Bobby’s mind churned, trying to think of all the possible ways the situation could get worse. Could Mr Skorne take hostages? Had he informed the megacorporations of Bobby’s existence? Who else could be a traitor that he didn’t know about?

  “Bobby, do you know who it is?” said Gary, breaking through his thoughts.

  Bobby realised Gary and Sammy had been waiting for him to respond for quite a while, and they seemed to be quite unsure due to both Gary’s revelation and their current position. Either way it probably wasn’t a good idea for Sammy to find out his father was a traitor, or if he was on board with his fathers plans, find out that Bobby knew, so Bobby didn’t tell them his speculations, he’d have to find time to inform Gary separately.

  “I have no idea,” he lied gravely. “Either way I don’t think we should remain here any longer, if the boss was expecting us then he might have surprises in store for us.”

  Gary looked at him pointedly, “Do you want to retreat before we lose more troops, or do you want to press in while we might still have some element of surprise, they will be very ready for us if we retreat and try again.”

  “I think I want to press on, although what that will involve I’m not quite sure, either way we should try and secure all the ways into and out of that arena.”

  “Good, that’s what a strategist would think!” Gary replied.

  Sammy sighed, “I am not optimistic you’ll have much luck, but I’ll help,” he stretched and turned around, coming face to face with the grinning skull of a nearby soldier. For a moment he froze before calmly turning around in the greatest display of self control Bobby had seen yet, “Umm, why don’t your soldiers yanno, have flesh?”

  +++++

  Bobby and the others organised themselves before heading down the staircase; they didn’t actually need to get the skeletons to move again because they had already filled up most of the stairwell with the long column of troops.

  As they were nearing the bottom one of the skeletons nearby tapped Bobby on the shoulder and Michaela spoke, “What happened out there, did you get the leader yet?”

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  “No, the situation has turned a bit grave, get Gary to summarise it to you, I need to think.”

  Bobby and his army reached the main corridor, much further along he could see people rushing into and out of side doors, these men somehow hadn’t realised that they had been infiltrated yet, although with the distance between them and the exits he guessed it made sense.

  He kind of felt like he was at a bit of a dead end, standing there, whatever they did, it was what the Undertakers would probably want. If they revealed their skeletons, the rest of the Undercity would see them as a threat and could probably be convinced to band together to get rid of them. Whereas if they retreated then they would be greatly weakened by this failure, and could face major difficulties getting back to their gang.

  The only way to get out would be to somehow take over the gang without facing the repercussions and use the forces gained to resolve everything else. Seeing as all the obvious moves had been covered, they would have to do something unexpected, something that would push back at the undertakers, potentially even fully reverse the situation.

  Bobby felt something click into place in his head as he suddenly grasped the perfect solution.

  Turning to his companions he began giving orders, “Michaela, can you take ten skeletons and go fetch James from the perimeter in the carpark, Sammy go with them, and take over James duties.”

  It was a bit of a perilous situation to put someone who very much might be a traitor on the security of their escape, but if his plan paid off then they wouldn’t need to escape and his plan had a good chance of succeeding so long as no one was around who had the possibility of ruining it. He then spoke to Gary, “I have the perfect solution to this situation, we still need to take control of all entrances and exits of the arena, but I think I will be able to coax this boss out, so we won’t need to go in to join him.”

  Gary nodded seriously, before beginning to brief the surrounding skeletons on the next stage of the plan. While he was doing that, Bobby mentally prepared himself for the next step, going over the plan he had come up with in his head to resolve the kinks. He might be able to cox the boss out of the arena, but they would still need to fight the man without killing him, and with a man of such strength, the fact that they weren’t going all out on him could easily prove fatal, especially when he was going to be doing everything he could to kill them.

  Michaela soon returned with James in tow and they set off without much more pause. The front of the army became a bit more dangerous the closer they got to the arena, as more and more men realised they had intruders and formed layers of resistance. So Bobby and Gary held back a bit, watching their troops charge unhesitantly into streams of oncoming bullets, sending bone chips flying everywhere.

  It was certainly deadly, but he could tell the resistance was lacking due to how few people were actually involved, whoever was trying to mastermind the situation had genuinely intended for them to come this way, any adversity they faced was going to be for show.

  +++++

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