There were two more checkpoints to the city, but Zarek just showed his "pass" and was allowed through. Obviously, this pass was stolen from the toll booth. Who was going to stop him when they were all dead, anyway? At that point, fooling the next checkpoints was as easy as breathing.
Once they were through, Zarek made a direct line to a condominium high-rise. After exchanging one of the treasures he stole from the toll booth, he got himself and Priya an apartment on the middle floors—not too conspicuous, but definitely not low-key either.
He knew that very soon, people would come looking for him. There likely wouldn't be many who entered the city between now and when the deaths were discovered, and even fewer who could suddenly afford such a rental.
But rather than choosing the safe route, Zarek chose to let his girlfriend have some time to relax a bit.
The one thing you learned about this world was that trouble was inevitable. Judging by the way they had been scanning him—and especially Priya—when they entered, that trouble would certainly be coming sooner rather than later.
So why bother to restrain himself? If they wanted to die, they were free to come and die.
Priya's eyes lit up in surprise when she saw the state of the place. It was so much cleaner than she could have ever expected. It didn't look like it was the apocalypse anymore at all. Well… that was also because it was bright day by now, and there were tall, floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere.
"The shower will probably be cold too," Zarek warned.
Priya pouted, but at the thought of an actual shower after so long, she couldn't be bothered to care anymore and rushed in.
"I thought you said it would be cold!" she called out after having already entered, the door open a sliver.
"Yeah, but your Endurance is higher now. It won't bother you as much."
"You should have led with that!"
"The lower your expectations, the more pleasing the surprise."
The banter of the couple bounced across the apartment walls, both ignoring the fact that there had probably been a perfectly happy family living here just a few days ago.
Zarek was very used to this sort of thing, but he knew that Priya definitely wasn't. So he distracted her with his jokes as he walked around, throwing everything that seemed too personal into a garbage bag and scanning room after room for anything untoward.
Of course, the first place he had long since checked was the bathroom.
The greatest surprise would seem to be that such systems had already popped up after less than a week. However, this wasn't normal if one took the entire city into account.
They were currently in the process of clearing region by region. This place wasn't exactly "safe" either. The odds of a Turned suddenly rushing into the building and causing a massacre weren't nearly as close to zero as the people living here thought.
If Zarek was right, it probably wouldn't be very long before some solicitors came to his door to try and get him to help in the clearing efforts.
Depending on how scummy they were, quite soon, those solicitations would become more aggressive—until they reached the point of becoming demands rather than polite suggestions.
All things considered, the prices of these apartments were cheap. The treasures he had handed over were trash and would barely help F-Class Warriors. But because Appraisers hadn't begun to appear yet, they could only distinguish between what had Godsfall and what didn't.
They knew this, obviously. The real reason they had opened this business was not to benefit from the treasures—though that was a bonus. It was to concentrate those with decent power but no real backing in one area, with the eventual goal of making them work for them.
'It'll still be another half month at least before that Godsfall Tear opens, and that's just speculation on my part. They had a pretty tight hold on it…'
The sounds of shifting clothing came, and a door swung open. Zarek looked to find Priya wearing a skin-tight, black bodysuit that hugged up the line of her crotch, up her hips, and vanished over the sides of her waist.
It cupped her curves almost too perfectly, her silhouette almost blinding beneath the beaming sunlight.
"Well damn…" Zarek muttered.
"Does it look nice?" she asked, doing a little spin.
Zarek couldn't help but feel a little heat in his belly when she did that. Those soft, caramel-colored cheeks of hers split into fours beneath the tightness of the fabric, just the slightest of jiggles coming when she landed from the tips of her toes down to her heels.
"You need to relax, I haven't even showered yet. I'll make you dirty."
Priya smiled sweetly. "Are you saying that I'm ugly? You haven't even answered my question."
"I'm too busy drooling. I haven't looked into it enough yet. How about one more spin?"
The light of Priya's giggle seemed to bring him life—life that was rudely interrupted by a heavy knock at the door.
Priya and Zarek frowned at the same time, the former entering the bathroom again to pull on a new pair of pants and take her gun--she had already reached the point where she didn't feel fully comfortable without a weapon. She only calmed a bit when Zarek held out a hand, telling her to wait to the side.
With long strides, Zarek made it to the door, opening it with a confident swing.
The two men on the other side took a step back, not expecting such a vicious action. Most of the time people would only open the door a sliver. Didn't this boy know how dangerous these times were?
"Who are you?" Zarek asked.
It was only after Zarek said this that the two snapped out of it and seemed to realize that this was supposed to be their situation to control.
The bigger-bellied of the two men cleared his throat and spoke.
"We're from GFI—"
"Who?" Zarek pressed.
"…Global Fitness Incorporated."
"Ah, that 24-hour fitness place?"
"That's the one."
"Since when are you people selling apartments? Who'd you steal this place from?"
Zarek spoke no differently from a brash teenager. He could practically hear Priya rolling her eyes from the bathroom.
The two men frowned, not sure how to deal with this. It was the other man who just chose to get right to the point.
"Are you enjoying your stay here?"
"It's been all of two seconds, old man. How the hell would I know? Is this knocking going to be a daily occurrence? In that case, I'll just move."
The two men seemed to be about to lose their tempers entirely, but they forced themselves to calm down.
"No, no. This wouldn't be a daily occurrence. Your move-in time just happened to coincide with our duties, that's all. We only came by because there's an opportunity to move up to a better apartment by lending your services. It's also a good chance to train and gather more treasures for you and your lady."
"Oh? Is that so?" Zarek smiled on the inside. "Tell me more."