And here is the next chapter! Usually, I'd have more to say but I'm currently suffering through a fever so yeah. Gonna lie down in bed again :P
The editing might not be top notch this time around, so if you see anything weird with the chapter, let me know and I'll fix it when I'm not getting my butt kicked by germs.
But with that out of the way, enjoy!
Chapter 5
In my experience, people don't do too well in the dark.
When we're kids, we often have a fear of the darkness, usually for reasonable, if somewhat childish reasons. We're afraid of the monsters and nightmares that may be lurking in those shadowy corners and pitch-black basements, ready to hurt us or steal us away. We're scared of what might be there. While it's all the product of a child's imagination, the root of that fear still boils down to one simple fact about the dark. We can't see.
So when the lights in the ballroom went out and guns started going off, people reacted the same way kids do in the presence of a danger they can't see. They panicked.
Screaming, shouting, cursing exploded all around me, almost louder than the gunshots themselves, with someone nearby even breaking into hysterical laughter as the countless bodies around us ran and collided with each other and the furniture. Tables fell over, breaking glasses and plates, and knocking those little glowing orange trees to the ground, their faint light useless to see anything beyond a foot or two.
I was still reeling from what was happening, but I had enough mind to know panicking like everyone else wouldn't help us. We needed to move. We needed a plan of action.
Okay, brain. Danger's afoot. Do what you do best.
First things first, we couldn't stay here. Every second spent in the thick of the crowd meant a much more likely chance of being separated or worse like getting trampled in a stampede. We needed something solid to put our backs against. Then we could start taking steps to get ourselves out of this mess.
In spite of the sudden chaos surrounding us, I managed to grab onto Sinon's shoulder and keep hold of her as the tide of scrambling people pushed and pulled at us like rogue waves. She must have managed to grab Rei, too, because I felt her grab hold of my upper arm in turn with one hand, and her entire body shifted. A moment later, a slender figure was shoved into my chest, and I heard Rei let out a squeak of surprise.
"Up against the wall!" I shouted, pulling both of them along like they were bags of luggage. I don't know if they heard me — my voice very well may have been drowned out by the dozens of others screaming all around us — but Sinon and Rei kept hold of me and each other as we pushed desperately against the sheer mass of people running around us.
I held my free arm out in front of me to make sure the way ahead of us was clear. The larger cousins of the tiny glowing trees were in planters pressed against the wall. I used them as a beacon and kept moving forward. Somebody fell and nearly bowled me over in the process, but the hold I had on Sinon kept me upright. I stepped over the poor guy's hand and shouted a quick apology, fumbling in the dark to grab him and haul him to his feet before moving on.
My hand touched the wall before we could be overwhelmed and I crouched down. Sinon and Rei did the same, staying close enough that I could hear them breathing.
"What are we doing?" Sinon asked, voice almost lost in the deluge of shouting and chaos around us.
I screwed my eyes shut, brow furrowed and consulted my memory of the ballroom's layout. We were up against the wall, most likely still underneath the second floor balcony. The only exit I knew of were the doors where we first came in, but they were on the other side of the ballroom and I wasn't eager to go through a panicked crowd to get there. Besides, with a crisis well underway, everyone would be running for the nearest exit. Odds were good that a mass of people were already trying to get out that way. We'd be stuck just trying to get through them all, and in the concentrated dark, that would be a death sentence.
Unless…we got the lights back on.
"Masai!" Sinon said in a tone like she'd been trying to get my attention.
"Remember when you pointed out those guards to me? The ones that went into the backrooms?" I finally said. "That might be where they shut off all the lights. If we can get them back on, then maybe there's a chance we can save this."
There was a stunned second of silence. "You don't want to escape?'
"Not a lot of chances to," I said. "Getting into the back rooms might be the safest bet we have. We just need to follow the wall. It'll take us right to the door."
"It'll be risky to go it alone without anything to protect ourselves."
"Yeah. Dangerous with a capital D," I said. "But hey, it's not like you joined GGO to collect stickers or something, right?"
Sinon snorted. "True." The hold she had on my arm tightened. "Okay. Let's go."
"Rei?" I asked.
"I-I go where you go, Master. I'm ready!"
