GENEVA

It was dead silent in the room.

No one spoke a word as the large crowd of GHOST members stared at us, their eyes glazed and barren of emotion. I could feel my hands shaking, sure that at any moment, they were about to attack us.

After what felt like a century of silence, a tall, dark skinned boy said in a slurred, garbled tone, "Who are y'all?"

I blinked, taken aback. Before I could respond, Alexander stepped in.

"You don't know who we are?" he asked.

A fair-skinned, blonde girl shook her head. "Should we?"

"You probably should, considering how much your leaders love talking about us and how desperate they are to have our heads. If you've watched the news by chance, you've also heard of us. We're kind of, er, fugitives. Does that ring a bell now?"

"Alexander-" Amethyst began.

"Nah, never heard of you," the girl responded. "Though that one looks familiar," she said, drunkenly pointing to Timmy.

Timmy nervously gulped.

Instead of saying anything else, the girl looked away from Timmy and raised a red cup, shouting, "Anyways, LET'S GET BACK TO PARTYING!"

The room filled with clamor and loud cheer as they were about to return to partying. But before they could, a lanky boy in the back yelled, "Hold up, you guys still haven't explained what you're doing here."

How were we supposed to respond? By casually telling them that we were here to save our friends that they captured and break in, creating chaos within their tower? Were we going to have to earn their trust by drinking with them? Gods I hope not.

We awkwardly looked around at each other, trying to find an answer to the boy's question. I opened my mouth, about to give some random answer, when I was interrupted.

"Wait, Timmy Dale?"

A buffed up, ginger haired boy walked in Timmy's direction, a look of shock on his face. "Bro, I haven't seen you in so long! How have you been?"

"Oh, I've been good. You know, duty calls," Timmy responded, trying to seem as casual as he could.

"You know how much I love that word. Duty." He chortled at the thought of the word. "Come on, have a drink with us. Your friends can come too!"

The GHOST members behind him cheered in agreement, trying to get us to join them.

Timmy reluctantly smiled. "How could I say no?"

The room exploded with hollers as everyone returned back to partying and drinking. The ginger haired boy wrapped his arm around Timmy's neck, raising a plastic red cup above his head. "To Timmy!"

Timmy joined the crowd of cheering GHOST members, not drinking his beverage but still cheering nonetheless. Alexander swiped a spare drink off the table, yelling, "Yeah, to Timmy!"

He raised it to his mouth, but Amethyst smacked it out of his hand before he could drink.

"Hey, don't drink that! That's illegal!"

Alexander pointed towards a small, brown haired boy who was shoving two drinks down his mouth simultaneously. He was about 3'7" minimum, and had a noticeable baby face. "You call that legal?"

For the next few minutes, Timmy conversed with a GHOST named Nathan and some other members while the rest of us sat uncomfortably. Alexander tried making small talk with a few guys, but they seemed too entangled in their discussion to really care.

"Anyways," Timmy said. "We need to get a move on. It's been great seeing you again, Nathan. I didn't know how much I needed a break like this."

Nathan frowned. "Wait, where are you going man?"

"Well, I need to report to the, erm, commander," Timmy responded, distastefully saying the last two words.

"Aww, why don't you just stay for another drink? I'm sure your report to Princess Prickface can wait awhile."

A couple of GHOST members chuckled slightly as one of the members roared "Yeah, suck it Prickface!"

Alexander butted into the conservation, exclaiming, "Prince Prickface? More like Miss Vanilla Latte!"

The group exploded into laughter, someone even dumping their drink onto their head in hysterics.

"Ah man, that's a good one," Nathan said.

"Yeah," Timmy said, "But, I really should be going. You know how Olivia is."

Nathan crossed his arms. "Alright, fine. But come back as soon as you're done. And bring your friend too."

He patted Alexander on the back, Alexander blushing on our way out. I was relieved to finally be able to leave that room. The GHOST members were friendly, but their yelling and partying was a little much for me. And besides, they were still part of the organization that captured Kai and Rose and had been actively attacking us the entirety of our quest. Their jokes and drinking wouldn't change that.

We exited through a door in the back of the room, entering a dark, narrow corridor. The floor creaked below us as we were standing on old wood and there was a flight of stairs in front of us. The lights flickered all around us, and I could hear the scurry of a mouse.

As we began going up the staircase, I couldn't help but ask, "Timmy, why didn't those people know who we are? What were they even doing there in the first place?"

