"Did you really have to use a Technique?" The woman asks from over the washing machines. The man manages to pop the spear out of the skeleton but with so much force that it causes him to stumble backwards. He wavers a few steps but catches his footing without much effort. He straightens himself out and bunts the blunt end of the spear on the tiled floor with a clack. He digs his free hand into his hip, beaming over the skeleton's re-deathed body.

"Of course I did!" He turns his head towards the woman, smile fading. "How am I supposed to get stronger if I hold anything back? I can't live my life only going half speed, I won't get anywhere like that." He takes his hand from his hip and lifts it, as a fist, in front of his face. "I have to fight with everything I have, with all my might, at all times! Or I'll never reach my full potential!"

The woman scoffs and shakes her head. "You're so cheesy. As long as you keep trying, you'll improve one way or another. The only real secret is just not to give up." She frowns and crosses her arms. "By the way... did you not notice? You almost hit me there."

The color drains from Steel's face.

"Tha... that can't be true!" His eyes shut, his face tightens and he puts his fist to his chin. "Hmm..." He nods and opens his eyes. "Whatever you noticed, it was definitely just a near miss! It only looked like it was going to hit you. It might have seemed scary but worry not, I don't make those kinds of mistakes. I'm not some rookie, you know. For your information, this isn't my first haunted house."

The woman puts her hands on her hips. "No, it's your second. We both cleansed our first Corruption Zone together, remember?"

The man nods. "Yes. So, you know, I definitely don't make those kinds of mistakes."

The woman crosses her arms. "You almost knocked me down a flight of stairs when a creaky door made you jump. Remember that?"

Steel scratches at the back of his head. "Haha... yeah. Whoops. My bad."

Solbird turns back towards the door they came in through. "Whatever you say. Just don't let it happen again."

Steel lifts his spear and squats down next to the re-dead skeleton. "If these enemies are really dead, it should happen any moment now..."

The woman turns back from the door. "Oh, I almost forgot. The loot."

The skeleton by Steel's feet releases a purple light. Suddenly, it bursts into particles of that purple light. The particles spread apart but as they do, they dim away into nothingness.

"There it is. Their physical forms couldn't hold together any longer. Since we overcame them, the corruption had to release it's grip. So, do these things have souls or what?"

On the floor where the skeleton had been now lays some items. Some pocket change and dirty cloth had replaced the beast. The woman strides closer to her opponent, which had already popped.

"We think they have souls." She says, crouching down next to the pile of remains. "And, we think that tormented souls are what cause the corruption to manifest in the first place. All we really know is that, in places of great or prolonged tragedy, Corruption Zones manifest."

Steel picks the cloth up from the ground. He holds it outstretched in front of him. "A cape." He announces. "It dropped a cape." He frowns at the cape. Holding it out in front of his head light which illuminates how dirty and tattered it really was. "For a room full of washing machines, this cape sure is dirty. Scan!"

Steel's goggles respond by tracing the cape's form with a deep neon blue outline. The scan bar loads quickly and a window with information appears in his goggles.

__________________

|OVERUSED HOODIE|

| +1 DEFENSE |

| +1 COLD RESIST |

| 1 DOLLAR |

__________________

"Oh, it's actually a hoodie, not a cape. Not worth much either, only a buck. However, if I went to the right place, I could probably get a couple extra bucks for it as material rather than as equipment." Steel folds the hoodie and stows it away in his backpack.

"Yours drop anything?"

Solbird sighs, standing across from Steel. She bounces some change in her hand. "Not really. Only some chump change." She pockets the change and turns back towards the door. "I didn't see anything else in here. The Heart definitely isn't here.

"Okay." Steel responds. "I still want to look the room over before we leave."

"Alright." Solbird says. "I'll wait for you by the door." She heads to the door and presses her back into the wall next to the opening.

Steel skulks through the room, opening machines and checking corners. Satisfied with finding nothing, he makes his way back to Solbird.

"Nothing here. Let's move on." Steel says. Solbird nods and leads him out of the laundry room, back into the hallway lined with wall mailboxes. Quietly, the two creep through the dark hallway, one after the other. Not long after, they find a spiral staircase leading up. In the wall beyond it, which marks the end of the hallway, they find another door.

"Thanks to the stairs this passage is pretty narrow. Only one of us is going to be able to go through at a time." Solbird says. Steel steps forward.

"Of course. I can do it!" He says, walking to the door. Solbird puts her arm out, bunting him against the chest.

"I'm already at the head on the line. Let me do it." She says. The man scratches at his head with his free hand.

Well, I'm no sexist. Empowerment it is! Lead on, lady." Steel says, gesturing towards the door. Solbird puckers her lips and moves to the door.

