"Go buy some yourself!" a guard shouted at another.
"I can't," the other guard said, trying not to sound desperate. "They have problems with the delivery. Come on, just give me some of your stash. I'll pay you double."
"Chocolate isn't expensive," the first guard said. "I don't really care about the couple of credits. I'm more interested in eating this chocolate right now."
The other guard groaned in frustration before walking away without saying anything else.
The first guard just looked at him with annoyance.
Fucking freeloaders.
As the day continued, more and more guards and Extractors started to ask others about their chocolate.
Some of the more powerful Extractors with higher levels of willpower noticed the business opportunity and sold chocolate sticks for over ten times the price.
The unofficial price of chocolate sticks soared, while the number of people gathering in front of Happiness Through Taste's ;) gates increased.
"How long is this going to take?" a John in the group shouted.
"Calm down!" one of the Extractors from Happiness Through Taste ;) shouted back. "We are working on delivering more chocolate!"
Usually, the Manufacturer didn't have any guards.
After all, why would they need any guards?
They were a Manufacturer.
Nobody would dare to break in unless they belonged to the absolute elite of the city.
But then, a couple of guards also wouldn't make a difference.
However, three days ago, the company started to put a couple of their Veterans in front of their gates to protect the building.
Initially, the Veterans didn't know why they suddenly had to guard the entrance, but their questions were quickly answered when the chocolate stopped coming out of the production halls.
Meanwhile, the Extractors inside the building were becoming concerned.
A couple of days ago, they received a message from their CZE.
The message basically said that everything was going fantastic and that there was nothing to worry about.
According to him, they had record profits, and a happiness survey said that everyone had broken the record for happiness.
Everyone was happy, and everything was great.
And then…
The CZE just didn't show up anymore.
He just… vanished.
The team leaders were confused about the absence of their boss.
What were they supposed to do now?
In the end, they just continued doing the same thing they did every day.
They continued producing Zephyx, and everything went as always.
And then, the chocolate stopped coming.
The team leads went to the executive floor and asked for the CZE.
Yet, the receptionist just said that the CZE wasn't accepting any visitors currently.
The team leads left again, but a day later, when things got even worse, they came back.
They demanded to speak to the CZE.
But the receptionist just kept declining their meeting.
Then, they started to demand to speak to the CEO.
Shockingly, the receptionist also denied that meeting!
What about the CCO?
No.
The CIO?
No.
The team leads became worried.
Their biggest and most important product stopped shipping, and none of their executives were willing to talk to them?
Some of the more paranoid team leads said that everything was going to be destroyed and that the executives jumped ship.
But that was ridiculous.
Why would they do that?
One day later, the first team lead left the building.
She just said that she would grab something from a warehouse.
Yet, she didn't return.
She jumped ship!
Some hours later, the second team lead left.
Then, two of them left at once.
Only three team leads were left.
Those three team leads were the highest figures of authority inside the company, and they felt very nervous.
The three of them talked amongst each other, and they decided that it was enough!
They entered the executives' floor and broke down the door.
The receptionist didn't dare to stop them.
She was not an Extractor.
As soon as the door was broken down, the three of them saw the grey hallway.
Grey hallways?
In Happiness Through Taste ;)?
This was against the Happy Family :) Code of Conduct!
What the hell was going on?!
Confused, the three team leads searched through the floor.
Nothing.
Empty.
Where did everyone go?!
"I found something!" one of them shouted from the entrance of a Containment Unit.
The other two ran to the guy and looked into the Containment Unit.
Rubble!
While three of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor were normal, one of the walls had collapsed into rubble, and most importantly, it was rubble made of stone!
This meant that there hadn't been a proper wall back there!
"A tunnel!" one of them shouted. "There had to be a tunnel there! That's how our Parents escaped!"
"Stop with this Parent bullshit," another one of them said. "There's no reason to keep this stupid policy."
"Oh, right, sorry," the first guy said with an embarrassed cough.
"But he's right," the third guy said. "The Pa- executives must have fled through a secret tunnel. But why?"
"Something must've happened," the first guy said. "We all know that the chocolate is highly addicting. There's a reason why we are forbidden from eating it."
"Isn't that because we are supposed to spread happiness instead of consuming it?" the third guy asked.
The other two groaned.
"What now?" one of them asked after a couple of seconds of silence.
The three looked at each other.
The three tried to come up with a plan, but they failed.
There was nothing they could do.
Eventually, they left the executive floor and returned to the colorful part of the building.
Their employees kept asking for orders, but they couldn't give any.
In the end, they didn't come up with a plan but with a list of priorities.
The highest priority was to deal with the imminent crisis.
The lack of chocolate.
Could they restart the production?
They didn't even know how the chocolate was produced!
How were they supposed to restart it?
"Then, we just have to find it," one of them said.
So, the three of them split up and searched through the entire building.
They looked through every Containment Unit, hallway, and room.
There were rooms they hadn't been allowed to enter in the past, but that didn't matter now.
And they found something!
Inside the central storage hall was a Containment Unit that was the wrong way around!
The main entrance faced the wall instead of the inside!
All of them had seen the Containment Unit before, but they had never paid any attention to its alignment. After all, it wasn't active anyway. It didn't matter in which orientation it was stored.
Even now, they wouldn't have cared…
If it weren't for the fact that there was an override on its console.
The override deactivated the big alarm of the Containment Unit.
Now, why would somebody put that in a deactivated Containment Unit?
The team lead, who found that, opened the door, revealing a lit cavern.
The three of them quickly entered the cavern, but after just 100 meters, they had to stop again.
Rubble.
"We should be near that other Containment Unit with the rubble," one of them said.
The other two nodded.
For some reason, the central storage and the Containment Unit of the executive floor were connected.
"The CIO always delivers the food to the central storage, and the chocolate also always comes from there," one of them said.
"You think she delivered the food to the executive floor?" another one asked.
"Yes," the first one said.
"And then?" the third one asked.
"No idea," the first one answered.
Silence.
"I think," the second one said after a while, "the cavern had more than one hallway."
The other two looked at the second one.
"If they wanted to keep the pathway between the storage and the executive floor hidden, they would have collapsed the entire hallway, or at least, both entrances."
"However, they only collapsed one entrance. Additionally, the executives vanished, and they couldn't have done that if they had just exited from the main storage."
The other two furrowed their brows.
"And that's also where the chocolate comes from?" one of them asked.
"I think so," the second one said.
"That means we don't have a way to produce chocolate?"
"I'm afraid so," the second one answered.
"What about our backer?" the third one asked.
The other two looked at him with raised brows.
"Oh, come on," the third one said. "I can't be the only one that noticed that life has been surprisingly calm. Despite the crazy revenue we produce, we barely get any pushback from the other Manufacturers. We're the fourth strongest Manufacturer. Yet, none of the three stronger Manufacturers dare to do anything to us."
"You think we have a backer?" the first one asked.
"It makes sense," the second one said, "and I think that's also the last piece of the puzzle."
The other two looked at him.
"There's only one thing that could make all of our executives flee like rats."
The other two slowly realized what it was.
"Our backer abandoned us."
"We're on our own."
In the distance, the sounds of the angry crowd became louder and louder.