Nick woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom, with a very anxious looking Lily staring intently at him.

“Hey there.” Nick said in a calm voice.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” With that, Lily slapped him across the face.

“Hey! I’m injured, wait, am I?”

Nick felt perfectly fine, which if his last memories were anything to go by, he certainly shouldn’t be feeling. Nick distinctly remembered dying, or at least having a foot in the grave. He shouldn’t be feeling as fine as he was. He looked around the room and saw a very haggard looking Maddy crashed out in a chair.

“Nope, you’re perfectly fine thanks to Maddy. No thanks to whatever decision making led you to how Gareth found you!” Lily fumed.

Lily’s raised voice must have alerted people outside of the room because Benny came barrelling in and dove into Nick’s arms, Henry came through looking a lot more collected but still concerned. Nick hugged Benny and the kid didn’t have anything to say, just squeezing tighter. Henry came over and pulled a reluctant Lily with him, pulling the whole family into a hug.

“Cute.” A grumpy looking Tony then swaggered into the room. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

The family separated and Henry took a confrontational stance towards Tony. Nick put a hand on his shoulder to tell him to cool it, Nick had this one. Henry grunted but followed Nick’s nonverbal cue.

“It was a pretty eventful trip, I’ll give it that.” Nick said.

“You managed to get two weapons and change your armour. I even managed to find a sticker in your pocket. That’s quite the haul.” Tony replied, his voice neutral.

“I’d say so, given proper luggage I probably could have gotten more. It was a bit inconvenient carrying all that around.” Nick noticed that his new chest piece had been taken off, he didn’t see it anywhere in the room.

“You managed to get the same amount of loot as a normal team would have. While impressive, I’m not it’s not enough to let you go off on your own suicidal adventures.”

Damn. Thankfully Nick had already hammered things out with Doyle or he would have been in a rather desperate position.

“So I’m back on the team, coach?”

“Not quite. I like the ability to get more loot while keeping the Roamers here to deal with the next invasion.” Tony replied.

Interestingly, Tony saw it was inevitable that there would be another invasion sometime soon. He wasn’t wrong, which was a win for the man’s paranoia.

“So what’s that mean for me, big man?”

“Cut it out with the names. It’s Tony or Boss. Pick one. You’re still going to go out alone, but you’re only allowed to move between floors when it’s day. I don’t want you turning up on my doorstep as a dying man again.”

It literally took every single fibre in Nick’s body to not reply with a, ‘Yes mum.’ Nick certainly preferred his dictators with the ability to have a little fun. Tony was far too bland.

“Easy as, Boss.”

“Good. I want you out there again as soon as possible. The militia needs more gear.” With that Tony turned and left the room.

Everyone waited a good while before saying anything.

“What an asshole.” Lily complained.

“Language.” Henry chided.

“He’s a jerk.” Benny called out.

“That he certainly is.” Maddy spoke up, surprising the group.

She got up and checked outside the door then closed it again.

“I’m assuming you did it?” She asked.

“Successfully got Tony to let me leave the floor? That much is obvious right?” Nick questioned.

“No you asshat. She means, you got in contact with Doyle, right?” Lily sighed.

“Ohhhh, yeah of course.” Nick grinned.

Nick then laid out everything to his family and Maddy. Three days, well two days now, from today. Doyle would be sending a force to safely get them out of there. Nick felt a bit awkward telling Maddy he’d accepted a deal on her behalf. She admitted that it wasn’t the best of deals, but said she could work that out once she was actually down there. Lily sighed heavily when Nick explained what he had agreed to in exchange for Doyle’s help; she certainly wasn’t impressed by Nick’s negotiation skills. He liked to think he did a pretty good job, but he knew his sister was just far better at that sort of stuff.

Then Nick grinned. He made Lily go out and check that no one was listening in again before he revealed another secret. He managed to get everyone interested.

“I found a level two button on the 71st floor. I’m a level two Brawler.”

Lily slapped him again and called him an idiot for taking such a dumb sounding class. Maddy was far more understanding, though she was shocked that he’d managed to get another class so soon.

“That explains the healing that was happening to your body, I thought you’d managed to find a strange item or something. That was enough to make Tony strip search you as soon as you were healed enough to not be immediately dying.”

Maddy then explained that she had been so surprised that Nick was healing that Tony thought he’d managed to find a special item that offered healing effects. As soon as she’d managed to get him stable he’d taken everything off of him and had Sebastian inspect everything. Well that explained where his chest piece was. Thankfully he had only patted down Nick’s pants, otherwise he would have seen the sticker on his leg.

Lily was pretty excited at the discovery of a level two button, she understood the implications of being able to get everyone in the family to 2-2 quickly. Most of the people on the 72nd floor were 1-1s, their entire family could be equally levelled with the floor’s Roamers. Now, they weren’t sure what the average was like in other floors, but 2-2 still had to be a pretty considerable advantage.

Thankfully Maddy had a bit more information in that department. She explained that she’d heard that most non-fighters were 1-1s, crafters or support classes would be funnelled class gems though. Most of the floors under Reggie’s rule had at bare minimum multiple level three teams. The leaders tended to be the strongest people of the floor, the two exceptions were Tony and Doyle. Apparently Doyle had a class that buffed people that worked for him and he was a pretty nice guy, so he had a pretty stable rule even though he had a couple of 3-3s under him. Tony was the real outlier.

Maddy had found herself fumbling around the car park on the 72nd floor just after Tony had imposed his control on the floor. Most of the floor’s fighters simply left after Tony made his move. Apparently the 72nd had a notoriously terrible layout, with very few challenge rooms within a comfortable range of the main room, and the main room itself being so small. The first room of the hotel was important for hosting groups of teams coming in, without them having to start exploring the floor just to find a place to sit. Apparently the previous leader was quite the people pleaser, and with him gone a lot of people moved to greener pastures.

