Minhyun informed them that everyone was out, including him. The three men and two boys in the basement were the only ones left. At least two rogues were behind them, if the buried ones hadn’t been able to dig themselves out yet.

Ren was pulled along as Junior unerringly rushed through the corridors. It was completely dark since the damage to the structure had cut out the electricity. How were they navigating? Was Junior’s sense telling him his chances of crashing into brickwork? Ren was about to pull his phone out for light when he remembered that he had superpowers.

Junior’s love wasn’t enough for a complete Conmote right now – at least not a useful one Ren could create while running and exhausted – but it sufficed for a convenient light source.

Soon a small orb giving plenty of soft, orangey-pink light trailed above them, made of foggy material like Ren’s earliest experiments.

A few more corners through the semi-dark with Minhyun’s continued updates in the back of their heads, and the boys reached the trio at the massive entrance of something that looked a lot like a bank vault.

The chief – Mister Sato – was typing into a keypad, the other two agents guarding his back. They had nothing but the grenade launcher’s inbuilt flashlight to let them see who was coming. Ren’s construction illuminated their stern faces.

“Junior Sir, we are ready to collapse.”

“Good,” Junior said, a bit out of breath. “Set the timer to two minutes. That still leaves us with a hundred percent escape chance.”

The boy walked up to the vault door and put his thumb on a finger print reader. With the hauling of a motor running on emergency power, the gate swung open. A seemingly endless corridor stretched far into the ground.

Ren asked “Is this an escape route?”

“No,” Junior said, already walking through the gate, “This leads to a panic room that won’t collapse. We have to sit this one out.”

“Won’t we be trapped if the building collapses?”

“We have Aron.”

“Right.”

“That reminds me,” Junior said, switching to sending through the link. “Aron, you have one minute thirty seconds until the explosion. Do something that makes noise simultaneously. We have to wake up a city.”

“Understood,” the American sent back.

Then the group entered the bunker. Stone walls, metal grids and hard furniture gave the room an extra claustrophobic feeling. If the huge amounts of concrete above them weren’t enough to do that. Emergency lights as the door closed behind them. Ren whisked away the Love orb, outshined by the harsh neon tubes.

Then they waited.

Still, Minhyun kept them updated. The rogues that had been wrecking the lobby had walked further into the building, which was a case of luck. Although Aron probably could have stopped them if they had tried to escape.

Block B went down in flames. The rumbling rose slowly to a crescendo. For a moment Ren thought himself in the stomach of a hungry giant. Dust fell from the ceiling. Anything not bolted to the stone ground rattled in place.

Then it was over. Of course the surface would look like a warzone and Ren figured the ruins were probably on fire. They’d see. The five people in the buried panic room waited while Minhyun and Aron tried to find their position according to Junior’s senses.

As far as it could be confirmed, the rogues were gone. And whatever Aron had added, it had made a sound that caused windows to shatter even outside the fenced area. Ren’s hunch had likely been the right solution.

“I think,” he said towards Junior, ”we should monitor our future experiment a lot more closely. If we do any at all.”

“Yeah," the leader answered, "I should have stuck around.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ren quickly insisted. “You have the whole organization to run.”

“That reminds me. We need new headquarters. Again. Mister Sato, once we’re back on the surface I want you to contact our remaining bases. We don’t have any big ones left so we’ll build one. I’ll need proposals from the department leaders.”

The chief of operations nodded grimly. Ren assumed the man would have to stay behind and rebuild his own base as well.

“Is that much of a problem?” Ren asked, to kill time and because he had realized that he understood very little of Junior’s role in the organization.

The precog shrugged. “We can build as many bases as we want. I’ll have to be a bit less soft on the stock market manipulation, but a billion here, a billion there, are easily liquidated.”

“How rich are you, exactly?” Ren was curious but careful in case this was a sore spot for the leader.

“Hard to say. Money isn’t all that counts. If I wanted I could easily outmaneuver all other investors on the planet and become the wealthiest man that ever lived. Did you know that most of the exchange volume is handled by artificial intelligence? Even split seconds of processing time can make a difference of trillions of dollars. I only need to see a minute ahead and can beat them all and take over the world before they figure out what to do about me. Of course that’s not in our interest when it comes to secrecy.”

“Woah.” The implications were stunning. But that was for another day. If more people learned about Junior – especially the superrich – the Shadow would find powerful allies.

“Money isn’t everything, though,” Junior continued, “I am owed a lot of favors. Being able to warn people – important people – of impending doom creates a lot of goodwill. Then there are assets the organization has held onto for a while like a small fleet of ships or a few hundred decommissioned warheads. Anyway, it’s all falling apart now.”

“Why?”

“Because you guys insisted on turning us into a charity organization.”

“Are… are you not alright with that?”

Junior hugged the empath, putting his head on Ren’s shoulder. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. Taking from the rich and giving the poor. Though, it turned out a lot more complicated that the little boy I once was figured. But the board of directors is crumbling. They’d rather jump off than stick with an organization that redistributes wealth from the world trade volume to third world countries.”

“So. Let them jump. Good riddance.”

“They’re influential billionaires. I might not need their money but their contacts are what kept the organization running smoothly. I’ll have to find my own security experts and- Ugh. I’m turning into a bureaucrat.”

Ren chuckled. For a moment he was tempted to tell the boy he’d have to cut his video gaming sessions short.

Aron dug into the bunker, burning away the stone wall as if it was paper. He stepped in through the huge, perfectly round hole. “One escape route in five minutes or less, as ordered.”