Honey : The Empire's Treasure 323 Missing Pieces To The Puzzle

"I believe it's safe to say that this whole trip was under false pretenses. The city is empty, there are no sick citizens nor should there be any monsters running around here…" Mika said after rejoining everyone at the couch. 

Listening to Ailwin's recount from beginning to end, she had the feeling that they were being played with in the palm of someone's hand; and that someone was most likely the King.

"Let me see the information on that tablet you got from Lord Elre."

Ailwin took out the tablet he has been keeping close to his side since he saw Ruven eyeing it.

The first thing Mika did when Ailwin hand the tablet over was transfer all the data that was on the tablet to her wristband before handing it back to him.

"From what I have gathered of the evidence here," She pointed to the tablet, "...its basically experiments that have gone wrong. Unfortunately for us, the information doesn't say what they were trying to do accomplish, just what they did."

"En...I think he made this as an insurance against whoever he was working for." Ailwin agreed.

Having read the information on the tablet herself, Celaena felt sick to her stomach.

Could this what my family face...?

"Prince Ailwin... are you saying the purpose behind the mastermind infecting this whole city, is to do an experiment?" Celaena looked at Ailwin in horror, she didn't want to believe what was in the tablet; neither could Nylian and Hycis.

"Possibly... I believe they came here looking for something, but ended up doing another."

Mika's thoughts kept going back to a.n.a.lise' cave and the two men her mother killed.

"So, they came here looking for…what?" Celaena asked.

"Honey." Ailwin answered.

"Tree." Mika whispered.

"Why do you say that?" Mika didn't mean to speak out loud, let alone someone acually hearing her words. Yet, since Ailwin asked she had no problem telling him she a.s.sumptions.

"Umm...well...when we first entered the city, we went into the residences trying to find people. Instead of finding people, all we found were empty houses and vacant farms. The trees on the farms had been tapped dry. They were so dried out, they began to wither. If they came here looking for honey, they had already taken it..." Mika explained her logic to the group.

"Okay, so they harvest all the honey, but why did they take the a whole city's worth of citizens?...and without the rest of the Kingdom knowing...?" Hycis shook his head as he spoke, not believing it.

Mika's logic was helping Ailwin gather all the missing pieces to this conspiracy.

"Isn't it easy for the King to get rid of a city.... " Celaena furiously remarked as she began to notice the similarites between her homecity and this one. "...they could have been experimenting on a whole city and we would never know it."

"Then what are the experiments for!" Ailwin jumped out of his seat. It wasn't like all these thoughts hadn't gone through his mind already.

"A weapon?" Hycis said.

"...maybe those monsters…" Nylian thought back to the monster Ailwin and Braeden faced in the video.

"Maybe...but I don't think that's it…" Something was telling Mika that she was missing a key factor.

"I don't think so either. That is what has me so confuse...If the King was doing something here, why would he tell me to come?"

No one could answer this question, because it didn't make any sense to any of them either.

After a while Mika spoke, "Right now, we have too much information in our heads...why don't we do this?"

Opening her trunk and digging around inside, Mika pulled out a tablet of her own. Bigger in size, it allow everyone to see what she was writing.

"What we know is that 1) the King personally wanted YOU to come here." Mika looked at Ailwin before writing it down.

"En..."

"2) We also know that the city is completely empty of its citizens, possibly from a virus."

"Yes...and that there are monsters running around outside." Nylian added.

Mika went to write that down as well as but stop.

"Do we know that there are monsters running around?" 

"Of course we do. He showed us the recording of it attacking them!" Nylian shouted while everyone else nodded their head.

"….but we also walked the city's streets at night and nothing attacked us." Mika's words made them all freeze. "...plus the Shadow Wolves are just outside the city's gate, and they haven't been attacked at all since coming here. Right?" Mika looked at Ailwin for conformation. Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

"Yes."

"Are you saying that attack wasn't real…?" Nylian questioned.

"No...what I'm trying to say is, why is it Ailwin and Braeden were attack when we were outside the city at night just like they did. We walked around unaware of the dangers...easy prey, but we weren't attacked. If there are monsters out there waiting to eat people then shouldn't they have gone after us?"

Hycis gulped, he didn't like to think of himself as some monster's meal. Yet, when he thought about it, Mika was right. They had wandered around the streets and inside people's houses but nothing happened.

"You're right...Why didn't I notice this? Since that one attack nothing else happened...not even an sighting…" Ailwin chastised himself for missing something so important.

"Your mind was busy thinking about saving everyone…" Mika held Ailwin's hand, comforting him so he doesn't blame himself.

Ailwin squeezed her palm in return, silently thanking her for the gesture.

Seeing the loving moment between his boss and Mika, Nylian couldn't help but to breakup the sweet mood between the two.

"How is Braeden by the way?" 

Hearing Braeden's name caused Ailwin to go silent. Just this morning when he went to check on his best friend, he could see the life was slowly being drained out of him..