[HIATUS] The Tide Rises

Chapter 20

"Midas?"

No matter how much he despised their new forced commanders, Midas always kept to his usual routines and tried to be up early and presentable for whatever strange tasks SHADOW would set them to, when they weren't taunting them, at least. Despite his sarcasm and smart remarks against them, it seemed his mannerisms were hard to drop.

Today, however, Jules hadn't seen him.

Sure, he would always force himself to awaken before her, or in general would make an effort to be up and running before her. It had been a few hours since Jules herself had been up to her tasks, and she had only now realized Midas was nowhere to be seen. Now, here she was, knocking on the door to his makeshift prison room, which lay just above the seized vault.

There was a growing unease in her stomach as she waited in silence for her brother to give her even a grunt of a response, but there was nothing. Only the chattering of nearby SHADOW agents or henchmen, whether originally SHADOW or GHOST turned SHADOW, and their steady, patrolling steps through the rubble of The Agency.

Something was off. She knocked again. "Midas, if you don't come out I'm going to force you out." She laughed quietly to herself, but her smile quickly faded when she was still met with nothing. Only now was she really beginning to worry. "Midas...?"

Had he been sent out for a mission? Cast out? Was he... dead?

The doorknob finally jiggled, and the door slowly opened. In the entrance, there stood not her brother... but a cold gaze from the sinister eyes of a gas mask. And, judging by his posture, he was not pleased to see her.

"Hello, Jules," Chaos Agent spoke, his bitter voice sending chills down her spine. "Please, come in."

Hesitantly, she inched forward, knowing that if she didn't, her end would draw near. Her breaths were caught in her throat.

She looked around. The room, for its gloomy, prison simplicity, was trashed. She had not actually seen her brother's room before, but she knew this couldn't be his doing.

Her eyes darted to her right at the movement of a SHADOW henchman who had blended in too well with the wall. A gun was now threatening her face. The door behind them all slammed, and next to it, another henchman, who had been hiding behind the door, lunged forward and pulled her arms behind her in restraint.

Jules found herself trembling as she was held against her will. She hadn't shaken so bad since February, not even when she had initially been captured. "What- what's going on...?" She whispered.

Standing beside the armed henchman, Chaos Agent broke into a fit of sarcastic, maniacal chuckles. His version of anger. "You tell me," he hissed, then dangling a piece of paper in her face. It was a note, she realized... a note written in elegant, golden cursive, ending with the incomparable 'M' signed at the bottom, taking up a fourth of the page.

All she had to read was the last small paragraph just above it to realize what had happened, and what would soon happen.

'They will wish they hadn't messed with us. I'm sorry, Jules. Hold tight. I will return as quickly as possible.'

Midas had fled.

He was no longer here, and soon, she would be gone, too.

~•~

The true fact of the matter was that it was his calculations that left The Fortilla as GHOST's only remains, but Midas could never admit that. He could barely admit it to himself. So, as he familiarized himself with every corner of The Fortilla, there was always a mix of impressiveness as he wandered it's tactical, sturdy structures, yet more so shame, because this was all his work had become.