In the last moments of sunlight, Romeo and Blade were getting ready to leave their cave. There wasn’t much to do, they didn’t leave any marks or tracks in the cave, and even if they had, it wouldn’t change a thing. Still, the former chairmen couldn’t help but fall back to his habits of his old explorer days.

“Do you mind if we go over the plan?” he turned to the woman who would follow him in the attack at the facility.

“I remember it,” Blade replied.

“I believe you, but can we go over it, nonetheless? Maybe there is a detail don’t match between our understandings and it would be better to be on the same page.”

Blade sighed, “Fine. Sure. Step one, we go to the entrance and try to get inside.”

“I’ll be using my previous position as the reason I am here, and you are my bodyguard,” Romeo continued.

“And what are we going to do if they realize that it’s a lie? Or if they ask why a traitor is there?”

“The traitor part is simple. I’ll just say it was part of the plan. That way, we have a man on the other side. Everyone who knows about the labs thinks they are so smart and self important that it would sound obvious that they would be able to do that. If they don’t believe, then we go for Plan B.”

“Break in and start destroying everything,” Blade nodded.

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be ideal. Sure, if we are able to destroy the facility, it will stall their plans. But finding a place that has information and extracting that, that would be the best result.”

“I know, I know. Even if I really want to break them, I understand the priorities.”

Romeo just nodded, “If they do, let us in. I’ll try to ask for a tour of the facility. Or at least directions to some of the important places.”

“And those places could be the lab, the cells, or the archive. Right?”

“They are calling it Grimoire, not archive.”

Blade gave him a blank stare, “You are kidding me.”

“I wish I was. According to Becca, they are referring to any library or place where they keep documents and files as Grimoire.”

Blade scoffed, “It’s like they are trying to be pretentious pricks.”

“And yet, it’s awfully on brand, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Blade sighed, “But that’s it, right? When we find that Grimoire, or whatever the fuck. We either steal the documents, or use the copy drive to copy the files and then bolt,” Blade pulled a small device about the size of a nail from her pocket. It was a tool created by a hacker that could copy files of any computer and network at incredible speeds. According to the creator, the copy drive could copy the entirety of the internet in less than a month. Anything around a few petabytes would take less than a minute.

“And we destroy everything we can on our way out. Ideally, killing most scientists in the process,” Romeo nodded.

“I don’t like that part,” Blade twisted her nose. Romeo stared at her and was about to say something when the armored knight continued, “But I’ll do it. It’s the same situation as the criminal. Those labs are too awful. I give the guards the benefit of the doubt if they know what is going on, but the scientists… they know.”

Romeo just nodded. They double checked their gear and waited for the last ray of sunlight to vanish on the horizon before jumping from the cave. It was a good 50 meter drop, but both had ways to slow their fall. Romeo had an item, while Blade had a skill for it. After landing, the two walked towards the facility entrance. The idea was to seem like they were supposed to be here, which also meant they had to move calmly, even if both were more than willing to run right now.

They made that small trek in silence, with Blade always walking behind Romeo, as a bodyguard should. Eventually, they reached the large door, protected by two guards in heavy armor.

“Hello,” Romeo opened a large smile, “I’m glad we have properly protected this place. I’m Romeo Ballester. Former guild chairman.”

“Hi… Yeah, I know who you are. But this is a restricted area. I have to ask you to leave,” one guard replied.

“I know that. I’m here to inspect the facilities.”

“Why would we let a traitor go inside?” the other guard scoffed.

Romeo just widened his smile, “You really shouldn’t believe in everything you hear. Think about it, the chairman responsible for uniting the guild and the New Dawn somehow saves a bunch of people from the other species and then he is kicked out. Why would someone who worked with the New Dawn to do everything they did would care about what happened with the leaders of non humans?”

“I don’t care. Leave,” the second guard pressed. Blade was about to step forward and go for Plan B, but Romeo continued.

“That wasn’t rhetorical. Think about it. Why would I help the non humans if I was on New Dawn’s side?”

“Because you are stupid,” the second guard snarled, but the first one raised his hand, telling his partner to stop.

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“Or… because you never saved them,” the first guard started to think in silence. No one said a thing, after all, the best way to make the guard believe them was to make them think they figured something out. Eventually, the man continued, "I mean, you never meant to save them. It wasn’t about that. We needed someone on the inside, and who is better than someone who is about to be the fall guy for the Guild? Someone who would have access to all the classified information the guild has, and could use it as leverage to see what the non-human were up to.”

“That’s almost correct. The best way to go about it is to only feed them fake information while steering them from the right intel. For instance, telling the non-humans about a plan already in place to attack one room that had little importance to us, but housed many civilians on their side. After hearing that, they moved troops to defend that place. While they scurried off to protect their own, we could strike on more meaningful locations and take those strategic positions to ourselves,” Romeo smirked, twisting some of the recent events. It was common knowledge that the Alliance was protecting their people, especially those areas with lots of children that were close to the battlefront. Their large presence in those rooms caused some other flanks to be weaker, and made them lose positions that, although strategically significant, would only be helpful when defending against an expanding force.

