Chapter 13: A Way to Fill the Hole

I heard a woman’s voice in my head, questioning me about my prayers. I asked her if she was God, to which she responded no, but she said that she did know him. I asked her who she was. She told me to look out of my cell window above my bed. It took some effort, but I finally managed to spring jump from the bed to grab hold of the window seal. As I pulled myself up to look through, I saw none other than the Great White Dragon sleeping in a mountain-sized hangar next to my cell.

“You know, when I rule the Tarrus Empire, I think the people should craft a religion devoted to me in my honor,” mused Lord Gregory as he lay half-naked on the massage table with only a white towel covering his lower section while a gorgeous blonde did the most wondrous things to his backside.

“I think it would only be fair,” agreed his masseuse whose name he could never remember. “After all the work you’ve done for them, ridding them of the Elemental filth. They should probably make a statue in your honor. It’s not too much to ask for a religion as well.”

Although she didn’t make much of an impression on him with her personality, she more than made up for it in bed, and the best part was she never complained when he felt like getting a little frisky. Jefferson Gregory just couldn’t understand why so many women found his tastes for romance undesirable. They were whores after all. Their place was to amuse him, not bore him with ethics.

Lord Gregory went into a foul mood when he found out that the Elemental had escaped her cell, and just when he was working himself up for another good torture lesson. She actually had the nerve to mock him during their sessions and tell him that he had no idea how to torture someone properly. That’s why Gregory wanted so badly to improve his technique. But now, that dream had been dashed because the stupid Elemental didn’t have the courtesy to stay in her cell where she belonged.

At least the masseuse is always here when I need a little pick-me-up.

“The nerve of that witch,” cursed Gregory. “Escaping at the very eve of my triumph. By this time tomorrow, the Grand Ministries will be damaged beyond repair, and I will begin my ascension as the new ruler of the Tarrus Empire. Everything had been perfect, and then that little vixen has to go and ruin it for me so that I can’t take any joy in my victory.

“Well, no matter. As long as that fool Goblin does his job like I pay him to, she’ll be captured soon enough. Galzar may be a good-for-nothing slug, but at least he’s a decent slave. He’ll bring her in, and then I’m going to have a special session with her that she’ll not soon forget.”

“Speaking of the Elemental,” whispered the masseuse, sounding a little concerned. “Aren’t you worried about her getting in here again?”

“Ha!” Gregory tried not to show it, but at that moment, he found it difficult to keep his hands from shivering. “That witch wouldn’t dare! This penthouse is the most secure location in the building. And since her escape, I’ve tightened up security up here even further. There’s no way she’d ever breach the state-of-the-art defenses in this room!”

Even though Lord Gregory would never admit it to anyone, when he learned that she had been inside his room while he slept, he had nearly wet himself. He had always taken for granted the fact that his private torture chamber lay just outside his quarters. No one had ever escaped from that room before, but then again, no one had stayed alive in that room for more than a few hours.

It just seemed like a good idea at the time since he wanted to keep the chamber away from prying eyes. There were still many employees working in the building unaware of his dirty little secrets. But this time, his secretive nature had almost been the death of him.

The girl was right here in this room while I was sleeping! She could have ... she could have ... But why didn’t she? Most likely she was so scared out of her mind that her only thought was escape, so she probably didn’t even notice me. Yes! That must be it!

“So,” cooed the masseuse interrupting Lord Gregory’s line of thought and bringing him back to the conversation. She spoke in a seductive voice and her hands became increasingly more aggressive. Gregory liked aggressive. It put him in a festive mood. “What’s to keep her from overcoming those state-of-the-art defenses like she did when she escaped?”

That was not so festive. Rising from the massage table while clutching his towel with one hand, Lord Gregory hit the woman hard in the jaw. She sprawled to the floor with a bloody lip. She tried to look innocent and weak now as she cried pitifully, but she knew what she did. She knew the penalty for grasping for that which would never belong to her.

“Who asked your opinion?! Your job is to massage me and amuse me in bed! Not belittle me with your taunts!”

The girl began to crawl away, but Lord Gregory placed a good kick to her stomach, sending her retching and writhing on the floor. “You think I’m afraid, don’t you?! You think I’m actually afraid of that Elemental and her band of misfits?! Well, I’ve got news for you! Lord Gregory fears nothing! Her friends are dead, and soon she will join them!”

The blonde started sobbing now, but Lord Gregory didn’t care as he raised his fist again.

“Lord Gregory, sir,” said Galzar suddenly in his creepy, whispering voice.