"Then stay close," I said, and put myself between them and the rest of the room, shielding them with my body as best as I could, and we hurried down the length of the wall.
I didn't say it, but there was another reason why I wanted to get the lights going again. Things had turned into a verifiable disaster. There was no denying that. People were going to be blamed for it. One of them would be Philia.
None of this had been her fault. She'd been put into a bad position and tried to make the best of it, but there wasn't a doubt in my mind that she could be nailed to the wall for tonight. We needed to get the lights on. Restore some kind of order and security. Then maybe we could at least salvage something from this mess and spare her from the inevitable fallout.
That single thought spurred me forward, and with every step, the air grew steadily hot and sulfurous from gun smoke. I kept my head down, rounds whizzing by the space around us to the tune of several different forms of gunfire. The harsh bang of a high caliber pistol, the sharp staccato of automatics shooting in burst fire, the hollow boom of shotguns belching fire and lead, all of them blended together into a whirlwind of confusion set in total darkness. Something punched me on the bicep hard enough to actually hurt through the pain absorber, but I soldiered on.
Let it never be said I'm a quitter.
Realistically, it didn't take us long to reach the door, but it sure felt like it had. I threw it open and all three of us hustled inside to a long hallway lit with lurid red lights set low on the walls. It wasn't enough to see every nook and cranny, but at least we wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark.
It was an encouraging sign, too. If the power had been cut, then those lights wouldn't be on either. Someone had just flipped a switch. All we had to do was flip it back on.
"Everyone good?" I asked.
Sinon looked down at herself. Her hair had been mussed in the confusion, but otherwise she looked unharmed. "I'm alright."
"I'm okay too, Master," Rei added.
I nodded and looked down at my arm where a large red spot glowed just above my elbow. Whatever hit me had packed a lot of punch behind it. I debated using a medical syringe, but decided against it. No telling what was waiting for us further on.
"Okay, so far so good. Let's hope our luck holds out." I pulled the Walther pistol out, checked to make sure it was loaded again, and stalked down the hall, keeping it low and against my thigh.
"Where'd you get that?" Sinon asked as she followed.
"Present from Noya," I said. "The insurance he and Argo put together. They're probably armed too for all we know."
Sinon stared back at the door we came in. "It'd be good to have them here."
I nodded. Extra backup would have been appreciated, but seeing as how things were, it'd be almost suicidal to go back out there, especially since I never saw either of them before the blackout happened. Argo and Noya could be anywhere in that chaos.
"Any idea who's responsible for this?" Sinon asked me.
I shook my head. "Not a clue. Never seen that guy with the hannya mask before."
"He must be hiding his face to keep from getting caught."
I shrugged. "Could be. Or it's just his style. GGO's got all types."
Sinon shrugged. "Suppose there's only one way to find out. Whatever the answer is, we won't get it unless we deal with this."
Right. Pick up the pieces first, before you start putting them together.
We continued down the hall, but the further in we went, the more I noticed something that put me on guard. Dead silence. There wasn't so much as a shoe scuffing against the floor. The gunfire outside, muted to a dull roar, was the only audible noise I could hear. Sinon and I saw guards come in, but they weren't here now. Hell, they would have thrown the lights on themselves if they had been. Something must have happened to them, and I had a pretty good idea what.
I stopped just before a T-intersection and peeked out. There was more hallway to my right, a partially opened door on the left hand side. To my left was a closet with its door thrown open, the inside empty. A closet of some kind.
"Rei, watch our backs. You see anything, start hollering," I said.
"Got it, Master."
I moved, careful not to make any noise and alert anyone who might be around. It didn't matter who was in here, if they had a twitchy trigger finger, they'd start shooting at the slightest disturbance. I went down the hall, peeked around the corner to find it empty, then doubled back to plant myself against the wall next to the half-open door. I peeked inside.
It appeared to be some kind of storage room. Metal shelves loaded with boxes, crates, and pallets were organized in two neat rows that reached up almost as high as the ceiling, leaving a wide space in between them that led to the other side of the room, where another door stood. I didn't see anyone milling around nor any sign that someone had been through.
I stepped inside, pistol raised, and took a single, cautionary step in. Then another, eyes searching for any threat.