Behind him, Blade couldn’t help but wonder if Romeo was truly on her side. He was acting too naturally with those people, as if he had done that before. What was even more scary was the utter lack of any fear or hesitation in his words.

The first guard looked at him in awe, “That is very well done, sir.”

The second guard looked at the first, then at Romeo, “Yeah. I guess.”

“Now, would you allow me to enter and inspect the place? I’m afraid that if I have to get a written approval or something it would take too long and my absence might be noticed,” Romeo asked.

The second guard was about to say something, but he was interrupted by the first one, “Of course. I’ll just have to ask someone to be your tour guide. As a precaution, and to show you the place properly. But who is…” the guard looked at Blade, seeing the entire black armor. He noticed how the armor was bigger around the chest, which was a trait only present for female armor, “…her?”

“That is my bodyguard. Even if non-humans some accept my help, my presence is not always welcome. Hence, I have some protection close by at all times. She also helps me with my work and has a keen eye able to notice some of the more pragmatic details that allude me. I can’t even tell you how many times her insight helped us avoid any problems,” Romeo continued.

The guard nodded, “Ok then. Just give me a moment,” he pulled back and started typing something on his tablet. After about a minute, he opened the door and gestured inside, “Please, there is already someone waiting to guide you just beyond the third set of doors.”

“Only three sets? I thought we would have more,” Romeo commented.

“The first one is the only one that matters. It’s heavily reinforced, making it near impossible for someone to break inside. The other two are made to slow people down. That way, if we have invaders, we can blow everything up and bury them under the mountain. And if it’s something from the inside that is trying to leave, the personnel have enough time to leave while we do the same,” the guard explained.

“From what you are saying, this setup is much better at keeping things in than keeping things out. Then again, as long as you don’t lose the room, you wouldn’t have to worry about a large invading force, so the priority does make sense,” Romeo walked to the door and started heading inside, with Blade right behind him.

The first door was just a way to pass to the actual entrance. Where a massive 5 meters tall and 20 meter wide set of double doors stood. It was an imposing sight of dark metal, with several carbon fiber bars going across each plaque, reinforcing the structure even more. In front of it, a single guard stood. Less armored than the ones outside, but still wearing some sort of leather that would allow for better movement. They exchanged some greetings before their guide moved to the side, where a control panel was located. It was a biometric lock, where one would scan their fingerprint, their eye, and their mana. If any of the three inputs didn’t match, the alarms would trigger and a net of mana disruption would fall over the entire facility, draining all the mana of those inside and stopping them from being able to regenerate. The same lock was present in other important places inside the building.

“If someone who works here is inside when the net is deployed, what happens to them? They will be unable to defend themselves and trapped with something that is trying to break in, or out?” Romeo asked.

“That is a problem that people smarter than me are trying to solve. Maybe they will change the mana part. But for now, everyone is carrying a small mana crystal with enough mana to pass through a lock. Since each of the entrance doors has its own scanner, this should be safe enough until a better solution comes up. In anything were to happen, they would have options to hide in safe places until the problem is solved,” the guide said with a smile. Whatever the guard outside said made this person very interested in helping Romeo inspect the facility.

As they said, the next door also had its own biometric lock. And between opening and closing each door, it took them 5 minutes to pass through all of them.

“What is stopping someone from digging through the sides of the mountain in order to enter?” Blade asked the guide.

“There is a 30 meter thick wall of cobbleflame titanium reinforced with trifrost carbon fiber around the outer layer of the facility. The top doesn’t have it, since it would be too heavy, but the outer layer goes up about 200 meters from where we are standing. And we have sensors covering the entire mountain. Especially the less protected areas above. The ceiling here only has a 10 meter thick wall of the same material. That will stall any attempt to break in for enough time for the sensors to detect something,” the guide explained.

With the last door open, they started walking through the massive laboratory. Polished obsidian, reflecting distorted figures of those walking by, covered the floors, each step echoing louder than it should have been possible against the sterile silver walls. The air hanged heavy with the faint tang of chemicals along with the distant hum of the arcane machinery working non stop. Moving deeper, tubes filled with various liquids appeared on the top of the walls, flowing in a constant stream. Small sparks of pure mana crackled inside the mixtures, revealing the raw power contained behind those glass pipes.

The guide showed the living quarters for those who slept in the facility, the dining hall, and meeting rooms. In the next floors below were the simple research labs, where they created various compounds in order to supply the needs of their work. Each floor showed more intricate equipment, putting in evidence of how the work became more complex. But slowly, they started to look more and more ominous, contrasting even harder against the sterile look of the place. Small microscopes became larger, and eventually were placed on top of chairs covered in straps and manacles still stained with red. Centrifuges were no longer small, and made only for small vials, and now were tall enough to fit a person and had its sides covered in needles, like a twisted attraction in a hellish carnival. Needles no longer were there just to inject small quantities of anything, but now could almost be confused with vacuums. It got to the point where it wouldn’t surprise Blade if someone used those needles to pluck out the eyes out of someone’s head.

They continued walking until they reached another set of double doors, very similar to the one at the entrance, but on a smaller scale. The guide then turned to the two and smiled, “And this is the end of our tour.”