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Chapter Sixteen
 To sum up his thoughts on the situation, Gallant Strong Cyclone was very confused.
 "So it's probably weird, that you're a Stromling," the brown haired girl, Allison Ryder, chattered away. "Aren't the Maelstrom kind of extinct now? Don't Stromlings hear each others' voices in their heads? Do Stromlings even have telepathy- do Stromlings even talk?"
 "I can talk." Cyclone said indignantly. "Because I'm a minifigure." Although when he thought about it, he had heard another Stromling talk, before it got smashed. Then he almost got smashed. He shuddered to think about it.
 "Yeah so what do Stromlings think about?" Allison asked. "About serving the Baron, or smashing things, or infecting people..."
 Cyclone rolled his eyes. "I don't know what Stromlings think about."
 "But you're infected, so, shouldn't you be, becoming, you know, thinking all evil things about now? No offense intended of course,"
 "I still feel the same." Cyclone said.
 "I once asked my dad about Stromlings," another voice said, and Cyclone looked up at him. Ben, the young auburn haired boy, had been going from file cabinets to bookshelves, looking through the Leek Works archive room to find anything on disinfecting Stromlings. So far he hadn't found anything, because he was still scuttling between drawers, running his fingers over book bindings, and occasionally grabbing a book and opening it, but only to put it back.
 "My dad said he had friends who were infected, and disinfected." Ben continued, speaking while he worked on his search. "And they talked together, about being infected, and the thing about my dad's friends... they were special. Something kept them from being infected immediately. They told him that they always maintained free thoughts, but began to experience evil 'urges', that became stronger the longer they were infected."
 With nothing left to say, Ben closed his mouth, so the only noise from him was the bumping and clinking of drawers sliding open and shut on their metal rails.
 "I wonder who his friends were." Allison mused aloud.
 "Yeah, me too." Cyclone agreed, as Ben stood up to walk and disappeared around a wall into the other part of the archives room. "Who's his dad?"
 Now Allison rolled her eyes. "It's not obvious? Oh, I guess not, since they don't look much alike. But then again, neither does Red. Red hair seems to be the dominant gene with this guy. The boss of this place. Intrepid Fusion Eclipse."
 "He's their dad?" Cyclone asked, surprised. He pictured Intrepid... he couldn't be older than seventeen. He shook his head, flabbergasted. "What?"
 "Yep!" Allison confirmed.
 "Isn't he a little, you know, young?" Cyclone queried.
 "Oh, you're thinking about the wrong guy! Dimensions are so confusing!" she laughed, then continued. "Yeah, no, we're talking about our Intrepid Fusion Eclipse. He's twenty years older than your Intrepid. Yeah, I can see why you'd be confused... that'd be strange really, ugh, don't make me think about-"
 "So Ben and Red are brother and sister?" Cyclone asked.
 "Half-siblings."
 "Oh. Why's that?"
 "Everyone's always yelling at me that I'm talking too loudly," Allison said suddenly, and she glanced towards the corner around which Ben was. Then she grabbed Cyclone's hand, the hand that wasn't a literal sword arm, and pulled him surprisingly soundlessly into the hallway. There wasn't a door to close so Allison just held a finger up to her lips.
 "What's the matter?" Cyclone asked hushedly, worried by her sudden discreetness.
 "What I'm about to talk to you about," Allison whispered, "this subject, isn't something the rest of us talk about much. It's like an unspoken rule, saying it's forbidden to talk about our personal lives. Actually not our, plural, personal lives, but the boss's." She shivered and grabbed her shoulders. "I feel like I'm breaking a rule even telling you about the rule! You know that feeling?"
 "I guess so," Cyclone said, trying to understand. "Why are we hiding from Ben, though? Is his mom...?" He didn't dare finish the grave thought.
 "No, not her. Not Elite Distant Tofu, AKA Mara Mercury, she's very alive. She's the boss's second wife, after..." Allison gulped. "...after Red's mom... died. She died a long time ago. You won't find anything about it outside Leek Works, though. It's not even in the main archives."
 "It's expunged?" Cyclone figured. "Why?"
 "The only files are in the boss's personal office, and no one's read them. I certainly haven't." Allison explained. "It's almost romantic. But they're really all hidden away because of the nature of her death. The faction leaders know a little about it, and they said to hide it. Not to cause fear, since the war was over..."
 "It had to do with the war?" Cyclone asked.
 "Yeah. It was in our 2020 when it happened..." she leaned in close to Cyclone's ear. "A rift opened between our dimension, and another dimension, where the Maelstrom won the war. The boss's team was the first to respond. But then the Darkitect himself came, and he took... ugh."
 Allison suddenly scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her fists against her temples, swaying on her feet slightly. Reaching for her shoulders to steady her, Cyclone forgot for a second to use just his right hand, since his other arm was a sword. But now that both his arms were up, he did a double take when he noticed that on his left side appendage, there was not a blade to be seen. It had become a hand again.
 "Thanks, sorry..." Allison mumbled. "It hurts to think about." She opened her eyes and gave a small smile. "Where were we?"
 "You said it was a secret," Cyclone recalled, letting go of her. "If Red's mother's death was a secret, how do you know so much? You couldn't have been there, in 2020... fourteen years ago? You'd be what, three?"
 Allison sighed. "Well, that's actually why I'm here. I don't really work with Leek Works the way the others do. They, Red, Ben, his mom, her brother - when he did work here, he left - and the boss, and the others; they have a cause, to help the Nimbus System's citizens, and all minifigures across the universe. But I've never really understood the conflict.
 "I kind of, well, work for the boss himself." Allison said. "And it's because of what happened to Red's mom. This is something I've never told anyone else."
 She grabbed Cyclone's head and whispered directly into his ear again. The words she said, not just because of the close whisper she said them in, jarred Cyclone when he heard them.
 "I was born what the dictionary calls a medium." Allison said. "I can listen to the spirits of smashed minifigures."