Psychronicles

3. The Incendis Hideout

"Ha! You fools are dumb enough to take me back to your hideout?" Vermillo laughed as Ian, Corey and Prisha dragged him out of the warehouse. "I'll tell! I'll escape when I can and tell everyone!"

"Urrgghhh!" Ian was getting fed up with him. "I'm getting second thoughts. He's just too loud and annoying."

Corey clobbered Vermillo over the head too knock him out, "Well we certainly don't need him conscious right?"

"About time you did something right," Ian muttered as they tried to find a way out into the woods without people getting suspicious of seeing Vermillo tied up. Somehow they did.

They soon reached a strange looking plant, which is the entrance of Gonle's Occult Society hideout. Making sure no one else is around but his team and the unconscious Vermillo, Prisha pulled out the Key Seed and held it out towards the plant. The seed glows a bright white light, causing the plant to bloom into a flower, the Flower Gate.

The group stepped up on the flower before it closes again. No matter how often Prisha has been through this it always in some way creeped him out. When the Flower Gate opened once again, they were in a corridor lit with bright purple torches along the walls. They walked deeper in toward a steel door. But still tired from the events up to now, Corey tripped over for a moment.

When he got up, he realized he was missing something, something important. So he looked around and finally found the silver puzzle piece on the floor. He picked it up gazing at it, reminding him of the day when everything changed.

"So is that your way of saying you want to be left behind?" Ian turned back to tell Corey.

"Sorry," Corey pocketed the puzzle piece and continued walking with his friends. They then entered through the steel door.

On one of the sides of the chamber is a man sitting by a desk with lots of books and documents. The man had curly blue hair with glasses, the Gonle Occult Manager Jordan. Jordan looked over to see Ian, Corey and Prisha enter with another man tied up and commented, "I see the case is making progress."

"Yeah thanks," Ian responded then referred to Vermillo. "Now is there any place where we can leave this?"

"I have a spare room further down," Jordan answered.

VWVVW

After taking a bath and putting on another set of clothes, which are the same style scarf and coats, Prisha met Ian and Corey at one of the tables in the chamber to break the code Rina sent them. There Prisha and Corey managed to figure out the encryption. It turns out to be a variant of the cryptogram with the space also mixed in with the letters. Soon Rina also entered through the chamber door returned from her task informing each other on the situation.

"Wow so their hideout is in that park?" Ian said energetically. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's teach those terrorists!"

"Sure, one of their lackeys has a relic bow, let's all hope they have nothing more dangerous like a pit of cobras," Prisha remarked.

"Oh I forgot to say something!" Jordan spoke up from his desk. "The explosion at the lab! It turns out your client Stan Lott reported to us and is alive!"

"Wow that's great!..." Rina exclaimed but then remembered what Prisha said before. "But then again, that would make him suspicious of the bombing wouldn't he?"

"Difficult," Prisha answered. "I remember saying there's not likely to be any survivor. But if it's Stan, he was the one who requested our service. He must have been looking down on the Occult Society much to be responsible for it."