After wiping the blood from his quinque, Ali pressed the button on the handle, retracting the deadly weapon back into its compact form. He stood up, surveying the chaos he had left behind-bodies strewn about like discarded rags-before making his way to the stairwell. His steps were heavy, echoing through the deathly silence as he ascended to the twenty-fifth floor.
He emerged into a massive kitchen, the kind used to serve an army of hungry mouths.
Stainless steel counters gleamed under the dim lights, pots and pans hung from overhead racks, and the air was thick with the smell of spoiled food and decay. Ali strode confidently across the floor, stopping only when he reached the centre of the room.
"Come out. I'm going to find you one way or another, so make it easy on yourselves," he shouted, his voice resonating off the metallic surfaces.
His challenge was met with the hesitant shuffling of feet. From behind a large, stainless steel desk emerged two elderly women, their hair grey and faces lined with wrinkles.
They wore faded and filthy aprons, their hands shaking as they approached him. Neither dared to meet his gaze, their eyes fixed on the ground as if looking up might make them vanish.
"Is all the food stored here?" Ali asked bluntly, his tone more impatient than threatening.
"Most of it, yes," one of the old women replied in a quivering voice. "The boss... he takes some to his floor upstairs."
"And the water?" Ali's voice was cold and clipped.
The second woman pointed shakily toward a small room in the back corner. Ali followed her gesture, moving to a room lined with rusty metal shelves.
In the centre sat a massive water filtration tank, old and barely functional. The tank dripped brownish water into several half-filled plastic bottles. He crouched down and picked one up, holding it to the dim light.
The liquid inside was murky and unappealing. 'The filtration system isn't properly working.
There's no way I'm drinking that shit unless I'm close to dying.', Ali thought as he put the bottle back down and returned to the two cooks who remained frozen in their spot.
"Start moving all the food down to the lift," Ali ordered, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. The old women nodded meekly, fear widening their eyes as they began to shuffle toward the stored supplies.
Ali turned to leave, but paused at the doorway, looking over his shoulder with a dark smile. "Careful not to slip," he said mockingly, "LOTS of blood down there.". The old women exchanged a glance, their faces ashen with terror.
He climbed the stairs to the twenty-sixth floor, which was sparsely furnished and messy-scraps of paper, broken tools, and discarded belongings lay scattered on the ground.
The centrepiece was a surprisingly luxurious bed, covered in tattered silk sheets, an oasis of comfort compared to the barracks-style bunks below. It was obvious this room had belonged to one of the captains. Ali swept through it quickly, tossing aside worthless trinkets in his search for anything useful.
'Nothing that can be used', he thought, slamming a wooden box shut.
The next floor, the twenty-seventh, mirrored the one below-more signs of personal space but just as barren of any valuable supplies. It seemed that neither of the captains had lived a life of excess. Ali shook his head with disdain, his boots crunching on debris as he moved to the next set of stairs.
Reaching the twenty-ninth floor, Ali pushed open the door cautiously, the hinges creaking. The moment it opened wide, the unsettling sounds of guttural moaning filled the air, accompanied by the rattling of chains.
Ali's eyes took in the scene— zombies, their flesh rotted and eyes vacant, lined the walls. Each creature was restrained by heavy iron chains around its neck, preventing them from moving more than a few feet. The only clear space was a narrow corridor leading to a door at the far end-the entry to the final floor.
With a weary sigh, Ali pulled the small knife from his waist. He moved methodically, stepping into the corridor and approaching the nearest zombie.
Without hesitation, he drove the blade into the creature's forehead, the undead body going limp instantly. He didn't rush. There was no need. Instead, he worked with precision, each stab finding its mark, each zombie dispatched with clinical efficiency. Twenty-five times the blade descended, twenty-five times the floor was spattered with dried old blood.
Two minutes passed before the last zombie's lifeless body slumped to the floor.
Ali wiped the blood from his blade with a rag he found on a nearby countertop and slid the knife back into its sheath. Satisfied, he ascended the final staircase.
The space was stark, almost barren. The walls had been knocked down to create a single open area dominated by a luxurious bed draped in sheets that seemed out of place in the grim environment.
A small, dirty bathroom lay off to one side, but it wasn't the sparse furnishing that caught Ali's attention. It was the two young women on the floor, dressed in torn garments that barely covered their bodies. They lay beside the bed, chained to the wall by metal collars around their necks.
As soon as they saw Ali, their faces brightened in twisted joy. They scrambled towards him, the chains rattling against the hard floor as they rushed to reach him. One wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his abdomen.
The other began kissing his hand fervently, while her fingers fumbled at his belt, attempting to undo it.
"They're broken," Ali thought as he looked down at them. He crouched, his movements slow and gentle, lifting the chin of the girl who was desperately tugging at his waistband.
Her wide, hopeful eyes met his, but there was nothing behind them-no comprehension, no recognition, only the emptiness of the enslaved.
"I killed him," Ali said, his steady and calm. "You're free. You can go. Your master is DEAD." Yet the girl merely smiled at him, a hollow expression of obedience and submission. She pressed herself closer, undeterred.
Ali's face remained expressionless at the girl's tragic reaction. He had seen this kind of damage before, had known people who never found their way back from the darkness.
'It's harder for them to try and come out of the abyss than it is to fall into it', he thought. 'To remember what it means to be human would mean remembering all the pain and humiliation that lead them to this and that hurts more than anything...' Ali sighed as he gently pushed the girls away, standing up.
Ignoring their desperate whimpers, Ali strode toward the enormous glass wall at the far end of the room. He gazed out at the desolate cityscape spread out beneath him. From this height, he still had no idea what city he was in, it might have never existed in his world to begin with.
Scanning the skeletal skyline, he focused on two distinct buildings, the only two which were close to the one he was at in terms of height. One was fortified, surrounded by a makeshift barricade that kept the undead at bay, while the other stood exposed, its doors wide open and unguarded, a feeding ground for the mindless creatures below.
'Looks like this one might have been the easiest to clear after all', Ali thought, his gaze lingering on his next targets before he glanced back at the broken girls.
A few minutes later, Ali exited the thirtieth floor without a backward glance, leaving the door ajar. His face was a mask of cold detachment as he began the long descent down the stairwell, step by step.
Back on the thirtieth floor, the sound of Ali's fading footsteps was replaced by the eerie silence, broken only by the soft whistle of the wind passing through the shattered glass wall, carrying with it the faint smell of decay from the broken chains on the floor.
Please donate some of your power stones, it would help my ff massively.
Five chapters ahead of webnovel on patreon.com/Rondo312