Eventually Nick and Maddy got back up and got ready to leave the challenge room. Then the realisation that he’d just pissed off the king of these cursed lands dawned.

“Hey uh, Reggie won’t kill me right?” He asked, though surprisingly Nick wasn’t unsettled by the thought.

“Nick, I won’t lie, I expected you to be dead already. So I doubt he’ll kill you now.” Maddy laughed.

Nick felt an overwhelming calmness, he simply acknowledged the absurd circumstances he’d found himself in and decided to make the most of it. He had a class that gave him cool skills, he’d been given the opportunity to get superhuman abilities and he was in a totally new environment for him to explore. While yes, there might be a few more negatives than positives, he didn’t get much of a choice. He could sit down and focus on all negatives and he could shell up and hide away. That wasn’t what he wanted though. He had an opportunity to experience something wild, something new. He also had his family with him. He had younger siblings he had to look after. Being down in the dumps wasn’t going to help him, or them.

Nick looked at Maddy and nodded. The duo left the room and used Nick’s map to find their way back to the main lobby. Nick wondered how long he’d been out for and Maddy checked her watch thing. He found out that it was an item crafted by people from the Parklands, each item was all tuned to the same time. This meant that everyone in the Complex was able to operate on the same time, which was pretty cool to Nick. Maddy told him he’d been out for about two hours, and it had been about three hours since he’d run off from the meeting.

Nick wondered whether the meeting would still be going on but Maddy assured him that even for the most mundane of meetings they were long and drawn out, let alone one about something like war. Maddy was right, when they made it back up to the table the group was still in discussion. The duo got a few looks but everyone seemed more focused on the talking points. Nick and Maddy were able to easily integrate back into the group standing behind Tony.

Nick listened in on the meeting for a while and picked up that they were devising a plan to work out a roster of some sort for guarding the hotel. The talk went on for a few more hours before things began to wrap up. There were groups from every floor organised to guard the two bridges that connected the car park to the Parklands. They were on the 74th and 73rd floors and would require quite a number of people to guard each one as they were quite large apparently.

There was also a team organised for guarding the 71st floor, as there was another bridge that connected the 70th floor to the Parklands. This part got Nick a bit more interested, he hadn’t heard much about the 70th floor up until this point. He knew that there was another settlement down there as he’d seen their encampment on the ramp, it had prevented them from continuing in the car.

Nick quickly found out there wasn’t a positive opinion about the lady that ran this floor, Margret. Reggie positively bristled with agitation when she came up. From what he gathered, Margret was at least as powerful as Reggie and ran her floor very differently to him. She seemed to have a pretty good relationship with the Parklands and engaged in a lot of trade with them. While Reggie didn’t think she’d let an army walk through her lands, or try to expand herself, he didn’t want to take the chance.

Nick was interested in checking out the 70th floor at some point, especially since he found that they had another event room down there. Apparently there was one every five floors, which was rather exciting.

Then the meeting was done. There wasn’t much of a fanfare, actually it felt that Reggie was just shooing them away. The groups began to file out of the hotel and back towards the market. Some groups dispersed and entered into shops or approached stalls, Tony just marched on through. He didn’t stop to even glance at the stalls, he pulled the team straight towards the ramps. Nick was more than disappointed, he had wanted to search through the market and spend some time window shopping. As he was passing by he activated his treasure skill and was immediately completely overwhelmed and almost tumbled over, thankfully Logan caught his arm.

That definitely hadn’t been the smartest of ideas. He hadn’t thought through the consequences of his choice there, though if he had have thought about it for a moment he would have realised how bad of an idea it was. Well it was certainly a lesson learnt. No more activating a skill that highlighted treasure in a market place.

Nobody thought too much of it, likely related to whatever his earlier freak out was. Everyone just kept walking, seeming to have expected Tony’s behaviour. Nick watched as the stalls dwindled and it was only once they got closer to the edge of the car park that he realised the light from the outside was getting dimmer, it must have been getting late in the day.

“Don’t look at the darkness Nick.” Joshua called out. “As soon as it starts to get dark it starts staining you.”

Nick quickly averted his eyes. Then he started thinking back to him and Benny challenging each other to staring out into the darkness, god he hoped Benny had taken some of the pills. He’d certainly make sure the kid had some as soon as he got back. The journey on the way back down to the 72nd floor was quiet. Tony didn’t speak a word and his silence spread throughout the group, no one wanting to be the first that talked.

