"It's still worth investigating. But first…" Alrik stopped talking, and took out the disk that he had transferred to his pocket in the car.

"The guard that bumped into me slid this into my hand."

"What!" "That's dangerous!"

"There wasn't exactly any time for me to stop and ask what he was trying to give to me. And the car wasn't the place to start that conversation." Alrik replied to them.

"What if this is actually the listening device? Or maybe a damn bomb?" Gaya said with a frown.

"That's one of the reasons I diverted us to the office. We have jammers here to make sure no tapping device can be planted here. If it is indeed a listening device, all it heard was our talk in the car. It would have been cut off as soon as we stepped into the elevator." He replied and she sighed.

Alrik fumbled with the small disk, and eventually, a part of it slid open. A small memory card was inside the disk.

"We're definitely not using any company affiliated or personal devices to check that out. I'll have Graham's team prepare a secure location, and new encrypted devices. Then we'll find out if what you were given is worth anything."

It took less than an hour for everything to be organised, and they moved to the new location. Separate from anything connected to Alrik or his company, but secure enough. Every device in the room was brand new, and was unaffiliated with any of their usual networks to avoid any form of hacking or cyber invasion.

"Okay, we're ready." Jonah said as he took a seat beside Ally.

Since he was her assistant, he was only there just in case she needed any form of IT support. If the device truly carried malware, she would focus on keeping it contained and he would focus on trying to savage information before the disk got corrupted.

"Go ahead." Alrik said and stood behind them as Ally got started on the memory card from the disk.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and soon the information that was encrypted became visible. First it was a video. A man in a doctor's gown set up the camera, and leaned close to it. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"My name is Dr Erin Holstrom. I don't know where to start, because there's so much to tell. I stumbled upon this by accident and now I've been dragged into it. I stayed to keep my life, but now I no longer have peace. My days are filled with tortured screams, and my nights are filled with dark dreams. I feel like I'm slowly losing my mind or maybe my humanity. No one will believe me if I try to expose this, and they've got eyes on me almost every hour of every day. Not just me but the others as well. Watching to make sure we never expose this." Erin paused and then began to laugh.

"Or maybe it's all futile anyway, even if I manage to expose it. They'll just cover it up. We think we escaped the monarchy, and we think we selected our rulers, and we have a say. But we're all just puppets. The monarch families are still pulling every string in the damn nation. They have members of the five main families in all forms of government and military, some with different names, and most of the other positions, they fill with their lackeys."

There was a noise in the background, and Erin looked panicked. "I must go now. They must never find out about this. I don't even fully know what this is. Maybe a way for me to vent, like a form of self therapy? Maybe a way to lessen my guilt? Maybe I'm making this to fool myself into thinking I'm gathering evidence and preparing to be noble? Or maybe I really will release this one day. Whichever it ends up being, I hope it finally gives me peace. One thing is for sure, we're all in grave danger."

The first video clip cut off, and they checked the date stamp for it, it was about eight months ago.

"There are more videos and a few files. Should we examine the files first? Or watch more videos?" Jonah asked, and Alrik looked to Gaya then Bruno.

"Well, we have some time to kill, so we can watch more videos. The files might not make much sense alone. I'm sure there's a reason the videos are on the file." Bruno suggested and Gaya nodded.

The two of them had been standing behind Alrik, who was also standing. But they all decided to sit instead. The next video was made almost a month after the first. The doctor looked more haggard, yet more determined when his face was shown in the video. The background was also different from the first one. This place looked more like a lab while the first one was done in what looked like a dorm room.

"My name is Dr Erin Holstrom. My official position is a veterinary doctor for the guard dogs housed in the Hub. It's a cover up. I've started and deleted this video a hundred times because sometimes it seems so futile, and other times, it seems like I might actually succeed. My guilt remains present, and I can barely look at myself in the mirror. This might sound like a conspiracy theory, but I promise to find more proof. The atrocities being committed within these walls is beyond human comprehension."

He paused to adjust his glasses. "First of all, the stories we know are not all true. At this point, I have no idea what's true and what isn't. From what we know, some say the portals are a curse. Others think it's a science experiment gone wrong. It's a mix of both. Like I said, I stumbled on this by accident. Someone before me must have also tried to get the truth out, and who knows where the poor chap is. I only found a relatively old scroll with information on what caused this predicament in the first place."

Alrik leaned forward. He was very interested in this. Not even Zee truly knew what had caused the portals' existence. She spoke about the veil between worlds thinning, and Jaryn's efforts to steal her power, and the use of dark magic. But there had to be a reason that the portals only plagued Velmorra, and Valderra. Also with the fact that both nations had been one before splitting and becoming mortal enemies for vague reasons.

"The five families of Velmorra, originally used to be nine. Way back then, Velmorra and Valderra were a joint kingdom, Valeryth. The five we know; Rosyn, Haleran, Yves, Dondern, Golem. Then Thestle, Franon, Juvre, Orewyn. Most of these have been modernised, Rosyn to Rosewood, Haleran to Halden, Yves remained the same, Dondern to Daviston, and Golen to George.

Franon, Juvre, Orewyn families are now the Valderran Monarchy. And the Thestle family became Zerdon after their ancestor came into possession of the family sword, but they're no longer among the monarchy and occupy prestigious positions, but those are mostly for show and for the sake of the myth surrounding the sword. "

"That's odd. There is no record of nine ruling families. Only the five we know, and then Zerdon as the next most influential, before the other new money noble families." Gaya said with a frown and Jonah paused the video.

"I'll start research on that when we're done here." Ally said, and Alrik signalled to continue the video.

"This all started with the greed of one man. The ruling king then. All the kings we had were from these families. One for every generation, on a rotation. But when King Grendan Yves ruled, and his tenure was coming to an end, he decided he wanted to rule longer. He didn't feel the need to keep up the rotational system, and wanted to be the absolute power. Maybe his greed reached into another realm, or maybe he orchestrated that, who the fuck knows." The doctor ran a hand through his hair.

"Anyway, he began to have dreams. The owner of the scroll with all of this information was the king's physician. He treated the king when his paranoia began to grow, and most of his records were destroyed along with most of our actual history. The dreams were of a different world. Paranormal creatures ruled and so did magic. Grendan began to obsess. He felt he had seen the answer to his problems. He assumed that his dreams were a sign. That all he needed to keep ruling was magic. The type that couldn't be found in this world."

"He tried every possible means to reach this world he dreamed of and failed. Then he heard of Amreth's lover. A being from another world. And his obsession became even darker. Again, maybe his dark desires attracted evil to him, because instead of just dreams, he began to dream of another being who claimed to be from another realm. A being named Jaeryn."

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