursed under his breath coming to a realization, "if the water is running that means someone is set to tour the house today. I knew it couldn't just be this easy." He hit at the hose he was holding three times, in hopes it would fill the pool faster. It was just below a fourth the way full, but not quite, and clearly not what he was going for. With repeated facepalms, and yanking of his hair, he could only come to one conclusion. "I guess this is gonna have to do," he muttered, dropping the running hose toward the corner of the pool to let it run a little longer on its own. "I gotta get out of here. Fast."

If he lacked the strength to carry Young Camdyn to where he needed him, or he had completely given up at this point, he didn't even try lifting his body off of the ground, but had dragged him across it. It gave him minor scratches all over his body, and covered him with dirt, that I had to coil up just watching, but he made it to the pool that way. He dumped his body in softly, as not to make that big of a splash.

"If you live through this, then I'll definitely have to mold you to be on my side," Soren said quietly as he left. "That means that you're too good to be on anyone's team except mine, but listen, if you do live, this can't be the last time this happens, because I have to know you're actually cut out for what I think you are. Do I think too highly of you? Maybe I do. I'll get that evidence now, if you live or die. Just don't fall for her. That's the only rule."

That's how he ended things as he got in his car to drive off.

Camdyn, standing beside me, watching it go down, groaned, enough that it brought him down to his knees. There was not a word from him as it happened, and I was too stunned to get anything out of him in time. Those same scratches began to form on his body, in the exact same places as his younger self, that couldn't have happened if we were to physically try. His body began fading in and out, until it flew up into the air, and like a shooting star, brightened the sky before it was absorbed right into his past body. It's as if he was whole again, with the past scenarios that made him, him, but that meant that keeping him alive was even more crucial than it was a moment ago.

"Camdyn!" I yelled, after accepting that I've seen the connection of his current and past. I struggled my way up the fence that my father made seem so simple, but I was beat on my way over by two of Blake's doubles, who were already busy submerging him further into the water. Right away, I regretted reacting so strongly, but I didn't know what the chances were that I'd be able to do different if I was given another chance. I've been holding so much in this entire time, it's a miracle I haven't bursted before.

"Don't touch him!" I screamed again, this time at those innocent looking freaks. With my feet planted at the edge of the pool, I prepared to make a dive. The water was cold compared to the warm humid air; at least, that's how I imagined it to be, but as I swam closer to the two of Blake who have became enemies to me, they didn't seem to be the least bit phased. Those things couldn't be distracted by anything you did. They were blinded by their tasks and they were up to doing nothing else.

"Don't get yourself involved," Blake's one other form spoke out from the same edge I'd jumped off of, his arms crossed as he looked down at me, soaked. Those siren's of warning were going off again; the one that claimed that a bug was detected in the game. It was always about him when those happened, and it was out of two things; his need to protect to Shyrene, or the grief of Shyrene's loss. It was always her, and it must've been because no matter how he's programmed to act, nothing has tight enough of reins to get around how much he loves her, truly.

"I wanted the pool so I could die easier. Let me die now," He said bluntly, jumping into the pool, and whipping back his wet hair.

"Blake, you don't have to die. You can't. There's only three of you left, and I'm sure we can get through this without having to lose any of you. We'll need all of you badly! We don't know what's coming!"

"So? There's none left of Shyrene at this point so that doesn't really phase me," he shrugged. "Besides, you can't cry over Camdyn being treated this way in order to pass the level. Do you really think you can do that?" There was a pause, but I didn't answer. He liked that. "That's what I thought, dang crybaby." He added on.

By the lift of Blake's hands, Camdyn's features were going blurry, and fully disappearing from his face. It reshaped in mid-air, floating over toward Blake, who was doing the same thing to himself. They hovered above the waters, and like time was froze, they took every ounce of attention, mostly because I didn't want to look at them and accept that for a mere moment neither of them had a face where it was supposed to be.

As the two facial mask-looking things floated between all of us, and plastered to faces they didn't belong, Camdyn's body with Blake's face, and Blake's body with Camdyn's face, the two Blakes on the opposite team did stutter their actions, grow confused, and eventually changed target.

Flabbergasted, I could only watch Blake be submerged by his own team, and represented by Camdyn's face at that. Too quickly, his body floated at the surface, and I doubted he could still be breathing. He didn't even put up a fight. He didn't even try to get back to the surface. He just let them take him, and no matter how fast I got there, I didn't have enough time.

It sucks, I've already known, when something happens that you knew nothing about, but could've helped if you did, but it's much worse when you watched it all unfold and still couldn't devote yourself to make a difference.

I can't let him die like that again. I just can't. He's so insane with himself now that he's lost her, and it doesn't even have to be forever if he'd contribute to giving us a chance. If we could contribute for the best of one another.

"Camdyn, are you okay?" I asked him trying to go on with the game. As I brought him to solid ground, the different features were hard to look at when I knew they weren't his. He coughed up some water, leaning over toward the side from his laying flat stance, and afterward managed to smile, while he squinted up at the brightness around him.

"Cute," he said groggily and in a daze as if he was tranquilized, swiping my hair back behind my ear. "Didn't I tell you not to worry about me, love?"

"Love?" I questioned, but inside, the pitter patter was louder than rain against your window sill.

LEVEL EIGHT PASSED

TWO LIVES REMAINING

LEVEL NINE WILL SOON BEGIN