James slipped out into the night without waking the team. He didn't want anyone else in harm's way and if he were to get caught he didn't want them sharing in the blame. According to Kazav HQ was thousands of miles away but James' power had grown to the point where that kind of distance was like a cross-city trek. While still not able to fly, he was capable of covering massive distances with every leap and bound.
It was a serene experience as he flew over the forest, lakes, and rivers that dotted the landscape below. The cool night air flowed through his hair along with the sweet smell of night blossoms. Such a therapeutic atmosphere helped to calm his nerves for the task ahead. James was still unsure of how all this was going to go down and began firing off nervous questions to Kazav.
"So once we get there how do we get in?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but we will figure it out when we arrive."
It took over an hour of nonstop power jumps but they finally landed at the spot Kazav claimed was the secret HQ location. James looked around for any kind of building or structure that might stand out but the only thing in sight was a barren field of dried-up tumbleweeds and half-dead plants.
The biome had shifted from the forest to dry and water-parched grasslands that reeked of despair.
"Are you sure about this?" James asked aloud. His voice echoed out into the dusty air.
"I'm sure!" Kazav replied. "Just keep looking around. I can sense it all here, somewhere."
James launched off the ground and shot up into the sky. From the height he was at he could see everything around for miles. The only thing that caught his attention was a flickering light coming from what looked like a run-down gas station. It hardly felt like it was HQ worthy but since it was the only building in sight he decided to give it a shot.
Once he arrived at the gas station it became clear that nobody had been here for years, maybe even decades. All the shelves were bare and empty and the building had become overrun with desert creatures.
"Looks like a dead-end," James mumbled sullenly.
"Not so fast kid! Take another look behind the counter."
James jumped back over the counter and gave it a closer look. Sure enough, there was a hidden lever on the underside that was barely visible.
"Wow! How did you know there was a lever back here?"
Kazav let out a cool chuckle. "Lucky guess I suppose. Once you get to be my age your instincts become very acute."
James flipped the switch causing a loud cranking noise to emanate from the center of the room. The floor tiles parted and folded in on themselves revealing a cobweb-infested secret entrance.
"Bingo!" Kazav shouted out excitedly.
"This is giving me Deja Vu," James remarked as he thought back to the secret passage he uncovered during his first encounter with the cleansers.
"Don't worry James, not all hidden switches lead to dark, secret monster club meetings. At least I hope they don't."
With great unease, he entered through the secret hatch and down into the tunnel below. He looked around at the rusted metal stairwell that circled endlessly into the depths. It was lined with cinder blocks and industrial lighting panels most of which no longer worked.
"It doesn't seem like anyone has used this tunnel for a long time."
James nodded his head, hoping what Kazav said was true. "Hopefully it doesn't raise any alarms."
"Relax kid, you're invisible. Even if they have an army of cameras they won't be able to see you!"
Kazav's reminder put him more at ease. It's easy to forget you're invisible when you have been visible your entire life. James laughed to himself as he thought of all the trouble this ability could get someone into.
They reached the bottom of the stairwell and passed through a metal hatch. On the other side of the doorway was an old-looking shelter, much like the old bomb shelters from before James was born.
They looked through the rooms and storage closets that branched off from the main walkway. James recognized some of the heroes from the posters hanging in the living quarters. "This must have been HQ's living spaces when they first got their start down here."
The rooms looked like they belonged to low-level heroes as they had few accommodations. A look inside revealed the same basic setup. An old metal bed frame with a few chairs and a table. Some rooms had a stand for your armor but most of them were devoid of anything else.
They kept moving past all of that and got to the end of the hallway. A large metal blast door separated them from the other side. James tried to open it using the rusted metal lock but only managed to snap it off.
"What now?"
"Knock it down!" Kazav shouted enthusiastically.
"Are you sure? It feels like that might make too much noise."
"We don't have a ton of other options now do we?"
James powered up his fist and pressed it against the door.
"How about this instead." With his powers, he melted a hole in the door, turning it into a molten puddle of slag.
They stepped through into a much more luxurious environment. This was obviously reserved for the high-level heroes. It looked like a mix between a hotel lounge and a corporate building complex.
