“And how do you suggest we do that?” Matthew quickly countered.

“We already know where we can hide, and it’s likely that the documents are in one of the rooms around here. I doubt there’ll be any indicators of which room it is, but if they are all empty that makes our job fairly easy. As we just need to avoid or knock out the guards and we search through all the rooms,” John said, trying to sound confident, though not entirely sure that will be so easy.

“There aren’t any guard patrols in this corridor, but we saw a couple in the surrounding corridors,” Yan added matter-of-factly.

“That should help, if anyone gets into trouble, make sure to come back here where we can easily help you. Our party is still up so we can keep watch on everybody, so I think our best bet for now is to split up into groups of two and three. I’ll take Yan and Matthew,” he looked to both of them. Yan nodded, while the ice mage looked uncomfortable, “Bass, you’re with Charlotte, ok?”

“Sure!” the cheery approval was her only response.

“Before I forget, I need to add you to the party, Matthew. What’s your last name?”

“My family’s name is York,” Matthew answered the question almost politely.

’Isn’t that an English city?’ John found that quite strange but nonetheless quickly invited Matthew to the party. The ice mage’s face turned to shock for a moment, and he pressed on the air, at which time his stats and level appeared on the side of John’s vision. He was also level 20, like Charlotte. Which made John’s mind wander again, 'I suppose that makes sense… I wonder why he couldn't deal with that Golem?'

Shaking his head, he remembered it was time for them to start their mission. John signaled everyone out of the room as he turned to Bass to speak.

“We’ll take the left side, you guys take the right,” she quickly agreed, “you should also take this,” he handed over Yan’s map, ”keep that in case you two get out of range of the minimap. We three will be together so we’ll have my version if need be,” John said. It felt to him like all this was prone to go wrong, so he hoped that would serve as enough precaution for now.

The two groups soon split apart, as they both disappeared down the separate corridors cautiously. Both hallways were extraordinarily dark, the only lights were a small one hanging from the ceiling in the middle of each corridor. Everything from the walls to the floor were made of some metal-like material which somehow absorbed more light than it reflected, despite its bluish gray color.

Luckily, the shadows it provided were exactly what they needed to hide. John went in front, checking the hallways was clear of guards. When he came back and they headed forwards, Yan noticed a room they had not checked to the right. The others had covered the rooms in the initial hallway, but there were apparently quite a few more to check.

As they entered the dark room a slight glow appeared in Yan’s eyes, and the light switch was quickly found and turned on. So John and his two teammates began searching the rooms. It was another office room like the one he and Matthew had woken up in, although this time there were four desks in the room, all with drawers.

“This is a waste of time, I’m sure they marked the room with the documents somehow,” Matthew complained as the other two worked silently.

“We can’t take that risk,” John had no patience for the cryomancer’s complaints. That was enough to shut him up for a while. When they finished clearing the room and found nothing, however, his anger returned.

“This is ridiculous, we can’t go checking every room here!” his tone was more venomous than arrogant now.

“I doubt there are any easy to find markings. Those would defeat the purpose of giving us real experience in an unknown scenario. Although it might be guarded, at least,” Yan said, she had seemed quiet earlier but she was clearly listening. Matthew became less angry, though for how long that would last, John wasn’t sure. Thankful for the help, he led them into the next room.

The five of them were sitting on the floor in one of the empty rooms, watching four guards standing at the entrance to another room through a crack in the door. After two hours of searching through all of the empty rooms and finding no other similarly guarded rooms, it became obvious that was where the documents would be. It had been a few minutes since they sat down, but instead of coming up with a solution, most of the time was spent with John and Matthew arguing.

“I told you it would be marked,” The ice mage was glad to point out John’s mistake with both a hint of mockery and anger. He was, however, being uncharacteristically quiet, as they all were. Whispering was necessary for them not to be discovered, after all.

“What matters now is how we get in there,” the Gamer quickly retorted, “every three minutes two more guards pass here, so whatever we do needs to happen fast,” he sat there now, trying to think up a plan or hoping someone else had one. Deciding to cease interacting with the croymancer’s complaints.

“Let’s make a distraction! I could make a loud noise with my halo and force them to move away from the door to check it out,” Bass suggested.

“No, that would be too risky. We don’t know how powerful these guards are or what defences would be enabled if we’re detected. And we can’t risk a scrying spell, it might give away our presence,” John dismissed the idea out of hand. Bass sighed slightly in response.

“We could always try to surprise the guards and knock them out,” Yan was the one to speak up this time.

“I doubt we could do that quietly enough, and even if we could it’s entirely possible we’re not strong enough to do that in time,” John was getting frustrated, and he saw the others were as well. His mind was racing but no new ideas came to him.

“May-maybe we could take out one of the patrols and… disguise ourselves as them?” Charlotte was as nervous as usual, but her idea was sound.

“That might just work, but we’d need to take out three patrols to get everyone in, that would be too suspicious. And we don’t know if they’ll be expecting us either,” John paused for a second, considering their options, “I guess we don’t have much of a choice though, that does seem like the best option. Just in case, only two of us will go, the others will try to think of some other way and attempt it if we fail. That alright with everybody?”

“Let’s do it,” Bass quickly answered.

“Sure,” Yan sounded a lot less enthusiastic.

“I guess…” Charlotte was still herself, or at least whatever persona was hiding the one John had seen before.

“If I have to go along with your plans, I suppose that is not such a terrible one,” Matthew’s tone made it clear he agreed it was a decent plan.

“I’ll volunteer. This is my plan, the risk is mine to take,” John felt uncomfortable letting two of the others go alone.

“Like I said, let’s go,” the sound mage also volunteered.

“You sure about this? We might both get killed,” the Gamer asked her, his voice almost shaking.