"Well, they basically spend all their time down in the basement and drink like crazy, so they're pretty detached from what's going on with the GHOSTs," Timmy explained. "So, when they saw you guys, they didn't recognize you. Also, and you may not believe this, but LOTS of people dislike Olivia, not just us four. That whole group hates her guts, which is why they made the basement a pub. They needed a secret place to vent about their frustrations, while also drinking to their heart's content."

I suppose what he said about the group made sense. Being under Olivia and Ivan's control must be tough, so it wouldn't be surprising that the members resorted to drinking and making their own place to vent about their problems.

We arrived at the top of the stairs, entering a small hallway with only one door, and beyond that was a corridor which we promptly entered. The corridor had a series of doors on the sides and marble flooring, along with lights emitting a dim glow. I could faintly hear footsteps and grunting and the sound of metal weapons clashing together, though I wasn't sure of where those noises emerged from.

We began walking slowly through the corridor, being as cautious as we could and not trying to make any noise. Midway through the corridor, we were given two choices: Continue proceeding forward and find out what's at the end of the hallway, or split right and go down a whole new hallway.

Timmy came to an abrupt halt, his palm up to signal us to stop.

"What are you stopping for, man? Right is always right, so let's keep going north," Alexander said.

Timmy shook his head. "That's not the problem, Alexander. If we take another step forward, we're going to be caught on the cameras."

As soon as Timmy said that, I noticed the red light blinking. A camera was wedged between the wall of the right hallway and the corridor we were currently in, right in the top corner.

"Oh, that's not good," I said. "If we keep going forward, we get seen. If we go right, we get seen. We're at a dead end."

Alexander scoffed. "Yeah, right."

He jumped upwards about ten feet and reached his hands out for the camera. Once he grasped the camera, he tore it off the wall and threw it onto the ground, imitating an NFL player doing a touchdown. The camera broke into pieces, spazzing with random jolts of electricity.

When Alexander landed, he smoothed his hair over, his expression smug as he looked up to the roof in glee. It was like he was reenacting a superhero movie scene, just with less of the heroism and more of the cheesiness.

"Why'd you do that?" Timmy asked.

"What do you mean? I solved the problem!" Alexander said, getting up from the ground.

"Well, you just alerted security that one of their cameras has suspiciously gone off and now they've probably sent someone to investigate why."

"Oh," Alexander said. "Whoopies."

"So, what do we do now?" Amethyst asked, a hint of panic in her voice.

Timmy rubbed his chin. "We need to ambush whoever is watching the feed before they inspect the crime scene."

"Okay, so where is the security room?" I asked.

"Follow after me," Timmy instructed.

He turned into the right hallway and speedily walked down to the end. It had a similar design to the corridor we were just in and had a similar amount of doors in it as well.

At the end of the hallway was a staircase. After a quick scan of our surroundings, we proceeded up the stairs. As we were going up, a GHOST member was coming down, muttering something about the cameras going off again and why in the hell it was his problem.

He spotted us, opening his jaw to yell but being cut off by Alexander, who mercilessly clotheslined the living daylights out of the GHOST member. The GHOST hit his head on the stairs and slipped down a step or two, us having to dodge his unconscious body as it continued its path downwards.

We arrived on the second floor. It was filled with multiple doors on the left and the right, all surrounding a glass-walled room with a singular, large computer inside of it. A trio of GHOSTs inspected the computer, flicking through several areas that contained cameras with a mouse. I could also hear the sounds and noises of the GHOSTs training more definitely, as I was able to detect that the sounds were coming from above us.

We slowly walked toward the security room, light on our toes as we approached the trio. The door to the security room was open, so we wouldn't have to worry about making any noise to open the door. Before we entered the room, Timmy turned around and put a finger on his mouth, signaling us to stay quiet.

I held my breath as we followed Timmy's lead, inching past the door. We paused just centimeters behind the trio, their eyes glued to the cameras.

"Boo," Alexander said, earning the attention of all three guards.

As they turned around, Alexander grabbed one of the guards and chucked him into the glass wall. A big chunk of the wall shattered on impact, the guard flying out of the room.

The other two guards grabbed their weapons, completely out of their seats. Amethyst pulled out her bow and shot an arrow at one of the two remaining guards. The guard blocked the shot with his sword, but when Amethyst shot again, he left his side exposed and I kicked him backwards. The guard stumbled into his friend and they both banged into the wall, hitting their heads against each other. With a groan, they both crumpled to the ground, knocked out. Amethyst used a grappling arrow to bind their legs together and that was that.

