Monster Exchange Program

by Mark Albany

  The campus dining hall was a lot nicer than I thought it would be. The mess hall back in the M&M training facility had been hard to associate with food for most of the humans that made their way inside. There was something to be said about private universities, though, even if most of the students needed to pay a little extra to have access to it. Of course, in my case, access to the cafeteria for three meals a day was included in my scholarship.

  People liked to ask what trolls ate. The answer was, pretty much anything. There was a standing joke about the Vestfell tribe that they grew apple trees not because they liked the apples but because they liked the wood that the trees provided. It escalated to the point where every time the leaders came over to my tribe for a visit, they were offered firewood before they were offered food. I wasn’t a fan, but jokes were like traditions and needed to be observed as often as possible.

  Half-trolls inherited that hearty appetite, or at least, I had. I could down pretty much anything if I needed to. The food they offered around here was pretty exquisite, though, and in an all-you-can-eat buffet, too. I started off with bacon. Trolls could eat pretty much anything, but most had a particular taste for meat. I was no exception.

  Lots of bacon, some of the meat strips and some scrambled eggs. Fries, and a touch of salad because I was human and needed to stave off some of the human health problems that came with a protein-heavy diet. I sat at one of the abandoned tables. Those few humans who were watching were in for a treat the likes of which wouldn’t be seen outside of a competitive eating contest. The pile of food on my plate was gone in a few minutes. Delicious, greasy like I enjoyed it, the smell of the eggs and meat lingering in my nostrils even after the plate had been emptied. I was tempted to attack the buffet again, but I put it off for now. I had one extra meal to tag in for today, but that could wait for the moment.

  I moved over to the men’s room, ignoring the eyes that followed me as I closed and locked the door behind me. It wasn’t supposed to be done by anyone but the staff, but I needed a bit of privacy for the moment. I pulled my phone out. It was one of the new ones, the kind that projected holographic images. I’d played around with the circuitry, which allowed the hard light to extend beyond the borders of the phone, pushing it over to a nearby wall as I accepted an incoming call.

  “Afternoon, Chief,” I said, placing the phone on a nearby sink and crossing my arms. The image that was projected onto the wall like it was right in front of me was of a tall, full orc, powerfully built, although a little shorter than I was. Orcs didn’t have much in terms of height versus trolls—especially war trolls. There was gray in his dark hair, and his ears were longer and more pointed than mine, with a dozen rings pushed through them. His tusks were a lot longer too, circling up and over his jaw, with decorations carved into the ivory of them. Tusks of orcs and trolls never stopped growing for the duration of their life, meaning that, unless they were broken, they were a good place to permanently carve mementos of their happiest and most victorious moments.

  Ryko was the first orc to be accepted into the FBI, and when they opened up the Myths and Monsters Branch, he was made the head of it. Ryko had a lot of shit to put on his tusks. Calling him Chief, even if he wasn’t technically the head of a tribe, was a matter of respect.

  “Afternoon, Nate,” Ryko said, crossing his arms over his chest. The juxtaposition of his one eye and enormous bulk wrapped inside a shiny new suit and sharp tie was jarring. “Or should I say, Agent Ellison?”

  “Special Agent Ellison,” I corrected. “Says so on that shiny silver badge they gave me.”

  “Special Agent, it is,” Ryko chuckled. He was a by-the-books kind of orc, and usually a lot gruffer and more foul-tempered than he was now, which meant that he had just received some good news. I doubted that I would be privy to it. Most orcs weren’t a fan of trolls, to begin with, let alone mingling the races. Ryko, however, was the kind who thought that I and others like me were the future, whether it was approved of or not.

  “Do you have anything to report, yet?” Ryko asked. “I know it’s your first day, so I’ll temper my expectations.”

  “Nothing concrete, yet,” I replied, keeping my voice down in case anyone was hanging around outside the bathroom door. “Girls are missing from the campus all right, but nothing that says our kind of situation yet. I’ll keep on looking, though. I have a…hunch.”

  “Hunch?” Ryko asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “A…premonition, I guess,” I replied. “Something that came to me when I was reviewing the footage we got.”

  Ryko had told me more than a few times that he didn’t like me using the old magic. It was antiquated, a relic of a bygone era when trolls needed such things to survive. We were in a civilized place now, and magic wasn’t used in civilized places. Still, there was natural respect for the powers that had sustained our people for so long. He nodded, not questioning my ‘hunch.’

  “Keep investigating,” Ryko said after a long silence. “Keep following those hunches. Even if it’s not our kind of thing, it can’t hurt to track what’s taking these girls down and put a stop to it.”

  “Will do, Chief,” I replied.

  “Ryko, out,” he growled, ending the transmission. That killed the hologram and retracted the extended light splitters. I picked up the device and returned it to my pocket, realizing that someone was knocking on the door.

  Opening the door revealed a couple of young men wearing letterman jackets waiting outside.

  “Come on, this ain’t a private room, tusk-face,” the one closest to me snarled, coming closer.

  I placed a hand on his shoulder and forced him a step back. “Says the guy who has to squat to take a piss.”

  “The hell does that mean?” the young tough asked.

