Lott stopped moving, her hand pausing in the air. Almost mechanically, her head turned to make eye contact with him. Instantly, the air was colored with vibrant curses. Slooky’s eyes widened to near comical levels.

“Uh, Lott… you should see how you look when you curse. I almost peed my pants.”

He was hit with a rare glare before feeling her tap the back of his head. Of course, even prepared, his mouth ended up an inch from the dirt.

Slooky whirled on her, lifting his head back up away from the ground.

“Hey! Learn to control your strength, woman!”

“That was controlled.”

It was a pointless fight, he concluded. There was no way he planned on actually eating dirt today. Or, in fact, ever. He rubbed the back of his neck absentmindedly, thinking over their options. Clearly, they couldn’t just barge in and ask anyone where Magnice was. If everyone looked like their avatars, finding him wouldn’t be hard, but considering they were able to customize and change things, nobody on the planet actually looked the same as in Fallacy. And for the Ghosts, it was paramount they appeared different.

An idea sprouted in his head. He’d been to multiple facilities, all with special wings not open to everyone… but it was always open to the Ghosts. He snapped his fingers.

“Wait. If we get to the section that houses the special rooms, there should only be one occupant, right? It should be him.”

Lott nodded slowly, agreeing. She looked him over.

“You’re sneaky and small, right?” she eventually asked.

“I suppose more than you are.”

She pointed down to the map they’d drawn, finger landing atop an asterisk.

“Think you can get in the vent system here?”

Slooky turned, noting the place on the ground before gazing at the place it was on the building. The access point was high, but not with Lott there. If he could climb her like a ladder to reach it, then it was just fine. He nodded. But those particular vent screens had no easy way to remove them. They were like permanent fixtures, placed near rooms.

“Think you can pry the outside off?”

They made eye contact, nodding once to one another before heading down.

“In five, they face east.”

Just as Lott predicted, the guard in the watchtower above the facility yawned and turned to face the other way. They made their move, racing over to the vent. It was almost funny how they had such advanced technology, could hop into another world at will, just by putting on a helmet and lying down in a device, but there wasn’t any way to put cameras everywhere outside.

The weather, more unpredictable and unstable than it ever was, could destroy a camera in a matter of seconds. Having to replace them after every difficult storm was costly to an extreme level. Since storms happened nearly every week, hundreds of cameras would have to be made and installed every time.

Even inside the facilities, cameras weren’t in abundance, used for main areas only.

Wouldn’t want someone finding a file full of secrets if they can hack into the security system…

Boosted up into the vent by Lott, Slooky shook his head.

But, he supposed, there was a perk to it.

It meant nobody was watching Magnice on camera. Less visuals meant more sneaky operations.

His forte.

It didn’t take long to discover where the special rooms were. He’d literally hopped in right next to them. Silently thanking Lott’s unnoticed brilliance, Slooky maneuvered himself around in the tiniest of vents.

Quiet.

In and out.

Fast.

Or not.

He made it to the visible vent holes, just to peek into room, only to find nothing. And nothing. And nothing.

Not a sound could be heard anywhere, making him seriously wonder if Magnice was mute. And then he heard it. A noise. Sliding feet first back the way he came, yet again, he headed down to the next set of rooms.

After the fifth room lacking anything remotely different, like a personal item, or a person, he saw light streaming in through the holes of the vent in the sixth room. The room didn’t have a pod. It had a person, though. One making noise.

He tilted his head, brows furrowing as he watched what was happening inside.

“Ah! No!”

The person screamed and ducked, lifting their arms above their head.

“Huh?”

Then, they stood up, racing about the room, throwing their fists around as if attacking something invisible. The only clue was a strange helmet attached to their head, one he hadn’t seen before.

Slowly, he slid back, away from the room.

“That better not be Jack, or I’m leaving him here,” he muttered, shaking his head vigorously.

Once he wiggled back to the fork in the road, he checked the final two rooms in the area, according to the view of the hallway he’d glimpsed earlier. Noting, at that time, there had oddly been no guards stationed there.

The seventh room had nothing, but the eighth…

He slammed his palm against the screen and dove into the room, head-first toward the floor, on which, he rolled. Tumbling right up into a standing position, he looked at the normal-seeming occupant within the room. At least, they were far less strange than the other one he’d seen.

They stared at him, wide-eyed, a hand to their heart.

“Geez,” they breathed out. “Let me guess…” With a once-over, he focused in on the face, lowering his hands to the armrests of his chair while he narrowed his eyes. “Slooky?”

The reality of the situation finally fell into place within Slooky’s mind as he stared at the person in front of him. He looked down farther, where there was quite a surprise.

“Jack, you…”

“Yes, the lower half of me is mostly worthless when it comes to standing and walking and generally everything. Why do you think I asked for help?”

Magnice folded his arms over his chest, raising a brow.

The problem for Slooky wasn’t with the fact that his comrade was seated in a wheelchair, with tiny thin legs that reminded him of abnormal toothpicks. It was with how they were going to get him out. He glanced up the way he came.

“Uh… I came in through the vents.”

They stared at each other silently for a long moment, both thinking the same thing. Magnice was the one to voice it aloud.

“I don’t think that’ll work.”

He nodded. “Right. Any ideas?”

Magnice sighed, grabbing a few more of his things and shoving them into a bag, wheeling around the room like a pro… and like he never lived outside of it. He took his watch off and laid it on the top of the dresser.