Timmy sat at the computer and began clicking through all the locations of the cameras, trying to find something. We gathered around him as he stopped clicking, pausing on a camera view of a jail cell.

"Hold up, that's Kai and Rose!" Alexander pointed out.

The both were sitting on the ground of their cell, their hands covered in chains. The bars of the cell were rusty and old, as was the inside of the cell, which had grime and grease all over the stone floor. From the side of the cell, I could see the corner of an empty desk and a few boxes surrounding it.

"Where are they?" Amethyst asked, analyzing the scene on the camera.

"It says that they're on the fourth floor, so the floor above us," Timmy answered.

I squinted. "What else do the cameras show us?"

Timmy clicked on the mouse a few times before stopping, showing us a different view inside the tower. The cameras were showing a group of three GHOST members carrying a wooden crate into a wide, dark room.

"There's my shields!" Alexander exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

"And my bow!" Amethyst added.

I also spotted my daggers, Rose's knives, Scorcher, and the other jewelry stolen from us by the two apes.

Timmy turned away from the computer. "Okay, so this is the plan: We go upstairs, retrieve our things, and save Kai and Rose. Afterwards, we avoid all the guards and make our escape. Capiche?"

"Capache," Alexander responded.

We exited the room and walked past the security room, continuing into a different hallway before running into a staircase. We quickly walked up the stairs and arrived at the third floor.

Compared to the second floor, the third floor was like a football field. It had multiple doors with labels on them, all leading to rooms with a certain purpose. There was a large double-doored room in between two hallways with black-and-purple patterns etched on the walls, including the large GHOST symbol. The hallway to the left of the double doored room contained three doors and led to a dead end where a painting of some middle-aged dude was hoisted up. The hallway to the right was much lengthier than the left hallway and had an array of doors that stretched on further than I could see. Farther north to the double-doored room and the two hallways was another large room, one that I couldn't quite make out.

"Alright, where's the storage room?" I asked Timmy.

"It's further down from here, past the training ground - the double-doored room," he answered.

As we progressed past the three-roomed left hallway, I could hear exceedingly loud sounds coming from the room. They only got louder as we got closer to the training ground, and eventually, we could hear the doors to the room unlock and open on its hinges.

"Quick, follow me!" Timmy exclaimed.

He ran to the short hall left of the training ground and entered one of the rooms, us following behind him. GHOST members began exiting the training ground, done with their training it seemed as footsteps emerged from outside the building.

We went into the left doorway of the hallway, entering a small, compact room with a total of three washers and three dryers, along with a brown table that had heaps of dirty clothes on it. There were a couple laundry baskets as well as a cabinet full of detergent and softener. A foul stench traveled into my nose, one that reeked of sweat and many food stains.

We hid behind one of the washers, which appeared to be detached from the wall. We were well concealed although it was a small space to hide behind and the lights were turned off, so we couldn't really see anything.

After thirty seconds of hiding, the lights turned on and I could hear a group of GHOSTs laughing as they entered the room.

"I can't believe you almost barfed, Syd," a random girl said, half-giggling.

"Oh hush, Gaby," Syd responded, throwing something onto the stack of clothes. "You were practically turning green with your lack of stamina."

"Y'all chill," a deep-voiced boy said. "With all those exercises they gave, I'm surprised that any of us survived."

The group continued their conversation, completely oblivious to our presence. We were all trying our best to be quiet in the fear of getting caught, having to resist the severe discomfort of our current situation.

"Your clothes smell, Damien. Go put them in the washer," Syd said, turning on a random dryer in the room.

"Yes, ma'am," Damien groaned.

He grabbed his clothes and walked over to the washer we were hiding behind, which was not good news for us.

I traded looks with Amethyst as Damien threw his clothes into the washer. He was one glance away from discovering us.

"This washer won't turn on, what's wrong with it?" Damien asked, pushing the buttons on the washer in frustration.

He looked behind the washer, catching sight of us.

"Look, it's the intruders!" Damien exclaimed, catching the attention of Syd and Gaby.

We got out of our hiding spots as we met face to face with the trio.

"Well, well, well, look what we have here," Syd sneered.

She was a brown skinned girl with dark curly hair and blue eyes. She was standing next to Gaby, who had brown hair with green eyes, and was glaring at us. Damien stood in front of them and had positioned himself into a fighting stance.

"Hey, guys," Alexander said sheepishly. "We fixed your washer!"