"You didn't have to say it like that." She says, facing the door.

"Like what?" Steel asks, trying out different grips on his spear.

"If you really believed in empowerment, then is it really necessary to make a specific point of it? You don't have to point out that you aren't sexist. Makes you actually seem sexist." She reaches forward and grabs the doorknob.

"Well... You know... I was just... I was... I just wanted to..."

The woman pushes the door open and peeks her head inside. "Looks like it could have been an office, or maybe a large closet. Or both. Could be something important here." She pushes the door open the rest of the way and strides inside. The man shakes his head and follows in behind her.

Steel finds Solbird standing in front of a desk, staring down at it.

"There are some papers here. Some management stuff. Number crunching, finance calculation. A lot of creative ideas for ways to screw their renters over to make an extra buck." Solbird puts the paper down and picks up another one. "Even this utility bill is pretty cheap, considering how many apartments it looked like this building housed. This person was making quite the profit off of utilities alone. Hmm, I don't even see anything on here about..." She docks her spear between her legs and picks up more papers. She shuffles through them.

"Nothing about repairmen or exterminators. Hard to imagine this place was clean."

"Probably wasn't." Steel chimes in. Solbird puts the papers down and looks at Steel.

"Something doesn't really add up there, does it?" She says, taking her spear back into her hands. "I thought there might be something more useful here. Like keys. No luck though. Okay, now you lead." She says, gesturing back towards the door. Steel turns around and walks out of the office. He stops outside of the doorway.

"Hey! Was that there before?" He asks.

Solbird tries her best to peek over Steel's shoulder, even getting on the tip of her toes.

"Ugh, I can't see over you." She lets herself relax in defeat. "Was what there before?"

Steel turns around and chuckles. "Too short, huh?" He takes a few steps forward, out of the stairs blockage, and steps to the side. Using his spear, he points to another door in the wall right where the staircase starts. Solbird steps forward. A cage mesh door sits before them.

"An elevator? I didn't notice that before either." She says. "Maybe the staircase distracted us from noticing it?”

Steel reaches over and grasps his spear arm. "Maybe, but I don't like how this feels. Let's try not to take our time." Solbird taps the flat of her spear against Steel's arm.

"Don't be a wuss. This is literally one of the lowest level zones we could have chosen to purify. The worst we'll see here is a roach or two." Steel frowns and releases his arm. He walks to the staircase and puts a foot on the first step.

"If you say so. Let's go." He gestures his head towards the stairs. Solbird moves behind him and they make their way up the stairs together.

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The climb is dark and dingy. The shadowy atmosphere seems to flow through the walls like blood through veins. The staircase leads to the second floor where they come out to an elevator, more stairs and two hallways.

"We'll scan the apartments for the Heart." Steel says. "Just a quick check in each room. If there are any enemies we'll defeat them and move on. Destroy every enemy we find." He moves towards a hallway.

"Not that it matters." Solbird says, following him. "If we purify the place they'll all be eliminated in the aftermath regardless."

"I don't want to miss a chance to gain combat experience. Not to mention any money they might drop."

The hallway Steel leads them into is plain but tattered. The walls are a dirty gray, with shadows wrapping around them. The floor is a mess of carpet. What was once probably an attractive design is now torn and stained. The colors were muted and dulled and everything bled into each other.

"All of this damage. It's the corruption, right?" Steel asks.

"I don't think so." Solbird replies. "Look, the corruption really does damage everything it touches. Over time, corruption will grow worse if left alone. That means it will spread further and whatever is closest to the Heart of it will be more and more damaged and dangerous. If it gets bad enough it can actually bring seriously powerful and evil monsters into our reality. Those monsters will be able to move freely through everything the corruption touches."

"Damn." Steel says. "Guess we're doing a pretty good thing here, aren't we?"

"Yes." Solbird replies. "Though, even if we didn't cleanse the area before it grew worse, there are other more powerful teams of

Purifiers that can come in and deal with it. However, corruption at this level shouldn't cause any damage. At least, not to this level.

Obviously, this place was torn apart long before we got here."

They reach the first set of apartment doors. One of the two rooms does not actually have a door but is only a doorway. They turn towards that door.

"So much for privacy." Steel says, peeking his head in.

"Old school. These days, they have other ways of invading your privacy." Solbird says.

Steel's headlight illuminates an abandoned apartment. It's paint is scratched and torn, peeling. There is some furniture as well, but it's tossed around the room. Nothing seems to be in proper place.

"Jeez, it's like a poltergeist tore this place up." Steel comments, taking a step inside.

