"Why are we here, Lorelei?" The tall man from Austria fumed and Lorelei gave him one of her best fake smiles. The dim light of the office shrouded most facial expressions, but his blunt rage glowed in the twilight. "To call us in at this time! What were you thinking!" Maximilian looked like he wanted to tear her head off. "It is exactly because of this situation that I called you in." she said and stood up from her chair.

The rest of the executives controlled their feelings better than the moron Maximilian, but their eyes agreed with him. "We are losing this conflict, day by day. It is only a matter of time before we all get killed, either by the Queen and her allies or…." She did not finish the sentence, but everybody knew what she meant. "Do you have a plan?" Felicia, the only other woman at the executive rank asked and her smile was far more dangerous than Maximilian's impotent rage. One snake knows another, Lorelei thought.

"We need a decisive victory. Because of that I have invited our enemies here tonight." Her words caused an instant uprising. Shouts and accusations filled the room until Gabriel spoke and the rest shut up. "Explain yourself Lorelei," the man with the chiseled chin said with a deep voice. Lorelei nodded in thanks and said, "I left some breadcrumbs and hints to ensure that our enemies would know about our meeting here tonight. They will not be able to resist the lure and come eager to cut us down."

Maximilian fumed again, "You served us to our enemies, TRAITOR!" Lorelei played it cool and showed no emotions. Of course, he was right, ironically he was the only one who saw her for what she was. "Are you saying that the combined might of all executives with our elite bodyguards is inferior to a patchwork alliance of clans? If that is the case, then HE would have our heads anyway," Lorelei shouted, with eyes full of fake fanaticism.

"When will they arrive?" Gabriel asked and got up from his chair. "I expect them in the next hour or so," Lorelei said with a smile. The stoic man nodded and walked towards the door. "We will talk about this, once the battle is over," he said, before leaving the room. The rest followed the strongest of the executives and Lorelei stayed behind. She was by far the weakest of them and nobody expected her to fight because of that.

MORONS, she thought. It did not matter to her who would win this battle, just that the conflict ended soon… before he started to move. If the organization was victorious she would be praised for her decisive actions. If the alliance of clans wins, she would reveal herself as the inside source who helped them to find this place. Lorelei would be able to offer information about the organization and more importantly about the Source. She would win either way.

Lorelei sucked on her teeth and looked through the tall window front down to the city beneath her. She had thought about running. In the end she had realized, as long as the bastard was still alive she would always have to look behind her back, expecting him in the shadows. The Source needed to die, if she ever wanted to be free again. Lorelei was confident she would be able to use the whole event to her advantage. She had infiltrated clans before. Some lies, some smiles, some meaningless sex and soon they would be best friends. Lorelei smiled, it was a beautiful smile, for a monster.

In the outskirts of London, in an empty supermarket parking lot, a rather colorful group of people had assembled. Far from being a circus, class holders from four powerful clans had gathered, many of them belonging to the elite of human class holders. Marcus stood close to his own clan and watched the rest of the assembled force. A familiar face appeared to his left and Kim asked, "What does your gut say?" Marcus put up a sad smile and said, "On paper this is an impressive strike force, but…." And he let the words hang in the air. "...but, the tactical situation is completely against us. Unknown enemy, unknown terrain, no command structure or familiarity between the groups, time pressure… was this what you were thinking about?" Ye-jun said with a grin.

Marcus looked at his teacher and was glad that Ye-jun saw the same problems he did. "This is not going to be easy," Marcus whispered, but Kim understood. "Be careful tonight, Marcus," the Korean man said and returned to his own team. Marcus waved to Amy, Jack, Jura and an unknown man, who looked like another officer from Sleeping Sky. Xeen, what is your opinion, Marcus thought.

My thoughts mirror yours. It is a gamble and most likely not as simple as you would hope. Stay vigilant Marcus, an enemy specialized in deception will also use it in combat.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I will keep it in mind.

Marcus kept his worries to himself when the Queen of Hearts gathered everybody for a brief meeting. The target was a skyscraper in the City, where right now the local leaders of the organization had gathered for a strategy meeting. The plan was simple, storm the building and eliminate the command structure of the enemy. If successful, it would shorten the conflict by months. There was no tactical finesse, speed was the main idea. Rush in, cut them down before they can fight back or escape.

