Finding a bicycle turned out to be easy enough. Max went to an apartment complex and scoped out some of the abandoned rooms. His reasoning was that after the area had been abandoned, any bikes left outside were probably already taken or needed work to get working again.

He wasn't expecting to find what he was looking for so quickly but likely got lucky due to focusing his search on first-floor apartments. The apartment complex he was at, Shady Oaks Community Lane, was relatively close to a college, which had also raised the possibility of finding a bicycle inside one of the units.

The bike he found was actually a pretty good one. After all this time, the tires weren't ready to go anymore, but luckily none of the rubber treads had rotted.

Judging from the state of the apartment itself and especially the inside of the units, it looked like these buildings had been empty for around three years, best max could judge. It was long enough for a lot of stuff to age out of usefulness, but not everything. He’d gone through a decent number of units before finding the bike and poked around.

He’d looked for anything he wanted to take and found a few handy things. It looked like most of the units had been opened and ransacked over the years, but not all of them. And based on what he could observe, it looked like most of the looters had only been looking for valuables or maybe food. Probably also weapons. A surprising number of useful items had been left behind, like lighters, pots and pans, even camping goods. It made Max feel like he was treading a moral gray area by effectively stealing the stuff he had gathered, but after a few years of abandonment, and with this area basically being off-limits to most people anymore, he figured it was fair game.

Either way, he still opened a portal using a bead and threw in several armfuls of stuff. After finding the bike, it was a good point to leave, too. There was a limit to the kinds of things he could probably find in an abandoned apartment near a university. It was why he’d taken his time to search, and why he never asked Lavinia’s spirits to search for him.

Walking among the ghosts of other people’s abandoned lives had almost helped affirmed Max’s humanity, at least in some strange way.

It didn't take him long to switch out the inner tubes of the tires with spare tubes he found stored next to where the bicycle had been hung against the wall. There was a little hand pump to inflate the tires that he put to good use and then threw in the backpack that he found in another unit. It sat on top of the golem parts he’d moved into it.

Once his new bike was fixed, Max took one last look around before setting off on the first leg of his journey to reunite with his friends. On the way out of what had been his home city, he rode back through the area near where Alfonso's restaurant was located. Now that he had a better understanding of the situation, Max truly felt bad for the man and he also understood why Alfonso was staying.

Seeing it all in the fading daylight, Max noticed several buildings, including Alfonso's, that had solar panels rigged up in a smaller grid for people who had stayed behind. For somebody like Alfonso, living in a restaurant with large freezers, it actually made sense to stay in the condemned area of the city. As long as he didn't get killed or his restaurant wasn't destroyed, he’d be able to live just by sourcing food. After all, Max highly doubted anybody who was still staying in this city was paying property taxes or rent anymore. This was all basically a squatter area now.

Maybe Alfonso actually did a decent amount of business for being in an abandoned city. It was an interesting thing to think about.

Max still planned to make good on his promise to Alfonso to promote his restaurant. He briefly wondered about shawarma again and keenly felt the absence of a smartphone. He still had not quite gotten used to not being able to look up any random knowledge he felt like. "Okay, added to the high priority list, get a new phone," he muttered to himself.

At one point, Max rode his bike by the dojo he’d fought a challenge match in before meeting Ethan and Chad. There were no cars on the street. The windows of the businesses had been broken out, whether by monsters or looters, he wasn’t sure.

Riding through the empty city was depressing. So depressing, in fact, that he almost didn't return to his old apartment. His plan was to at least retrieve his guitar and maybe a few other items of sentimental value once he got there…if they were still there. However, when he arrived, he found that half the building had been burned down, including his old unit. There was no way to know when the destruction had occurred, or even whether it had been ransacked or looted before then. Zero effort had been made to restore the area, so it must have happened either right before or after the area had begun being evacuated.

"Damn," he muttered.

Lavinia softly said, "I'm sorry, Max."

That's right, he thought to himself. Lavinia has my memory, so she knows the significance of this building. Out loud, he said, "Thanks," and then began biking his way out of the city again, on a mission to find someone who could give him a crash course on the current state of the world.

