Concealed plans

     There's good news and bad news... The good news is that a few hours ago, THEXIS informed us that the guards' radio traffic had increased, and the impression he got was that there were returning to the tower. That meant they would be passing by the base within the next hour or so. But that partially led onto the bad news. As they had taken so long in deciding to return, we had to remain within the base until they had passed to prevent them finding out about where we were based. As we now know where the next secondary portal locations are based, we can't get to any of them before nightfall! AMPHIS and THEROS finished with the map, and they are spread out much further. The closest one to us in terms of time is way to the North West near to a pool of lava. All of the others are far spread across the land mass to the West of us. We wouldn't be able to get to any of them before nightfall, and there's no point starting now... Apparently. COLUS has said that waiting an extra day isn't going to kill us, so we're all in the lab at the moment, discussing the possibility of a tunnel connecting the base to the portal.

"It is possible. I believe the base to be on a similar level to the portal chamber, albeit a change of a few metres higher or lower. What is best is to us a spare map to plot the most logical path to create the tunnel, base on which direction we begin it from. If we can establish that, then we can create a strict set of instructions, and have another team digging from the chamber to us. It would be faster, but error prone. It would take some calculating, but I'm sure it's possible."

Amie nodded, showing her approval of the idea, and we all knew that the more attention we brought to ourselves, the more likely we were going to need a place to retreat to. What better place than the Nether! Well, that didn't sound quite right; technically it was the worst place to fall back to, but strategically, it worked to our advantage. We would run on a faster time stream, so we could achieve more in essentially the same space of time. We would have to seal the entire place off when not in use, as technically it would class as a security breach otherwise. I left the brainiacs to sort out the complicated bits of the tunnel, and went in search of THEROS and AMPHIS. There was something on the map that had thoroughly confused me...

     I thought so... I couldn't believe it at first, but examining the copies of the maps laid out before me, I could only conclude one thing.

"We don't quite get it either. It seems illogical, but the report seems to mention this site as quite recent. It's likely then that the location may have been risen, otherwise... Well, you're going swimming!"

He wasn't joking! Earlier when looking at the revised map, I had found a secondary portal location placed way off to the South in the middle of a huge body of water! At first I thought it was either a mistake, or that the location was bigger than the small island it might be found on, but after asking AMPHIS to see a blank version of the same map, I found out that my initial thought was true. How were we going to get to that? Even if it was a newly erected synthetic island, we would need boats at the least to get to the thing!

"Well the report doesn't mention anything about there being an island there before, nor was there any mention of one being erected to allow easy access to the existing portal. Either it wasn't included... Or you may be going deep underwater..."

Great(!) Swimming and going underwater. I hated diving... I had always had trouble trying to keep my body underwater during my swimming lessons as a child. I hated them! I hadn't tried since, but I doubted in that time my body had found a way to overcome it's own buoyancy at the drop of a hat!

     I went back to the lab to see how the others were doing; OROTHO seemed enthusiastic about this tunnel to the portal, and making some headway would be great! When I arrived there, there was random hole in the wall where there used to be stone slabs... What was going on? Had they already begun bashing through walls to construct it already? COLUS saw the look on my face and began to explain:

"This is just a door system OROTHO has been working on that creates a seamless effect. Almost as though the wall is normal! Give him a demonstration!"

OROTHO walked over to the wall close to the open hole, flicked a switch, and a chunk of the wall slide back out from a hidden compartment, and then forwards, creating a perfectly smooth wall. There was no hint as to a door being there, and it reminded me of the door system they had built at the tower!

"Very efficient use of space and resources! We're hoping to begin the shaft through here. OROTHO's been dying to make a use of this door system in such a long time, and now we have a use for it. We're just planning the directions and depths first before attempting anything, but we're all very enthusiastic about it!"

The concealed entrance was a brilliant idea! If anyone did gain entry into the base, then we could slip out through the wall, close it behind us and hide out in the Nether, or at least the portal chamber. If such a scenario ever did play out, COLUS was quite willing to destroy the entire base by detonating the TNT placed everywhere around us. COLUS reckons by the time we come back from destroying these next portals, they should have everything planned out, and then this may take top priority. It makes sense; no point continuing to destroy portals, drawing attention to yourself if you've no fall back plan. I'm excited to see what they draw up whilst we're away. We'll have to wait until tomorrow before setting off though...

Syeonyx signing off