Chapter 8: Alliance

My sister and I were in my room. She was sitting at my desk, and I was sitting on my bed. We were both looking down at our phones.

I asked my sister, "Has anyone from your alliance left?"

"Not yet," she said. "But before I closed my alliance, people were leaving and joining all the time. Worse comes to worse, I can kick people out and invite you."

I sighed and said, "Well, maybe I'll just join some other alliance for now. I mean, I can always leave, right?"

My sister's eyes lit up, and she said, "Yeah, you should do that! And tell me how your alliance runs things. I don't really know what I'm doing, yet."

"Ok," I said. "I get free gold out of this, too, right?"

My sister nodded and said, "You get one hundred gold."

"What's the gold good for?"

My sister said, "You can get items from the store, but I'm hoarding mine. Gold's really hard to get. You know how in your mystery game, you can watch a video or something to get diamonds once a day?"

I nodded.

"Well, you can't do that here," she said. "Other than getting gold for joining an alliance or from the bouncy chest…what's it called? Anyways, you can't get gold anywhere else."

"Ok, I'm gonna do it," I said.

"I wanna watch!" she said and sat next to me on my bed.

I smiled and turned my screen a bit towards her so she could see what I was doing.


The city was in a celebratory uproar, because the Player was looking at a list of alliances to join. Everyone was out on the streets cheering the dim Player Orb.

Kate and the others weren't down there. They were sitting at their usual spot at the top of the falls looking down at the city. They had discovered that the Player Orb always beamed down on the city but never lit up anything above it.

"I can't believe it," Kate said with a smile.

"You called it," Jack said. "You said that he would join an alliance. Now all we need is for him to change his name and our city name to something more than just a string of numbers."

Next to Kate and Jack, Erick, Lobby, Toffer, and Manda were also sitting on the edge looking down at the city.

"When did she say this?" Toffer said.

"It was when we first reached Stronghold level five," Jack said with a grin.

"Before the abandonment?" Erick said. "Wow, remind me to always listen to your predictions, Kate."

Kate shrugged and said, "I think we got lucky."

"But I wonder why the Player left us in the first place?" Manda said softly.

"It wasn't something we did, was it?" Lobby said.

"Who knows," Jack said and leaned back with a sigh.

Toffer said, "Well, Players are unfathomable creatures. What I would do to know what goes through their minds."

Suddenly, Athena's voice echoing through the city interrupted them.

"We got free gold!" Lobby said happily.

"But what is gold supposed to do?" Manda said.

Everyone shrugged.

"Well, we started out with one hundred of it," Kate said. "And now we have two hundred. That's double, so it has to be a good thing."

Everyone nodded.

"Here you all are!" 88M's voice said behind them. "Zeus and Hero Adileh want all the high absorption rate citizens to come to the Stronghold."

"Hi, 88," Kate said. "Why do they want us?"

88M moved up and down on the balls of his feet with excitement.

"When the Player joined an alliance, the Alliance Room unlocked! We can enter it now, and there's a whole new quests room and some sort of event room!"

"Really?" Kate said and got up. "I definitely have to see that!"

88M smiled then stopped.

"Wait, we're all going down the path, right? It's not really urgent, so we have time…"

"Where's the fun in that?" Erick said with a laugh.

Manda said, "You don't have to jump with us if you don't want to, 88."

Toffer said, "Dear 88, you jumped so admirably the last time."

88M shook his head and said, "But that was an emergency! And it took forever to find the surface!"

Erick laughed again and said, "No worries, 88. We'll just wait for you at the bottom."

Kate glanced down at the Player Orb. It was dim. Erick also looked at it before saluting them and leaping off the edge.

"See you down there all," Toffer said with a similar salute and jumped, too.

"I can walk down with you, 88," Manda said softly.

Lobby said, "I can, too."

"Same here," Kate said with a smile.

88 frowned, and after several moments, he closed his eyes and sighed.

"It's ok…I'll jump, too," he said. "I'm not scared necessarily…it just…it isn't my favorite activity. And I always get nervous that the Player Orb will light up while I'm in mid jump."

"Don't worry, buddy," Jack said. "We can walk down with you."

88 tightened his lips and said, "Nope. Here I go!"

He ran past them to the edge.

"88," Kate called, but he was already jumping off.

"Eeeyaaahhhhh!"

"I think that sounded like a fun shout?" Lobby said.

Jack chuckled and said, "More like a scream than a shout."

"We'll walk down with him next time," Manda said.

Kate nodded.

Then all together, the four of them jumped off, too. When everyone reached the back entrance of the Stronghold, they dried themselves off as best as they could then went inside.

Kate couldn't wait to see the newly unlocked rooms.