The view from the Northern Hotel's highest suite looked upon the shopping hub below, people scurrying about their business like the inside of a large hive. The suite was very high up, far enough from the rim of the station that there was a distinct spring to Mindeham's step as he walked from room to room, trailing Leonard as he gave him the grand tour.

"Is it relaxing being in lighter gravity all the time?" Mindeham asked.

"Oh, they keep me here to atrophy my muscles to make it harder for me to escape! Haha, a joke, a joke!"

Despite Leonard's assurances, Mindeham wasn't quite sure it was. Leonard led him to the massive lounge room, with the wall-to-wall television and the integrated gaming consoles.

"Here is where I spend a lot of my time," Leonard confided to Mindeham.

"Aren't you supposed to be ruling the station?" Mindeham asked cautiously. Leonard was looking a little strained.

"Yes," Leonard said, quietly. He looked a little downcast, and didn't say anything for a while.

Mindeham and Leonard played the two-player version of 'attack of the killer bees' for a few hours, and then one of the green-clad people came in with dinner, bowed, then left.

"Do you have an office?" Mindeham asked, trying to add up all the rooms. "If you usually use the spare room that you showed me, I can sleep here or something instead."

"No, that's okay," Leonard said, busy shoving food in his mouth. "My office is outside, in my original constituency."

For a while after dinner, Mindeham lay on the bed of the spare room, staring up at the ceiling. He did not know what to do. Leonard did not seem to be particularly happy, and he had angered Lae more than usual. Presumably Lae would be looking for him now, but he was a little too scared of what Leonard would say to go and ask to leave...

Eventually, he worked up his courage, and walked into the lounge room. Leonard was prostate on the floor, praying under his breath.

"And Mindeham, please help me escape once more, I don't mind how any more, so please..."

"Are you a prisoner, Leonard?" Mindeham asked. Leonard jumped, and scrambled to his feet.

"Are we prisoners?" Mindeham asked again.

"I'm sorry," Leonard said. "I don't know what they do to my former associates when I'm not looking, and I panicked when I saw you wave. I don't even know your name."

"Never mind that," Mindeham said, making up his mind. "Let's think about escaping, instead."

*

Lae figured that if she was going to find out where Mindeham was, she was going to have to go straight to the most ostentatiously sketchy part of the whole strange cult.

"I am afraid that the Northern Hotel is fully booked," a green-clad receptionist called out to her as she walked through the golden lobby.

"I am looking for someone," she said. "Is Manuel booked in?"

"I don't know of anyone of that name," the receptionist said.

"He'd be with the Glorious Leader," Lae said, taking a wild guess.

"Oh. Black hair, dyed green tips?"

"That's the one."

"He is a guest of the Glorious Leader," the receptionist said, as if that settled everything. There was a pause.

"Can I see him?" Lae asked.

"I'm afraid the Glorious Leader enjoys his privacy."

"Can you send a message?"

"They are very busy."

"Can you send a message when they are not busy?"

"I am not authorised to go up to the suite."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Can you send up a message with someone who is?"

"What is the message?" the receptionist said, giving up. Lae blinked. She hadn't thought this far ahead.

"Tell him I know where he is."

"I will not send up threats!"

"That's not a threat," Lae said, before seeing two burly green-clad security guards come her way. "All right, I'm going, I'm going."

Lae walked out into the shopping plaza, and looked up at the hotel. The lady had mentioned a suite, which in the Northern meant the last three stories. There had been an article on them when Ministrator Coverley, the station's corrupt and criminal leader a year or two before Ministrator Leonard came to power the first time, had his large parties up there. The windows were wide, but glazed dark, and Lae could not see anything through them.

"Right," she said after a while, and headed off purposefully. It was time to find cousin Jarad again.

*

Leonard looked on as Mindeham messed around with the bathroom supplies.

"So, in theory, we can degrade the initial seals around the windows," Mindeham said, waiting for the chemical concoction he had made to stop fizzing so violently. He made a brush made out of Leonard's hair, and began painting it on the edges of the window. "I believe usually they have an extra seal behind that, but that one is relatively easy to chip away, if we can keep back a knife from dinner."

"How do you know all this?" Leonard asked.

"Oh, I used to be an engineer," Mindeham said. "A while back, though, before I got into sales."

"What made you change careers?"

"Oh, multiple things. Various personal and environmental changes. And then I got an offer from a friend I couldn't really refuse."

The seals around the window began to change colour. Parts down the bottom, where the concoction was pooling, began to bubble a little.

"What did you do, before you were a politician?" Mindeham asked Leonard.

"Oh, I was a grocery store attendant," Leonard said. "Then my boss got into politics, and hired me as an assistant, and I sort of learnt my politics that way."

"Was your boss a good politician?"

"He wasn't that great, but he was running against the most corrupt Ministrator we had had in years, so his strongest platform was 'at least I will stay on the right side of the law'. He was thrashed in the debates because of that, though, and the other guy won again."

"But surely he had some other--" Mindeham and Leonard dived for cover, as the window moved in its frame and fell into the room with a thud, shattering into four pieces.

"Huh," Mindeham said. "I guess they just rely on the seals these days..."

"Be careful," Leonard said, as Mindeham picked his way to the window frame, and looked out. One story below was Lae, industriously washing the window.

"Have you come to rescue us?" Mindeham called out to her. She looked up, an unidentifiable look on her face.

"I guess," she said, flicking a switch on the scissor lift she was working on to make it rise up to meet him.

"Come on, Leonard," Mindeham said.

"Dear god Mindeham, you have a horrible sense of humour," Leonard muttered, looking out and going green, but he climbed out onto the scissor lift and held onto the railing, knuckles white.

"Thank you for rescuing me," Mindeham said to Lae, as they slowly descended to ground level.

"You'll cause less trouble if I do," Lae said, but then turned to Mindeham and smiled. "You're welcome, though."

"It's okay, Leonard," Mindeham said. "You can open your eyes now."

Leonard looked around, and realised they had reached ground level.

"Come on, you two," Lae said. They hopped off the contraption, and helped her put it on the pallet of a truck.

"Where did you get this?" Mindeham asked.

"Jarad's wife is a window cleaner," Lae explained. "She totally thinks I'm a criminal, but Jarad convinced her to lend it to me."

"I think we'd better hurry," Mindeham said, glancing at the front door of the hotel. Strange thumps were coming from the interior.

"I need to make sure it's all tied down properly; Sie will kill me if I lose her work stuff," Lae said, climbing up onto the pallet and double checking the ties.

"What do you think those weird cultists will do to us if they catch us?" Mindeham asked.

"What's that quote of Elvenheim's you always say? 'Eventually they'll forget you or there'll be a coup'?"

"What's that quote of Lae's you always reply with? 'One day they'll decide to burn you as witches instead'?"

"And that's done," Lae said, checking the last tie. "See, that didn't cost us any--"

At that point, screams and gunshots sounded from the hotel lobby, and Mindeham's kidnapper rushed out, towing a younger woman in a bright green shift behind her. She caught sight of the truck, and headed towards it, gun waving.

"Go!" Mindeham said, scrambling into the truck bay. Leonard and Lae scrambled in, and they headed off.

There was a thud from the back of the truck.

"They've jumped onto the tray," Leonard said nervously, looking back. "Say, isn't that your guide?"

"She was certainly leading me around, but only because I didn't want her to shoot me!" Mindeham said. Lae sighed, and turned around to face the back of the truck.

"Where do you want to be dropped off?" she yelled.

"The police station," came a faint call back.

"No problems, see? We'll drop them off there, and that'll be the end of it," Lae predicted.