Chapter Thirty Three: Realms Unknown

An hour later, Ronin sat at the base of the stairs admiring his work, a brand new invention in record time. 

Sitting on the floor initially, the waist high device rested inert, waiting for life and orders. Kneeling and tapping its datapad to life, Ronin tapped in a list of instructions that would determine its actions as it carried out its function, lighting and clearing out the building above.

As he finished, it floated up to his eye level and bobbed gently in the air, waiting for him to finish his work.

Smiling, he typed in the last set of instructions and the cameras he'd mounted on it flickered to life and began transmitting their feed to Silas's datapad. He'd taken several of Trigger's specially designed scopes and heavily modified them to make them record and transmit, as well as bits and pieces of the team's various projects to make a floating lantern that would flash a light as bright as the weapon he'd made earlier. IT would flash at regular intervals he'd designated based on the length of the hallway and layout of the floor they were on now, and upon sensing motion via tiny motion detectors protected by light shielding.

The lantern floated gently up the stairs and out of view and almost immediately flashed so brightly that it was easily visible even around the bend of the stairs.

Silas motioned for them to come over and set up her datapad to stream to projectors that floated out of her pockets and flickered to life on a wall nearby.

Watching the lantern's ascent, Ronin noticed that the dead that seemed freshest killed, still recognizable and flesh bound, stood still barely twitching, while the skeletons that wandered the halls seemed almost antsy, eager to move and unwilling to stand still for longer than seconds at a time.

One of them cast a glance at the lantern, deep purple lights from within its eye sockets glowing brightly as it charged at it, its bony jaw cast open and a horrible and impossible roar booming from its nonexistent throat.

The lantern flashed brightly, turning it, and the rest of its fellow undead, to dust, barely slowing in its movement.

It made slow and steady progress in this fashion, lighting and clearing each hallway, though dead climbed out behind it, leaving it alone for some reason.

Ten, twenty, thirty stories passed by like this until it reached the fortieth floor, where it encountered a large empty room that didn't match the floor plan of the rest of the levels beneath it.

Darker somehow than the floors beneath it, this floor grew darker the closer the lantern got to the center of the room, until it seemed as though it had reached the absolute middle.

From all around the lantern, a massive roar grew, so loud and powerful that Ronin and his friends felt it all the way on the bottom floor.

What seemed like massive petals wrapped the lantern in a dark and cruel embrace, to which the lantern simply flashed its light.

The flower petals blasted away from it and wilted on the walls they hit, dying immediately upon separation from their core.

The cameras picked up what seemed to be the sound of wind and focused on the source of it, a massive swirling spiral of darkness that had formed on the wall near the door that could only lead outside.

A voice rang out among the roaring, like honeyed moonlight, "This is a shame. These flowers are NOT easy to make, my mechanical friend."

Two figures left the vortex of shadow, a young girl that struck Ronin as...off somehow, and a young man with a single black horn jutting from the side of his head and pointing upward at an angle.

Azue shuddered, visibly disgusted by his appearance and the man looked directly into the cameras and said, "Hmmm...interesting. I've seen a lot of things since I came here, but this is the first time I've seen something that reminds me of the old days like this."

The girl spoke, her voice high and annoyed, "What're you muttering about over there?"

The man shook his head and moved his hair from his face, revealing midnight blue eyes, and said, "Nothing important, my little friend. Looks like the game is up here...the others will have to suffice for this little experiment your mistress is running."

The girl, clearly annoyed, asked, "You can't...fix it or something? This is extremely important."

The man's eyes flashed dangerously and he said, "Unlike your guild's little toys, this is a LIVING thing. I have no more seeds to plant another, nor do we have time to wait for her to mature. We've been outmaneuvered by whoever built this...device."

 Stepping back a step, the girl said, "Well this IS well out of our territory...we're risking war just being here. If anyone knew what we're doing with this, even we'd have a hard time dealing with the backlash."

The man smiled and said, "Now that's a good little girl. Will I still be receiving my pay?"

Rolling her eyes, glowing bright yellow in the gloom, she said, "It's already been transferred to your account. Check your V.U.I., I'm not your mother, for Jevah's sake."

The man nodded, snapping his fingers as he did and the unnatural darkness in the room dissipated, natural light filtering in from the windows and brightening the interior.

He shuddered and flinched as some of the light hit him and took a step back toward the portal, saying, "I'll be leaving now, Mira, are you coming?"

She stood for a moment, her form wrapped in a tight black cloak, revealing her to be a very young woman, and said, "Yeah. Nothing left to do in this hell hole."

The man looked at the cameras again as Mira walked back into the portal and he winked and turned away.

Azue visibly shook and gagged as she watched him leave. Ronin walked to her and put his hand on her shoulder and she said, her voice icy, "I'm fine...I just HATE him."

Silas asked, "You know him?"

Shaking her head, Azue said, "I have never seen him before in my life...I just feel...like somehow...I know that I HATE him...and not just a little bit."

Turning back to the projection, Ronin saw that the lights in the building were slowly flickering back to life as the duo disappeared, blinking back to full strength as the vortex spiralled shut.

