Orion stared at the central tower of the GWT for a long time. He had done so before, back before the Undying Void had swallowed his world whole. He had always found the tower strangely beautiful.
It was nothing special, just a cylindrical tower that extended some fourty stories into the sky. The top of the tower was steeply slanted, though that slant was now hidden behind a nearly blinding purple light.
The tower was mostly glass, but it had a unique design that ran up the sides of the lower levels. Some of the glass panes were darker than the others, causing a slight but noticeable contrast between the top and bottom of the tower.
As you ascended the tower, the less frequent these tinted windows became. By the time you reached the twentieth level, the windows had no tint at all. Orion noticed that with the light at the the top of the tower, it nearly looked like a shadow was being cast on the lower levels by this supernatural illumination.
Orion felt fear fester in his chest as he watched the tower. He would need to make it to the tower eventually, he had been commanded to do so.
Would he survive the journey?
Orion turned back to his food, and his new companion. Andrea sat on Orions armchair, a bowl of leftover pasta in her lap. A smaller bowl sat infront of Orion, mostly untouched. He lacked an appetite.
The same couldn't be said for Andrea. She devoured the food infront of her like a starving animal. She had removed her leather jacket, revealing her muscled arms. Orion could see a tattoo poking out from her back, and spreading onto her shoulders and down to her triceps. He couldn't make quite make out the design, but he seemed to see feathers of some sort. He would ask about it later.
When she had finished with her food, she set the empty bowl on the coffee table infront of her. She leaned back in the arm chair and turned to Orion, who sat adjacent to her on a sectional couch. She motioned to his mostly full bowl.
"You should eat," she said. "You'll need the energy."
Orion turned to the bowl. He knew she was correct, but he found his stomach to be in disagreement with the idea. It was probably stress, but he also found himself thinking back to the feeling of something new being inside his body. Even if it was something as useful as the [Decay Searcher] gift, he found himself nearly nauseous with the knowledge that his body had been altered in some way. Orion made to switch the subject.
"You're a fighter, right?"
Andrea nodded.
"Boxer." She corrected. Orion wasn't surprised. She had the build for it, and the attitude matched as well. Orion wa surprised to see how calm Andrea was in this situation. She seemed to be all calculation, without stress or fear.
Orion envied that.
"What about you?" Andrea asked, crossing her arms as she looked at him. It appeared like she was studying him. Orion felt nearly uncomfortable, as though he had entered some new, less deadly trial.
"No, I've never really been a fighter."
Andrea smiled, as though she was amused by something.
"I meant like, what do you do for work?"
"Oh," Orion said, a little flustered to have misunderstood such a basic question. "I was a team lead at a graphic design company."
Andrea nodded. The work wasn't very interesting, at least when compared to Andrea's choice of profession. Now that Orion thought about it, she had to be a decently well renowned Boxer to afford living at the GWT. It wasn't a cheap place.
The Grand Western Towers had been built barely seven years previous, and were made to be 'luxury apartments.' The cheapest rooms, near the bottom of the side towers, were still pretty pricey in Orions eyes. But it made sense, each apartment was constructed well and had full amenities. Not to mention the towers themselves, which all had a collection of different recreational and practical facilities. There was a pool, several gyms, a library, and a food court at the bottom of each tower.
Orion couldn't afford the apartment under regular conditions. He had been gifted the place by his father, who had passed away only a handful of months ago. His parents had split up right after Orion had moved out, and his father (a decently well known lawyer) was able to afford and fully pay off an apartment at the GWT for a full two years. He got cancer three months later, and had passed away four months after that.
He had left Orion the apartment, with no rental payments to be made for a whole seventeen months. Outside of the bills he paid for electricity and water, the place was pretty much free.
His situation had always made Orion feel slightly out of place at the GWT. He was surrounded by people who had worked their hardest to give themselves a good future, and here he was, inheriting one from his father.
"Alright," Andrea said with a sigh. "Guess there's no beating around the bush. We gotta get a game plan."
Orion nodded. He was lucky to find another living person to team up with, but if they weren't cautious, they would definitely end up dead.
"I think we need more information on the situation outside of this room. We don't know what's waiting for us out there."
Andrea nodded, leaning forward in her chair.
"I think we can expect a lot of monsters. My guess is that any monsters that weren't killed in the trial are gonna be left out there for us to deal with."