"That's possible." Solbird says. She follows Steel in and turns towards the kitchen behind the counter.

"Scan!" Steel calls out, facing away from Solbird. A blue light traces the objects in the room as the scan loads up.

Solbird walks around behind the counter into the kitchen. Seeing nothing but a wreck, she walks further into the kitchen and finds a fridge laying on it's side. She squats down and opens the fridge door upward.

"Ach.. gah! What the fuck!" She exclaims. "It smells terrible!" Steel is still scanning the living room.

"What does it smell like?" He asks.

"Like, terrible. I don't know. Ugh, and there are still roaches here!" She says, as a platoon of roaches marches out of the fridge.

She releases the fridge door and lets it close with a clawp. She stands back up. "Nothing special otherwise. Just a shitty apartment."

She rummages through some drawers when Steel goes,

"Whoa! This is messed up!"

Solbird puts some silverware down and looks up. "What? Bugs?"

Steel scoffs. "You could say that." Steel was standing near a wall, putting his hand up to something. "Yeah. Bugged. Like, with a camera." He says, stepping aside and looking back at her.

Solbird exits the kitchen and approaches Steel. Her headlight causes something to glint in the wall as she peers up at it. She gets in close and looks at it from side to side.

"The camera is tiny." Steel says. "Probably would have been impossible to spot in a normal situation. Obviously, there was something weird going on in this apartment." He turns. "Also," he gestures, "there's a huge hole in the wall. You can walk right through to the next apartment from here." Solbird turns around and looks over the apartment.

"So, if I were the camera... I would have a great view of both the living room and the kitchen. Not a bad spot for someone who wants to keep an eye on the whole place at once."

"So?" Asks Steel.

"So, we're in a Corruption Zone. This probably has something to do with that."

Steel's eyes widen. "So whoever put it here probably wasn't the one living here. Then what? The manager?"

Solbird shrugs. "There's no way to know of anything for sure at this point. But hey, we aren't detectives. Let's just move on." Steel nods and swirls his spear in one hand.

"So, through the wall or what?" He asks.

The woman shakes her head, eyes narrowed. "No, let's go through the hallway. I don't like how things are looking." She replies. Steel stops spinning his spear and shrugs.

"Sounds good to me. I'm going to go check out the back of the apartment real quick." Solbird nods and moves out into the hallway. Steel turns towards the hallway of the apartment. He moves through it and peeks into the bathroom.

"Hmm, nothing in there. Not even a shower curtain." He turns back into the hallway and approaches a closet door. He places his spear against the wall next to it and lifts his fist up. With his other hand, he throws the closet door open. A shadow jumps out at him. He leaps back into the wall and punches forward at the same time. His fist connects with a broom handle as it falls to the ground.

"Man! This place is cleared out." He puts a hand to his chest and lets out a sigh of relief. Then, he grabs his spear and leaves to join Solbird in the hallway. On his way, he hears Solbird call out,

"I think we have a problem!"

Steel breaks into a run and skids out into the hallway.

"What? What's wrong?" He asks, finding Solbird standing alone.

"Did you notice this before?" She asks, pointing down the hallway. Steel follows her finger to see a titanic pile of rubbish reaching up into the floor above. The roof is caved in and all kinds of plaster and furniture is piled up like it were a mountain.

"Uhh, I'm not sure how, but no. I did not notice a giant mountain of rubbish completely blocking off the hallway... somehow. Maybe because I was distracted by the carpet. Remember how I was asking about the damage?" Solbird frowns at him.

"Also," she says, "All of these other doors are locked." She steps closer to the door and jiggles the handle to prove it.

"Hey!" Steel exclaims. "There's that big hole in the wall that’s large enough to walk through. We could use that! It probably leads us to the other side of the hallway, right?"

"That's what bothers me." Solbird says, walking back to the open apartment. "No where else to go but that way or back." Steel follows behind Solbird into the apartment.

"Oh, so that finally bothers you?" Steel says. "All this creepy shit, and it's a big pile of rubbish that bothers you?"

"Yes." States the woman. "I'm on point. But be ready."

Solbird walks through the hole ahead of Steel with her spear raised at attention. She stops before entering into the room and swivels the light around.

"I see... well, it's like the last room. Furniture tossed, place wrecked. It looks like the ceiling caved in. Also, there's a lot of rubble.

However, it's kind of like a hill. Looks like it wouldn't be hard to climb. We could probably walk straight up it, into the apartment above." The woman steps out of the broken wall and straightens up. She walks over to the entry door and opens it. Opening it allows a bunch of rubble to fall inside the apartment. Solbird jumps back just in time to avoid it.

