Before I could reply to the druid, startled as I was, strong hands forced me onward. They led me past shelves stocked with bulk commodities – paper towels, detergent, garbage cans, and the likes. I glanced back over my shoulder, catching the druid's eye. He was looking back. There was a wariness there, a caution that mirrored my own.

What was he doing here? And how long had he been in Gold for?

Our captors brought us to the front of what appeared to be a pharmacy window, an opening in the wall into a separate room. Heavily armed guards stood on both sides of the window, and a wire fence had been crudely bolted over the window-opening. Inside sat a middle-aged man, chin peppered with grey stubbles. He waved us in. Guards escorted us through a door around a corner, and we came face-to-face with the stubbled man.

The air was thick with tension and the smell of coffee. A long table, covered in maps and scattered documents, occupied the center of the room.

“Do you know where you are?” the man asked, matter-of-factly.

“Some sort of base, I reckon,” Jack said.

The man sat down on the surface of the table. He propped a foot onto a nearby chair.

“You’re not wrong,” he said. “We are the Liberation’s Call Syndicate.”

Wait. I had heard that name before.

But only as a whisper in the shadows. I had never thought I'd encounter them face-to-face. Their motives were as cloaked as their identities, and I had heard practically nothing about them during my stay in Silver – except the identity of their leader. At the helm of the Syndicate was Doublerift, one of the five Legends. A man who ranked among the likes of 6E12.

“…Are you Doublerift?” I ventured to ask the man. He stared at me wide-eyed for a second, then burst out in a reverberating guffaw.

“Am I?!” he said. “If only I were! Resource disputes? Street skirmishes? You think I fight those for fun? If I were bloody Doublerift, those bounty bastards would’ve been wiped off the map yester-year!”

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“Then who are you?” Saber asked him. “And what are your goals here?”

“Commander,” he said. “That’s what you’ll call me. And you’ve got no business knowing my plans. If you wanna join my side, you join as a soldier, you keep your head down. Doesn’t matter if you’re bloody Alice,” he spat. “you’ll be a grunt, that’ll be what you start as.”

I froze for a second.

“Wait,” I said. “You know about Alice?”

“Pfft.” He gave me a side-eye. “Surprised?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

The commander gave a bored yawn.

“Get them to jail,” he ordered the guards. “We’ll sort them out later.”

We were ushered away to one of the supermarket's storage rooms, one with a high ceiling and heavy iron doors. Inside were rows of barred cages of metal. In each was a bed, plus assorted other pieces of furniture. Only a few had people inside.

I was pushed and locked into a cage at the back of the room. In there, surprisingly, I had a king-sized bed to myself, foam mattress and all. Not to mention I also had a leather office chair, a stylish glass desk, a stationary bike, and a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper.

“This is kinda nice for a prison,” I admitted to the rest of my team.

“We just throw random stuff in there,” one of the guards responded. “Got something nice? Good for you.”

As the thick, metal door shut behind us, Jack glanced around the cell, bewildered by the unexpected accommodations. His cage had a wooden cabinet and a Christmas tree, among other things.

"They really decided to wing it huh,” he mused.

In the following days, the Liberation’s Call Syndicate, or LCS as they preferred to be known, brought us meals with commendable regularity. Most of it looked like frozen dinner. Despite being armed for combat, the guards around us acted more like reluctant hotel staff than enemy soldiers. They often got bored, made awkward small talk with us, and asked if we needed them to fetch anything.

The only one they didn’t talk with was Roger.

As I laid on my gigantic bed one evening before lights-out, the door to our storage room swung open. A large, muscular figure loomed at the entrance.

It was the druid.

The wardens nearby stepped aside for him, and they closed the door behind him.

Hal walked up to my cage with folded arms. He gave me a gruff smirk.

“Been a while,” he said.