BEFORE

The lobby was not what Victor had been expecting.

It was clean. For a place that had not been used in over twenty years, the place was weirdly clean. Victor looked around but could not see a single speck of dust expect for the footprints he and Bar made on the marble floor. The fact that the flooring was made with marble was another thing that got to him. He turned to his old friend.

“White marble flooring? Was The Candy Crew that rich?”

Jolly Bar, retired villain-turned-information broker, just gave him a chuckle. “Of course not, but Professor Bath was. This base was his to begin with before he got caught. He spent a little too much on it, and the professor’s family needed the money to engage a lawyer. Not that it helped much. The Candy Crew bought over the lair on the cheap.”

“How come I never heard of this place?”

“It was never operational. Remember the period before The Candy Crisis when Mage had us buying up property left, right and centre?”

Victor frowned at the memory of the crisis that took down The Candy Crew, but he gave the information broker a short nod. “Yeah, I remember. You mean we bought this place twenty years ago and it has been just sitting empty the whole time?”

“Mostly. No one knew about this place except for Professor Bath’s family, and they were not members of The Game. This place was never operational, so most of The Candy Crew did not know of it. And, after The Candy Crisis went down, most villains knew better than to touch anything that belongs to the crew. No one went poking around our places, so this place has been forgotten.”

“How did you know about this place then?”

“Someone from The Candy Crew need to liaison with Professor Bath’s family. Guess who got the job?” Bar explained with a smile.

“All I did back then was shake down innocent shopkeepers.” Victor shook his head in disgust. “This place awfully clean for an abandoned lair.”

“That’s on me. I was thinking of using the place as a base of operations when my business gets bigger.” Bar pointed at the receptionist’s desk at one end of the lobby and then at the several sofas and beanbags on the opposite side. “Even did some interior decorating. I was going put a widescreen television up on the wall there.”

Bar pointed at a wall facing the sofas and Victor could almost see it. A television for guests of the lair, where they could relax as they wait to be admitted. Victor could put his crew’s logo on the wide wall behind the receptionist’s desk, if he ever gets around to getting a logo, and get Jennifer to set up a service café where the guests could enjoy some snacks before entering the lair.

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Victor followed Bar to the elevators on the side. There were three of them and Bar pressed the button on the rightmost elevator. There was a low sound as the elevator moved up to the lobby level, before a ‘ding’ sound indicated that it had arrived. The duo entered and the buttons showed that the lair had five levels. Bar pressed a series of buttons, no doubt a security measure, before the elevator began moving down. A red digital number appeared above the metal door, showing Victor that they had went down to the second floor below the lobby. The door opens with another ‘ding’, and Victor immediately saw a sizable security setup. A big scanning machine with a table, two bulletproof security panels, and a camera on the ceiling. Victor followed Bar past the unmanned security checkpoint and could not help but asked about the set up.

“Why did you set up this checkpoint when no one is using the lair? Seems like a waste. You could sell that security machine for tens of thousands of dollars.”

“Not really.” Bar replied after a pause. “It fell off a truck, and the guys who picked it up gave it to me as remittance for services rendered. I thought it would be a good idea to show potential clients how secure the lair could be if they put a little work into the place.”

In layman terms, the machine was stolen but the guys who stole it could not get rid of it. So, they gave it to Bar as part of their payment for the information on the heist. However, Bar had problems finding a buyer as well, so he decided to put the machine to use. Victor wonder what it was that made the machine that hot.

The duo reached a fork after passing the security checkpoint. Bar led Victor to the left and they walk through a double door. They entered a huge circular room dotted with circular tables that could seat a maximum of eight to ten people per table. There was a serving station on one side, and some vending machines up against one wall. Victor saw that these were franchise food-dispensers and shook his head. Junk food vending machine was something the world did not have before he went in. Now, they were everywhere!

“This is the cafeteria and entertainment level.” Bar said as he took a seat at one of the tables. “This end is the kitchen and eating area. If we had went in the other direction at the fork, we would be going to the entertainment area.”

Victor nodded as he sat down opposite Bar. He felt weirdly out of sorts. When he met Bar at Two Drinks Tavern and told him he need a new lair for his crew, he was expecting some broken down abandoned hole in the ground. Something like the lair H.A.V.E introduced to him.

Instead, he got a clean, operational, partially furnished lair that used to belong to The Candy Crew. It was too good to be true. In The Game, friendship only goes so far, making Victor wonder what game his old friend was playing.

“So, what do you think?” Bar asked.

“I am wondering how rich you are.” Victor looked around in mock wonder. “You have to be rich to maintain a lair like this when no one is even using it. This place looks surprisingly well kept for a lair that had not been in used for twenty years.”

“Oh, it doesn’t always look like this. Most of the time, this place looks like a dump, but I have been cleaning it up.”

Victor raised an eyebrow at that. “Because of me?”