"It looks like rubble mountain covers a lot of area. The door hallway is completely blocked off, probably completely filled. So, our options are either back... or up." She turns to find Steel standing in front of the back wall.

"Another camera?" She asks, walking closer.

"Worse." He says, putting his hand to the wall. He pulls something from it and shows it to her.

"A speaker." Solbird says. "Why would a speaker be hidden in the wall?" Steel closes his fist around it.

"Cameras. Speakers. Looks like there's a reason the corruption grew here, like you were saying."

Solbird scoffs. "A reason? For corruption? No no. Things are just plain evil. There are no "reasons" for anything. Definitely nothing that a camera and a speaker could explain." She says.

The man shrugs. "Sarcasm aside, it isn't good. Something causes this kind of evil and we have found some odd things here."

"Are we finding it?" The woman questions. "Or is someone showing it to us?" She turns to look back at the hole in the wall. Steel slips the speaker into his backpack.

"If something like this is in every room, then why make us go through these specific rooms? There's probably a camera in here as well."

Solbird peers around until she finds the bedroom hallway. She checks it out and finds nothing. Returning to Steel she tells him,

"Looks like there's nowhere to go but up."

"Or back the way we came."

"Oh, that's no fun. Don't you like the impending sense of doom and deadly traps?"

The man snorts. "What better way to sharpen my senses than to hang out in haunted apartment complexes?" The woman smacks his shoulder.

"See? That's the kind of optimism we need. Hey, you can go first this time."

Steel frowns. Solbird pushes him towards the smaller mound of rubble in the center of the apartment. "You only have yourself to blame. Now go set off a trap for me while I enjoy this really nice apartment all to myself."

The man, using his spear as a walking stick, starts up the rubble ramp. "If a skeleton jumps me and you're not around, I'm going to turn you into a skeleton and leave you here." He says. Solbird follows him up the rubble ramp.

"Save all that attitude for the baddies. You already used a technique today. Has your energy even started to replenish?" Solbird sweeps her eyes to the corner of the goggles. Steel's energy bar has indeed replenished by five points.

Steel makes it up the ramp and into the next apartment. His headlight sweeps the area into view. "Scan!" He calls out, still sweeping the area.

"You don't see any enemies? No skeletons? Nobody waiting to pounce on us? No poltergeists throwing shit around red handed?

Nothing?" Solbird taunts. Steel sighs.

"Nothing except another camera." The man says. "I don't see any secret slots in the walls for speakers, but I found another glint in the wall." The man's light passes over the woman's head and rests on the front door.

"Uhhm, is it just me or does the corruption seem a little less intense up here?" Solbird asks. Steel glances at her. She covers her eyes with her arm. "Careful! That's bright!"

"Sorry." Steel replies. "Anyway, I didn't notice." He looks at the walls. "Now that you mention it... it doesn't seem quite as, I don't know, shadowy, I guess."

"Or as impending." Solbird adds. "Maybe it's on the other side of the building? Rather than below us?" She reaches the top of the rubble ramp and walks to the front door. "Forget about the bedroom. It's obviously not here."

Steel crosses his arms. "Well, it certainly doesn't get any easier to breathe when you're closer to a Corrupted Heart. So, this oddly specific pathway is actually guiding us in the wrong direction?"

Solbird shakes her head. "No. I mean, maybe. How would I know? But… there was only so much below us. There's no reason not to follow along and see where this leads."

Steel presses his lips together. "Unless... unless we don't want to get ambushed by evil spirits!"

Solbird laughs. Steel shakes his head and relaxes his posture. "Okay. Whatever is waiting for us, I'll take care of it. No problem.

Just another challenge for me to prove myself with. But... you should lead again." The woman nods. She opens the front door and steps into the hallway. Steel follows behind her further into the hallway.

The third level hallway resembles the hallway from below, but not as damaged. However, in one direction, there is a large gap in the floor where the rubble mountain droops into the lower level.

"We can't get to the stairs with a big hole in the ground. Unless..." Steel says.

"Uhh, no." The woman responds. "Let's try not to walk across the top of a haunted rubble mountain in a place where everything is torn to pieces." She turns away from Steel and continues down the hallway. She steps slowly with her spear raised, heel to toe, making as little noise as possible. Her light swings up the hallway and finds the closest apartment door. "We'll try this next pair of doors." She says.

Solbird approaches the door. She reaches a hand out towards the handle. Her fingers brush against it when footsteps reverberate throughout the hallway. The pair whip their heads in the sounds' direction. A silhouette approaches in the distance. The two headlights lock onto the figure, revealing a black suit, a tie, a white undershirt and black dress shoes.

Under their breaths they both whisper,

"Scan."