I looked at the figure standing in the dim light in confusion. While I was not certain, due to his general state of unkemptness and paleness, he looked very similar to Felix, Sophia’s brother. But why would he be angry at his sister, if she came to rescue him from torture? As I was frozen in confusion, Isleen moved forward, drawing his attention, which caused his features to soften.

“What are you talking about? They are the ones you guided me to.” She asked in her calm, dreamy voice.

“I… One of my earlier visions, it was of her,” he gestured towards Anath, “attacking my sister. To protect my little sister, I guided the others to attack them, when I was able to. Sadly, the others failed.” There was a bit of a sneer on his face.

“Tell me, why did you attack my little sister?” he asked Anath, in an angry voice. I was still a little confused, and Anath was just coming out of her shock, slowly and woodenly moving, her hands going up to her mask, unlocking it and dropping it, before jumping into his arms. I took that as confirmation that he was indeed Felix.

Now it was his turn to be shocked for a moment, but he managed to hug Sophia, holding her close. Isleen seemed a little confused and I had an idea of what might have happened.

“Isleen, meet Sophia, his little sister.” I addressed her, to start with the easy things.

“Sweetie,” I started, looking at Sophia, when I noticed her brother looking at me weirdly, “After our second meeting, when I brought you back with me for the first time. Did you question your path, your decision to be Anath? I mean, you almost died, so maybe you,” I continued, now focusing on Felix, “saw some sort of metaphor, an image of her internal struggle between her normal life as Sophia and her powered path of vengeance as Anath.”

There was a mumbling agreement coming from his chest, where Sophia was still hiding her face.

“So, I sent people to attack my little sister?” Felix asked in a stricken voice.

“Yes. And the people you sent almost killed me.” I added in the spirit of disclosure. “Take it as a lesson that your Power, impressive as it might be, is not infallible. Or rather, that it is very much open to interpretation.”

He did not look happy at that, maybe because I was in essence scolding him, so I stopped that train of thought, thinking about our further actions.

“Anyway. Do you know where the command centre and the data centre are? We should hit both, before we get out of here. And do you know if the kidnapped females are trained here?” I asked, hating the lack of information we had before going in. Our plans were quite literally made on the fly.

“I don’t think any girls are trained here, only guys.” he explained. “But know where the command centre is and I think I know where the data-servers are.”

“Good. We should check the other cells here as well. Even if those inside will not join us, they can escape on their own, adding to the confusion.” I suggested.

By now, Sophia had recovered and was putting her mask back on, getting ready to move on. I had heard her mutter to her brother while I had been thinking, but I had not eavesdropped, it seemed rude to do so.

“We should consider splitting up again. The faster we get out of here, the faster I can call in daddy and the cavalry.” Her words confused me a little, why would we call in her father?

“We can, but what do you mean about your father?” I asked.

“Didn’t I tell you?” she asked in a confused voice, “My father is the leader of the local Powered Association. I think, in your country you call them Heroes’ League.”

Now, I was well and truly confused. If she had an inside-line to the local Powered law-enforcement, why did she have to wait for Sophia and me to make this raid? But after a moment, I had two plausible explanations, one was that the local law-enforcement was just as corrupt as the one in New Brunsburg had been before I had uncovered the officers that had been bought by the Omegas or that they needed to have some sort of probable cause to come here, making our attack a good excuse to look around. If he wanted to keep his daughter’s power under wraps, it might be the second one.

It also added to our problem that we had attacked the compound in disregard of local and international law, which might become a problem.

During the moment I had thought about things, Anath had moved back next to her brother, making it obvious who would be paired up, if we split.

“Anath, can you and Isleen please check the other cells? And can you tell me where you think the data-centre is?” I asked.

The other two girls easily went along, leaving the room and moving to the next cell door, while Felix looked slightly angry. But he explained the layout that he knew in short words, giving me an adequate idea where to go. His explanation was interrupted a few times when heavy doors crashed onto the floor, but as he was wrapping up, the other two returned and told us that Felix had been the only one in the cells. That could be good, as it might mean that overall less guards had been around or bad, if it meant that every other powered had been brainwashed and would attack us before we could leave.

There was quite a bit of confusion on my mind when Isleen and I left, moving towards the data-centre, as I wondered what Anath and Felix were talking about. I wanted to have Galatea listen in, or listen in directly, but I resisted the temptation, trying to focus on my own job. By now, the command staff had managed to get their people in a semblance of order, after the original confusion and organised groups were trying to take us down.

Unfortunately for them, they only had handguns and the odd flash-grenade, which could not even scratch the paint of my armour. Mainly because it was not painted, but that was not my problem. But for me it was quite advantageous that they had grouped up, as I was able to take them down with the taser, which got quite the workout, and use a web-grenade to tie them down afterwards, getting squads of six with two grenades. If I had to collect single attackers until I got a pile of six, it would be rather annoying.

As we walked, Isleen started talking not on the com, but directly. “So, what can you tell me about my future sister in law?” she asked, almost causing me to stumble.

Not only was she talking about unrelated things in the middle of a combat operation, possibly distracting me and alerting our enemies, no she also assumed that she would marry Felix.

But I could not resist to answer, “What are you talking about?”, as I was truly curious why she thought that Felix and she would marry. To my understanding, they had met for the first time a few minutes ago and spoken a few words.

“Oh, I will marry him, no doubt about it. We shared our dreams, you know? I don’t think there is anything more intimate than that, we looked into the depths of each other's heart, seeing the truth of our characters.” She explained in her dreamy, singsong voice.

“Interesting…” At that point, we were interrupted by another group attacking us, making me lose track of the conversation and I did not try to pick it back up.

Shortly after, we arrived at the location Felix had believed to be the data-centre and a quick punch took care of the lock that was keeping the door closed. Nobody was inside, so I asked Isleen to cover the door and linked my armour and thus Galatea to the system. It was a little risky, there might be things that could hack into Galatea, but I had to take the risk.

“We are attacking the command centre.” Anath told me over the coms, as Galatea started to break through the flimsy defenses they had. Clearly, a direct access to their servers was not considered probable, so their defenses were comparatively weak.

As I waited for Galatea to do her thing, there were a few bangs, hinting at someone using flash-grenades, soon followed by Anath, telling me that the command centre had been secured.

I asked her to make sure that nobody could command from there and moments later, the noise of far away explosions echoed through the facility.

Just then, I heard a crackling sound and suddenly my infrared detectors went wild, as nearby high-temperature sources appeared, quickly changing the scale of my detectors from a range of room temperature as the bottom-point of the scale to roughly seventy degrees celsius as the high point, to a much, much less fine gradient. The new high-point was now in the thousands of degrees, easily two thousand degrees, coming from the inside of the servers, as some sort of emergency measure was making sure that I was unable to get more information. It was most likely linked to the command centre, once the command centre was taken, the information was destroyed. It was not a good system, but it worked.

As the temperature in the room skyrocketed, thanks to the incendiary system that was destroying the computers, so I cut the connection and left with Isleen, but not before tossing a few grenades back in, making sure that even if there was some sort of backup in the room, it would be slagged.