The Company: Kay

Symbol: Kay

Symbol: Kay

“What happened?” Tarni asked.

“We’ve been separated. Question is now, do they have to work to get us in, or do we have to work to get them out?” Michael asked.

“Probably both,” I said.

“How do you mean?” Tarni asked.

“Well, we want to get in, because they’re in. And they want to get out because we’re out. And I think I should rephrase my question. Are we meant to be trying to get in, or are they meant to be trying to get out?” Michael said.

“Smartass,” Tarni muttered.

I could feel Michael grinning by me. He always did whenever someone made a remark like that to him.

“But, asking the question gets us no where. We need the answer,” Tarni said.

The door reopened, spreading the same, small amount of light as before. I got herded inside by the people behind me, so I stood by the door waiting for Garran.

Just as I saw his face lit by the light, the door shut.

“Bugger,” Tarni said.

“Great,” I said, turning around.

I looked at the inside and stared in shock.

“Guys, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Michael said, quoting the Wizard of Oz.

“We weren’t there before, but I know what you mean,” Tarni said.

Instead of the nice looking place we’d seen earlier, we were now looking at a mansion in a haunted house ride at a theme park. The wallpaper was torn, and the paint on furniture was chipping. The furniture was everywhere over the floor. The lights were broken and dim and there were cobwebs covering a lot of things.

Lying in front of us were some weapons. Twenty exactly. The amount of us there was.

“Everyone grab a weapon,” Cambello, a level 7, said. “There’s one for each of us.”

I reached down and picked up a Naim-Blade.

“It’s all our weapons. The ones we’d prefer,” I said, passing my Naim-Blade from hand to hand.

“Now the question is: Are we happy about having weapons?” Michael asked.

“What do you mean? Of course we’re happy. We have defence,” Tarni said.

“But surely if we have weapons for defence, that means we’re going to need to defend our selves from something. And that’s bad,” Michael said.

“Oh,” Tarni said. “So that means you think we’re going to be fighting."

“Correct. So that’s bad, even though we have our weapons,” Michael said.

“Yo, brainbox, enough with the explaining,” Kate said.

I looked at all the people with us.

“We need to work out our advantages and disadvantages,” I said.

“Advantage one: we have a healer,” Kate said, and all our gazes turned to Karri.

“Advantage two: brainbox. Advantage three: fire,” Kate continued. “Disadvantage one: we have no idea what we’re going to find in here.”

“Who put you in charge?” Cambello asked her.

“I did, actually,” Kate said.

“I thought we were all listening to Kay as she’s tight with Erin,” Cambello said.