I found it when a figure stepped out from behind one of the shelves into the middle of the room.
At first, I thought the intruder wore some kind of hooded mantle, but with the glare of the red emergency lights, I could make out what was actually a black raincoat underneath a vest of body armor. Just like the guy out front, he wore his own face mask, a matte black metal one shaped to look like a featureless bird with a short curved beak, its eyes glowing red.
In the space of half a second, the intruder lifted an assault rifle at me and fired without hesitation. I dove behind a metal crate sitting on a nearby storage rack. Bullets bounced off it in loud pings, but I didn't dare try to shoot back; a well-aimed burst could introduce a few rounds to my face.
Sinon threw open the door I came in and Rei leaned out to throw something hard straight at the intruder. The gunfire turned on them, pelting the door as Rei retreated.
I leaned out and fired off two shots, both hitting center mass and driving the intruder back in a stumble. He redirected his aim on me, but I was already on the move, running around the outer perimeter of the room, keeping the shelving units between us while forcing him to focus on me.
"Sorry, buddy. This shindig is invite only. I'm going to have to ask you politely but firmly to leave," I shouted, shooting more rounds at him as I moved. Bullets sliced through the air around me in kind, sparks and shredded cardboard flying into the air as they tore through the room, and I ducked my head, legs pounding furiously. "Love the outfit though. Very chic. The body armor really brings out your eyes."
I came to a stop at the other end of the room, pistol moving from left to right. But no one was there.
Motion flickered at the corner of my eyes and I whirled in time to see the birdman come around the corner to raise his rifle again. I beat him to it, sweeping the pistol up and firing, catching him in the arm and throwing his aim off.
I didn't bother to stick around and ran down the pathway between the rows of shelves and back towards the door I came in. When I glanced over my shoulder, the intruder came around, aimed down his sights, and his bullet line landed straight on the small of my back.
Only for Sinon came sprinting out from between the shelves.
She delivered a swift stomping kick to the side of his knee, dropping him to one knee. He turned his rifle on her, but Sinon was already gone, and as soon as she was clear, I poured every last round into him, catching him in the chest, shoulder, and neck, until he collapsed to the floor. He disintegrated into pixels a second later.
I let go of the breath I'd been holding and ejected the spent magazine for a fresh one. "Thanks for the assist."
Sinon came stalking out of the corner, eyeing the spot where the intruder had died. "Anytime. But that couldn't have been the only one. There might be more on the way."
"Definitely not eager to meet any back up," I said. "Rei?"
"Here, Master," she said, joining us.
"Nice distraction. What'd you even throw at him?" I asked while pulling the slide back on the pistol.
"A tiny sandwich."
I blinked and looked up at her. "You threw food at him? Where'd you even…wait, were you taking food from the buffet and putting it in your inventory?"
Rei shrugged and answered like what she did was the most normal thing in the world. "It was free, Master. If we take some, we can eat it later and save money for our food budget."
"She is your financial assistant, Masai," Sinon said, scanning the room, probably in an attempt to hide the giggles I could hear bubbling underneath her voice.
I pursed my lips. Then I asked, "Did you save any steaks?"
"Yes, Master."
"Rei, you're a genius. This is why I hired you."
Rei showed a bashful smile as I went over and opened the closed door on the other side of the room. On the other side was another corridor, stretching to my left and right, empty on both sides. "Okay, same plan as before. Rei, watch our backs."
"Affirmative!"
I stalked out, deciding to go down the left hand corridor, eyes jumping from one place to the other every couple of seconds. This far into the back rooms, I couldn't even hear the gunfire outside. Assuming, of course, it was still happening. For all we knew, Rosalia's security force could have been stamped out already and that ranked pretty low on my 'cheerful thoughts' scale.
I took a single step out when two more of the bird masked intruders rounded the corner. Clearly they weren't there to welcome us either, because the instant they saw me, they lifted their rifles and rained leaded hell on me.
I threw myself back inside the storage room, flinching my face away from the hail of gunfire and knocking into Sinon in the process. She bumped into Rei in turn, and all three of us nearly fell to the floor, which would have been monumentally stupid way to die if Rei hadn't managed to keep her balance long enough for us to regain our footing. As that happened, the birdmen kept right on firing at the door, sending chips of stone and tile flying.
