The Spy

[RHINO COBRAS SLAIN: 1/10]

[QUEST PROGRESS: 10%]

"I just crunched up a rhino cobra!" Ian exclaimed.

[HEALTH POINTS NOW AT 81/100]

"My health is dropping!"

Then there was an interlude of straight up unbearable pain as Lilac cleaned his wound and bandaged it.

"It could have happened to anyone," Lilac said softly. "Them cobras, they're a menace. We could've died if one rhinoed through the tents."

Ian shivered, both due to the pain and the thought of the absolute destruction that had passed them by.

"At least you got one of them." Kortock kept looking somewhere into the darkness that was only torn by the flashlight that Ian had given him.

"Give that to me," Ian said.

He had a suspicion, and the feeling had finally risen from the waves of his subconscious mind as a fully formed thought.

He pointed the flashlight towards Lilac.

She was all turquoise.

He pointed the flashlight towards himself.

He was pink, and so was Kortock.

"Lilac is not on our side," Ian said, breathing heavily now, panicking over the permissions he had given her, the trust he had given her, and he was upset enough that he gave his system the command to revoke every permission she had over his finances and insurance.

[ACCESS DENIED]

"Damn me! Goddamn!"

Lilac shuffled away and suddenly disappeared in a thick cloud of darkness.

All of the men were now awake and completely aware of the situation. Ian fired his gun at the spot Lilac had been in, but her concealment skills made hitting her an impossible task.

"Don't you worry, son," Kortock said and offered his shoulder for Ian to give him something to lean on.

"My gambling skills make me a master of tracking, and Aiden is just a plain good hunter. We will have to track down that treacherous young lady and reveal her true intentions. I feel like she will be the key to all of this assassination business."

"You can DREAM of catching ME!"

The voice belonged to Lilac, but it had such a dark, threatening tone to it that it was hard to believe it was the same sweet girl that had witnessed Ian puke his guts out in that little hospital room.

Then Lilac appeared from the shadows, and she was dropping her facade quickly, to boast, perhaps. She took off a wig that revealed her true hair color.

Her long lilac hair was now swaying in the wind. She stood defiantly in her impractical black heels, a formfitting purple suit hugging her every curve. Even her real body shape was different – she had stronger arms and stronger curves, and if it was even possible, she had a prettier face than before.

Ian and Aiden both shot at her, and Ian did his best to summon the mental strength to fully mean to burn the girl, but she was gone again, in a cloud of black and purple smoke. There was nothing they could do, as it was dark now, anyway.

Ian did not feel like sleeping, though. He was too upset about being stabbed in the back.

"I should have known!" Kortock growled and punched a tree.

The tree was either not as sturdy as it had looked, or then Kortock was too strong for his own good. The tree came down with a mighty rumble that was surely enough to wake up the whole jungle.

"Whoops," Ian said. "At least you didn't give millions to a woman with a concealment system. I really should have known. This is awful! I should have realized."

"No, I am the smart one here, at least it is supposed to be that way," his mentor said with a bitter chuckle. "Her system made her the perfect spy, and I trusted her. I was an idiot."

[INTELLIGENCE IS NOW 17]

"That's terribly helpful," Ian muttered. "Getting smart mainly made me want to burn stuff."

"I think…I think that might be a handy desire right now," Aiden warned him. "There are a dozen filtigers approaching us from the shadows. They don't seem to be looking for food. They are…they definitely see us as a threat. Yeah. We should…you should burn stuff, Ian."

Ian had to wait to see a filtiger in the narrow space that his flashlight could illuminate, but he did not wait much longer.

"AARGH!"

He set the first one as his target.

"Ian, you don't have to be careful, everything that can burn has already –"

The filtiger went up in flames with its final, pained roar splitting Ian's eardrums.

Another came, a smaller one, but Ian had to do something about it as well.

Ian hit it with Target Fire.

The filtiger youngling burned alive.

Ian raised his gaze towards the next one, ready to set it on fire as well.

"Calm down, son! I know you want to kill things," Kortock said and pointed at the disappearing tails of the remaining filtigers. "But we still need that biological bumper. We still need to leave some of them alive. Or we will all be krobinnuti food."

"All right," Ian said, because he was tired and angry and if he had been a person with no impulse control, he would have been in the mood for some alcohol.

They had no booze, which was absolutely a good thing. Ian didn't want more fights, not after finding out that the first crush he had acted on was towards a traitor, a hostile spy.

"But why would anyone take the side of krobinnuti?" he asked his mentor. "Are we not supposed to be in this war together?"

Kortock shook his head. "Some people are just after money and a better life for their own families. Sometimes, the entire species is insignificant for them when they have to pay for daddy's chemotherapy or the education of their three daughters. And who can really say that things would be different if they were the ones to choose?"

"I don't know about you, but I would choose differently," Ian claimed, but he was not sure if he was being truthful.

[HEALTH POINTS NOW AT 82/100]

"My health is doing good. I should probably try to get some sleep."

"I will watch over us with Aiden," Kortock said. "You will take the second watch with Mister Tank over here."