Welcome to "The Diary of a Miner"; a blog detailing the adventures and mysteries that I, Syeonyx, embark upon in my quest to further my mining and survival skills! It'll be tough, there will be good times and bad times, but I'll always be alive to post my adventures... probably...

The truth comes out... Sort of...

     I followed THEROS out of the room, and out to where Amie was currently being held. COLUS had secured her in OROTHO's room as he never seemed to be in there anyway! The door was locked, and she seemed to have made no attempt to escape. She was either playing it cool, waiting for a moment to sneak out, or she was actually cooperating, and wanted to remain here. She definitely seemed adamant she wasn't going back to HoN Co. ... Or at least that's what she had said... She heard us coming, and was looking at the door when we were level with the windows. I was curious about her, as well as OROTHO, but I might be able to get some better understanding if I quizzed her before we took her to OROTHO. THEROS seemed to agree, so before we opened the door, she agreed to answer a few questions. I initially asked if she knew of a person named "OROTHO". She denied doing so, but that wasn't proof of anything. The Lone 7 had all been given new names when taken in to protect their identity. If they were previous employees of HoN Co., the last thing they needed was them running around with their original name! OROTHO was likely to be an example of this.

"Have you heard of us before?"

"Only bits and pieces... The guards and a few senior engineers and scientists spoke of your name, but only in relation to the portals... I think they know you're behind the disappearance of some of them..."

"What about the figure? Are they working for you?"

"Who? I don't know who you're talking about... I'm just a scientist... I work primarily with the senior engineers and the guards that secure HoN Co. locations... I've never heard of "the figure" before..."

It was likely she was telling the truth. I mean, we didn't know who the figure was, and if she was who she said she was, she was likely to have been kept in the dark, for security reasons...

"We're bringing you to the lab for another interrogation. We've spotted some odd, group inconsistencies which arose since you arrived... We have a feeling you may know one of us..."

"Oh! I doubt it... I keep mainly to myself. I don't go out much, so I'm unlikely to know anyone from here... Besides, I think HoN Co. would frown upon fraternising with "the enemy"..."

She had a point... This next conversation was going to interesting...

     We brought Amie to the science lab. As she entered, I noted a very uncomfortable look cross OROTHO's face, and an uncooperative stance about him. Yes, this was going to be interesting... Amie sat down on the far side of the room, whilst OROTHO paced back and forth in front of the Creeper screen. When Amie saw the Creepers behind the glass panels, the same shock and awe crossed her face as it had mine when I first saw it! COLUS saw the look on her face, and sought to reassure her:

"Don't worry; they're conditioned not to explode... Courtesy of OROTHO here... Now then... OROTHO? Come over here..."

OROTHO stopped pacing, but refused to move.

"I'm fine where I am..."

"Professor Fenrii? Do you know a man of the name, OROTHO?"

"I don't think so... I've never heard of that name before..."

"Are you sure? What about Professor? Professor Machs? Ring any bells?"

"Professor Machs? That was the name of the senior scientist I was stationed with."

"Are you sure? What happened to this, Professor Machs?"

"He disappeared... Well, he was called up to the higher echelons of HoN Co. when he helped drastically with the portal technology... Why? What does anything have to do with..."

"OROTHO? Please turn around..."

OROTHO slowly turned around to face the rest of us, a look of seething anger on his face, coupled with fear. These were emotions rarely seen coming from OROTHO. Then again any emotion from OROTHO was often seen as odd!

"Professor? What...? Wha... I don't understand..."

