Syne and Dell arrive at one of the Titan City docks.

• [room for development] - shopping break

After navigating through the roads and waterways of the city, Syne finds Pylos Headquarters surrounded by the Titan City military. None of the officers will allow the party to pass, nor will they explain the current situation. (*The military believes it has finally located the terrorists.)

• Drawing Syne aside, Dell asks if they can just forget the whole mission thing. Syne explains that he's been given a high-priority confidential report to deliver, and he can't neglect his duty. Dell acquiesces; he's out of his element when it comes to human matters.

• The two explore a bit, and find an entrance to the sewers, and from there they gain access to the sub-basements of Pylos Headquarters.

As Syne and Dell ascend each floor, they find the building mysteriously empty. (*It has been evacuated.)

• On one of the upper levels, Syne and Dell find a room within which stands a large model of the World. Each Pylos mining facility is shown on the map. The model apparently simulates what will happen to the topography of the continent with continued use of the mines: the land becomes deformed and entire sections of the continent sink. Dell comments that that's bad. (He has a talent for understatement.) Syne argues that they don't know the exact conditions of this simulation, and simply the fact that Pylos has worked on this model suggests that they are working on ways to prevent such occurrences.

• On the next floor up, Syne and Dell run into a military group that's sweeping the building. As Syne tries to take time to explain his presence, the officers don't give him an inch; they've been ordered to attack anyone still in the building. They apparently think Syne is in disguise.

  • Syne and Dell defend themselves, knocking out as many of the officers while avoiding deathblows. (A series of fights with several ineffective officers.)

  • As the fight seems about to end, the obvious leader of the group comes after Syne and Dell, towering over them with a really mean-looking sword. The two of them run.

  • As they round a corner, Syne comes to an abrupt halt when he finds an archer down the hall a ways with her arrow pointed straight at him. He ducks, and the arrow passes over him, hitting the military leader squarely.

• Syne scrambles to the archer (*Enna) before she can move far, and sees another male archer with her. He is very grateful to her, and warns that the military is surrounding the building; it's very dangerous. The young woman just looks incredulously back at the construction worker. (*Because he was wearing a Pylos uniform, she was aiming for Syne. His sudden gratefulness and concern for her safety has caught her off guard; this is not the typical Pylos lackey she's been used to thinking about.) She responds with a curt "welcome," and hurries off with her friend.

• Dell is suspicious; could they be the terrorists? He and Syne run after the two in question, but they never quite catch up. They find an open lift shaft that leads down a long ways, with a rope still left there for descent. Syne slides down, and Dell drifts after.

• They reach the bottom, which is a narrow access corridor that leads outside to an alleyway. When Syne and Dell arrive there, the two archers are nowhere to be seen. A sudden explosion knocks Syne off his feet, and he recovers in time to see Pylos Headquarters crumble to ruins.

Syne and Dell use the clouds of dust to their advantage and get away from the military forces. They stop to rest for a moment and a small, mostly vacant pub. Syne is quite shocked -- the headquarters of the largest company in the world has just been destroyed. Dell (again with the understatement) thinks that maybe those archers were really terrorists. (Syne: "Oh, ya think?")

• Syne figures the best course of action now is to get to Pylos Alpha and, if anything, warn them. Possibly no one else knows about the assault on Delta, and it might make sense that if they wanted to attack one mining facility, they would attack another. He might even find someone who could receive the confidential report from the foreman.

When the two of them arrive at Pylos Alpha, Dell spots a familiar-looking caped duo running in through the main entrance. Shouts coming from much further down the street indicate an approaching Titan City military force. Syne is running out of time, and decides that the best thing to do is to get the people inside out of danger.

• Knowing the layout and inner workings of Pylos mining facilities (they are all virtually identical), Syne and Dell sneak in through an auxiliary door and make their way to the security room.

• Once they arrive at the security room, Syne very casually slides behind the backs of the dreary guards on duty and yanks the emergency evacuation alarm. The commotion is sudden as workers flood the corridors in a rush to get out.

• On their way out, Syne and Dell run into Enna, who's been separated from the rest of her group in the confusion. Before any of them can do anything, a large group of military officers surrounds them, and despite Syne's explanations, all three are bound and taken into custody for terrorist involvement.

