Eliot crunched on a nature valley bar, as he and Anubis followed Thomas and Merrick. He was planning to let Thomas do all the talking today, he was just going to observe and see if anything fishy was going on. That's the reason Eliot says but honestly you don't point a gun in someone's face and expect there to be no bad blood, so he decided to just give Merrick a little space. He noticed how Merrick kept giving Anubis curios looks, Anubis would just ignore him and crunch on the other food bar that was in Eliot's other hand.

They went down a couple flights of stairs until they reached the first floor lobby where apparently the whole entire coalition was waiting, not saying a single word. Probably in fear that Eliot would go crazy again and decide to burn a hole through them. ‘Good choice’ He observed that there were more people compared to yesterday and even a dog; Eliot couldn't tell what breed of dog but it was a bit smaller than Anubis with a complete different color ‘Mental note; make sure to ask Thomas what color that is.’.

Anubis looked at the other dog and quickly made his way to it, Eliot didn't much mind as Anubis needed to communicate with his own every now and then. Him and Thomas stopped at a large area with a couple couches and tables, it looked like a rec room of sorts. Merrick motioned for the both of them to sit in a two seater couch where the rest of the people surrounded them; Eliot kept twitching wishing his hand was on his plasma pistol. This many people made him nervous for some vague reason.

Merrick seemed to spot the small finger twitches and decided it was best to speak up before they have to move a dead body from the lobby.

He cleared his throat and looked at both of them with an easy smile. “So, what can you tell us about what's going on outside? As you can probably tell we haven't left this apartment building since the satellites arrived.”

Eliot already told Thomas that he could be in charge of the discussion, he seemed more friendly anyways, even if he had a bigger build than Eliot.

“Well I don't really know what to tell you, most of the stuff we've witnessed is talked about in the forum section of the satellite. The thrall, the towers and that nothing works anymore.” Thomas replied loud enough so that everyone could hear him.

“Yeah, I read some threads about those but it's a different thing to read and actually have someone tell you their experience in person. I honestly just want to know the best method of dealing with them so that we're all protected until the military get involved.” Merrick replied while getting a whole bunch of head nods and smiles from the group.

“The best method is killing them.” Eliot spoke out of turn before realising it, ‘Damn it El, all that cool aloofness you just built up is gone.’

“Can't we just barricade ourselves inside the building and wait until the government or the military comes. We could literally save our points for less barbaric abilities and actually make a difference; have you seen some of the stuff in the ability list, we could literally stop global warming our restore entire forests, even clean oceans from pollution.” Merrick seemed to get more and more excited with each idea, Eliot couldn't blame him they seemed highly impressive but there was a couple of things Merrick seemed to overlook.

“Your thinking about saving the planet in the middle of the apocalypse, when your lives are literally at stake at this very moment? How do you even plan on acquiring points to buy any of those abilities that you mentioned, you do realise you have to kill shit to get points right?” Eliot asked not with sarcasm but with genuine curiosity.

Merrick smiled as if he expected this question “Look, I was an environmental major before all of this happened so the planet does have a lot of importance in my book; and killing things can't be the only way to make points, the abilities in the list cater to hundreds of different professions and crafts. How would they have time to kill and gather points when there making something; the system probably has multiple different methods to gather points. Like selling your designs or even missions to actually restore ecosystems; the possibilities are endless.”

“Thats cool and all but it's already been more than a whole day and the military hasn't been deployed anywhere. The forum is filled with people from all over the world wondering where they are.” Thomas added feeling sidelined from Eliot's interruption.

Merricks smile got a lot more stiff after that. “They're probably trying to figure out the best possible plan to be as effective as possible.” That sounded like a load of horse shit to Eliot so he knew no one in this room could believe that. But contrary to what he imagined people were still nodding their heads ‘the fools’.

Merrick continued “Listen, we don't want to figh..” Before Merrick could finish that sentence everyone's satellite lit up and a screen was presented giving everyone new missions.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

{Mission}

{Spires and Spores}

Failed

Points: 0

New

{Mission}

{Take what's not yours}

Destroy construct nest and collect

the energy source

Reward: 2,000pts

There was a long awkward silence after the satellites gave them a new mission. It pretty much contradicted what Merrick was trying to say; they wanted to wait and play it safe until someone else could come fight there own battles but now the system was presenting them with a means of points. By destroying whatever a construct is, the complete opposite of safe.