"Welcome to the club... OROTHO? Please enlighten us!"
----

     After a lot or arguing and shouting - mainly from OROTHO, and COLUS telling him to calm down - we managed to get some information out of both of them. It was very surprising, and we've all learnt a lot from it. I don;t know about everyone else, but I'm more nervous of OROTHO now... Amie told us that OROTHO - or Professor Machs - was the senior scientist she served under years ago, back when HoN Co. first found the portals. He was the lead professional in this area, despite the apparent infancy of the research done into it so far. He lead a whole team into the purpose and secrets of the portals, and was the first to allow HoN Co. to send men in through it. The information gathered from it allowed OROTHO to inform them that the Nether likely contained vast quantities of unimaginable energy stored in fuel and ores, and it would be good to acquire them. Only problem was, they found that taking the ores through from the Nether to Minecraftia warped them somehow; they lost the contained energy as they passed through the rift. By this time, HoN Co. was adamant that this was the way forward for energy. So they set out acquire knowledge of the portal to help them retrieve the energy without it's loss through the rift. Then more and more HoN Co. miners found portals, and it wasn't long before HoN Co. was struggling to keep it private. So they started killing miners who found one, to cut all ties... If their families asked, they died in "a freak accident during a routine mineshaft inspection"... OROTHO began spending less and less time with the research team, and more time with the upper levels within HoN Co. ... Eventually he just disappeared... A part OROTHO is unwilling to fill in... Amie took over control of head researcher, and that's where she's been since, more or less since the startup of the Lone 7. They've been working closely with portal technology, and found the master portal a few years back. Since then, they've been working on a way to activate it, thinking it was a way to merge Minecraftia and the Nether together, but they need to activate the primary portals... That's where the portal replication technology came in... COLUS verified the timeline; the Lone 7 had come together as the full team - AMPHIS, COLUS, THEXIS, THEROS, SERVERE, UOPETA, with OROTHO joining at a later date - and vowed to take out the portals. Each member had found a portal whilst working for HoN Co., but had put two and two together when HoN Co. acted shifty around it...

"So... OROTHO? You worked for HoN Co.?"

"Yes... But might I remind you that we all have at some point or another... What difference does it make, I left because I didn't like the direction we... They were going in... I got out..."

"But you can't just get out! You were a senior researcher! they wouldn't just let you go, why did they let you leave?"

"They... I didn't give them a chance to say no... One day I was working as normal, the next I didn't turn up for work... They sent out covert search teams, knowing that if I'd gone rogue, I was a loose end... A potential chink in their armour... If I went public, I could topple HoN Co. ... But I didn't I went into hiding, and eventually found the Lone 7..."

"But it doesn't add up... How could you hide? Surely they knew that you were too valuable not to keep an eye on... If you wanted to leave, they'd know exactly where you went and when... You would be too valuable an asset to let out of their sight!"

COLUS had a point... There was something off with OROTHO's story, but we were getting off the point. What were we going to do with Amie? She still didn't seem in any rush to leave, and she was cooperating completely... OROTHO's initial statements to "kill her!" didn't add up with his story or hers... Why was he scared of her? Did she know something? I asked COLUS if I could take her aside, to which he agreed. OROTHO watched her as she and I went to the corner of the room, out of earshot... I told her that I knew she was with holding something... Something about OROTHO that might prove important...

"I didn't think it was important, but shortly after Professor Machs, OROTHO, left, I did some investigative research into it... I couldn't let it go that he had simply disappeared, and I found out that he had worked his way into the higher areas of HoN Co.! He was regularly doing important jobs for them, things that helped us lower down in the company, but one job he went on, he never came back from... The thing is, the report I managed to access seemed to indicate that Machs wasn't coming back... It had no real objective to it. Well, the bits I could read. Most of it was still encrypted, and I didn't want to draw attention to myself..."

What was she saying? That HoN Co. had given OROTHO an assignment to leave? I doubted that very much, but it still didn't make any sense as to why they never pursued him... Unless... Unless they knew where he was going... We went back over to the others, whom were now watching us intently.

"Well?"

I gestured to Amie to inform the others, and she repeated to them what she told me... With each sentence, the stress on OROTHO's face grew and grew... he was hiding something, and he wasn't very good at covering it up... At the end, COLUS asked OROTHO about the assignment he had been given, and he rattled off something about retrieving some intel in the field... I didn't buy it for a minute! OROTHO was hiding something... Everyone knew it, but he was sticking clearly to his guns, and was not budging!

"Well we're not going to get anything sorted out today... We all need to calm down and get some rest. As for you two, put OROTHO in the bottom floor of the library and lock him in. Put Amie back in OROTHO's room... We need to keep them separate in case one decides to "injure" the other... We'll sort this out tomorrow..."

OROTHO began protesting, but he knew it was futile, and eventually went with AMPHIS to the library... With OROTHO's past coming to light, we couldn't trust him any more than Amie! However, I must say, I was beginning to think Amie might actually be telling the truth about all of this... She was cooperating all the time, and OROTHO was the one being difficult... As usual... Maybe... It doesn't matter... Hopefully we'll sort this out by tomorrow, and we'll finally have an idea what to do with Amie... Lone 8...? Maybe?

Syeonyx signing off

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