"Time to back up! Get away from the door!" I said. Sinon and Rei immediately ran down the hall. I kept pace behind them, moving in a sort of backwards half-jog, keeping my pistol trained on the door in case we were followed.
"Where are we going?" Rei asked.
I bit my lip. We could have retreated all the way back to the ballroom, but then we'd run the risk of being squeezed between the attack happening there and the birdmen following after us, and being stuck in that position by guys who were better armed than we were didn't sound like such a hot idea.
"This room has the best cover we can get right now. Spread out, we'll figure out something," I said.
"I really would like a gun right about now," Sinon said as she moved behind a shelf.
"I'll complain to Noya about it at our next meeting," I said.
We got about three quarters down the room before the birdmen came inside. One of them pulled the bolt back on the receiver of his rifle and chambering a fresh magazine. I peered down the pistol's sights and focused on the bullet circle in my vision. I could kill one right now if luck was on my side, but that was a big 'if'.
Still. I needed to try.
I pulled the trigger. They fired back. Something punched me hard in the stomach, but I didn't so much as flinch and kept shooting. The first shot went wide, the second hit the lead birdman in the shoulder, the third hit his chest.
And the fourth almost hit Noya as he came sprinting into the room.
He slid up behind them like Death's own shadow, and they never saw him coming. Not until he jammed the business end of his pistol against the back of the nearest birdman's head and pulled the trigger. A splatter of virtual gore exploded from the top half of his head like an overripe tomato. His lifeless body dropped with hardly a sound and Noya turned his gun on the one I had put a few rounds in.
The birdman crouched down, trying to duck the shot and swinging his rifle to shoot him in the stomach, but Argo's Right Hand saw it coming, and booted him right in his masked face. He fell to the ground with a faint grunt.
Noya stood over him and delivered five shots straight to his heart with the same cold detachment he always had when it came to killing. It didn't matter how good his armor may have been. The body twitched with every shot until it went still with silent finality. When it started to dissolve into pixels, Noya ripped the assault rifle right out of its hands before it could disappear completely.
"You made it," he said as he approached us.
"Were you expecting us?" I asked.
"For the most part, yes. It wasn't hard to deduce what happened outside. If you weren't still stuck out there, you probably would have made your way here to switch the lights back on," Noya said. He held the rifle out to me. "Have you found anything?"
I took the rifle from him. It was a hefty number, with a thick polymer stock and a magazine big enough to bludgeon someone with. An FN SCAR, if I recall correctly. I handed it over to Sinon, who took it with a nod of thanks and checked it with smooth, precise motions. "Not yet. Just these guys. How'd you even get back here?"
Noya tilted his head towards the door he'd come from and started walking. We followed after him. "Snuck backstage. Argo's still out there. She told me to come back here. Help you if you were here. Fix the lights if you weren't."
I checked my health. The shot to the stomach dropped me down to just under half. I grabbed a medical syringe from inside my suit jacket and jammed it into the wound, letting the faint hiss fill the silence. "She stayed behind? Why?"
"Trying to see what she can learn from the attack, if anything. Things are going to get messy once this…" Noya pondered over his words. "...robbery is over. Best to gather what information we can."
I kept the grimace from showing on my face. "Yeah. I can think of a few people who aren't going to be happy about tonight." When we reached the hallway outside, I asked, "Have you seen Philia anywhere?"
Noya shook his head as he headed down the direction we were going before. "Didn't see anyone once everything started happening. You think she had something to do with this?"
"No," I said, almost before he finished speaking. "Can't be her. She wouldn't gain anything from doing something like this, and besides it isn't like her."
The silence hung in the air for a moment before Noya said, "I'll defer to you on that then."
We picked up the pace into a loping jog. Eventually, we reached another T-intersection where a door lay at the point where all three halls converged together. Above it was a sign that read Electrical Room. I scanned each of the three different directions in case we weren't the only ones around, but found nothing. I wasn't exactly eager to let my guard down at the moment, though, and kept my pistol up and at the ready.
"Lights must be back here," Noya said. He pushed the door open, and complete blackness waited for him on the other side.
