Bobby ran over and ripped the gag off Sammy, “How did you get caught?”

  The man spluttered and coughed, taking some deep breaths before he replied, “I don’t know, the boss somehow knew everything about my betrayal.”

  A speaker in the ceiling crackled slightly, before the voice of the commentator from earlier came out, “And the champion of the first half challenges the boss to a duel, it’s unprecedented!”

  Bobby looked down through the window in confusion as an impossibly large man whose arms bulged with more than just muscles came out into the sandy arena to the roar of the spectators. The man was twice the size of the person who’d challenged him and probably had some sort of bionic implants, although you wouldn’t have noticed them in the geometry of his muscles unless you were specifically looking for them, no one's arms could naturally get that wide. I am so confused, how did he know we were coming and why is he fighting?

  Gary spoke up to his side, “I’m assuming we’ve just been played somehow, if this man somehow knew we were coming and what our intentions were the arena would be the safest place for him, after all, if we attack him directly every single person here will see the skeletons and or your magic.”

  “But isn’t he right in the open, couldn’t we just shoot him with a gun?” said Bobby.

  “Yeah, but we need him alive to control the gang, and you probably won’t be able to turn him into a thrall while he’s bashing your skull in.”

  Bobby felt dazed and flopped down into one of the seats while Gary began untying Sammy. “I don’t get it, how can he have known this much about us?”

  Gary’s face began going dark, the opposite of his normal jovial expression. “There is only one way this could’ve happened.”

  “What?” Bobby asked, knowing the answer already, but not wanting to jump to that conclusion.

  “We’ve been betrayed.”

  Bobby felt a bit like the walls were closing in on him, he had given so much trust to everyone he met recently, but for one of them to suddenly turn on him in such a fashion? He didn’t even know how to react, he also didn’t even know who it could be, after all there were countless people who’d seen his skeletons.

  After managing to calm himself down by forcing his system full of magic his brain started going into overdrive, he might not be able to understand who it had been, but at least he could begin narrowing everything down.

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  First of all it could not have been any of his thralls, he wasn’t sure even Michaela could defy an order if he directly gave it to her, not that he ever wanted to particularly test that, so it had to be someone who was alive. Out of all the living people he had placed his trust in there were not too many who actually had the capability.

  The Rats also couldn’t have done it, they had too much to lose, the same was for Gary, he had given too much to the man and the man had also suggested it had been a betrayal. Which meant that it was one of a final few, either a member of the JJJ, one of the mutants he’d released or Lucinda…

  Bobby mentally tried to dismiss that last option, but knew he had no choice but to include her in his thoughts until he could prove that it wasn’t her. He continued thinking, but felt like he was missing something, what could he be missing?

  Bobby idly scanned the room until his eyes fell upon Sammy.

  Why is he still alive?

  Logic dictated that if you found a traitor you killed them, after all if they were alive they had potential to cause much more damage than they already had. What reason was there that the Kamden Crew’s boss had left Sammy alive?

  Chills went down Bobby’s neck, it couldn’t be Sammy because the man had no way of knowing about the Skeletons or the Magic, after all when they had met him, no supernatural elements had been present, even if they had hinted about them. Sammy’s father though on the other hand, someone who had every reason to want to keep his family alive?

  Mr Skorne knew almost everything. The man had the perfect set up to be innocent, a poor tortured mutant rescued from the vile basement of an evil gang, implicitly trusted by everyone, and wanting revenge on those who had harmed him.

  Bobby's instincts were almost screaming at him about how faked it all could have been. Unlike almost all of the other mutants the man's eyes were the only thing affected by the genetic experimentation, what if for whatever reason he had snuck into the basement of the JJJ, then when they had attacked he entered a cell and put fake contacts in, pretending to be one of the subjects.

  He only had to wait to be released, tell some sob story to gain Bobby’s trust, and also the power over the gang, mutants and the skeletons in the process. Then he would have had to wait for Bobby to leave, take control and make sure Bobby didn’t return. If Bobby did return then the man would have just had to keep betraying him to their enemies until one of them succeeded in killing him.

  The man's compound eyes couldn’t have been real as well, those things were borderline just light sensors in insects, and he’d been wearing sunglasses to cover them up, all while teaching children english literature and maths, something that definitely required complex animal eyes.

  Who could infiltrate the cells of the JJJ though? One group immediately popped into his mind, one that didn’t have to because they had every reason to be there: the elusive organisation that was to blame for the human experimentation, the Undertakers. The very organisation he suspected had ties to the megacorporations. Not only that, the man was a lawyer, and one could only become a lawyer nowadays if they worked for one of three groups.

  Bobby suddenly felt very wary about his predicament. What could the man be doing back at the JJJ with the full cooperation of everyone there?

  +++++

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