The sun was setting, so Shogai and Jade didn’t stay for long. They still wanted to visit Scott, and see if he was doing alright. Unfortunately, he was out when they arrived at his place. They knocked a few times, and looked through a window. The house was mostly empty. A picture of what must have been his family was on a desk. There was also a pile of letters. That was good; it meant he was still in contact with them. Shogai was initially worried that Scott would be disliked by his friends if he got fired, just from the way he was speaking, but it didn’t seem to be a problem.

  “We’ll check back with him some other time.”

  After some more getting lost in the tunnel system, Shogai and Jade made it back to Nexus. The lights were almost all off, since it was night by this point, but Kiara was stargazing in the field when they arrived.

  “Hey. How did it go?”

  Shogai and Jade glanced at each other. There was a lot to say, and it was way too late to relive that. The Deviants had hurt Mira’s family horribly. Nifa didn’t want to see him. At least Xero and Zinnia were fine.

  “Actually, tell me in the morning. I’m tired. Goodnight.”

  Kiara stood and set off towards the building, with Jade and Shogai close behind. She paused in the doorway in surprise.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Shogai looked past Kiara to see Nemean in the entrance. He seemed to be waiting for them.

  “Oh good, you’re here. I was about to leave. You three, I need a quick chat.”

  Nemean took a seat at the giant table. The one with 20 empty seats. He didn’t seem to care about where he sat, and gestured for the trio to sit. It was as if this table was so unused that it wasn’t considered professional anymore.

  “Traditionally, new Nexeans are meant to meet all the Inner Ranks in one go. Introducing yourselves to them. That way, you know who your allies are in case you run into each other on a mission. There have been… complications with arranging this. A few of the Inner Ranks are not available. So to make up for that, take these.”

  Nemean pulled out three sheets of paper and handed one to Shogai, Jade and Kiara. It looked like a document. It had 8 faces on it with names on the side. The top two names didn’t have faces attached.

  INNER NEXEANS

  Inner Rank 1:

  Shokyo

  Inner Rank 2:

  Hina

  Inner Rank 3:

  Takari

  Inner Rank 4:

  Kyorei

  Inner Rank 5:

  Wright

  Inner Rank 6:

  Ciela

  Inner Rank 7:

  Amelia

  Inner Rank 8:

  Nifa

  “All you need to do is remember these people as your allies if you run into them. Understand?”

  Shogai was stunned that he was being handed this information so easily. They nodded. He had a look at the faces of the Inner Ranks. He ignored the top two for now.

  Three Nexeans stood out to him. One was Nifa, of course. He remembered Mira telling them she was Inner 8. Next was Inner Rank 5. Wright. Katro had mentioned him. Apparently he was in the building. He seemed to have grey skin, which was intriguing. Then Shogai focused on the picture beside the name “Ciela”. It was a girl dressed as a witch.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Ciela. The person that saved him in his first fight against Sekara. That was so long ago, yet he’d completely forgotten about her. He needed to thank her when he got the chance.

  “Thank you, Nemean.”

  “Whatever. I don’t want you kept in the dark about people you’ll inevitably work with. Anyway, I didn’t come here in person just for that. Jade, I need-”

  The elevator pinged, and someone walked out of it. A man with grey skin. Shogai glanced back at the sheet in his hand. This was Wright.

  “Nemean, she’s not getting any bet-” Wright had a serious look on his face, but he stopped when he saw the group. “Who are these three?”

  “New Nexeans.”

  “Oh, of course! Katro told me about you three!” Wright suddenly had a massive smile on his face, but Shogai could tell he was worried about something. Regardless, he introduced himself.

  “I’m Shogai.”

  “Kiara.”

  “Jade.”

  Wright’s eyes briefly narrowed at the last name. He whispered something to Nemean, and Shogai was just barely able to make it out as “the one with the-?”

  Nemean nodded, and cleared his throat.

  “Well, as you three can probably tell, this is Wright. Now that the formalities are done, back to what I was saying. Jade, I need to try something. Come with me.”

  Nemean stood and walked towards the lift. Jade looked nervous, and gestured for Shogai and Kiara to come with her for support. When Nemean turned to see them, he shook his head.

  “No. Only Jade and Wright. This is important.”

  “Nemean, please. It can’t hurt for me to bring them along.”

  “Exactly.” Wright surprised everyone by backing up Jade without hesitation. “I mean, if I’m allowed to come along, so should they.”

  Nemean raised an eyebrow at Wright. People didn’t normally speak against him. But eventually he rolled his eyes and gave in.

  “Fine. But speak not a word of this.”

  The five of them shuffled into the elevator and Nemean pressed a button. There were three main buttons. IR, G and OR. Shogai had learnt that these stood for the Inner Rank dorms, the Ground floor and the Outer Rank dorms. There were several buttons below them, but Raven had forbidden him from pressing any except G and OR.

  Shogai hadn’t been exposed to technology of the degree of Nexus. In the first week of being a Nexean, an Outer Rank each helped him, Kiara and Jade learn about it all. Jade was taught by Valerie, and Kiara by Ryukyu. Shogai got stuck with Raven, and she seemed to dislike it as much as him. She was a terrible teacher. When Shogai didn’t understand how phones worked, she got frustrated. When he couldn’t make coffee, she snapped. As for lifts, they kept getting into arguments about whether it was called “lift” or “elevator”. The books from the mainland were all saying different things, so Shogai settled on using both. Eventually he caught up (mostly thanks to Jade and Kiara) but that was an extremely long week.

  Nemean had pressed a button labelled “La”. Shogai wondered what that could stand for. The lift seemed to be going downwards, but a lot lower than the Outer Rank floor. It was a full minute before it stopped, and the doors opened.

  The room they were in was a blinding white. It was freakishly shiny, and looked like a place humans were never meant to step foot in, for fear of dirtying it.

  “Laboratory.” Jade said, and Wright nodded.

  “This is where we keep most things we’re uncertain about. We run experiments for the most part. After all, knowledge is power.”

  Around the room were different… things in glass boxes. A strange mask, a glowy crystal, a weird robot and a dusty book. There were hundreds of pieces of junk in this room.

  “To be honest, almost everything here was contained long before any of us were around. We don’t know what our predecessors were trying to discover with these strange objects, but we’re working on it.”

  A bang was heard at the end of the room. It seemed to be from around a corner. Wright sighed.

  “Well, I did say almost everything here was from before our time.”

  “Hide your faces.” Nemean handed each of the three a mask and ordered them to wear it. Confused, they obliged.

  Nemean fearlessly walked towards the source of the noise, and the rest of the group followed his lead. Surely it couldn’t be that dangerous. After all, there was an Inner Rank with them. Whatever was here, it couldn’t hurt them.

  Not physically.

  It was an enormous glass box. Almost empty apart from a tray of food. It reminded Shogai of how Cerek would treat psychiatric patients. Complete solitude.

  Lying on the floor in the middle of the box was a girl with long brown hair. She was bruised all over her body, and judging by the patches of fresh blood on the floor, she’d been doing it to herself.

  “That’s…” Shogai stuttered,

  “Ciela. Yeah.” Wright finished off his sentence.

  “W-why is she..?”

  Ciela’s eyes opened. They were glowing a bright red. It reminded Shogai of Elano’s Heart, like how Raven’s eyes glowed. But there was a problem. Ciela’s eyes were blue. Not red.

  Ciela looked at the people watching her, and she snarled. She threw herself towards them with bloodlust, only being stopped by the pane of glass between them. Upon remembering it was there, she simply stood there with her terrifying glowing eyes.

  “She ran into Muryoko.” Wright said. “The Deviant King.”

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