  “It means to use the fucking ladies’ room. It suits you better.”

  They didn’t have an answer for that, and I didn’t wait around for them to come up with one. I had work to do, so I mimed tipping a hat and brushed roughly past them. Food would have to wait. I needed to look into the disappearances and hunt down clues while trying to pass it off as casual interest—a new student wanting to know more about where he would spend most of his next three to five years. As I made my way around campus, I pulled the flyer that I’d plucked from the post out of my pocket and inspected the woman’s features more closely. This was the same woman from my vision. It was difficult to forget when you’d been in the eyes of the person taking her. Her name was René Pearson. Her parents were offering quite a substantial reward for any news regarding her, and there was a police hotline set up to call in case anyone saw anything. I made a mental note to memorize the number.

  “Hey, you!”

  My head snapped up, fingers quickly refolding the flyer as I turned to see Kelly jogging over to me. She was wearing fewer clothes—a short skirt and a thin, red cardigan that showed off a lot more curves—than when I’d first seen her so it took me a moment to recognize her, mostly relying on the bangs and glasses. She’d been hiding that tight little body the entire time.

  “Hey,” I replied quickly when I realized that she was waiting for me to say it back before continuing. I quickly tucked the flier back into my pocket.

  “What was that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Just a frat, advertising their rush ahead of time,” I lied smoothly, without needing so much as a beat to have my story.

  “Nice!” Kelly chuckled. “I’ve been thinking about joining a sorority. I’m a sophomore, but I didn’t have time to do anything during my freshman year. Too busy jumping around from one cause to another while trying to keep up with my studies. I think I might join one this year, though. My folks told me that it’s important to enjoy your time in college, you know?”

  “You should rush Tri-Delt,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Tri-Delt as in Delta, Delta, Delta. You know their slogan, right?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tri-Delt,” I said. “Everyone
else has.”

  She giggled and swatted me playfully in the arm. I frowned, pulling the flyer back out. “Actually, this… Know anything about this chick?”

  The look of confusion in her eyes only lasted a moment, as she likely wondered why I had lied. So did I, honestly, but hey, I was still getting a feel for this place.

  “The missing girl?” Kelly asked, tugging my arm and urging me to walk with her. “A lot of rich parents have rich kids coming to school here. If the story about kids being kidnapped from campus starts to spread, the university will see a drop in donations and applications next year. Campus security has very clear priorities to protect the university first, students a distant second.”

  “Huh,” I grunted. “Rich people problems.”

  “Right?” Kelly chuckled. “Anyway, I don’t know that much about the girl. I didn’t know her very well, and I wasn’t around when she went missing. I spent my summer break with my parents up in Malibu, so I wasn’t here when people started disappearing.”

  I nodded. She looked at me. From the way her eyes narrowed, it seemed like she knew that it wasn’t the answer I’d hoped for.

  “I know a couple of girls who stuck around, though,” Kelly said, guiding me back to the fountain section of the campus. “I can introduce them to you if you’d like.”

  I nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “May I ask why you’re so interested in this?” Kelly asked as we kept on walking.

  “I guess part of it comes from morbid curiosity,” I said with a small smirk. It wasn’t really a lie, I thought. “Another part is just me watching my back. A monster like me comes to campus, girls are disappearing, and people make the undeniable association.”

  “But you arrived after the disappearances started,” Kelly pointed out.

  “Sure, but that won’t matter to a certain kind of person,” I said, my eyes falling on a group of youths that stopped talking and stared at us. “Those guys over there, for instance, will be the first to tell campus security that they saw you walking and talking with me if you were the one to disappear next. The admin for our building would offer a similar story.”

  “Disgusting,” Kelly growled.

  “It’s only natural,” I said with a small smile. “I don’t hold people’s natures against them. It’s just as bad as holding their appearance or where they’re from against them.”

  “That’s… very understanding of you,” Kelly chuckled. “Oh, there they are.”

  She waved to a pair of girls that I already recognized. Blonde and black hair. Jennifer and Crystal, if memory served. Both came over to where we stood.

  “Hey, Kelly,” Jennifer said, wrapping the smaller girl up in a hug.

  “Jen, Crys, this is Nate,” Kelly said, hugging both of them before turning back to me.

  “We’ve met,” I replied, forcing a small smile to my face out of politeness.

  “Yeah, Nate fixed my phone after I dropped it,” Jen laughed. “I still don’t know how you did that.”

  “That’s classified, ladies,” I answered with a sly smile. Jennifer and Crystal snickered at this, their pert breasts bouncing up and down.

  “Nate is curious about René,” Kelly explained. “You guys were still on campus, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Crystal said, her smile disappearing. “There was a party up at the Sigma Chi frat house. We were all doing shots when she got a phone call and stepped out. She didn’t come back, afterward.”

  I narrowed my eyes. There had been no mention of a phone being found in the area in the reports. Too much had been obfuscated by campus security in their attempt to protect the university.

  “Did anybody ever find her phone?” I asked, tilting my head.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Jen replied. She was about to continue when a tall, young man approached. He was handsome. Nice jawline, expensive haircut, and trendy clothes, like he’d just stepped out of a fraternity recruiting poster. I immediately hated him. He draped his arm over Jennifer’s shoulders as if he owned her.

