“I am so jealous.”

  “It’s just a secret door…”

  “It’s a secret door hidden in Central Park… literally steps away from the statue of Balto, Loophole!”

  “I’m going to have to side with Codex on this one.”

  “Oh not you too…” I groaned, reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “You’re literally standing right here, you don’t have any reason to be jealous!”

  After I had gotten done talking with BrainCraft, Swansong and I went back out into the city to fly and patrol around for the rest of the evening. While we didn’t end up finding a single extra encounter to handle, nor did we run into any of the other Augments in the city, my Personal Gravity Laws ability did increase up to Level 3, which would really just let me stay in the air longer. The lack of new enemies to fight was a bit odd, but given that we were positive they were Augment in origin, it could have just meant that our invisible enemy had been reevaluating his plans after his creations had been destroyed so quickly.

  When the next morning passed by mostly without incident, Swansong finally told me that there was something she wanted to look at over in Central Park and I agreed to meet her there.

  “I meant I agreed with the sentiment, besides, it’s not like we’ve bought it yet,” Swansong said with a shrug. “Regardless, I can be jealous of the people that already have cool secret lairs.”

  “It costs 150,000 credits and we haven’t had a single new Crime Alert since the monkeys, why did we come here to even consider this?”

  “To be fair, you did have the alert down in Chelsea that popped up first thing this morning, you just didn’t respond to it because you didn’t want to run into Hydramental,” Jon said and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Well Loophole did say that that guy had a bit of a temper,” Swansong said before I could vocalize the same thing. She reached up and tapped at her chin for just a moment. “I guess you could have still gone and tried to get partial credit, but it's probably not worth him trying to fight you just for helping out."

  While I had mostly skipped over my interactions with Hydramental when I was convincing Swansong and Pinky to turn off their Acceptance Matrixes, with us now a part of a full squad and Hydramental a possible source of issues, I at least filled Swansong in on his bi-polar tendencies, just in case she encountered him without me around. I still had a few messages from him that I hadn’t responded to, though I did finally open them up.

  As I had expected, they were mostly expletive filled demands for information on what had happened, with an increasingly annoying edge to them as the hours went on. The last of the messages he sent had only come through just after Axio’s announcement when I had been talking with BrainCraft, once again demanding that I “show my fuckin’ face” so that we could “hash things out.”

  “I mean, even if I threw in all 36,500 credits that I have in my B.E.L.T., we’d still be short by over 110,000…” I said, skipping past the topic and moving right along. I looked from the highlighted edging that revealed the door embedded into the wall in a small tunnel. “Are you somehow sitting on that many credits?”

  “Nope, not even close. I’ve only got 25,000 myself,” Swansong admitted with a shake of her head that sent her red hair tumbling around her.

  “Then I ask again, why-”

  I was cut off as a flash of light appeared over her hand, leaving a slip of paper clutched between her fingers.

  “I’ve got a coupon,” She said with a wide smile as she looked up at me. “75% off.”

  “75… wait… when did you get that?” I asked as she pulled the coupon back into her B.E.L.T.

  “I got an F:Tier box yesterday from an achievement called Late Bloomer. Apparently that’s what you get for not getting into an actual fight until after the first Phase,” Swansong explained. “I didn’t end up opening the box here until this morning and this was what it gave me.”

  “Huh… well that’s lucky for us,” I said, taking a moment to think about it and feeling a crease form in my brow as I got stuck on what felt like it should be mostly basic math. “That uh... that means it would cost… umm…”

  “37,500 for a Level 1 Squad Base, or 18,750 each,” Jon said, apparently having had the number waiting for me to simply ask for it. “And I really think you guys should do it.”

  “Why am I not surprised that you already had the math done… why didn’t you just tell me you had the coupon instead of waiting until we got here? It would have cleared up just so much confusion…”

  “Codex suggested it,” Swansong said with an awkward shrug. “He uh… for some reason thought it would help with my public speaking issue?”

  “That’s not what I said at all! Sheesh, first Loophole half listens to me and now you…” Jon complained. “I said it would help her learn about “showmanship,” something all good heroes need and something that’s easier to practice in controlled situations, like this one.”

  “Um… how was this supposed to teach her showmanship?” I asked.

  “Look it’s not important now that she’s gone and tried to explain it,” Jon said with a groan. “So, are you guys gonna buy this place?”

  “Are there other places we can look?”