Expert or not, it was going to be a lot easier to look for a specific kind of person outside of a ghost town like this one.

Max was about to take his bike onto the on-ramp towards a highway when he heard some commotion in the distance. Curious, he turned and headed towards the sounds that had gotten his attention. Even from this far away, it sounded like violence. Max rode down the side street past abandoned office buildings and textile companies until he passed a warehouse building on his left and saw what was happening. Four cars were parked in the parking lot haphazardly, two of them still with their engines running. And near one of the loading docks, seven men were beating another man as two others held onto a smaller young man who was crying out in anger, frustration, and fear.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Stop! You're going to kill him! Fuck! You fuckers already killed Antonio!"

Max glanced over and, sure enough, there was a man lying in a pool of blood. At this point he was pretty sure it was a body. The man wasn’t moving and the damage looked severe.

He did another quick count to verify his numbers. That two men were holding the smaller guy who was yelling. Seven were taking turns chuckling and beating a man curled into a fetal position on the ground. Now Max could spot another man behind them all, holding a pistol nonchalantly in his hand as he smoked.

“Stop!” Screamed the restrained man. Tears of frustration ran down his cheeks. “Just let us go. I won’t say shit.”

“What a crying bitch,” said one of the attackers. He spit on the man who was getting kicked by one of his surrounding friends. “His friend’s getting killed and he just keeps running his mouth like a pussy.”

“Don't worry," chuckled one of the men holding the restrained man. "You'll get your turn after him, puta.":

Max was almost within speeding distance of one of the cars before any of them noticed he was there.

The man with the gun turned and exclaimed, "Whoa, what the fuck? Who is this?" His gun came up, and he fixed Max with a steely gaze.

This guy's definitely pulled the trigger before, Max thought to himself. He stopped his bike, held his hands up, and got off his bike with a clatter. By now, all of the attackers had turned to stare at Max with open-mouthed astonishment.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" said one of them.

"Is he trying to stop us? Who does this asshole think he is? I didn't know there were still Boy Scouts around here," said one, and a few of them laughed. The relatively undamaged victim didn't say anything. He seemed to be warning Max away with his eyes. But at the same time, perhaps hoping for help.

Max was living his second life and was not nearly naive enough to immediately assume that the guys getting a beatdown were saints. It was even possible they deserved what they were getting. For all he knew, they were drug-dealing child killers. It could be that everybody involved in this scene was equally awful. However, he knew what he was witnessing probably wasn't right. Even though everyone involved looked similar and around the same age, there were a whole host of reasons he suspected that the larger group was probably harder, less moral. Some of it was just his gut.

He was aware of his own hypocrisy. After all, he was willing to kill somebody in an extremely one-sided duel, or kill many in war. Even if he were to fight a group like this one, even by himself, the large power differential suggested that he was the same as this attacking group–at least in some way. But the warrior in Max, the honorable part of him, couldn't help but feel revulsion when he saw a group beating or attacking an otherwise helpless person. He doubted they’d been given any kind of choice, or received any warning at all.

"You guys are really tough," he drawled. "Let me guess, you all have been looking for these three guys. Some of you were patrolling or riding around and saw them, stopped them with a gun, called all your buddies in, and started having a good ol' human piñata brotherhood bonding time, huh?"

"Yo, was he watching?" one of the men started to say, but another elbowed him in the ribs.

"Shut up, motherfucker, let George handle it."

The man with the gun, presumably Geroge, relaxed his posture and indolently propped an elbow on top of the car’s mirror. "I don't know who you are, man, but you seem to have gone to the wrong place at the wrong time. School must have been out at Good Boy Ranch or something." Most of attacking men laughed, and their mirth was punctuated by an agonizing groan from the moving man on the ground. The other man in the pool of blood still hadn't twitched.

Max paused for a moment and gave all of the people involved a closer look. Now he could see that the three victims definitely had rougher and cheaper clothing than the men who were attacking them. He saw plenty of jewelry on George the car guy too. It didn't take a genius to assume that this was some sort of criminal thing and that if Max hadn't come along, all three of the victims would have likely been beaten to death and maybe not even found for weeks.