Lord Gregory paled for a moment or two before checking that he still had his towel on. Then drawing himself to his full height, Gregory directed his punch to the Goblin’s face. “Damn you, Slithe! I’ve told you over and over again never to sneak up on me like that, especially when you’ve been given explicit orders not to disturb me when I’m with my masseuse!”

Galzar rubbed his chin and knelt. “A thousand apologies, sir. But I bring news that could be detrimental to our cause.”

“Don’t tell me that you let that little vixen escape the building?!” Lord Gregory stormed over to his drawer and pulled out a small control from his dress robes. “Unless you want me to fry your brains with the detonators I implanted, you’d best choose your next response carefully!”

Gregory angled the control at the Goblin menacingly. With a touch of a button, he could reduce this creature to a withering mass of rancid flesh.

Again, Lord Gregory detected no emotion on Galzar’s twisted expression as the Goblin calmly replied, “I believe my apprentice has failed to terminate Squad 99.”

It took a few minutes before Lord Gregory could fully register what he heard as he lowered the detonator slowly. “Are you telling me that there is a squad of fully-fledged Elementals coming for me?”

Galzar did not respond.

Just saying the words out loud proved so taxing that Lord Gregory slumped to the floor beside the masseuse, who still lay cringing. Seeking an opportunity, the woman tried to scuttle away without Lord Gregory noticing, but he did notice.

“Take care of that, would you, Galzar?” ordered Gregory despondently.

The woman barely had time to squeal before the Goblin dispatched her with a flick of his wrist that sent a knife straight into her heart. The black dagger glinted dangerously in the dim light of Lord Gregory’s quarters, but he hardly paid attention. He still came to terms with the fact that soon, even more Elementals would be coming to his building, much like the she-devil that almost had him at her mercy.

“Alright,” said Lord Gregory, all his thoughts turning to survival rather than ambition. “I trust this doesn’t affect your judgment ... knowing that your daughter is most likely dead and all. You never really cared much for her anyway, right? At least not in the way that a father cares for a daughter. So, I can rely on you to be emotionally stable, right?”

Lord Gregory thought he detected a slight twitch in the Goblin’s shoulders, but it came and went so quickly that the nobleman decided that he imagined it.

“Of that, you need not concern yourself, sir, for I have no emotions to speak of. Emotion is a human expression after all ... and as you know, I am not human.”

“Good,” said Lord Gregory, gripping the Goblin by his tattered gray garments desperately. “Because I need you to protect me! Do you understand?! At this point, all other objectives are secondary to my wellbeing!

“I don’t care if you have to lay down your own pathetic life in the process, just make sure I am alive, or your people won’t get any more funds from my company ever again. That Goblin City that the Empire left in ruins ten years ago will stay in ruins.

“And don’t forget, that if I die, you die with me thanks to the detonators in your brain! Do we understand each other, you Goblin bâtard?!”

Galzar stared at Lord Gregory with unreadable yellow eyes. Then nodding slowly, the Goblin said, “Yes, sir. We understand each other perfectly.”

Lord Gregory smiled in relief. “Then you’ll kill the Elementals for me?”

“Yes, I will kill the Elementals,” agreed Galzar coldly.

Silvia had been told that her eyes glowed yellow at night. So, still being held under the numbing effects of the glowing psionic ropes and her own injuries, Silvia watched her captors with her cat-like eyes. They currently plotted their infiltration into Gregory Industries on the roof of a building a few streets down from the tower. Her vision was getting better, but the fading light still made it somewhat difficult to completely discern the features of the Elementals.

They were doomed to fail, of course. Now that Galzar knew for certain that his prize pupil had been defeated, he would be on alert. Galzar may have been powerful, but he was also cautious. His cautious nature was partially responsible for his fierce reputation.

Still, the more time Silvia spent with her captors, namely the red-haired one named Ryan, the more uncertain she felt about everything. They weren’t at all what she expected. They didn’t mistreat her nearly as much as Lord Gregory did, and they were supposed to be her enemies. They didn’t even seem to mistreat their nonhuman subordinates.

But most vexing of all was the strange one called Ryan. She still couldn’t get a good look at him with her head feeling fuzzy, but as her vision improved, he almost seemed to have an orange tan, a most peculiar skin coloration for a human.

Whenever the red-haired boy looked her way, for some reason, she’d feel her heart flutter and she turned away from his strange, yet kind, red eyes. She didn’t really know why. She suspected that he emitted some kind of power that made her lose her nerve around him.

