After Dante and Zac returned to their apartment from their meeting with Camille and her scientist, they played games for a few hours before the redhead got ready to sleep.
The warlock had been sleeping on the couch the entire time, as he felt like none of the two rooms belonged to him since Megan and Sophia were living there not long ago.
Nonetheless, he enjoyed sleeping on the sofa as he thought it was more comfortable than any bed he ever tried.
Coincidentally, Zac felt the same way. After he saw that there were still a few of the girls' belongings in the rooms, he didn't feel comfortable taking it for himself.
Luckily, he had a futon that he placed in the living room, so none of the apartment residents were using the bedrooms.
When the pair was fast asleep, Dante abruptly opened his eyes and gazed to the side, seeing Zac peacefully sleeping on the futon.
The warlock sat up on the couch and sharpened his gaze, feeling like someone oozing a lot of hostility was approaching their home.
*slap, slap, slap* "Huh… mom?" Zac woke up after Dante gently slapped his face three times.
"Shhh, don't be loud," Dante whispered, gazing at the apartment's front door.
After the warlock gave his friend instructions to stand in the middle of the living room, Zac reluctantly agreed, knowing that Dante had a plan in mind.
The silence of the night made it easy for the pair to hear the footsteps approaching their front door, and once the rustling of the lock began, Zac realized that he couldn't see Dante anywhere.
With a little bit of panic, Zac wondered if he should hide but remembered that Dante told him to stay completely still in the center of the living room, making a small drop of sweat drip down his temple.
*Click!* the lock of the door opened, and Zac perked his body while slightly trembling, seeing two men wearing masks entering the apartment.
As soon as they spotted Zac standing still, the men were surprised and took a cautionary step back, pointing their silenced guns at the redhead.
Zac closed one eye and looked to the side as if he were waiting for the bullet to hit him.
However, Dante appeared from the side in the blink of an eye and grabbed the muzzle of their guns, squeezing and breaking them in half before gripping their necks.
After three seconds of not hearing anything, Zac turned his gaze to the men, only to see Dante holding them in the air by their necks with their feet separated from the floor.
The two intruders tried scratching and kicking the warlock with their flailing limbs, but Dante's body was unmovable, not even flinching at their desperate attacks.
Once they were done struggling and fell unconscious, Dante asked Zac to call Camille, saying that they had gotten pretty lucky.
While the redhead hastily picked up his phone, Megan suddenly arrived at the apartment's entrance, huffing and puffing after rushing out of her apartment on the third floor.
"Everone okay?" she asked with a somewhat shaken expression.
"Everything's great," the warlock replied, showing the two thugs knocked out on the ground.
"Miss Megan, how did you know they were comin–..." Zac spoke up as he turned to look at the woman, but as soon he saw her outfit, he shut up and timidly turned back around.
The shorts and oversized tank top that Megan wore as pajamas barely covered her chest, and while Dante was unaffected, Zac's face was as red as his hair.
Megan explained that she had access to the cameras in the building, and whenever someone passed by the hallway on the fourth floor, she would hear a beep on her earpiece.
She ignored the alerts during the day as there were lots of neighbors who had to walk by, but late at night, she paid close attention to them, even while sleeping.
A few minutes later, Camille arrived at the apartment with a large group of men and women wearing black suits, who took the two thugs and carried them to their vehicles.
Still, the night wasn't over for the group, as Camille asked them to go with her since they could be interested in the information they got from the men.
It was 3 am at night, and Zac was thinking about skipping the questioning of the criminals. He wasn't personally a fan of seeing others getting tortured, and he also had classes the next day.
When the redhead was coming up with an excuse, Camille expressed the importance that he listened to the information, and Zac instantly knew that the woman wouldn't say that carelessly.
After a forty-minute ride, they arrived at a large warehouse located on the outskirts of a poor district.
Inside, they saw the two thugs tied to a chair with the same max-security plastic band around their torsos that was put on Dante on his first night.
"There you are…" greeted Paige, the scientist, who was wearing plastic gloves and a facemask as if she were to do surgery.
"Hi, Miss Paige," the warlock politely greeted the woman.
"Hello…" the scientist replied with a stoic tone and gaze that contrasted with the cute hand wave she gave the group.
Zac wondered why the scientist was there, and Camille responded by saying that Paige was one of their best torturers since she knew how to get information from people quickly.
"Having someone who knows everything about the human body torturing you is much scarier than an idiot who doesn't know what they are doing, don't you think?" Camille asked Zac.
Paige knew what the most sensitive and weakest parts of the human body were, which was why her torturing methods always produced results, as nobody was able to endure her treatment.
*Gulp* "Y-yeah, I suppose…" Zac nervously replied.
While the scientist prepared her tools on a small table placed next to the thugs, Camille asked her lackeys to wake the prisoners up, making them dump a large bucket of cold water on them.