“...So I think this conversation is over, unless you have more to say?” Eliot said trying to excuse himself.

“Are you guys going to go do this mission?” Merrick said trying to reign the conversation back into his territory.

Eliot looked at Thomas wondering if he was willing to do it, Thomas just shrugged his shoulders and said it was up to him.

“Sure, why the fuck not.” Eliot responded

“Are you guys out of your minds, your both what eighteen years old? You have no experience in this situation, we should let people who are trained for this sort of thing to handle it!” Merrick lost his smile and was trying to convince them to become sheep like the rest of them and wait until a shepherd comes along telling them what to do. But fuck that, there bloody wolves; who’ve already had a taste of blood and they wanted more.

“Look Merrick, where just different type of people. No need to get overly dramatic, you could do your thing and we will do ours.” Thomas said standing up along Eliot.

The people in the crowd looked like there were beginning to have second thoughts, the allure of points and bad assery was to appealing for their feeble minds to handle. Eliot whistled for Anubis to come back to his side, he looked more happy for some reason when he returned ‘Must have had an interesting conversation with the other dog.’

Merrick looked like he wanted to argue more but decided not to. Instead he sighed and replied “It's your lives I supposed, but you might have to wait, the mist is still outside.”

“What mist?” Thomas asked

“Just look out the window.”

Both Thomas and Eliot looked out the window for the first time noticing that they couldn't even see outside of it. A white mist blanketed the whole entire thing, shrouding their vision.

“It goes up to at least the eighth floor and it's all over the city, been there for a couple hours now. I'm surprised you haven't noticed it.” Merrick said as he and the rest of the group began to make their way upstairs. Leaving only a couple of people who looked like they wanted to talk to Eliot and Thomas.

“Hey you guys have a minute?” Came the voice of a blonde guy with a patchy beard. The people with ‘Patch’ where circling the three of them, trying to do it nonchalantly but alarm bells were instanly being set off in Eliot's head. Eliot reached for his plasma gun trusting in his gut but before he did he felt cold metal against his neck. He looked over to a brown haired man with a buckler shield and a double edged sword outstretched onto Eliot's neck. ‘Where the fuck did those come from?’

“I wouldn't do that if I was you, if I activate this vibroblade I could cut through your neck like warm butter.” Mr.brown said trying really hard to be intimidating; it worked to say the least his blade looked sharp as hell. Eliot looked around and realized people who didn't have items all of a sudden did; one of them had a weird looking gun pointing it at Anubis another had an engraved wooden staff coupled with a cowl trying to look cool but wasn't doing much. The last person had the hand item called the Manus that he saw Genesis with the previous night and Patch just stood there with a shit eating grin.

“Don’t put your lives on the line just for some items bruv, just give us the book along with all the items you have, and we'll let you go.” Patch commanded with the same grin as if he’s already won.

Eliot instantly put the dots together and realized that Genesis indeed double crossed them, but instead of with Merrick like he first assumed, it was with Patch and his group. He was honestly surprised that they would come at them so quickly, he wasn't prepared for this at all.

“Well fuck, I guess you guys win this one. You mind telling Genesis she could go fuck herself for me?” Eliot said as he reached for the book in his messenger bag.

“Why don't you tell me yourself?” Genesis voice came from behind Mr.Brown, everyone's attention was instantly drawn to her. Before anyone could react she waved her hand through Mr.Brown's head; he crumbled to the floor in a heap foaming at the mouth. Anubis took the brief change in attention and launched himself at the gun wielder tearing out his throat drenching his already dirty fur in blood and gore. Thomas covered his fist in ice and punched the staff wielder knocking him out.

Eliot aimed his gun at the guy with the Manus item and told him to take the headband off. The guy quickly took it off and kicked it to Eliot; he looked at his friend who was being mauled by Anubis and paled, sweat was forming on his brow and he kept muttering sorry. Eliot eyed the carnage and quickly looked away, it was too much, thrall was one thing but killing another human was too far.

“Anubis! What the fuck!?” Eliot screamed still aiming his gun at the hand guy. His hands were shaking from the quick scene of mutilation he just saw.

Patch just stood there in bewilderment wondering what just happened, it was too fast for him to process and before he could utter any words Genesis’s hand passed through his head forcing him into unconsciousness.

“I told you guys I would get you the items.” Genesis said with a smile.