“A stupid one.” He met Slooky’s gaze. “Lott’s with you, right?”

A nod came with the response. “Yeah. Just us two so far.”

He looked Slooky over again, slower, with a discerning gaze. It was with complete silence and long enough visual investigation, that Slooky slowly raised his arms, self-conscious, and covered his torso.

“Hey now, watch the eyes,” he said quickly. “I may be single now, but you never know how long that’ll last in the apocalypse!”

Speechless, Magnice’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he came back to his senses.

“Uh, I was thinking I’m not that heavy, but I’m still too heavy for you to carry me and run.” He shook his head in disbelief. “But that was where your mind went…” he muttered.

“Right. Gotcha.” Slooky sighed, putting his hands on his hips, finally feeling free of the sharp gaze. “I don’t really want to carry you anyway. Lott’s better at that sort of thing.”

Attaching his bag to his front, Magnice paused.

“That means you’ll have to cause a distraction.”

“I’m good with that.”

It was silent for a moment. Magnice’s expression remained sour, even as he spoke.

“This could literally kill you.”

Shrugging, Slooky hopped up onto the dresser and reached for the vent hole. He gave a quick grin.

“Oh, well, blaze of glory, right?”

Magnice watched as he climbed back up into the ceiling, muttering to himself.

“Gotta do something. Fix my…”

As he waited in the silence of his room, Magnice mulled over those words. No matter how he thought about it, the next word had sounded like mistake.

But, he wondered, what mistake did Slooky make?

Outside, the two of them leaned against the wall, coming up with a rough idea of what they were doing. Since the closest door was the one leading right to the objective named Magnice, Lott simply had to go around to the other side of the building, but it wasn’t the only thing that needed planning and mention.

Slooky handed her a small canister.

“Pull this when you’ve got him and are free of the building. Toss it back in through the door. I’ll throw this to signal when you go in. It’s pink, by the way.”

“Understood.” Lott nodded. “And he can’t walk?”

“No. No, he can’t. Like not at all.”

“Does he have legs?”

Wondering what the relevance was, he stared at her, confused. “Well, yeah, but they’re like… tiny. Like the size of–”

“Your arms. Got it.”

Interrupted and offended at the same time, Slooky threw his hands up in the air. “What is with you two?!” he whisper-yelled at her. “Am I your punching bag?!”

A deadpanned expression filled Lott’s face. “No. That would probably kill you.”

With a heavy sigh, Slooky pointed to the corner of the building, unamused.

“Go.”

Chuckling as she went, Lott made her way over to the door, standing at the ready.

Slooky opened his bag with a tsk.

“Should’ve done the transfer right before out-pod. My stash is seriously lacking.”

Of course, he had a stash outside of Fallacy, of smoke bombs and other small miscellaneous items. There may not have been a good reason to have them in the real world, but it was more of a why not, that turned into a thank goodness. Even so, it was quite limited in number and variety. An extra fee could be paid to bring as many things over as possible, but it would have to be something smaller than the pod.

Most of his things were, it was just that there was so many of them. He had the money, not the space.

Outfitting several together, tying them with a string, he sighed and walked to the front of the building, sticking to the shadows and blind spots of the watchtower.

Grabbing his smallest smoke bomb, he chucked it clear across the front of the building, onto the rocks of the far side. The pink smoke grew like a cloud almost instantly, and shouts of alarm were almost instant, along with the thundering of feet in the hallways. Stepping back along the side, out of sight of the front doors, he waited, hearing the voices grow. With a peek, he rolled several cans across the ground, into the pink smoke they’d begun to investigate.

Feet started hitting those cans, with just a little too much force, causing them to explode into popping sounds and confetti.

Birthday cans.

Slooky grinned.

The more colorful they were, the more fun there was to be had.

Using the string on the big one, he swung it around over his head before letting go, launching it right into the middle of the group.

One by one, they all looked to the direction it had clearly come from. Bafflement, confusion, anger. All were aimed at the master behind it all.

Slooky saluted them all, grin on his face, as he slipped on a pair of shades.

“Thank you for all coming out to say hello!” he called brightly, just as the big one let loose, the force of it sending nearly all of them to the ground. The ones spared of the explosion had seen the light it emitted, temporarily blinding them.

“Adios!”

Shaking his head, he started back the way he’d come.

How come they were never prepared for that sort of thing?

It was like they hadn’t–

Swish.

Dropping down into a backbend onto a hand in order to avoid being cut by a blade swiping through the air, Slooky rolled to the side. His shaded glasses, discarded in the tumble, cracked against the hard rock ground.

“Yo, Slook.”

The voice that called his nickname with such ease and familiarity made him freeze in place. Paired with the face watching him, the body holding the weapon that nearly cut him, it took more than a few seconds for him to come back to himself in the present time.

“Thought we were friends,” he said bitterly, his gaze dropping down to the blade in their hand. With a glare, he jutted his chin toward it. “So much for a greeting when you do it with that.”

They scoffed and pulled something from their pocket, flattening it haphazardly on their thigh before slinging it his way.

“And I thought friends don’t lie to each other.”

The crinkled printed paper floated across the distance between them, spinning in circles slowly until it landed, in the perfect position for Slooky to see the contents on it.

His heart seemed to come to a stop with the world as he saw his face, his avatar’s face, with four more sets of images beside them.

Big nasty words colored the middle of the page.

‘The GHOSTS. Wanted dead.’