Nick was pretty fine with the silence. It gave him some time to think about his next steps. He knew that bad things were coming for Tony, he didn’t seem overly aware of it but Reggie hadn’t included the 72nd Roamers in the groups of guards much. Far less than any other team. The Roamers were just on rotation down to the 71st floor a couple of times a week. Nick was sure Tony was happy to be able to keep the Roamers around more often but Nick knew something was going on.

Nick needed to talk with Maddy, she seemed to have a connection or something with the 71st floor, enough that she could plan to get her sister down there safely. He needed to get in on that plan. Getting his family away from Tony was the first step but now that he knew there was a war coming, he knew being on the 71st-75th floors was just asking for trouble. He’d try and get down to the 70th floor, to scope out the situation down there. There was also the Parklands, though he was very unsure about that being a possibility. He didn’t know much but remembered Mindy not having a positive opinion of them, which had to come from somewhere.

There were options, but the first step was the most important. Tony was a direct threat to his family's safety. Before anything else could happen Nick had to deal with this. His first thought was to classes, could he get his family classes? Would that help him in any way? He had a feeling Tony wouldn’t allow it. Would that even help him get them out? He couldn’t be sure so he scratched that one off for now. Running through the possibilities he realised that no matter what, he’d need outside help. Gareth seemed like a nice enough guy, but there had to be a reason he stuck around on the 72nd floor.

He didn’t know anyone else, so it was likely he’d have to rely on Maddy and her connections in this regard. Next his thoughts turned towards himself. He was an asset, his class made him valuable. Considering what Maddy said, it seems like a lot of people considered Explorers more trouble than they were worth, but there was still a market for them. The case of Greg proved the concept at least. So people weren’t going out of their way to create new Explorers or take the class themselves, but were more than happy to snatch up existing ones.

This was good. Tying into the threat that Joshua had given him about leaving the team he knew he had a solid bit of worth to work with. It was even better with Maddy combined. Healers seemed far more common, each team had someone that looked like Maddy or Benedict but surely a healer was a Class no one would complain about having more of. If he could bundle a deal with him and Maddy he would have a lot more bargaining power. He just had to make sure Maddy was on his side.

The cogs were turning, the almonds activating, neurons firing. Nick was hatching a plan. He just needed to get down to the 71st floor, then he could use his relationship with Maddy to start a connection with Doyle. Maddy likely had a plan of her own in this regard, but Nick was flexible and certainly open to options right now. It was just finding the time or opportunity to talk to her alone. She had made it sound like Jacob was a key factor that prevented much unmonitored contact between the team members, but there had to be a way around it.

Nick started brainstorming up a way to get himself down to the 71st, preferably alone, but he was coming up short. There was very little chance that Tony was going to let Nick out of his sights, not without some damn good reasoning to do so.

Nick was pulled from his thoughts as the group made a change of course, walking away from the ramps they’d been heading down. They had made it to the 72nd floor and were now heading back to the hotel. They passed by a rather shoddy looking encampment surrounding the ramps and were greeted by some half-asleep guards in junk metal armour. That’s when Nick realised something. The 72nd floor was dirt poor.

Tony was clearly a bit of a megalomaniac, a power hungry son of a bitch. He was likely pretty insecure about being the weakest of all the teams. Nick had seen the people from the other floors, they all had better gear, they all looked more enthused, more disciplined. This was an angle Nick could certainly use.

Tony had lusted after that 2-2 status hard. It wasn’t even a strong status from what Nick could tell, but he had been desperate for it. Nick wasn’t sure how such a weak person had come to run the 72nd floor but it gave him an opportunity. He was a bonafide treasure detector, he was Tony’s ticket out of poverty. Nick just had to use that angle to leverage himself.

Nick smiled to himself. He had it. He had the angle and he could quickly pull together a plan in his mind to take full advantage.

First things first though, he had a family to talk with. Nick had a particularly smart sister who’d been left to her devices for an entire day, which she no doubt had put to good use. She’d certainly have information for Nick to work with and then Nick would have an excellent conspirator for making the most devious of plans.

Nick couldn’t help but look forward to seeing his brother’s excitement at all the information he’d have to spill about the place they’d found themselves. He looked forward to seeing his father’s resourcefulness shine and he most definitely looked forward to whatever his investigative sister managed to find and infer from their surroundings.

Tony had put the Jones in a particularly rough spot, but the family was tough. They’d certainly be getting their pound of flesh.