I came up beside him and looked around the room, frowning. "Everything else back here is lit up by emergency lights. Why's this room completely dark?"
"That's the big question, isn't it?" Noya said. He glanced at me. "Some kind of trap. It's gotta be."
I peered inside a bit deeper. The middling amount of light keeping the hallways lit up wasn't much, but it helped my eyes adjust at least somewhat to the darkness of the room. If it didn't, I wouldn't have caught the mine sitting on the floor.
No sooner had I noticed it than I heard Sinon shout my name in alarm. I whirled around and saw two more birdmen running down the hall directly behind me with their rifles raised. Noya started firing, forcing them to focus on him as he hid behind the corner at the mouth of the hallway they were coming from.
"Master!" Rei shouted. Another pair of the intruders were coming down the hall on our right, already firing and…
And I got what they were trying to do. They were putting pressure on us, forcing us to either take a stand and die or run into the only place where we could take cover and eke out a fighting chance — the room behind me. The very place they boobytrapped beforehand. Heck, the birdmen we already killed were probably supposed to show up to the party too in case we got this far.
"Door's rigged!" I called, and ducked down. "Hold them off! Gotta disarm it."
"Got it!" Sinon said. She unloaded at our incoming friends, firing one round at a time instead of letting loose, making her every shot count.
"Rei!" I shouted, and tossed her my pistol. She caught it almost without looking and immediately joined Sinon in keeping the birdmen at bay.
I got to work, dropping flat on the ground to make myself as small a target as I could while I worked on the mine. I've played with my fair share of traps like those before. It took more than a few points into Dexterity to make them, and just as much to disarm them. Luckily, I had more than enough to work with.
This particularly nasty surprise had a motion sensor on it. It was a miracle it didn't go off when Noya opened the door. They must've put it far away enough that it wouldn't go off unless someone stepped inside. Easier chance of killing a whole group running inside to take cover, rather than the first sorry sap to open the door.
I crawled closer to it. Slow. Patient. I needed to be careful not to set off the motion sensor with any sudden movements. A bullet hit me in the left calf. I grimaced, but didn't dare move any faster. If the trap detonated because I got hasty, it could very well kill all of us.
"And here I thought I was the only one who liked using traps," I pressed a finger against the mine with one hand and opened a small holographic window with the other, displaying a jumbled mess of wires. I got to work, cutting them in the correct order, careful not to snip the wrong ones.
"Master, I don't have any more ammo!" Rei shouted.
"Gimme just one sec," I said, focusing intently on the wires. I cut the last one in the sequence, and the entire holographic screen flashed green and disappeared. A small light underneath the sensor went out and I shouted, "Trap's gone, everyone pile in."
The words were barely out of my mouth before Sinon and Rei stepped over me to get into the room, both of them grabbing me by the wrists and half-dragging, half-pulling me along with them as I tried to get to my feet. Noya brought up the rear and slammed the door shut behind him so hard it rattled the doorframe, plunging us into absolute darkness.
"Don't go any further into the room," I said. "If I were these guys, I'd put more than one trap in here."
High pitched pinging sounds rang from the door and I heard Noya say, "I'll keep it shut as long as I can, but expediency would be appreciated."
I nodded, remembered nobody could see it in the pitch black darkness, and opened my menu with a swipe of my fingers, using its faint glow to give me at least a little bit of light to work with. "Guess no lunch breaks for me. Anyone hurt?"
"Rei took a few shots," Sinon said as she stepped into the small circle of light my menu provided, leaning against the wall. Several bright red spots dotted her chest and one shoulder. "I did too, but I can manage."
I grunted and fished for the remaining two medical syringes inside my suit jacket, along with the magazines for my pistol. "Here. Use them if you need to, and give the ammo to Rei."
Sinon took everything and nodded, her face set in cool determination. Immediately, something hit the door with several hollow thumps, followed by gunfire and more sharp pinging noises. Thankfully, the door was made of metal. It'd take some doing for them to break through it.
That thought died a sad death when something heavy slammed against the door and shoved Noya a good six inches across the floor. Gunfire ricocheted through the opening into the room, sending sparks flying around us until Noya slammed the door shut again.
"Expediency," he said again, with a little bit more tension in his tone.