James frowned as he looked through the glossy and high-tech living quarters. He felt like this was the moment that things began to go south for the guild. He felt that the second they started separating people into classes and groups, giving some of them the good life while making the others compete for scraps is what divided the guild and made them unable to meet challenges the way it used to.
Reaching another stairwell that led even further into the bowls of the facility, James skipped the stairs and opted to jump down instead. He landed with a loud thud as the force of his descent sent cracks crawling through the floor.
"Oops," he whispered in hopes that nobody heard.
Kazav scolded him and demanded that he be more careful. James shrugged off his sassy lecture and kept moving. One more long hallway later they reached another blast door that was much more glossy and modern looking than the last.
"I think this is it," Kazav announced.
"Yup," James agreed as his anxiety inside began to skyrocket. "Let's do this thing."
He pressed his hands to the door and tried burning a hole through it like last time but it was absorbing the heat like a space tile. He tried a new approach and instead created a concentrated beam of energy. Like a laser cutter, he melted a hole into the door and placed the metal cutout onto the ground beside him. Behind the blast door was a storage closet that nobody seemed to be using. It was empty besides for a few boxes of old tech stacked up in the corners.
"And we are in," Kazav announced excitedly.
James looked around for any signs of activity. "Yeah, but where do we go from here?"
Kazav felt things out a bit. Once he felt he had a handle on what direction to head in he said, "We need to go down. Try and find an elevator or something."
James exited the storage room and darted through the never-ending hallways as he tried not to make a sound. Not being able to be seen is a huge advantage but he was still being as cautious as possible. There were a lot of heroes wandering around and some of them could have the power to detect him even if he is invisible to the naked eye.
After a few minutes of searching, he found an elevator and clicked the down button. The lights above the elevator lit up as it approached his level, counting down until it came to a slow stop. His heart almost exploded once the doors parted as he found himself standing directly in front of Official Franklin.
Kazav could tell James was freaking out and rushed in to calm him. "Chill out kid, you're invisible. He cant see you so just hold still and don't panic!"
Franklin looked around to see why the elevator had stopped. He looked right, then left. Shrugging his shoulders, he closed the doors and continued on his way.
James let out a relieved sigh. Eventually, another elevator came that was empty and he got in. He clicked a lower number and waited for the doors to open on that floor.
"What are you so tense for? Nobody can see you remember?"
"I know I'm invisible Kazav! I'm just not used to it yet."
"Okay, okay, calm down kid, yeesh. Try not to panic is all I'm saying."
The elevator stopped on a floor above the one he wanted indicating that someone else was trying to get on.
"Crap!" James shouted internally.
He suspended himself close to the ceiling by pressing his hands and legs against the sides of the elevator like in a spy movie. The doors opened and a cluster of office workers huddled in.
"Good thinking kid. There were way too many people down there. You would have been made for sure!"
James shook his head and tried to be as silent as possible. The workers started to talk among themselves, revealing juicy tidbits of information.
"You hear about the massive number of people defecting to the Cleansers?" One worker asked another.
A young woman in a business suit and old lady glassed replied, "Yeah, they aren't letting the public know but they have way more support than anyone is letting on. You know, trying to keep panic to a minimum."
Another worker laughed and patted her on the shoulder. "Isn't it funny how quickly humans will start turning on one another when they are afraid? It's pretty embarrassing."
They all chuckled until the elevator doors opened and they all got off. James jumped back down when they left and pressed the button for the doors to close.
Kazav began to laugh. "As sad as that was to hear, it is kinda true."
"It's also equally true that adversity brings people together," James shot back.
Kazav let out an unconvinced, "Meh," and left it at that.
Once they reached the floor James had clicked for he snuck out into the hallway and began a search based on Kazavs intuition.
He rushed past a door but then froze as Kazav yelled, "Wait!"
"What? What is it?"
Kazav scanned his surroundings. His gut feeling was rarely wrong and it was screaming at him to look inside that room.
"This is it, kid, this is the room we need!"
He checked out the entrance. It was a normal-looking door with no real security. Hardly the door that James would have expected a horrible secret to be behind.
"Are you sure?"
"Yup! I'm sure, whatever we are looking for is behind this door."