The only winning trait of the 72nd floor was the bar. The bar had been the major produce of the floor, as bars were the only place that full sized bottles of booze could be found. The bar on the 72nd floor was the only one of it’s kind and there had been a rather profitable trade from the Parklands, which Tony had completely ruined.

Tony now flogged off the alcohol at very cheap prices, fearful that if he actually charged a fair price for them someone would get mad and just take them from him. It reminded Nick a lot of the American trade policy, which was entirely enforced by their military might. Tony was like a third world country selling its resources to superpowers, fearful they’d just get invaded if they asked for too much.

Nick’s analogy was almost enough to make Nick feel sympathy for the man, that notion quickly vanished though.

Nick got up to his feet and looked for some clothes, he felt a little awkward only wearing torn and bloody pants. Thankfully there was a cupboard in the room. Sadly, it didn’t offer anything very different in options, Nick was once again greeted by a sickening amount of denim. Nick just grabbed a plain shirt at random and threw it on. He very reluctantly grabbed a pair of jeans to get changed into. He went out into the empty room to do so, he was a gentleman, he wouldn’t be exposing the underwear to a guest.

“Why do you look like someone shot your dog?” Maddy asked him as he came back into the room.

“It’s the jeans.” Henry said with a sigh.

“What’s wrong with jeans?” Maddy asked.

Nick was about to absolutely rip into the abomination that was denim when Lily put a hand over his mouth.

“I won’t let him get started. He just really doesn’t like denim.”

Nick frowned. “Denim is -”

“-STOP RIGHT THERE MISTER!” Lily yelled at him.

Nick frowned again but held his tongue. You’d never convince someone in such a bad mood anyway. Nick had yet to convince his family of the evil of denim but he’d get there one day.

“Okay then, moving on.” Maddy said, concern thick in her voice.

Poor woman, she’d been stuck here in the clutches of denim for a whole year, imagine the damage such an experience would have on any innocent soul. Nick could weep for her.

“What are we going to do in the meantime?” Maddy continued.

“Well Tony wants me to continue getting loot, which I won’t say no to. I’ve met some interesting people down on the 71st already, it can’t hurt to continue building a solid foundation down there.”

Nobody really had anything else to say to that. Henry was talking with Gareth a lot each day and Lily had extracted as much as she could from Mindy’s group, not finding much else out that Nick hadn’t from experience. Benny seemed happy just hanging out with his friends everyday, with there being no school it must have felt like a holiday for the little lad. Wait, was there no education here in the Complex? That wouldn’t do at all, while Benny was literate Nick didn’t want the kid not getting a proper education in such formative years.

Surely there had to be a teaching related class? Impart Knowledge, Scold, Give Detention, that sounded like a pretty well rounded class right there.

Nick would let Benny enjoy the free time for now, but he’d definitely find out what sort of education options were around once they were a bit more settled. Jeez, Nick was beginning to feel old, he was barely in his 20s and he was thinking about the education of kids in his care. Maybe he’d leave this stuff to Lily, she was far more mature even though she was the younger one. He was sure she’d already gotten a handle on these things.

Nick was pulled from his thoughts when he heard Lily ask Maddy a particular question.

“Should we meet your sister? Before things get hectic?”

Maddy didn’t respond for a moment, her face went a little dark. Eventually she spoke, it sounded like she was choosing her words carefully.

“Abigail doesn’t like meeting people. She’s become a recluse since we’ve been here.”

Now that raised some serious alarm bells to Nick. He wasn’t an expert on this sorta stuff for sure, but he knew that isolation was a killer. If Maddy’s sister had been isolated for the last year then something was seriously wrong. Nick felt like he had to make sure the girl was alright.

“Like Lily said, things are going to be getting a little hectic. It would probably be best to introduce ourselves now and not when we’re running down the 71st floor.”

Maddy looked hesitant but nodded. “Okay but you’ve got to shower first. A new shirt and pants doesn’t do much to hide all the dried blood Nick.”

Nick had to agree, he’d been more concerned about covering up than actually getting clean when he’d gotten changed. Everyone then sat down and waited as Nick took a long and well deserved shower. It was surprising how much blood had been caked across his skin and into his hair, it took quite the effort to get it all out. It was once he was done that he realised he hadn’t brought a clean change of clothes.

Once all of that had been resolved everyone was finally ready to leave. Nick realised that they had been in a random room in the Quarters, Maddy explained that they kept a few rooms near the door empty in case of medical emergencies, nobody wanted blood all over their rooms.

Maddy led them to her room, the handle had what looked like a little bundle of bones hanging from it. It was very ominous looking, where the hell did you even find bones in a place like this? Just before she opened the door Maddy turned to the group.

“Please don’t gawk, Abby’s a little strange but she’s a good kid.”

Nick’s red flag alarm was once again sent blaring.

Then Maddy opened the door and a strange den was revealed to everyone. There were strange vines hanging from the walls, markings had been drawn across the walls and there little stacks of crystals spread across the floor.

Maddy led the group deeper into the room, Nick noticed the lights weren’t on but there were different crystals stuck to the walls emitting light. What the heck was going on with this room.

“Bit of a vibe in here.” Lily commented.

“Thanks.” Replied a feminine voice from within the room.

The group ventured deeper down the hallway and emerged out into a wider room. The room was filled with potted plants and crystals, where the heck had they even come from? The group found a figure curled up in an armchair staring at them intently. It was a girl, 16 or 17 at most, dressed in full black garb with long dark hair.

“Nick and his family I assume? I guess we’re leaving? Or was that tomorrow? I can never keep track of these things.” The girl said with a sigh.

Well, this wasn’t what Nick was expecting.