• As the three are loaded into police craft for their trip to the prison, one of the officers suddenly notes that Enna isn't carrying a bomb. Wasn't she trying to destroy the facility? "Yes," she responds, matter-of-factly. Three seconds later, an enormous explosion engulfs Pylos Alpha, utterly destroying the structure which collapses onto the mines beneath.

Syne, Dell, and Enna are thrown into a heavy-duty cell to be kept until they can be put before an adjudicator. Syne continually attempts to explain himself to the powers that be, but to no avail. Enna seems to have no guilt about the injustice of Syne and Dell's imprisonment. She finally spills her name, and Syne asks her why she's being an agent of these terrorist acts.

• Enna gets hostile when put on defense. She counters by asking Syne why he puts up with being a slave to a dictating corporate monster. (Indeed, the Pylos construction workers are essentially slaves, but this has been undisclosed until now. The idea is not considered all that scandalous, and the workers remain low-profile in public view.)

  • Syne argues that Pylos has changed hundreds of lives of people who would otherwise be out of a job, having nowhere else to go. The construction army puts potential criminals to work and teaches them the value of their dedication.

  • As for Syne himself, he maintains that he has a good deal: being an orphan, he would been forced to eke out a living and probably would have starved to death before long if he had not been taken in and taught by the construction foremen. (*This is not the impartial truth; Syne is merely restating everything he has been told by the men he grew up with.)

• Syne presses Enna again to answer his question: why is she doing this? The immediate situation having calmed a bit, she is more than happy to give him her list of reasons.

  • The main terrorist issue is environmentalist in nature. She claims that the mines will branch out so extensively as to cause irrevocable damage to the continent's ecosystem. When Dell mentions the simulation they saw, she terms that model "optimistic."

  • Pylos was single-handedly responsible for the swift construction of Titan City; so quick was it, in fact, that it completely disregarded the former industrial hub of Trosene, leaving many once-wealthy entrepreneurs destitute without any viable way to rebuild. Most people in Trosene and the surrounding area blame Pylos for the economic disaster: "if we can't have it, neither can they" has become a sort of motto for activists.

  • Enna also makes vague reference to the Pylos leadership; she has had experience with their actions, and knows that they are self-serving cruel people with no intention of doing anything other than making money.

• These reasons, Syne explains, do not justify the deaths of hundreds of innocent Pylos workers. ("Lives are lives, no matter what side they're on.") Enna responds weakly by saying the workers should be thinking for themselves, not assisting the plot of Pylos. Syne maintains that none of the workers know about any of this; they only see a frightening group of people out to kill them. Enna falls silent.

• As night falls, Enna begins to subtly work at the lock holding them in. Her contingency plan is foiled however; the jailers have installed covers over the locks to prevent the terrorists from getting out "like they did last time." She would need some sort of tool to pry it off, so she asks Syne if perhaps he managed to keep something on him that might do the trick.

  • At first Syne, doesn't respond, and as Dell asks Enna's question, it becomes clear that Syne does have something, but isn't willing to let Enna get out of jail.

  • Dell finally talks him into helping, since the two of them are innocent. Enna takes Syne's small hammer-pick and gets the lock cover off, then pours a small gooey substance into the lock. After letting it dry for a moment, she hits it and it shatters into pieces.

  • As they escape from their cell, alarms go off and the party has to deal with a few guards that were nearby. Having little problems with that, they grab their equipment and run. They find a very convenient hole that has been blasted in the side of the prison complex that leads to a waterway beneath. Enna finds this too convenient, and thinks it may be a trap. Syne figures they don't have much time before someone finds them. Enna quickly fires off a flare to signal to her partner her location.

  • A watercraft comes racing down the channel moments before an entire squad of guards comes down the hall. The party leaps away from their clutches and onto the terrorist boat, which pulls away down the channel.

• Enna quickly introduces Wallace, the male archer who was also at Pylos Headquarters, who is driving the boat. He pilots the boat through a maze of Titan City waterways (a racing minigame) until their pursuers are out of sight, and the group heads back to Trosene.