Orion felt his stomach turn. The theory made perfect sense, but it put the duo in a dangerous spot. There must've been thirty apartments per floor of the apartment, and even if they assumed that half the people survived on every floor, that still left fifteen monsters per floor.
Multiply that by twenty floors… Orion shuddered. He had barely survived an encounter with one monster, what would he do if he came face to face with multiple at once. At least he had Andrea now. But would that be enough?
"We need more people." Orion blurted out. Andrea nodded slowly.
"It might help, but if our group becomes too big, resources will be harder to take care of. None of the fridges in the building work anymore, so foods gonna spoil pretty fast. We'll have to survive with canned stuff. That's not hard when there's two of us, but the more people we add…"
It was true, there was a delicate balance they would need to reach, where they had enough people to be effective. But not too many that resource management became a big issue.
"I still think we need a larger group. There's gonna be monsters waiting out there for us, strong monsters, even stronger than the Moss Shambler."
"Moss Shambler?" Andrea asked. Orion hadn't meant to say that part out loud. He only realized in that moment that he was nervous, as though speaking to Andrea was some trial by itself.
She didn't seem to be dangerous, in fact she seemed pretty set on sticking with Orion. But something about her, or about the situation, caused Orion a deal of stress. Maybe it was just her stature, she was an awfully imposing person.
Or maybe it was just that Orion didn't wanna seem weak. Andrea was set on sticking together for now, but what about in the future? If he couldn't pull his weight, couldn't be useful to her, she might abandon him. The idea of being alone again, having to face the unknown horrors of the complex without someone to back him up, truly terrified Orion.
"That was the name of the trial monster I fought. It nearly killed me."
"Are you injured?" Andrea asked. Orion almost told her about the cut in his side, but he stopped himself. The cut was a weakness, something that set him back. He needed to appear strong, capable. The injury would just be a reason for her to abandon him. Or worse.
Did the kill counter go up for people?
"No, I'm alright," Orion lied. "Just had a close call. You seem a little beat up yourself though."
Andrea shrugged. "That thing caught me off guard is all. It was invisible when I first encountered it. Once I found it though, it went down pretty easy."
"And you inherited its ability, right?" Orion asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted to see if Andrea could give any further insight into the Gifts, or the other stats.
She nodded. "Yep, I don't think it's real invisibility though. The words in my brain, whatever the hell those are, described it as becoming ignored." Andrea said those last two words with a bit of vitriol. Did she have something against the ability?
"That makes sense. When you spoke in the hallway, I was able to kinda see you. I noticed the light around you seemed to be refracted. But I think if you had stayed quiet, I wouldn't have noticed you."
It was a powerful ability, one that would become incredibly useful to them in the future. So long as she stayed silent, she was practically invisible. It could make scouting different sections of the apartment easier.
"What about you," Andrea asked. "The moss you make, does it do anything?"
Orion slowly placed a hand on the table, and expelled a small amount of moss outward. It grew slowly, not as tendrils, but as a consistent patch. Orion only then realized that his moss appeared different from the Shamblers. His seemed more lively, more green. It made sense, given that the Shambler was some sort of undead.
"It's a touch sensor, if anything interacts with it, I'm able to feel it."
"Does it matter how far away you are? And how much can you make?"
Orion stuttered for a moment. He felt a little foolish in that moment, being unable to answer questions about his own Gift.
"I'm not sure, I haven't really had much time to test it. But I could feel it when you touched the patch in the living room earlier."
Andrea seemed satisfied.
"That'll be useful, we can set up a patch infront of the door when we're sleeping so we'll know if anything gets in. But we have one issue. Offence."
Andrea had a good ability for scouting and stealth, and Orion could set traps and secure areas. But if the pair actually came in contact with another monster, they would need to rely on their brute physical strength.
"That's why we need more people," Orion concluded. "Not a massive group, but the more people we have with us, the greater amount of Gifts we have at our disposal."
Andrea considered this for a moment. Orion could see the gears turning in her head. Eventually, she nodded.
"Alright, I think we should go search for people. But what's the best way to do that?"
Orion hadn't considered that. Going to each and every room was dangerous. Any apartment that didn't have a survivor in it would have a monster waiting for them. Was there a way to check if rooms were dangerous before entering? Maybe he could use [Decay Searcher]?
Andrea contemplated for a second, then smiled.
"I got it."