  “Nah not really. You guys are only eligible to purchase a squad base in regions that your team has a full claim on, meaning only here in Central Park since it doesn’t automatically convert the areas you guys claimed on your own into Squad territories. There are technically a few other possible spots that you can set the entrance at and I can have you guys run around and see them if you really want to, but I think this place is secluded enough that it will give you guys a place to slip in and out of without too many people noticing,” Jon explained and then I heard him let out a laugh. “And again… Balto statue. Remember how many times we saw that movie growing up, Loophole?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen that…” Swansong said as she looked out of the tunnel toward the bronze statue just a bit up the pathway. “Is it good?”

  “I mean, I think so, maybe it’s just nostalgia but it’s a really good animated movie,” Jon replied before he seemed to think about it for a minute and then added, “Although you should avoid the sequels like the plague.”

  “You just really want us to buy a base just so you can see if the Command Room gets upgraded, don’t you?” I said with a sigh, trying to get us back on topic before I met Swansong’s eyes. “Are you really okay with dropping this many credits on this? Do you think we need one?”

  “Well um… Yeah… I’d be okay with it… It was kinda my idea once I pulled the coupon out of the loot box,” She explained, squirming ever so slightly the longer I looked at her. “I uh… sorta live with my parents still. It’s a bit of a risk anytime I am trying to rush out the door when an alert pops up… I wouldn’t mind being able to jump right from my bedroom there to here so that I can stop worrying if they are going to catch me one day and get wrapped up into this.”

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  “Oh… oh yeah I can definitely see why you’d be on board with jumping right to getting one of these bases,” I said with a nod. “I can understand wanting to distance yourself from them and you’re right, this would make jumping into action a bit easier. Hell, I wouldn’t have to run up to the roof in my normal clothes just to get out into the city. So how do we do this?”

  “Well since you’re technically the leader, you have to be the one to initiate it and then Swansong can apply the coupon,” Jon explained and I highlighted the door once more. When I mentally clicked on it, a new “purchase” window opened.

  “Central Park Squad Base. Level 1. Cost: 150,000 Credits. Purchase: Self/Squad-Split/No.”

  Swansong lifted a hand up and the window briefly shuddered before the words “Discount Applied!” appeared and lowered the cost all the way down to 37,500 and then I selected the Squad-Split option on the window. It confirmed that we wanted to split the cost 50/50 and then 18,750 credits were deducted from my B.E.L.T. instantaneously.

  “New Achievement! Landowner! First you make a squad with this lady and now you’re buying the equivalent of a house? Sheesh you two are moving a little fast don’t yah think? Actually, you know what, I’m not gonna complain, that means I get an upgrade too. You’ve purchased a Squad Base, try not to leave the common areas a mess or else Carrot Top over there is gonna think you’re a slob. This is a Gold level achievement. Reward: You have unlocked access to the Squad Base interface.”

  “YES!” Jon shouted, practically rattling my head. I even caught Swansong wince slightly before his whoop left our minds. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “Good news I take it?” I asked curiously as I stepped toward the highlighted section of the wall. When I was only a step away, the bricks in the wall quite literally parted, pulling to the side and revealing a short staircase heading down into a darkened tunnel.

  “The Command Room just dinged around me and I have a message on the main screen that says, “Squad Base Integration now available”,” Jon said and I could hear the giddiness in his voice.

  “He’s so easy to please,” Angie giggled.

  Swansong followed closely behind me as we started to descend the staircase. The moment we were past the wall, the bricks closed up behind us and light flooded the area. Much like the tunnel that had led Hydramental and I into the base beyond Grand Central Station, the light in this one seemed to be coming from both everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  Luckily unlike the tunnel that had led to that base, this one was much, much shorter. It only extended about fifty feet outward from the bottom of the staircase before we reached another door. I grabbed the handle, pulling it open and waving for Swansong to enter which she did with a soft smile toward me.

  “Well this is… sparse,” She said.

  I followed her in and found myself immediately agreeing with her. The room was a large, empty concrete cube that almost reminded me of the empty combat cell that Pinky and I had fought in on the second floor of the Common Ground. The only two differences being that on walls almost exactly opposite of each other there were two very different looking doors and then at the center of the entire room was a large console with a holographic display that read “Initializing” hovering over it.

  “Is… is that my bedroom door?” I asked, staring at the door on the left side of the empty room before I looked over at a door painted with white, pink and gold swirls on the other side.

  “Well that would at least explain why mine is here too,” She said as she started to wander over toward it. “I guess that’s how we connect back to our Safe Houses?”

  “One way to find out,” I said and walked over to the door that looked like mine and pushed it open. It didn’t suddenly reveal my bedroom, instead opening up to a bright orange portal square.