Maybe monsters would spawn, eat the bodies, and they’d never be found.

Max sucked in air through his teeth, reminding himself that everybody involved might be a piece of shit, and none of this concerned him. However, if there was one thing he had learned in centuries of living, it was that people just surviving on the fringes of society often knew a surprising amount about the world around them. They did not have the luxury of ignoring what was going on or being ignorant of current events.

Since he was here already, maybe he could cross out one of the items on his to-do list.

"Hey guys," he pointed at the small man who was being restrained and only had a bloody nose so far. "How about I take that guy off your hands, ask him some questions for a while, and I'll even give him back to you if you give me a good reason for why he should be beaten to death. But I'm kind of in a hurry, and I need to go find some of my friends. It’s going to be a bit of a trip. You guys look busy, and you also don't look like you'd be really keen on just having a chat, so I’ll just leave you to do your thing instead of having a chat with any of you. Just that instead. How’s that sound?"

Absolute silence reigned in the parking lot other than the scrape of clothes against asphalt and the low moans of the man who had been in mid-beating when Max had shown up. One of the men, a guy in a flannel, blinked and said, “Is he seriously crazy? Did he escape from a hospital?”

George narrowed his eyes and began raising his weapon again. Max held up and empy palm and said, "Look, I’m going to level with you. I know the most efficient thing would be for me to let you guys do something real stupid and then rip you all apart in self-defense. But I really don't want to get blood on my clothes. They’re nothing special and I just looted them from an apartment, but believe it or not, they’re not too bad. Also, I'm really not here to play the hero right now or try to trick you. To be blunt, I've just got way more important shit to do. So let’s just make a deal, yeah?"

He held up a finger as he thought of something. "Actually, I just realized I’m sorta making a lot of assumptions here. Let me confirm something. Hey, dude who's being held, the guy they haven't killed yet, did you guys do anything to deserve this?"

"Hell no," the man yelled. He jerked his head at one of the the attackers. "That asshole's ex-girlfriend started dating my friend, and they killed him for it! And they probably killed my other friend, and they're going to do me next!"

With a sudden snarl of pure hatred, he glared again at one of the men who'd been hitting his friend, one with a green bandana. "It wasn’t our fault Homeboy here has a small dick and likes to hit women because he's such a pussy and can't get any respect with dudes. Can’t fucking fight without all his piece of shit friends helping him, either. Real brave piece of shit."

A predictable hail of punches landed on the man who'd just spoken.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Max yelled. "Everybody needs to stop."

However, the man in the green bandana who was yelling and punching didn't stop, and now the man with the gun had his weapon fully trained on Max again.

"You know what, buddy?" he asked. "I think we might just have to teach a fourth bitch who can’t keep his mouth shut a lesson today."

Max rolled his eyes. "Like I was saying, I'm not trying to live any cliches here. So your name is George, right? I'm going to tell you very bluntly that I'm a Returner, and I can absolutely rip you a new asshole whenever I feel like it. None of you guys can do shit to me. I'm going to say one more time–very clearly–that I want that guy that is currently getting hit to answer my questions. And if you don't call your boy off of him on the count of three, I'm going to kill him, and then I'm going to kill all of you. Because I know you’ll attack me after killing him, and I also know that once violence starts, leaving any of you alive would just probably cause more problems in the future."

The men who were not actively hitting their prisoner either looked absolutely dumbfounded, even more so than before. Only one or two had the beginnings of a fear shadow. However, George, the leader with the pistol–Max noted it was a Glock–gave Max a critical once-over. He looked at Max’s shabby clothing, his dusty sneakers that he'd also liberated from one of the apartments he'd raided, and the age-stained backpack he was wearing. His gaze finally settled on the bicycle that Max had been riding.

"A Returner? Yeah, sure you are. You just stay right there until we kill you. Unless you want me to shoot you first."

"Is that your final answer?" Max said.

"Yeah," the man smirked and spat. "I think it is."

"All right," Max shrugged and then said, "Lavinia, armor please."