James jiggled the handle. The door was locked but had no security system attached to it. He tore the handle off the door and entered the office. It was a quaint little setup with nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few nicknacks on the table and a bookshelf full of various kinds of reading material standing behind the desk. The only interesting item in the entire room was a laptop sitting closed on the desk. The computer was bolted down in a titanium casing that made it impossible to remove.
"That's it, right there!" Kazav announced, His voice practically vibrating from the excitement.
James opened the computer but was blocked by a screen asking for a password.
"Now what?"
"Hmm, well it looks like the keys that have to most erosion on them are the l,e,r,c,n,s, and a keys. Let's try and see what words we can create using those options."
James thought long and hard about what words he could make. It made him feel dumb but he finally admitted he was at a loss.
"I'm blanking Kazav, I can't think of any valid word that contains those letters.
"Hmm, try Clerns."
James entered the word into the box. "Password incorrect," the computer informed him.
"Darn, Uhm, try "Rencls"?
He typed it in only to once again be denied. "Nope it says incorrect and that we have one last attempt before we are locked out."
Kazav came to a startling realization. "Wait, I'm not considering he may be using the same key more than once." He let out a concerned sigh and said, "Try the word, 'Cleansers'."
James hesitated. "Are you sure?"
"I hope not."
James clicked in the keys and hit enter. The computer screen said, "Welcome," and booted up.
James got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Well, that's not good. The Cleansers may have breached HQ!"
Once the computer booted up a ton of windows flooded the screen. James scrolled through the computer's files as he looked for any signs of malfeasance. After a half-hour of looking, he failed to find anything substantial.
Kazav chimed in with a suggestion. "Try typing in a keyword. Maybe something like 'Cleaners' or something along those lines."
James typed in the word, "Cleanser," and one email popped up titled, "Agreement."
"This had got to be it!" Kazav shouted!
It required another password but using his previous method Kazav cracked it in no time.
James now had access to the contents of the message and was shocked and horrified at what it contained. As he scrolled through the message's exchanges it confirmed everything that Kazav was saying. The emails were between the 5 top officials of the guild and the leader of the Cleansers. They discussed terms of cooperation, land allotments, even how many people are estimated to survive the battle, and what to do with those that do. The crux of the messages was this. In exchange for not having a protracted war, the Heroes guild would give the Cleansers a certain amount of territory that they would gain during the battle. Once they had what was agreed on they would end the war and make it seem like a concession was reached.
"This is disgusting!" James cried out. "They are playing chess with these people's lives. Treating them like pawns they can move or toss away."
He found a flash drive sitting on the desk and uploaded the information. With the evidence in hand, he headed for the elevator. As he waited for it to reach his level a voice rang out through the halls, a familiar voice, one that sent chills down his spine.
"Is that Jeremy? Oh man, this is bad! This is so very bad!"
"Relax kid, relax, they won't be able to see you!"
"Yeah, but what if they can sense me?"
"Just shut up and be quiet! They won't sense you if you don't move!"
James hid in the corner of the room as his brother, along with several other high-ranking heroes, walked past the elevators. James eavesdropped on their conversation as they passed by.
"So you all know the plan right?" Jeremy asked the rest of the group.
"Yup!" The Crimson Lady replied. "Fight them until sectors F and G fall and then pull back and let them have it."
An official interjected. His face was contorted with concern. "But what about the other heroes in the other guilds?"
Jeremy stared him down, displeased with his interruption. "It's an unfortunate sacrifice, but one we have to make. Don't go soft on me now. We have some difficult choices to make but someone has to make them."
Their voices trailed off as they moves further away. Once he felt it was safe to move James made his way back to the elevator doors and clicked the up button. They backtracked and made it back into the tunnels they entered from under the assumption that nobody was the wiser.
Once outside James leaped out into the distance, his heart set on making it back home as fast as possible. It seemed as though they got away without anyone detecting them and James was about to let out a laugh from all the adrenaline coursing through his body. That is until a massive pain ripped through his back and sent him crashing into the forest floor below.
He looked up from the crater he lay in to see none other than Jeremy hovering above him, a hostile scowl beaming down from his eyes.
With a sinister smile streaked across his face, he asked, "You wouldn't leave without saying hi to your big brother would you James?"
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