The name’s Newman, John Newman.

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

“We already have somewhere to hide, and it seems likely that one of the rooms around here contains the documents. I doubt there will be any other indicators of which room it is, but if they are all empty that makes our job fairly easy. The only thing we need to do is avoid or knock out the guards and we’ll be able to do this easily,” John said, confidently.

“None of us saw the guard patrols coming to this corridor, but there’s one in the others every few minutes,” Bass added.

“Right. Our party is still up so we can keep watch on everybody, but I think our best bet for now is to split up into groups of two and three. I’ll take Yan and Matthew. Bass, you’re with Charlotte, ok?”

“Right.” That was her only response.

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

“York.”

’Isn’t that an English city?’ John found that quite strange but nonetheless quickly invited Matthew to the party. His 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.

'I suppose that makes sense… I wonder why he couldn't deal with that Golem?'

That done, it was time for them to begin their mission, so John signaled the others out of the room. A moment later, he turned to Bass with a serious expression.

“We’ll take the left side, you guys take the right. You should take this,” he handed over Yan’s map, ”Keep that in case you two get out of range, all three of us will be together so we can manage without it,” he whispered. There was a need for precaution, and he hoped that would serve as one.

The two groups soon split apart, as they both disappeared down the separate corridors cautiously. Both hallways were extraordinarily dark, the only light was a small one hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the corridor. They were all made of the same metal like material which seemed to absorb far more light than it reflected, causing them to look darker than he thought possible. It was, however, quite useful for hiding. John checked the path for guards before entering, and after seeing an unexplored room to the right, he quickly entered it. The others had covered the rooms in the initial hallway, but there were quite a few more to check. He was able to quickly find the lightswitch, and so he and his two companions began searching the rooms. It was yet another office room. 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. Luckily, that shut him up for some time. A few minutes later though, after they finished clearing the room and found nothing his anger grew.

“This is ridiculous, we can’t go checking every room here!”

“I doubt there are any markings. That would defeat the purpose of giving us real experience,” Yan said, she had seemed quiet earlier but she was clearly listening. Matthew became less angry, though for how long that would last, John didn’t know. 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. They were sure it would hold the documents they seeked as they had already finished searching all of the other rooms after two hours of work. It had been a few minutes since they sat down, but no solution had come up.

“I told you it would be marked,” The ice mage was glad to point out their leader’s mistake with both a hint of mockery and anger. He was, however, being unusually quiet, as they all were. They were trying to stay hidden, after all, any noise might lead to them being discovered.

“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, thinking up a plan.

“Maybe we can make a distraction? I could make a loud noise with my halos,” 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.

“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. 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 seems 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 seemed less enthusiastic.

“I guess…” Charlotte was still herself, or at least whatever mask she was wearing.

“If I have to go along with your plans, I suppose that is not such a terrible one.”

“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 seemingly volunteered.

“You sure about this? We might both get killed.”

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

Before the patrol got to them, they needed to find another empty room and set up an ambush. They both advanced down the hallway, doing their best to stay in the darkness and hidden from the four guards near them. They saw the guard patrol in front of them, which meant they had ample time to set up an ambush, so they snuck off into a nearby room. The room was far enough from the guarded one to hide most noise. Bass turned off all of the lights in the small room and they both waited with the door open slightly, 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 were to do something now that would just hurt our plan and risk our lives in the process.” Yan seemed adamant. To Charlotte, they both seemed naive. There was no guarantee their so called leader was competent, but he was clearly not a fool. His intentions, on the other hand, those were entirely unclear.

“Fine,” Matthew agreed, “but if they fail or we hear the alarms, I’m going in there. There is absolutely nothing either of you can say to dissuade me.”

“Agreed, that’s a decent plan anyways,” Yan conceded.

With that in mind, they waited, and minutes later the cryomancer’s wishes were granted as the alarms blared and the soft white light in their room turned to red.

“Let us see if those guards have left the doors now. Regardless, you two follow me or not, I’m going in.” When Matthew looked out, he saw the two guards running towards the right hallway, where Bass and John had gone. He then quickly stepped out of the room as they passed him. The others cautiously followed. They quickly entered the room that was guarded. Unlike the offices it had a set of double doors made out of wood. Inside, it was quite a bit more spacious, but the main thing that dominated the room was a large vault. It was a metal monstrosity, but obviously quite ancient. As with almost everything there, probably an artifact of the Victorian era. The main opening mechanism was a simple turning lock, though it was unusually large.

“And how are you gonna get in there?” Yan doubted the ice mage could do it.

He quickly showed her he indeed could, as the vault’s various components began freezing solid with a gesture of his hand.

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

“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 on the other side, and the red lights had turned green.

They ran and ran for what seemed like ages, ducking in and out of the rooms just to avoid the hailfire of bullets. Both John and Bass fired volley after volley of attacks to dissuade their chasers, but none seemed to work. Not until a loud sound was heard, the slide of metal against metal. Then the lights turned green a moment later, their chasers didn’t stop, but both of them knew their mission was completed. They continued running, only to see the way to the outside had opened. Where before there were only walls were now new hallways. Before they could escape the set of corridors, however, a loud shrieking noise came from behind them, 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 the corner and out of sight. The guards did not chase after them.

“Thanks… for the help… boss.” Bass seemed to be going in and out of consciousness. John wasn’t sure what to do, 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 luckily appeared with quite a few men and women behind her. Ember was standing there, a legion of medics behind her. Behind them still stood the rest of their teammates.

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