Leaving the room and looking to the stairway, Ronin saw that the light had come back here as well and he said, "Looks like this was a win for us."

Abster walked to the stairway and said, "You don't know how much good this will do… I hope more people benefit from this than just us."

Ronin looked at him curiously and said, "Just us? We don't live here though."

The man shook his head, his scarred face bright with happiness, and said, "You think I can just let you do this and not repay you somehow? The entire building is mine, basically, nobody's lived here in years but me, you guys are welcome to stay as long as you want."

Silas asked, "What do you do for money, Abster?"

The man shrugged and said, "In all honesty, money is pretty rare with the Guildless. We usually just try to scrape by with what little we can get."

Looking at his team and then back to Abster, he asked, "Can I get a second with my friends?"

 Abster nodded and said, "Do what you want friends."

Smiling, Ronin motioned for Silas to follow and walked to the room, saying, "Abster has invited us to stay here in the building."

Scalpel said, "That's nice of him...but do you think that's a good idea?"

Ronin shrugged and said, "We don't really have any other better options right now."

Trigger looked up from a gun he was polishing and said, "What if this is a trap?"

 Azue, now officially part of the little group, said, "I think that if this was a trap, it was a poorly laid one. He seemed more distressed by the creatures than we were."

Nodding, Ronin said, "Plus...whatever's going on here, I get the feeling that he wasn't part of it. He's too...genuine...to have been doing this. My instincts tell me we should be safe."

Scalpel touched her forehead as she said, "This would be a perfect place for us to set up shop too."

Sellius asked, "What's it going to cost us?"

Abster said, from the hallway, "I won't be charging you to use empty, unwanted space."

Ronin looked at the rest of his friends and they all shook their head and he said, "That won't do. How much space can we use?"

Abster waved his hand and said, "Anything above this floor is yours to use as you wish. Me and my late wife lived here...I can't bear to leave it."

"How big is the building?" Trigger asked.

Abster shrugged and said, "Somewhere in the ballpark of a hundred stories, I never got around to checking the higher floors or counting really. Average size building here in Neyk."

Ronin tapped his V.U.I. pulling up his account, he sent a contact and transaction request to Abster.

 Abster accepted the contact request, but stared at the transaction with his mouth open wide.

 Ronin had sent him ten thousand credits, a hundred for each floor in the building, and said, "That's for this month."

Though he was sure that things would change soon, money, at the moment, was nowhere close to a problem for the team for now.

 Abster said, "I can't accept this much...this is more money than I've ever had...than any of the Guildless have ever had."

Ronin shook his head and Silas sighed and said, "We're not going to stay here for free. You helped us when we needed it, and we helped you. That's even, so it's not a fair trade. As for money, I get the feeling that that's going to change soon. We're all scientists, except for Azue, and we all need materials and other things. If we're going to be staying here, the Guildless are going to be getting an influx of credits, from us if nobody else, after all, we're Guildless as well."

Abster nodded slowly and said, "If you insist...so what are you guys going to do now?"

Scalpel looked him dead in the eye and said, "The first thing I'm doing is setting up a clinic for the Guildless. It's outrageous that there's nobody to help when they need it."

 Ronin nodded and said, "The rest of us will probably spend a bunch of time upgrading and building defences for the building...I'm not sure why, but I get the distinct feeling that we'll be seeing someone from whoever sent those two. At the very least, I want us safe from Deviant attacks...we'll also need to make sure that our experiments don't cause too much trouble."

 Ronin looked at Trigger and Sellius who were in the process of strapping a remote controlled bomb to a massive hammer.

 They looked at each other and Ronin and Trigger said, "Yeah, maybe we'll finish this later…"

 Azue looked and said, "What can I do? I want to be of assistance."

 Silas walked to her and hugged her, pulling her head into her breasts and said, "For now, just keep being adorable, you. I've got an idea what you can help us with later, but for now, we've got to make sure home is safe and workable for what we need to do."

Azue mumbled, muffled through Silas's ample chest, "Oh...okay...whatever you need."

Checking the time, Ronin realized that it was still early in the afternoon, shockingly, and said, "Abster, can you show Azue where to get food?"

 Abster nodded and Ronin said, "Azue, here's some money, get us as much as you can."

Walking to her, he sent her a contact request as well as a transaction request for seven thousand credits.

She stared at the amount, stunned and he said, "What, do you think not enough?"

She shook her head and said, "This is...quite a lot."

He sent her seven thousand more and said, "We want to get ahead."

 Pulling a bag from his inventory, he said, "This is a bag designed on a concept similar to our inventory systems, it'll store anything you put in it as a digital construct so we can pull it out later, almost weightlessly. It should have a pretty high weight limit since it doesn't have the same hindrances our chips do."

Abster and Azue left shortly afterward and Silas said, "Where do we start?"

 Ronin sighed deeply, looking at the walls and said, "While they're out, we're going to build a strong defence system to stop danger from getting in here from the hallways, then we start building moving up. I'm sure we can get it done within a couple of months if we move fast."

Trigger frowned and said, "This is going to suck."

Sellius laughed and a pair of bright glowing red eyes flickered black in the darkened hallways leading to the bottom floor, unseen and unnoticed by the group.