Suddenly, Alexander ripped the washer off the wall and threw it at Damien. If he hadn't been wearing armor all over his body, he would've gone unconscious.

"Oh. Guess it's broken now. My bad."

Damien groaned in pain, clutching his wrist. The washer had landed dead on top of him, and he was unable to slip out from underneath. Gaby snarled and raised her hands in front of her, summoning vines that wrapped around our feet. Syd walked to the door of the room, locking it so we couldn't get out.

"Nowhere to go now," Syd said, a smirk on her face.

I squirmed and twisted wildly, unable to break out of the vines. No matter how much strength I tried to use, the vines wouldn't budge one bit. Gaby was trained, even more so than Katie and Miranda, the two head counselors at camp. None of my other friends had any success either, and the situation seemed hopeless. In a matter of minutes, Olivia or Ivan or maybe that Aldric guy would come and send us straight to Erebos along with Kai and Rose, and the whole quest would be over.

Then I remembered something.

I recalled my experience at the Pillars of Hercules, and the tale of Menelaus and Aristaeus I heard from the Naiads. The two heroes had tried to chain and capture Proteus to attain his wisdom, but every time they tried to capture him, he would always shapeshift and find a way to escape. This also correlated to my experience with Proteus, in which he kept escaping from my custody even though I was using Hercules' legendary chain, the same he used against the Erythmanian boar.

My experience, in a way, reminded me of the situation that I was in now, except I was Proteus in this case and Gaby and Syd were... me?

Taking the memory into account, my body decreased in size along with numerous other changes, including growing a small tail and gaining long whiskers, as I turned into a squirrel, just like I had done in the alleyway.

The vines fell in a heap around me as I ran toward Gaby and Syd, both who had a look of confusion on their faces. I returned back into my human form, jump-kicking Gaby in the face. She fell onto the ground with a bloody nose, not getting up.

I turned my sights on Syd. Her eyes met mine as she positioned herself into a battle position.

We engaged in a fist fight as we took swings at each other. For a brief moment, we were interlocked in a pattern of swings and dodges before I got the advantage on her when she lunged into her cross a little too much. I side-stepped and went for a body shot, hitting her hard in the side. She groaned in pain, her hands instinctively retreating to her side. Then, with her having no possible way to defend herself, I roundhouse kicked Syd in the face, finishing her off as she hit the floor.

I turned around to face my friends, who had gotten themselves out of the vines now that Gaby was unconscious and no longer had control of the vines.

"Well done, Geneva!" Amethyst complemented again. "But what do we do now? We have three unconscious GHOST members on the ground and we have to find a way into the weapons room while also staying concealed."

"Well, Mr. Single Tear over here isn't really unconscious," Alexander noted. "He's just sitting there and crying, one tear at a time."

Damien was conscious, but he was still stuck beneath the washer and was groaning in agony. I'm pretty sure he broke his wrist, as he kept clenching on to his wrist like a madman checking the time and whimpering like a stray puppy in the cold. And, as Alexander described, a single tear was rolling down his cheek.

"Well, there's nothing much we can do about them," he said, pointing to the unconscious GHOST members, "but we could conceal ourselves better by wearing the GHOST outfits left on the table."

I nodded in agreement and we began sorting through the clothes on the table and in the dryers. I grabbed a fresh pair of clothes from the dryer with my approximate proportions and put it over the clothes I was currently wearing. The outfit was warm and smelled of lavender and soap.

Once we had all changed into GHOST outfits, we walked to the door and unlocked it. As we exited, trying to act normal and act as if we totally hadn't just invaded the GHOSTs' facility and stolen their outfits, I heard a whine echo through the hallway.

Damien.

"Oh gods, Damien's going to be a problem," I said, "especially if he's just going to keep whining."

"Here, I have a quick solution to that problem," Alexander proposed.

He walked back into the laundry room, grabbed a dirty sock from the table, and shoved it into Damien's mouth, causing him to groan again, this time a lot more muffled.

Alexander turned around and grouped back with us, shutting the door behind him.

"You see, I put a sock in it," Alexander said, a wide smirk on his face. "You get it?"

"Nice one," I said with a deadpan tone. "We should get a move on."

We walked out of the hallway and began heading toward the weapons room. We passed by the gym and began seeing other rooms and hallways that I hadn't been able to see before. Now that we had passed the hallway to the right of the gym, I could see two sets of double doors in a large room adjacent to the gym. I could hear a decent amount of chatter coming from the room, and made the assumption that most of the GHOSTs that had just been in the gym now occupied that room.

