The sooner that these hostages are out, the better. Jayden and G, you come with me. We’ll go down to the police station, and you’ll get your briefing. After that, you’re off. Kat, you just wait until we’ve found a volunteer to go with you, and then you’ll do the same thing.”
“So,” the Mechanist said as the three council members nodded respectfully to Bob. “If that’s all, then I officially adjourn this council meeting. Everybody, go do what you need to do.”
And with that, Kat, G and Jayden stood up. Bob walked out of the council room towards the corridor, tailed closely by Jayden and G, while Kat took the passage that led to her room. On the way out, G and Kat nearly bumped into each other, but as G was about to open his mouth to say something, Kat turned her back to him and continued walking. G looked crestfallen as he followed Jayden out of the room.
The Mechanist now sat alone in the room. The occasional boom, chatter and whizz of warfare still droned on outside. The barrage was constant; although the wall was holding up well, the Noctem Armies never relented in their assault on the walls. The Noctem Alliance was definitely planning something. The Mechanist knew it. Although the constant assault on the outside walls was easily repelled, it certainly did keep the Elementia Army busy. And perhaps that distraction was all the Noctem Alliance needed to set their grand plan into motion.
The Mechanist knew that, whoever Lord Tenebris was, he was incredibly cunning. Because of this, the Mechanist was well aware that nothing the Noctem Alliance did was arbitrary. Everything was planned, everything was deliberate, and everything had a point. Element City’s defences may have been holding up splendidly, but the Mechanist knew that it was only a matter of time before the Alliance managed to find some way around them. And until that time inevitably came, the population of Element City was desperate and furious, no longer able to obtain any resources from the outside. They were simply left to try to survive while trapped within the walls.
And now he bore the entire weight of the situation on his own shoulders, and his shoulders alone.
The Mechanist was already feeling overwhelmed, leading the council in these dark times. He had had to put up with G and Kat’s bickering, as well as the constant news that all their efforts had barely put a scratch in the Noctem Alliance’s offensive. He was well aware of how important it was that the hostages be rescued, but the Mechanist was at the point of having a nervous breakdown when he realized that the fate of this country, which was already teetering on the brink of destruction, was now in his own hands.
He felt so stressed, so anxious, and so panicked. The world was crumbling around him, and he alone was responsible for holding it together. He was doing all he could, yet it was hardly helping in the least. As the gravity of the situation spiralled around the Mechanist, he wished with all his might that somehow, somewhere, there was some way that he might be able to escape from it, just for a little while…
Kat sat in the waiting room of the police station. In front of her, a window stretched from floor to ceiling, revealing a landscape view of the lower-level district of Element City. In the far distance, the grey stone-brick wall of the city stood proud and tall. About twice a minute, there would be a flash of white light at some point along the wall, accompanied a second later by a muffled boom.
Kat gritted her teeth and tried to keep herself together. It tore her apart inside that her people were being forced to suffer within the city, with food and supplies being rationed during the siege. It killed her even more that, because of the persistence of the Noctem Alliance, the Elementia Army was being forced to work day and night to combat the attackers, with more and more innocent civilians being drafted from their homes every day to keep up with the demanding costs of fighting this war. Life in Element City was miserable, and there was nothing she could do about it!
Kat forced herself to take a deep breath, and then let it go. No, there is something you can do about it, Kat thought to herself, trying to keep a calm mind. Just focus on getting Stan and the others back here. That’s all you can do right now.
As she thought this, Kat began to grow more and more irritated. The minutes ticked by, and still nobody had arrived to tell her that the volunteer was ready to join her. Kat began to get angry.
If they weren’t ready, then why did they call me down here? she thought bitterly, just as the wooden door swung open. Kat looked up expectantly, and was surprised to see Ben looking extremely uncomfortable.
“Finally!” Kat cried, jumping to her feet. “Do you have my partner ready yet?”
“Kat,” said Ben, and she was alarmed by how nervous his voice sounded. “Before you find out who your partner is, I need you to realize something. We tried as hard as we could to find somebody else… but there was nobody else qualified who wasn’t already occupied with something else in the war.”
Kat was befuddled. “What are you talking about?”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out in a hefty sigh.
“Come on in,” he announced miserably.
Ben stepped out of the doorframe, and another player walked up behind him. Kat’s jaw hung open, and her eyes boggled in disbelief. She would recognize that pale skin, those giant red lips, that snow-white leather armour, and that smug expression anywhere.
“Oh, no,” Kat breathed in horror.
“Oh… yes, I’m afraid,” simpered Cassandrix in her patronizing, upper-class accent. “It’s good to see you again, Kat, darling.”
Stan opened his eyes. He took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. He tried to move his arm but was only able to move it a few inches before wincing in pain. Reluctant to move again, Stan allowed himself a few more minutes of peace lying in bed.
Stan heard faint voices coming from down the wooden stairwell, and he turned his head to glance around the room. The torchlight gave the wooden attic a faint glow, and he noticed that the closet door was slightly ajar. Stan shrugged it off, figuring that it was nothing, and he closed his eyes once again.
As he lay in bed, nearly incapacitated by wounds and fatigue, Stan reflected on just how extraordinarily lucky he was to still be alive. His body ached all over from his leap into the ocean from the Noctem Alliance’s prison at the peak of Mount Fungarus on the Greater Mushroom Island. Filled with anguish over the death of DZ and reckless panic at the Noctem forces quickly closing in on him, Stan hadn’t been thinking clearly. Rather, he had simply grabbed DZ’s sword and taken a leap of faith—a leap, it turned out, that had hurt quite a lot.
After landing in the ocean and plummeting fast and hard to the ocean floor, Stan had swum as fast as his screaming limbs could carry him away from the island, the sirens wailing from the prison and troops shouting as they mobilized to pursue him. At one point Stan glanced back at the island and saw Mount Fungarus, silhouetted tall and proud against the setting sun, with half its top blown off, and troops scurrying around the various outer levels like ants around an anthill. Desperate to find cover from the incoming troops, Stan dived underwater to the seabed (which was thankfully quite shallow around the islands) and, by a stroke of incredible luck, he had found a bubble of air sitting on the ocean floor, a two-blocks-square cube. Far too relieved to question what the glitch was doing there, Stan had instead dived straight into it,