  “Hey, Cal,” Jennifer said softly, rolling her eyes.

  “Jen, I haven’t seen you since we got back,” Cal said, leaning in to kiss her. She pulled away just in time. He didn’t look like he liked that, but out in public, he restrained himself from trying again. Instead, he focused his frustration on me. “Is the tusk-face bothering you, babe?”

  “No, we were having a pleasant conversation,” Jennifer replied.

  “Well, it’s only a matter of time,” Cal chuckled, disengaging from Jennifer and coming over to me. He was trying to look tough, despite the fact that I was several inches taller and almost fifty pounds heavier than he was. “Get lost, tusk-face. Go find someone who doesn’t mind you bothering them.”

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” Jennifer growled.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” I said, raising my hands and staring Cal down with a smirk. “I was just about to get my stroll on.”

  “Hey,” Kelly said. She reached out and grabbed my hand, stopping me in my tracks for a moment and tugging until I faced her. I ended up a little closer than she had anticipated, but she didn’t pull away. I didn’t pull away, either. She looked up at me, a small smirk touching her full lips. “I’ll see you back at the dorm, okay?”

  I sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, you will.” I needed to pull away, start walking, but there was something in me that didn’t want to part ways from her just yet. Being close was comforting. Well, that and distracting. I had a job to do here, with the possibility of lives being at risk. Being distracted wasn’t an option.

  4

  I knew that I could get used to the kind of food they put out in the dining hall, although I assumed they would rethink allowing me a card as part of the scholarship over the next couple of weeks, considering the kind of dent I planned to make in their food stores.

  It was nothing personal. They weren’t going to go out of business just because they needed to buy a little extra food to feed a growing half-troll.

  It had been a productive day for me, even if it wasn’t very long. Under the guise of exploring the campus, I scouted the whole of the place. The central area was mostly made up of the study and lecture halls, and one library building, all named after donors and storied alumni of the past. I even recognized a couple of names. There were names on the fountains and benches, too, probably the lesser donors.

  After a bit of looking around, I managed to find the spot where the girl had been taken and mentally reconstructed the scene from my very vivid recollection of events in the vision. She had been picked up while out in the open, on the path, but there was nothing left that could be used as evidence. Even the bushes and the grass where one of the kidnappers hid was already too disturbed. There were tracks, dozens of them, all too fresh to have been part of the kidnapping.

  And, there was no sign of her phone anywhere. I’d thought that it was a lead at first, but unless the kidnappers were so idiotic that they kept their victims’ phones, they had probably thoroughly disposed of it to make sure that nothing could be tracked or lead back to them.

  It brought another idea to mind, but I needed to work it out a little more. I had the raw materials to build the required tracking device, but I did need something to track, first.

  As the sun began to descend past the horizon, I decided that I’d done enough legwork for the day. I needed to gather what I had and assemble a plan of attack. They’d gone over how we were supposed to build up cases back at the Academy, and the fact that there might be some supernatural elements to this didn’t change how that was supposed work.

  After a big, quick meal, I spent a few hours in the dining hall, assembling all the data, trying to get an idea of what had happened. There was no camera footage of the first two abductions but there were a few witness reports. None covering the actual incidents, but there was enough for me to start constructing something like a picture.

  Sure, it was a little uncomfortable to do this out in the open,
but people would simply assume that I was getting ready for classes to start tomorrow. Nobody would come close enough to see the actual contents of the files I was reading.

  Of course, I could have done the work back in my dorm, but there was the small matter of me sharing the room with someone who was already aware that I was at least curious about the disappearing girls. Having files on the topic with no explanations would only make things worse.

  I remained in the cafeteria until one of the people working there told me that they would be closing up shop in a few minutes. I checked my watch and thanked the man as I packed up my shit. It was half-past nine in the evening. I was thankful that they’d bothered to keep the place open that long.

  The light was on in the dorm room when I got there. I wasn’t surprised. Kelly hadn’t seemed like the partying type, which could be a problem. Hopefully, my next roommate was the kind that stayed out partying all night, giving me free rein of the room between him being absent or sleeping off a hangover.

  And someone who was a lot less…distracting.

  “Hey, Nate,” she said, turning to face me. She wore even less now than she had before. Incredibly short pajama shorts, a matching long-sleeved shirt, and nothing underneath from what I could see. Oh, she wore glasses, too, I realized. Glasses are a very underrated thing on ladies.

  She grinned at me as my attention returned.

  “Hey, Kelly,” I replied, forcing a smile to my lips as I placed my backpack on my bed. “I guess they still didn’t figure out that shit with our rooms yet, huh?”

  “I guess not,” she replied with a chuckle, looking around. “Still, it’s not like it’s the end of the world, right?”

  “No…it’s not,” I said, struggling and mostly succeeding to keep my eyes from dropping to check her out. She was dressed modestly the other two times that I’d met her, and now that she wore something more revealing, the curves that she had hidden before—the ones that filled in all the right places—became a lot clearer, and a lot more… What was the word?