Love and Salvation: Chapter 3 – Growing Bond

Chapter 3 – Growing Bond

I wake up to see Idelle and Deborah sitting in a hospital room around me. Syringes are pumping some kind of material into my semi-closed and slowly closing wounds.

“John!” both Idelle and Deborah say together.

They both look at each other, embarrassed that they said my name at the same time.

“How are you feeling?” Idelle asks.

Struggling to get myself comfortable, I say, “Fine. A little weak and hungry, but fine.”

“You’re lucky to just be fine. The doctors that your agency hired said you were nearing the verge of death,” Deborah says.

A doctor wearing a face mask walks in and examines my wounds. He says, “You’re healing properly enough and should be good to go in an hour. Idelle, the agency needs you to retrieve some materials. You should be receiving their location and pictures of what you’re looking for now.”

Idelle looks at me, I nod at her, and she reluctantly walks out of the room. The doctor injects me with something from a needle into my arm and tries to inject Deborah as well, but she’s resistant to it.

“No! I’m not taking anything you give me!” she says with her hands defensively up.

“This is to strengthen your skin and healing ability against the weapons that have been used against you. Please, cooperate with us, for John’s sake, if anything,” the doctor says.

“No, I don’t trust you! I’ve been getting by fine without it.”

“That’s because John’s been putting his life on the line for you, and look where that’s put him.”

“Tch…you…”

Deborah looks like she’s about the rip the doctor apart, so I say, “Can I inject it for you? Will you accept it then?”

Looking at me with suspicious eyes, she says, “Do you really trust these people to just inject you with something you don’t know the contents of?”

“It contains a mixture of what was used to experiment on you and what we use to increase the regeneration of superhuman cells,” the doctor explains. “I can tell you the technical terms for them, how we make it, and how we retrieved them, but I’m sure you know most of it, given your background as a doctor.”

“…alright. Fine. I’ll let John give it to me. If anything happens to me, I’m killing you all first, then beating him.”

The doctor hands me the needle, and I inject it into Deborah’s arm as he instructs me. Deborah seems stiff and hesitant, as if waiting for some horrible mutation to happen, but nothing does. She breathes a sigh of relief.

“See? We’re more open and willing to accommodate than before. If we did things the way we did in the past, I would’ve had guards come in here to restrain you before injecting you against your will,” the doctor says.

Deborah makes a growling sound at the doctor and then says, “That was exactly what was done to me. Are you one of the doctors who made me into what I am?”

“Yes, I am.”

Deborah grabs the doctor by the throat and slams him up against a wall.

“Deborah!” I say.

“It’s fine,” the doctor says in a pained voice. “I deserve it if she kills me. I admit I was only experimenting on people like you for a paycheck and to give myself immortality. Caring about the lives and well-being of others was secondary to me.”

“Was?” Deborah asks.

“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, make up for what I did, just like the rest of the agency, but if that costs me my life, then so be it.”

Deborah looks into the doctor’s eyes, trying to confirm if he’s telling the truth, and then drops him.

“There’s no reason to take my anger out on you. It’d be better to go after the bastards who have no regrets.”

“I agree. Once John’s sister is back with the materials, you’ll be ready to face them without restraint. Get some rest until then.”

The doctor leaves the room, leaving us alone for the time being.

“You must have some kind of otherworldly presence about you if you got them to change,” Deborah says to me.

“I was born in an adoration chapel and spent a lot of time there, so I guess you could say that I do. You seemed to have changed in the short span of time we’ve been together.”

“Yeah, it seems like it.”

I put my hand on Deborah’s. She doesn’t pull away, so I hold it and smile at her.

“See? You do have the potential to be a good person. You’re more than just a superhuman with acidic powers. I mean, look at me. My main tools as a hero involve violence just as much as yours,” I say.

“But you’re kind and use your powers to help more than anything. In fact, your greatest power seems to be your personality, given how much more it does for you than your actual powers,” Deborah says.

“You can do the same.”

“I’m not sure that’ll ever happen.”

“I’ll help you! We are supposed to spend the rest of our lives together, after all.”

“Oh, I somehow almost forgot about that. You’re still set on marrying me, huh?”

“I am, and I don’t see a reason I shouldn’t.”

“Even though I may be a danger to you, my being difficult to you, or my temper?”

“None of that bothers me. Everyone has their flaws.”

“Yeah? What’s yours? Do you forget to say bless you to people who sneeze? Have you not hugged enough people who need it?”

“That’s right.”

“Haha! I was kidding. You’re not the kind of person to have any major faults like me.”

“Minor faults and mistakes lead to bigger ones.”

“Whatever.”

For the next hour, Deborah and I engage in small talk about our lives, including both happy and sad moments, as well as things we regret. We often forget the points and stories we meant to bring up, but that’s fine. I enjoy having these kinds of conversations with people, where we keep talking about things and chatting without a particular direction or point, other than to enjoy talking to one another. It’s then that I notice Deborah has a permanent smile on her face, and pointing it out makes her blush and try to hide it. The doctor comes back in, tells us Idelle is back with the materials they need, that what they need to further strengthen us is almost ready, and walks away. Idelle barges in, sees I’m fine, and breathes a sigh of relief.

Knowing what she’s thinking, I say, “I’m fine, Idelle. I was just having a fun conversation with Deborah.”

Deborah blushes again and asks, “Was it fun for you?”

“Yeah. You seemed to enjoy our conversation, didn’t you?”

