Harid kept staring at his hand glowing with mild green light and felt his throat drying even more. He had not drunk anything for a considerable while. It should not be an issue to summon his lemonade bottle and have a drink, right?

  He hesitated, because he was almost sure that for some reason summoning the fancy garbage bin powers was like a beacon for the golden scourge. He should at least attempt to find an ordinary water source first.

  He did not know if finding water near a public toilet was too much to hope for, but it was his best guess.

  When he finally reached another station and left the safety of the service tunnel, he was not even nervous anymore, simply because he was too tired. Scanning everything carefully with his eyes, he wiped off the rest of the lemonade on a wall and left it glowing. This was still one of the stations he was familiar with, but it was honestly not that important. The stations were very similar to each other with only minor variations in their design and he knew them all as long as he knew one.

  He passed the pillars like a ghost, heading to the escalator that was not working. He was glad that it was not, its sound would have certainly freaked him out. He felt smaller as he walked further away from his hideout and his heart started to beat faster again. At this point he would be unable to run away if he met with any of the nasty inhabitants of this twisted dimension. Out of caution, he had even took off his shoes to produce as little sound as possible and was sneaking up the escalator barefoot, his shoes and socks in his right hand.

  His feet were cold when he finally reached the part of the station that was level with the surface. It was dilapidated in the same way as the rest of the subway and the occasional signs that were still readable were written in a language he had never seen before. Sun was still up and he could not see any signs of the spectacular golden armors that thankfully could not be missed easily in daylight. He had no idea where had all the knights ran to, but he was grateful for their absence. It enabled him to put on his shoes again to increase his speed in case of escape and he walked directly to the public bathrooms.

  Before he entered the set of small rooms decorated with beautiful blue tiles, he stopped and listened for movements coming from the inside, to his horror he heard a sound coming from the broken glass wall of the subway station that let the outside wind enter the building. It was the direction that was his blind spot and he immediately slipped inside the bathroom and hoped he had not been seen by whoever made the noise.

  He found himself before a washbasin and tried if it still worked. Unfortunately, a faint sound of an old tap being turned was all he was able to get and realized how thirsty he was.

"I am stupid, I should have searched the people down there." He whispered under his breath, but knew that he would have to find a long term solution for his water problem anyway. Unless he wanted to start a nasty game of wild hunt again, going green.

  He noticed that there was the same garbage bin of a modern design as down by the railway and touched it. To his surprise, the same phenomenon that had occurred before happened and a ray of light hit his chest, tattooing him with a different word next to the one that could summon the green lemonade.

"Fine, another self-destruction ability, why am I not eager to try it out?" He mumbled and subconsciously looked around to ensure there were no enemies chasing him. He was not opposed to collecting those tattoos, whatever they were, but he needed to barricade himself in a fortress first before he dared to test their usefulness.

"Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty." He was not even whispering anymore, only moving his lips noiselessly like in a silent movie. It was impossible to get out of his head the obvious and he stepped closer to the row of doors made of sheet metal that had a gap near the ground and ceiling, a classic setup in many public bathrooms that were not intended to be particularly high class. Out of paranoia, he bent down and looked through the gaps near the floor to ensure no one was there and only then opened one of the doors and entered. Closing the door behind him, he looked into the wondrous piece of ceramics that accepted all that humans no longer wanted in their bodies.

And lo, there was water at the bottom of the fountain of miracles.

  He pushed and pulled at the plastics around him until a sound of flushing the toilet greeted his ears. He would have never believed this kind of sound could be so peaceful and relaxing.

He almost felt like he was on a vacation on some tropical island, listening to the sound of a waterfall.

But it also sounded ominous, when he realized how loud it was in the omnipresent silence.

  Not thinking anymore, he crouched and proceeded to drink from the toilet, despite all his ingrained habits and health guidelines of society. He smiled and felt his perched throat having a wild celebration at that moment, but it seemed his actions had not gone completely unnoticed.

  A sound of a door opening slowly scared him out of his wits. He immediately locked the toilet door and sat down, lifting his legs into the air in case anyone tried to look through the gap below just as he himself had done a moment ago.