"Okay, we're almost there," Timmy chimed. "Be ready."

We passed two more hallways and took a turn to the right, entering yet another hall. As per usual, there were about three sets of doors lined on each side of the hallway, spaced out evenly across the walls. At the end of the hall was an open doored room that emitted a dim light. All I could see was the faint glow of shiny objects and materials.

This was the weapons room we had seen on the cameras, evidenced by the metallic camera wedged in the wall above the dim room.

We slowly entered the room, analyzing our surroundings now that we had a better view of what the room contained. There were groups of weapon racks on each side of the room, varying from swords to pistols to even battle ukuleles. The ground was made of a navy blue carpet and the walls were painted a stone gray. In the middle of the room was a large glass covered wooden table, with labeled guns stashed inside. A few GHOST members were walking around, shelving supplies and rechecking boxes.

Standing in front of the wooden table was a GHOST member, who was picking at her nails.

"Oh, hey," she said, looking up from her nails upon our entrance. "What are you guys doing here?"

"We're here to get some guns. Ya' know, blow some stuff up. Do the whole shebang. Just the usual stuff," Alexander said, waving his hands around casually.

The girl scrunched up her face in confusion. "Uh, what?"

"Just ignore my friend," Timmy said, giving Alexander a death stare. "He's a new recruit, so he's still trying to figure things out."

"Oh, I've been there before," the girl replied.

Timmy nodded, even adding a fake laugh in there. "Yeah, we all have. Anyways, Olivia said that you guys might need some help down here, so what do you need us to do?"

"Oh, alright. Well, we need to move some of the boxes over there," the girl said, pointing toward a rack filled with blades and short knives. "I'm sure you know where to move them, so get working!"

Timmy gave her a thumbs up and we walked over to the boxes. We each carried a box and followed Timmy's lead as we walked down a long shelving area of weapons and loot. The girl at the front was still looking at us, though that was likely to check what we were doing rather than being suspicious of us.

When the girl finally lost sight of us behind the rack and began engaging in a conservation with one of the GHOST members, Timmy looked at us and whispered, "Drop the boxes. Quietly."

We did as we were told and lightly placed the boxes down on the floor.

"Split up and search around for the weapons. They should be grouped together," Timmy explained. "Remember to be careful. We don't wanna look suspicious."

Alexander grouped together with Timmy while I got with Amethyst. While the two boys proceeded to a different rack, Amethyst and I stayed and decided to divide up, with her heading to the end of the shelving area and me searching at the beginning of the shelving area.

I diligently peeled the opening of each box and took a brief look through them, seeing if anything looked familiar. Some of the boxes were empty while others were filled to the brim with imperial gold and celestial bronze weapons. Worst case scenario, we could take these weapons if we couldn't find our own.

After scouring through twenty boxes or so, I met up with Amethyst near the middle of the shelving area.

"Any luck?" I asked.

Amethyst shook her head. "I think we're going to have to ask someone in here where the new weapons were placed."

We walked over to the shelving area that Timmy and Alexander had gone to earlier. Neither of the two of them were there, though a tall, bronze-skinned guy was sifting through boxes.

"Excuse me, do you know where the new supplies that came in today are?" Amethyst asked.

The guy stopped looking through the boxes and motioned his head forward, not really looking at us but more at the roof. "Yeah, look at the last rack. The newest supplies are there."

"Thanks," I said.

We ventured down to the last rack, seeing Timmy and Alexander carrying a box up and going through it.

"We found the box," Timmy said, handing Amethyst her bow and some of her arrows and giving me my daggers. Amethyst also grabbed Rose's knives and some of her jewelry and placed them in her pack.

The two boys and I quickly grabbed our supplies and valuables from the box before placing the box back on the shelf. Alexander also took Scorcher with him, placing it in his sword sheath. We had left a couple of things behind, but we couldn't afford to carry all of the stuff that had been taken, just the bare essentials.

We snuck around the shelving area and back to where we had first begun searching for our weapons, sneaking past the guy that had told us the location of the new supplies. Luckily, he was very invested in searching through his boxes, so he didn't notice us leaving with the supplies.

We exited the shelving area and back into the weapons room. The girl and the person she had been talking to had relocated to the back of the room, where they both were sorting through a rack of large swords. We were easily able to leave the room and went back down the hallway from where we had come from. Now all we needed to do was save Kai and Rose, and we'd be out of here.