"Rei, help me cover the door!" Sinon said. Both girls hurried to help him, and I got down on one knee to get a sense of the room.
The wall on my left was covered with electrical cabinets arrayed with switches and knobs and dials and meters. A switchboard machine the size of a freaking car sat on my right, its lights blinking on and off.
I crawled on my belly, moving at an agonizingly slow pace. Snails would laugh at the speed I was going as I searched for a fuse box to get the power back on and definitely not more traps.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the kind of luck being served to me today. The faint glow of my menu screen fell across another motion-tripped mine jutting out from an open electrical panel on my left. I went about disarming it too, all the while more and more furious pounding reverberated from the door.
"This is getting way too intense," I said. "Rei, what do we do when things get intense?"
"On it, Master!" Rei answered at once. "Um…I went to the zoo the other day. The only animal they had was a dog. It was a shih tzu!"
A beat later, I heard Sinon mutter, "You've got to be kidding me."
I laughed. "What? I'm teaching her valuable life skills." The mine's green light went out, and I kept on crawling towards what I assumed to be the end of the room.
Another thunderous boom blasted through the room loud enough to make my ears ring. I looked back. Smoke hung in the air. The door was part way open and dented to hell, bits of drywall and flecks of stone littering the floor around it. From the way it squeaked as it swayed, one of its hinges had to have been broken.
"Sinon!" I shouted. "You guys okay?!"
I reached for my gun. Then I remembered Rei had it and mentally slapped myself on the head. One of the Birdmen started to come in and I couldn't do a thing about it.
Then Sinon, wearing fresh cuts and soot stains, came sprinting out of the darkness, slamming the full weight of her body against the door and pinning him between it and the frame. Rei came to join her, her face deathly pale, eyes wide with shock. But still she managed to put all her strength into keeping the door shut.
Noya swept up behind both of them and shoved his pistol through the gap, emptying the entire magazine in a couple of seconds. The birdman on the other side disappeared in a spray of digital blood and together, all three of them shoved the broken door closed, bracing themselves against it. It squeaked and gave way even more with every hard shove the intruders outside gave it.
They wouldn't be able to hold it for much longer. No time to waste.
My eyes darted around the back wall where a row of more electrical cabinets stood. There I found what I was looking for, outlined with bright yellow tape. A breaker box. Underneath it was another mine. I crawled on my elbows to it, flipped onto my back to get underneath, and clenched my jaw as I worked to disarm the thing, hopefully faster than the unwelcome guests could barge in here.
"Masai!" Sinon pressed.
"Almost there," I said back, hands working furiously. "Trying not to blow up."
As soon as the mine was disarmed, I shoved myself to my feet, flipped every switch I could see inside the breaker box, and pulled the main breaker so hard I could have snapped it in two.
A low buzz rose from the room, met by the voltaic crackle of fluorescent lights being fed power. Then all at once, the stark white lights flipped on, washing us in brightness enough to sting my eyes a bit.
"Sinon?" I asked, coming around back to the front of the room where she, Rei, and Noya still held the door. Not a sound came from the other side.
When she saw me, Sinon raised a hand, then pressed her ear against the door. She stayed there for a beat or three, and said, "I think they're gone."
"Bugged out already?"
"They didn't keep us from getting the power on. No reason to stick around," Noya said. "They lost their big advantage. Depending on what they came here to do, they might have decided to cut their losses and run."
I let out a sigh. "Boy, I hope you're right. Let's get back to the ballroom. Maybe if we're lucky, everything's worked itself out."
Sinon nodded and shot me a brief smile. "You really took your time back there."
I shrugged. "When you have a job, you oughta be thorough about it. But hey, at least I know what I can do when I grow up."
"Oh yeah?"
"Electrician," I said. Then I tilted my head to one side. "Or bomb disposal. Or both."
I opened the door and peeked out. There wasn't a soul to be seen in any direction, but then again, I said pretty much the same thing when we first came in here. With a tilt of my head, I beckoned the others to follow me outside. They did, raising their guns and pointing them down every corridor when we stepped out, which was probably the smart thing to do. No sense in letting our guards down just yet.
We didn't see anyone on the way back to the ballroom. When we reached it, I realized why.