  Just like with the transit to Sanctuary Square, stepping through the portal was instantaneous, except instead of exiting out from behind the Display Case, I was stepping out from a portal that opened up inside of my closet. I walked over, poking my head out of the door to my bedroom and looked across the room to the door that opened into the Command Room.

  “Yo!” Jon yelled over his shoulder with a wave. “I’m already digging my way through the base features… this is so friggin awesome.”

  “Whoa what the heck!?” Swansong’s voice echoed in my head and I looked back toward the still glowing portal in my closet

  “I can tinker with the layout super easily,” Jon said with a laugh and a toothy grin as he swiveled slightly in his chair to look at me.

  Instead of guessing what they meant by that, and knowing it was literally only a step away now, I turned around and immediately went back through the portal. The bare concrete room was gone, replaced with a large open living room layout, complete with a small section at the center of the room where the floor dipped down. The holographic display had lowered down into the central depression of the room. There were no furniture or decorations, but the layout itself felt far more welcoming than the giant concrete bunker it had been only a few minutes earlier. The doors to our respective Safe Houses remained where they were, but a new hallway appeared opposite of the one we had first walked through to get to the room.

  The room shifted around us as one corner of the room stretched backward and a countertop lifted from the ground, creating a pseudo barrier from the rest of the room before the walls and floors in it transformed into tile.

  “This is like playing the Sims but without any of the bugs and a stupidly easy to use interface!” Jon said and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

  “It would be kinda nice if we had some actual furniture… what else can we do with this?” I asked as I wandered around the pit and over to the room that Jon had managed to expand from our layout. “Is this supposed to be a kitchen?”

  “Yup, check the squad window in your interface, I can modify the layout based on the total available size the base is allowed to occupy, but you two have to allocate the... I guess they’re called Base Points? Well simple name aside, at a level 1 base, you guys each get 10 of the points to allocate to upgrades for the place. I for one would like it if you spent 5 for the Command Room integration personally, but it’s probably a good idea to go through the different upgrades before we jump at what I want. The integration for my room here doesn’t have all that many details as to what would come with that, which makes sense given it’s still experimental, so I wouldn’t blame you guys if you wanted to jump at the more obvious upgrades.”

  “Whoever designed this game is really doing people a disservice by hiding details on everything until you unlock it,” Swansong muttered as she walked over into the kitchen area herself. “There’s appliances like stoves and fridges that we could get for 2 points each. The fridge doesn’t really do much, but apparently cooking food on the stoves helps get the Well Fed buff no matter what you cook on it.”

  “Hmm,” I said as I opened the window in my interface. A sudden idea occurred to me as I opened a second window up for my B.E.L.T. and looked through the sparse but somewhat growing inventory. “We don’t need a fridge,” I said with a laugh before I materialized a large cabinet that I had stuffed into my B.E.L.T. days earlier.

  “How will- ooooh,” Swansong said before cutting herself off.

  The large, somewhat beat up standalone cabinet had been sitting in my B.E.L.T. since just after my first interaction with the cloned version of Sal. It didn’t have the most space, but even then, if the basic fridge we could purchase for the room didn’t have any actual real benefits other than keeping stuff cool, then why waste the limited resource of points we had to change things. Since this cabinet had been upgraded by the system to be Refrigerated, it meant that it could, in fact, just work as our fridge.

  With that down, I looked back to the list of upgrades. They were split into categories based on their costs and while the list was excessively large, I still had to scroll through it to look at all of the options. There were simple things for only a single point, like televisions and sound systems, up to actual base defenses, like turrets and traps for three or four points. As Jon had pointed out, there was an option to integrate his Command Room into the base as well for five points and it was the only thing on the list that did cost that much.

  I was just about to say screw it and purchase the integration for him when alarms and sirens filled the room around us. I actually jumped, finding myself looking around and preparing for an attack when the holographic display at the center of the pit lit up brightly.

  “Squad Crime Alert! It’s a… bird? Robotic forms have been seen flying overhead of Central Park heading on a direct course for the Central Park Zoo! Go and save those cute animals before the weird robotic ones do something unspeakable to them! Reward: Your Squad will receive a Medium Reputation Boost, 2,500 credits, and a B:Tier Squad Base Loot Box.

  “There’s Squad Base boxes?! Oh, yup, there they are in the database, they grant Base equipment and upgrades!” Jon was right back into full on giddy mode as the Crime Alert faded and I saw Swansong hide a giggle behind her hand.

  “Well, guess we can do the decorating later,” she said as she shot me a smile. “Think you can fight while you fly?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

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