It didn’t take long before Din caught up with the rest of the group.

Right at the end of the stairs was a doorway that led to a long and dark hall. Tal and Cyen were waiting at the end of the stairs for Din while Lewis was waiting quite a bit ahead of them.

“We don’t have much time to waste,” Lewis announced before moving forward.

Cyen, who was sitting on the stairs, got up and then followed. Tal remained standing. He was deep in thought.

“What’s wrong?” Din asked.

“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. Let’s go.”

Tal walked ahead with Din following close behind him.

The hallway extended far, but it didn’t branch of or change in shape. The hall remained the same, with a flickering torch placed the same distance from one another. The walls and the floor were made of stone and the air inside the hall was cold.

Everyone was breathing heavily and shivering every so often, but they continued walking forward. The only other noise in the hall were the sounds of their boots and occasionally, the sound of rubble falling from the ceiling.

Eventually, the hall widened and we could see bars on both sides of the hallway. It was hard to see, but I could make out the shape of people behind the bars.

“These are the captives,” I pointed out.

Din squinted his eyes to check and agreed, “They’re holding the captives here.”

“I’ll get them out,” Lewis said as he prepared a strike against the door.

“No, wait!” Tal stepped in front of Lewis. Lewis lowered his sword. “Leave the rescue to team E. Our job is to go further in and get rid of any guards.”

“But the captives are right in front of us. We can just free them ourselves.”

“I can’t let you do that, Lewis. We have assigned roles for a reason, we have to stick to it.”

“Move… out of the way, lad,” Lewis raised his sword once more.

“Don’t you think it’s weird how, even after we’ve entered their lair, we haven’t run across a single guard?”

Lewis checked his surroundings. He didn’t seem to have realized at all.

“We’ll go ahead and check out the situation,” Tal instructed. “We’ll leave the rescue to team E. Got it?”

With a sigh, Lewis strutted off further down the hall.

“Are you sure about this?” Cyen asked.

“Yeah. I don’t like this. My instincts are telling me this is all a trap. We have to make sure it’s safe enough down here before the other teams show up.” Unlike Tal’s usual self, he appeared distraught. Sweat was visibly rolling down his forehead as he looked at the situation.

The captives remained almost motionless inside their cells and the fact that there were no guards. Something was definitely off.

“Lewis, you’re moving too fast. Wait up for us,” Din called out, but Lewis kept his pace.

Din and the others quickened their pace to catch up to Lewis.

“Agh—!”

Cyen sudden screamed. We all turned around to check on her.

She was holding onto her left ear. She quickly pulled out something from her ear. Her ear was bleeding.

“Cyen, what’s wrong?” Tal rushed towards her.

“I was using a sonar device to listen in on what was beyond what we could see. I sent a device ahead that was transmitting all the sounds to me, but something just broke it. The sound of it breaking caused my device to short circuit.” She showed the thing she pulled from her ear. It was a black stone-like object that had a broken front.

“Is your ear fine? Looks like it’s bleeding, hold still,” Tal instructed as he pulled out a piece of cloth from his pocket. “I’ll just wrap this around for now. We can’t go back now, but this’ll do until you get it checked.”

“Thanks.”

Tal carefully wrapped the cloth around her ear.

Lewis became impatient, “We don’t have a lot of time. We need to get moving.”

“How could you say that? She just got—” Tal began, but Cyen placed a hand on his chest.

“It’s fine. Lewis is right. We should really get going.”

“But…”

“There’s one thing I’d like us to do first. Something is up there. Something that broke my sonar device. We should have Lorelei check on it before we go in.” Cyen suggested.

“We can’t just leave it to Lorelei, it’s too dangerous for her to go alone,” Din opposed.

“What are you talking about, Din? Lorelei is already dead, she should be the perfect one to go in alone to check for danger,” Tal pointed out.

Even though I was dead, I still felt afraid of going in by myself. Din turned towards me. I wanted to tell him how afraid I was, but I could only nod to him.

What Tal was saying was true. I was the only one who wouldn’t be in any danger going in front of everyone like this.

“I’ll do it,” I told Din.

I then began moving down the hall. Lewis was angry, but he remained silent.

After passing by Lewis, it was a while before I entered a large room. The room was empty aside from a hole in the center of the room. I checked around first just to make sure no one was around before looking down the hole. It seemed like some sort of a well, I couldn’t see that well since the room the brightly lit while the well was completely dark.

It wasn’t until I focused hard on the well that I could finally make out what was inside.

It was filled with bodies.

Lifeless bodies lay down inside the well, piled on top of one another.

The skins of these bodies were devoid of all color. Worst of all was the fact that most of them still had their eyes open.

I covered my mouth as the smell of the rotten corpses filled my nose. I felt like I could throw up any minute now. Even while only being a ghost, the urge to want to puke was strong.

I had to move away from the well and take deep breaths before I could finally calm down. I had to cough a couple of times to make sure I caught my breath.

This must be where all the bodies were stored before they threw them outside in the city, one by one.

I then turned my sights towards the door that was located beyond the well. I moved through the door and saw a group of men in lab coats, gathered around a table.

The room had many different contraptions here and there. With bookshelves as high as the room itself and pipes going from one place to another, the room was cluttered. I checked around and noticed that there were no other doors and the only people in the room were the seven men in lab coats and three men with weapons and armor.

When I got a closer look at what the men in lab coats were gathered around, I saw that the thing they were looking at was a small black circular device that appeared broken. It looked like it had been stepped on. That might be Cyen’s device.

I immediately went back to the group and told Din about what I found.

“Only three guards, huh?” Lewis smiled with confidence. “We can definitely take them on, lad. What do you say?”

Tal nodded. “We should just take care of the guards and then hold the scientists captive until the other teams come in.” Tal then placed his hand on his chin and asked, “Is it just me who’s getting a really bad feeling about this? The underground lab is large, but we haven’t run across a single guard down here. Then in their lab, they only have three guards?”

“They had the entire mansion and garden filled with guards. They probably weren’t expecting anyone to raid them tonight,” Lewis said. “Being too careful can be a bad thing too, lad. Don’t let it slow your judgement.”

Lewis moved forward without waiting for Tal’s response.

“Guess we’re going,” Tal sighed.

“You’re the squad leader, Tal,” Cyen grabbed his shoulder. “You have the final say in what we do as a team. If you don’t want to do this, we shouldn’t. We can just wait for the other teams.”

Tal shook his head. “No, it’s fine. This is the right thing to do. We have our enemies cornered, we have to strike now.”

“Fine, if that’s what you really want to do.”

Cyen seemed unconvinced, but went along with Tal’s decision anyways.

Din remained silent and followed closely behind the two.