In an even stranger way, his presence reminded her of the way she felt around the silver-haired girl. And yet, he felt different somehow, even more intense, as if Silvia was being physically drawn to the boy.

“Alright, settle down you two,” Leon said to Ryan and Grafael, who were playfully shoving each other.

Reaching into his robes, Leon pulled out a small floating metal orb with glowing white lights shining out of it. The orb spun in Leon’s hand until a miniature image of Gregory Industries floated in his palm, a holoprojector not unlike the kinds that Silvia used to scout out a location before infiltration.

“Thisimius gave this to me before we left. It’s an intelligence blueprint gathered from our infiltration squads when they arrested Lord Gregory’s father a few decades back. It has the complete layout of the building that acts as the central headquarters for Gregory Industries. From what I’ve seen so far, we’ve got our work cut out for us.

“He’s literally got thousands of security forces pent up in that oversized building, and all of them are armed to the teeth in the latest Anti-Elemental weaponry. They even have some prototype weaponry that the military itself has yet to gain access to. Gregory is an arms dealer after all, so I can tell you with certainty that this is not going to be easy.”

Leon let the image float to the center of the gathering. Then, waving his hand slightly, he caused the image to grow in size until the miniature became almost as tall as Grafael. Leon then spread out his hands to zoom in until they were seeing into the building’s interior.

The building itself was a labyrinth that spanned literally miles in length, with floor upon floor, room upon room, and layer upon layer. Not dissimilar from a massive jigsaw puzzle, only an infinitely more complex version being a three-dimensional image.

“And if the security guards weren’t bad enough, they also have automatic guns stationed at key points in the facility that will kill any unauthorized personnel on sight. There’s a good smattering of them placed all over the building, but I’ve been able to pinpoint two locations where the majority of the guns are located.”

Leon pointed to one section near the top of the building, which Silvia recognized as Lord Gregory’s penthouse as well as his private torture chambers, where he kept Éclair. Then Leon pointed to another location near the middle of the structure which Silvia realized was the room that acted as the main communications center as well as the archives, the place of work for the top technicians and computer analysts in the company. These were the elites, the most trusted confidants of Lord Gregory. They had access to most of the information going in and out of the entire company which spanned over the whole planet of Tarrus.

“From what I can tell, these two areas have the heaviest security, which means that what we’re looking for is most likely at one of these spots. The one on the top is likely Lord Gregory’s personal chambers. It makes sense given the man’s file. He has been described as being very paranoid and a little panicky at times.

“So, it’s only natural for him to concentrate so much firepower to protect his room. The other location is likely the nerve center of the entire building. Any file, any communique, any type of evidence linking Lord Gregory with the senator’s assassination will likely be found there. My best guess is that Éclair is in one of these two locations, so they will be our primary targets during the infiltration.”

Silvia could not help but be impressed by their leader’s instincts. His hypothesis was indeed correct, and he had deduced all that while they had been traveling across rooftops at top speeds ... not to mention, with the added danger of coming under crossfire from both Ministries. Clearly this was one boy not to be underestimated. His intellect alone would’ve made him a dangerous opponent, but he had Elemental powers besides. When Silvia freed herself, she would have to kill that one first.

And what about Ryan, she found herself thinking. Instead of deciding on an answer, Silvia concentrated on the briefing.

“That’s all well and good, Leon,” spoke up the female called Rachel. “And I’m not saying that I don’t like your plan. I love your plan. I love you. Oh, was that out loud?” The girl suddenly became flustered as she curled her fingers through her hair. “Forget I said that. It’s just that ... well, getting back at the matter at hand, and I know you guys have come to pretty much expect this from me by now. ‘Oh, it’s just Rachel being a nag again’.” The last part she said in a deep voice that Silvia interpreted as a mocking imitation of a boy’s voice.

It must be hard being the only girl in the group, thought Silvia with a slight twinge of empathy.

“But doesn’t any of this sound just a little insane to any of you? You know, maybe just a little. I mean, am I the only one getting that vibe here? Is it just me? Come on, seriously?”

Everyone just kind of stared at Rachel in silence while looking confused. Ryan actually seemed to be considering her question. He scratched his head with such a serious expression on his face that was so comical, Silvia actually had an urge to laugh ... something that didn’t happen very often.

“Nope,” said Rachel growing more annoyed than flustered now. “Well then, ‘boys’, forget that the ‘girl’ said anything. In fact, I’m good with crazy. This whole trip has been one crazy boy blunder after another. So why stop now, right?” Rachel crossed her arms and seemed to be pouting.