They even had brought a Schuhman-Device, a modified alien artifact that was able to suppress teleportation in a certain radius. The thing was basically the opposite of the homing stones Spacial Mages use to perform precise long range teleportation. Because human tech was primitive the thing had the size of a small truck, while the original was basically a backpack. The tricky part of that device was that once you started it, it could not be turned off for several hours based on the way it worked. This alone made it a clunky tool that was only used in special circumstances. It could bite you in the ass, if things didn't go as planned.

As predicted the Colors had been relegated to protect the backs of the elite squads. They would follow after them and pick off stragglers and prevent back attacks. That is, if everything went according to plan, but Marcus' gut had a very different opinion about this. The whole thing was too easy, too convenient. He hoped the others were aware of that.

All groups got ready and Marcus saw some impressive people here. The Great Modo, an eccentric but deadly Blood Knight, talked to his retinue. Kara from Ravens! was a well known Elemental Mage and her bodyguard, a Guardian, was famous, too. He saw several dangerous looking members of Fuego Verdadero, but did not know their names. A stern looking man with red dyed hair and several weapons on him was maybe the clan leader. A smaller man with a robe and a staff drew Marcus attention too. He reminded him of Alistair in this getup, and Marcus tried to remember if one of the clans had a high level Blood Mage.

Overall Marcus counted ten elites and three times the amount of other class holders. Elena was here too, she gave him a bright smile and he waved back to her. Her team had an even worse job than the Colors. Crowd control and protection against potential enemy reinforcements. They were furthest away from the action and if everything went to plan, no reinforcements would come.

The sign for the attack was given, and then things moved quickly. Many of the elites moved by foot while supports and weaker class holders (including Marcus) used vans to get to the target quickly. It was the middle of the night and not many people were out and about, watching how a fleet of vans and high level class holders rushed towards their target. After a few minutes' drive, Marcus' van came to a sudden stop and the door flew open.

By the time he had left the vehicle, he could see the first members of the assault breaking through the lobby of the massive building. Now that he was here the whole thing looked even larger than he had expected. "Holy cow, that thing is huge! If we have to go level by level we will be here for hours," Kou said, what Marcus was thinking. "Look at this, the 'Summerchild' logo is plastered all over that place. I always knew those consulting firms were evil, but turns out they are super evil," Janette said in a way, as if this had confirmed all her beliefs about the world.

They followed after the leading groups and Marcus quickly realized Grace was taking point. They had not spent any time training their group fighting since he had returned. Right now Marcus felt like he was a useless piece in a well oiled machine. His friends moved with the experience of several years of fighting together. Marcus bumped around in their formation and hated every second of it.

"Grace, fall back. Let our Beefcake go first and double up with Achara," Janette's voice came clear over the com line and Grace moved without a word. "If any of you don't remember the good old days. Let the big guy draw the fire and cut them down while they kick him," Janette added after a few seconds and everybody acknowledged the order.

Isn't it nice to be needed?

As a sand sack?

Everybody has a place and a purpose.

When did you learn to be sarcastic?

HA! I was already sarcastic before your people even learned to speak!

Marcus swallowed his answer, because they had passed the entrance to the building.

The elites had made short work of the few security guards (not the nice type, the secret evil henchmen type) in the entrance area and broken doors showed their path. After a moment Marcus decided to follow a group on the right. It was not Kim's group, he was sure of that. He doubted Ye-jun would need much support anyway. For a few minutes they ran up flights of stairs, passed through offices and only saw few signs of combat. By the fifteenth floor Marcus dared to hope things were better than he had feared, but not for long.

They had finally slowed down and the sounds of heavy combat echoed through the whole building. The elites had encountered strong resistance and tensions in the squad grew with every second. The team had stopped near the next staircase and they covered all directions. Janette was looking at the ceiling and her eyes moved rapidly, her face fell after a few seconds. "We are losing people," she said with a pressed voice.

Seconds crawled by and Janette suddenly exclaimed, "We need to help them or they are going to get wiped out!" Marcus swallowed hard, but turned and started running up the staircase. He could hear the boots of his team behind him and prayed he would not regret this decision for the rest of his days.

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