“Yeah. Not like I wasn’t planning on risking my life for this anyway,” somewhere deep inside him, John was worried, but he shrugged and exited the room alongside Bass.

Sneaking off to a corridor they knew would have a patrol soon enough, they looked for an empty room to set up an ambush. They both advanced down the hallway, doing their best to stay in the darkness and hidden from the four guards a bit behind them. Seeing the guard patrol in front of them, they knew they had ample time to set up an ambush, so they snuck off into a nearby room. Bass figured it was just out of range for the four guards to hear them, but she did turn off all of the lights in the small room and only left a crack in the door. For a while they sat there in darkness, listening intently for any sounds.

A few minutes later, they heard the sound of two footsteps looming closer. A man and a woman in the same simple military garb John had already seen when he was kidnapped walked down the hallway. They were only visible through a thin strip of light that was the door. John readied a volley of Arcane Bolts deep enough in the room as to not be visible, and he signaled Bass to be prepared as well. The two guards passed straight in front of the door moments later, and as their backs turned the two trainees jumped out of the small dark room, both hitting one of the guards with a volley of fire. John hesitated for only a second, but it was enough. With an invisible and almost inaudible noise fell the first, but the second did not fall for the volley of bolts. One of them hit the woman in the arms. The others, however, were deftly dodged. Moments later, she spoke a few words and alarms started blaring through the small hallways. Red lights flashed out of those same light fixtures, and the woman drew her gun. Before she could shoot, Bass threw the same noise at the remaining guard, and she fell as well.

“Shit. We have no time, let’s go!” Bass was the first to react, John was still shocked over it all. He didn’t know why he hesitated, again…

Seeing the confused look on his face, Bass grabbed his hand and ran.

“We should be doing something instead of sitting around here,” Matthew stated bitterly.

“John told us to wait here. If we did something now that would just hurt our plan and risk our lives in the process,” Yan sounded adamant. To Charlotte, they both looked naive. Even if their leader was no fool, there was no guarantee he was competent enough to do this. His intentions were even more unclear to her, as something about him kept bothering her, like a nagging bug in the back of her mind.

“Fine,” Matthew relented, “but in case they fail or we hear alarms, I will storm that room. And there is absolutely nothing either of you can say to dissuade me,” he continued, his tone both threatening and clear of doubt.

“Alright, that is a decent back up anyways,” Yan conceded, though her voice was just as strong.

With that in mind, they waited. It was only a couple of minutes before the cryomancer’s wishes were granted when alarms blared and the soft white light in their room turned to a bright red.

“We ought to see if the guards left the doors, but regardless, I’m going in. You two may follow me if you wish,” when Matthew looked out, he saw the two guards running towards the right hallway, where Bass and John had headed. He then quickly stepped out of the room as they passed him. The others cautiously followed as they entered the room that was previously guarded. Unlike the offices, it had a set of double doors made out of wood. Inside, it was also a lot more spacious, but the main thing that dominated the room was a large vault. Marks of half rusted steel showed how old it was, but it was still a metal monstrosity that they had no way to break into. Charlotte figured that like most of the rest of the HQ, it was probably an artifact of the Victorian era. Hanging from the vault was what looked to be a giant but simple turning lock.

“And how are you gonna get in there? Any of you know how to pick a lock?” Yan doubted this haphazard plan. The ice mage responded only with a gesture of his hand.

Cold spread through the air like the crack of lightning, and a tinge of blue penetrated the giant turning lock. Metal froze and cracked with a loud snapping sound, and the twisted steel fell to the floor before anyone else could react. Soon enough, the door itself half froze as well.

“That’s how,” he said as he swiftly broke the ice and opened the vault’s large door. Inside was only a table, with a set of documents neatly tucked on top of it. Yan and Matthew found no time to look at them, however, as Charlotte quickly grabbed them both.

“Can we go now?” she asked softly. Perhaps she wasn’t scared, but she was entirely too nervous. They exited the spacious room, finding no one waiting on the other side, and the red lights of the alarm had now turned green.

They ran and ran for what felt like hours, ducking in and out of the dark office rooms just to avoid the guards for a few seconds. Hoping the hail of bullets they were constantly chased by would stop. Both John and Bass fired volley after volley of attacks backwards, knocking a few guards out, but more always came. It wasn’t long before they found themselves surrounded, trapped in a corridor between two groups of guards which were heading slowly towards the room they were holed up in. Just then, John heard the slide of metal against metal. Followed by the lights turning green, the storm of bullets didn’t stop, but both of them knew their mission was completed.

They jumped out of the room in unison, throwing Arcane Bolts to one side and blasts of sound to the other. Luckily, that took out all the guards bar one, and their way to the exit was clear. Another round of magic sent behind them, they both sprinted to the right. Where before there were only walls were now new hallways. Before they could escape the sight of the guard behind them, however, a loud shrieking noise came from there, and an even worse sound of twisting flesh was heard as it sank deep into Bass’s back.

’Shit! Shit! Shit!’ John was not in any position to panic, but he did nonetheless. He helped the injured Bass stand up as she bled from her side and the two of them quickly headed around a corner and out of sight. The guard did not chase after them.

“Thanks… for the help… boss.” Bass was going in and out of consciousness, but somehow she was still coherent. John wasn’t sure what to do as he walked down the empty corridor. He didn’t recognize this area of the HQ and he had absolutely no directions for where to go. Out of the corner of his eyes a familiar figure appeared with quite a few men and women behind her. Ember was standing there, a legion of medics behind her. Further down the corridor stood the rest of their teammates as well.

“We weren’t going to let you die,” she said. Her voice was as cold as ever, but her intent seemed genuine, “I still need to talk to you, after all.”