Timmy beckoned for us to follow him. We sped-walked forward and towards the end of the floor, passing even more hallways and double-door rooms. We speedily arrived at the stairs leading to the next floor.

As we jogged up the stairs, we encountered three more GHOSTs, and based on their faces, they definitely recognized who we were. One of the members was a fair-skinned girl with neck-length blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, and freckles covering her face, while the other two looked like identical twins, each with brunette hair, brown eyes, the same GHOST attire, and carrying the exact same weapons.

"Timmy?" the girl asked, her face pale with shock. The two boys next to her looked equally as stunned.

"Samantha, Keenan, Robby," Timmy said, half-muttering, half-speaking.

One of the boys glanced at Amethyst, Alexander, and I and said, "You're with these guys now?"

Timmy tried getting a word in, but Samantha cut him off, "Yeah, he is. You believe me now?"

"Oh, Timmy..." the other boy said, shaking his head disapprovingly. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Keenan, I've been saying this for years," Timmy said, now forming the confidence to say something. "Olivia is just trying to control you. In the four years we've all been here, none of our wishes have been granted. Keenan, you wanted to become an engineer. What happened to that?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Timmy," the girl, Samantha, countered. "You came to the GHOSTs for a family. And you got one! The three of us all cared for you so much and look where that got you."

"Sam, I cared for you guys too! But I couldn't stay any longer knowing what the GHOSTs were doing to us. I've been saying for months, years even, that I wanted to run away from the GHOSTs because I was sick of their manipulation. You failed to see that, which tells me all I need to know; Olivia has gotten into your heads and now you're just expendable pawns in her game. Even after what you saw in Palma, when Olivia literally choked me in the air to stop me from leaving, you take her side. You guys are truly hopeless."

The trio were taken aback by what Timmy said, falling silent.

"If you guys truly cared for me, you would've listened to what I said as opposed to someone you don't even like. Every time you told me I was a madman and to wait it out, I listened. I kept that hope up multiple times just for your sake, even when it went against my better instinct. But that feeling isn't mutual, it seems."

"Timmy...." Samantha stuttered.

"I'm not going to keep arguing with you guys. You've chosen your side, and I've chosen mine. Now, if our friendships really amounted to anything, you'd let me and my friends," he said, emphasizing the final word, "pass by unharmed. Unless the last four years of my life were a giant lie."

The three paused, taking in the impact of Timmy's words.

"If that's what you really want.." Samantha said, looking down at the ground, "Then we'll get out of your way."

The three walked down the stairs and allowed us to pass, their faces full of defeat. I expected them to make some sort of move, or say one last thing, but they didn't. There was no last glance or anything. What Timmy said had hit them hard, it seemed.

I had never gotten to know Timmy well. In fact, up until about a day ago I had wanted to boot him off the ship and get him out of my sight. But listening to what he said to the three GHOSTs made me see an entirely different side of him. It was as if I had truly gotten to know Timmy for the first time.

We finished going up the stairs and entered the fourth floor. There was a large office area that had a couple desks, filing cabinets, computers, and a conference room with a wide meeting table at the very far end of the hall. Between the conference room and the office, I saw the outlines of a jail cell.

We dashed toward the cell, finding Kai and Rose sitting on the ground, their faces lighting up at the sight of us.

"You guys finally arrived!" Kai exclaimed tiredly. "You get held up by traffic? I heard traffic's crazy in Italy!"

Alexander chuckled. "Yeah, I heard about that as well!"

Even though I didn't find the joke funny, I couldn't help but smile a bit. It was nice having Kai's charisma back.

"So, how do we open the cell?" Amethyst asked eagerly.

"There's a key in the conference-" Rose started.

Loud footsteps emerged from above us and reverberated off the walls of the fourth floor. Coming down from a staircase that led up to the roof of the facility was Olivia, Ivan, Aldric, and two GHOST members, all geared up and armed.

"Ah, the whole gang's here," Ivan sneered, reaching for his double swords.

Olivia saw Timmy and laughed. "Even Dale is here as well. Are you comfortable with your new group?"

Timmy didn't say anything, just unsheathing his sword as his eyes narrowed. Alexander summoned his shields, Amethyst notched an arrow into her bowstring, and I pulled out my daggers. We may have been outnumbered, but we'd still put up a fight.

"No time for small talk, I guess," Olivia said with a smug grin. She hung her katana out to the side and purple energy sparked off her fingertips.

It would all come down to this.