“I did…”

Idelle asks us about everything we talked about as if interrogating us and making sure we weren’t talking about anything bad, not about her, but about something she might disapprove of, like some overprotective parent. Soon after, the doctor comes in and injects a new formula into us.

“Do you want John to give you this as well?” the doctor asks Deborah.

“…yes.”

Idelle looks at us with suspicious eyes and asks, “You want him to inject you? Is that supposed to be an innuendo?”

Deborah stops herself from laughing and turns red. “No! It isn’t! I just trust him more!” she says.

“Hmm.”

With our injections complete, the doctor leaves the room, and an agent enters to provide us with our new debrief.

“After interrogating our mutual foes, we’ve discovered the location where they’re creating their new weapon. It’s an acidic weapon meant to be used against superhumans with durability and regeneration powers like John’s. It’s why they dared to go after him, despite his reputation as an undefeatable hero,” the agent explains. “They were going to assassinate you and other heroes allied to our cause and record it to sell their acidic weapons, but we’ve managed to stop their plans. Now, they plan to go back into the shadows and be forced to sell their weapons on the black market, but we won’t allow it.”

“I assume you already know where they are?” I ask.

“Yes. They’re using old safehouses and tunnels we’ve used to hide in or escape through, thinking that the changes they’ve made to them, and their new weapons, will save them or give us the slip, but it won’t. Not with you on our side.”

“Tell us where to go then so that we can end this.”

“We’ll upload them to your devices, but you’ll have to do some searching while you’re there, particularly around the symbols of spiders you’ve seen around our hideouts.”

“Spider symbols?”

“Yes,” the agent says while showing one on his device to us. “This symbol and its variants are a pseudo-calling card for our secret agency. We are also given a pseudo-name by it, that being Seventy-Three, since the spider’s legs appear to form that number.”

“Why Seventy-Three?”

“If you asked your parents or our more idealistic and older members, they’d say it’s a reference to Seventeen Seventy-Three, the year when this agency was said to have been started by citizens at all levels of society who rose against their government to start their own and force it to change, all the while throwing tea and naysayers into a harbor. This is the essence of Seventy-Three’s ideology. We exist in and outside of our country’s society, working in secret for what we consider to be the greater good, while having enough influence on the public to erase our names from the history books and public knowledge and make people think our actions were done by anonymous groups and people, who aren’t connected other than by coincidence.”

“You sound like glorified conspirators and puppet masters, who want to legalize and justify your own actions,” Deborah says.

“The majority of us don’t deny that. It’s an all too common saying that power corrupts those who wield it, but everyone wants to control their lives, and those who want to do that will inevitably have to change the environment around them, such as their friend and family group, their local community, and even their country or world, if they’re so bold. Like it or not, you’re not so different from us and will have to do the same as us for your own part if you want to sustain the normal life you crave.”

Deborah grunts, conceding that what’s being said is true. With the big speeches done and our plan clear, Deborah, Idelle, and I head out to the locations we’re given and search them. Now taking note of these places because of what the agent said, the places that we’ve been searching and fighting our foes in are not just places like hospitals, government facilities, and law enforcement offices, but also historical sites or museums that have important objects from our country’s past. Seventy-Three ties itself not only to the government and places of power, but also to places of history and significance. Their symbols are engraved behind chairs, shelves, under desks, and even on historical objects and pictures of current and famous individuals, hidden in plain sight.

We search further around these symbols, touching them to activate hidden passageways or break the area around them to reveal rooms and storage areas. Going deeper into them, we find our targets and quickly dispatch them. Some of them kill themselves with their own weapons, suicide pills, or blow themselves up to avoid capture, none of which Deborah minds since she wants them all dead anyway. Their weapons aren’t as effective as they used to be against us, and only give me minor burns or cuts, which are quickly healed soon after. By the end, no one talked or tried to talk to make us turn against the agency or join their side. I guess in this line of work, our actions speak for themselves, and when you’re this deep in the manipulation of society behind the scenes, there’s no digging you’re way out because you’re supposed to be non-existent to begin with. In that way, I have some respect for Seventy-Three, being humble enough to be satisfied with getting the results they want and not getting any public credit for their deeds.

After our job is done, the agents of Seventy-Three thank us, gather or erase the evidence of their enemies, or take them into custody, and give us our paycheck under the table. They tell us without holding anything back that they’ll use the weapons and research gathered here for their purposes, and give what they want to the government and public institutions as if they came up with it.

They say that, “In this line of work, if you’re the first one to present it, it doesn’t matter how you got it, as long as no one will face future or present consequences for it.”

Deborah and Idelle are disgusted by their blatant honesty, but don’t argue or say anything to them. As for me, I trust them with it and can only hope that I can further influence Seventy-Three to become a better agency and protector of our country.

With the threat dealt with, I grab Deborah’s hands and ask, “So, will you give me a chance now?”

She blushes, tries and fails to keep eye contact, and says, “…I…I guess so. I owe you that much since you’ve helped me get a second chance at a normal life.”

I hug her and say, “Thank you so much, but where will you stay? You can stay at my house if you don’t have anywhere to go.”

“I don’t have anywhere to stay. Still, don’t you think sleeping together is taking things too fast?”

“I didn’t say anything about sleeping together. I’ll stay on the couch, while you get my bed.”

Deborah is blushing even more and can’t maintain eye contact with me at all.

“…yeah…that’s fine…I thought that too…”

Idelle rolls her eyes. Together, we head back home with Deborah. I’m hoping that I can convince her to accept my marriage proposal during our time together.