Mayhem had swallowed up the ballroom when we left, and had spit it back out.
Pockmarks courtesy of gunfire carpeted almost every flat surface of the ballroom as much as stars dotted the night sky, from the pillars holding up the now abandoned balcony to the stone walls. Large holes gouged the once burnished floor, doubtless caused by explosions of some sort. The large blue and violet banners hanging from the walls were torn to shreds if not outright collapsed into a pile on the ground. In the near center of the room, in front of the stage, was a man's body lying on its side; someone had logged out during the chaos and left their avatar behind.
The ballroom had well over a hundred guests before the auction started. Now I could count at most thirty five or forty. None of them were Rosalia's security. The woman herself stood near the ballroom entrance where her Operators, Talbot and Faye, kept a mob of surviving guests at bay.
"Why the hell didn't you plan for something like this? Were you even trying?" one of them shouted.
"Your fuck up made me lose money!" another said.
Through all the screaming and pointed fingers, Rosalia kept a face of statuesque neutrality — which was pretty impressive since the vitriol coming off the mob surrounding her was poisonous enough to make me stay away and maybe consider turning invisible before they target me too for some reason, a victim of collateral outrage. Rosalia tried to speak to them in a calm voice, but whatever she said was so utterly lost in the swell that she may as well have said nothing for all the good it did her.
Up on the stage, Argo saw us come in and hopped down. She didn't look any worse for wear despite everything that had happened. "There you guys are. What happened back there?"
"Bad guys guarding the way to the electrical panels. Never seen them before, but they weren't pushovers," I said. "Took them out and got the power back on. You catch anything up front?"
"Not a whole bunch. Y'know, on account of the blackout and everythin'," she said.
"Yeah, blackouts tend to do that."
Argo shrugged a shoulder. "The fella with the Hannya mask was callin' the shots. He stuck around during the whole thing, but then he and all the others left maybe a couple minutes before the lights came back on."
"They must have gotten warning from the ones we killed," Sinon said with her arms crossed.
"Where'd they go?" I asked.
"Front door, maybe? It's the only way out. You guys didn't see an exit back there did ya?" Argo said.
"None that I saw, but we weren't exactly looking for one." I looked back at Rosalia. "Rosalia had lookouts watching the front door. They should be able to catch them."
"They'll be untouchable once they reach the safe zones. At that point it's just a question of whether or not Rosalia's folks can chase them down," Argo turned to look at the events unfolding. At some point, Gambler had gone to meet the crowd with Hanma in tow, talking to them and holding their attention while Rosalia quietly slipped away and headed outside.
"Things are gonna get messy for everyone. Real quick," Argo said.
"Yeah, it's a bummer, but this kind of thing happens sometimes in GGO," I said with a shrug of one shoulder. "The fact that it happened to Rosalia of all people is no skin off my nose, though. I'm not going to let it bother me too much."
Argo faced me. "Yeah, well, ya might wanna re-think that idea."
"Why's that?"
"Rosalia ain't the only person people're mad at."
I stared at her for a moment. Then it hit me and a kernel of worry sprouted in my stomach. I checked the ballroom again to make sure I didn't miss her. But she wasn't there.
Philia was gone.
"I was close enough to hear the Hannya guy givin' orders. Me and about everyone else still alive." Argo said. "The last thing he shouted out when they were leavin' was 'Time to go, Philia'."
I stared at her, then at the carnage around us. "Well…crap."
The guy responsible for this whole mess called her out specifically when he was bugging out. Now she was gone.
And a lot of people heard him in the process.
That did not paint a good picture.
He had to have been framing her. In fact, I was certain of it. I've known Philia for a long time and I've trusted her with my life on more than one occasion. But a lot of people didn't know her like I did. And they were baying for somebody to take the heat. Rosalia would get some of the blowback, but that didn't guarantee anything for Philia.
If something more was going on, she would have told me.
I played the events of tonight over and over in my head. Philia had been nervous when I met up with her. She'd given me a good reason, but an ugly little thought slithered in from the corner of my mind. I trusted her to tell me if something was going on.
But did she trust me?
Argo crossed her arms, looking out over the crowd with her nose scrunched in thought. "Jeez. What happened?"
Yeah.
What did happen?