  He heard the sound again and was unable to tell if the one who had pushed the door open returned back from where he had come from or was standing outside next to the wash basins. Harid stared into the mirror that hung in front of him on the door and saw his terrified expression.

"A knight took a shit or what?!" He silently worded with his mouth a ridiculous idea and at the same time the worst possible scenario that could happen. He continued to wait, hoping that another noise would provide him with more clues about the unknown entity sharing the bathroom with him.

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It felt silly, what if next to him sat someone in a similar situation and they would end up waiting for each other's move for days?

  Harid thought of a way to find out the intruder's identity, but could not come up with anything safe. After a while, he started to feel uneasy, another possibility was that the person had not stayed inside and had already left a while ago, but he was not going to know unless he left his position.

  His legs were turning stiff from his effort to keep them lifted off the ground and he decided to have some more water while he listened for something to happen. Slowly assuming his crouching position on the floor again, he drunk some more water and noticed that it was not particularly fresh, something he had completely overlooked when he had been dying with thirst some time ago. However, he drank the water anyway, but in the middle of his act a sharp sound of a door opening startled him and he quickly turned his head to look in the direction of the opened door.

To his horror, the door to his sanctuary was really opened and he stared into the face of a person.

He had just locked the door, but it did not change the situation, only making him feel betrayed by whoever was the manufacturer of the lock.

  After he had noticed her messy black hair and face covered in blood and dirt, he was not sure anymore that she was a person. There was something familiar about her and when his eyes traveled down to her waist he could not be more certain.

He would never forget those pants, he remembered vividly as he had grabbed and pulled on them in order to save his neck.

"A Zombie?!" He squeaked, but was unable to do anything else as she wordlessly jumped closer to him with her expression distorted with rage. He covered his neck with his hand, convinced that she was going to bite him, but she placed the palm of her hand on the back of his head and grabbed his neck with her other hand. She mercilessly pushed him down with all her weight.

  In an instant, he found himself drowning in the little water that was left at the bottom of the toilet. In panic, he instinctively tried to lift his head and to push the attacking monster away, but his hands were unable to do anything given his disadvantageous position, the angle was simply too bad and he had no leverage to do anything about the weight that kept him from breathing in a single breath of air.

  He imagined himself dying like this and his panic kept increasing. Had he escaped from the other attackers only to be drowned in a toilet? He could not accept such an end. He moved violently to the side and kicked in a random direction, hitting the toilet booth's sheet metal wall that produced a tremendously loud sound, but he did not care anymore.

  Strangely, the zombie attacker seemed to do care about the noise he produced and she pressed her body closer to his to limit his movement even further, leaving him with little space for further maneuvers.

  He knew that he had not much time left and his panic reached its peak. He felt something animalistic awoke inside him and he kicked the toilet's sheet metal wall again, propelling himself to the other wall. With the thunderous sound and the sudden movement, he was able to apply enough torque on his body to partially turn around his hips and kick his attacker's belly with enough force to launch her out of the door.

  The zombie girl flew away with a grunt under his heavy kick and he was finally able to pull his head out of the water and turned to watch her as she was lying sprawled on the floor while coughing wildly.

"A zombie, there are even those around." He breathed heavily while standing up and only at this point he felt all the bruises he received during the struggle. He hastily looked for anything that could be used as a weapon, but was interrupted by an unexpected reaction of the figure on the ground who lifted her head.

"You wish, murderer scum." She spat out while holding her belly and Harid realized that she was actually alive.

"Impossible! I have. . . " He paused, not quite ready to utter the final word.

"You have failed to kill me, not for the lack of trying." She was slowly standing up while looking around, probably for the same reason as Harid.

"But how?" He was puzzled, not able to imagine how she had been able to escape the knight back in the tunnel.

"Just die." She responded, clearly not interested in explaining anything to him and the gazes of both of them ended up staring at a big wrench that was for some reason propped up against the wall a few meter away from them.

  They were about to jump after it and continue in their fight when a familiar ominous sound entered their ears. The heavy steps of someone who must have heard the noise they made and was on his way to investigate. To make the situation even worse, the footsteps were very close, they had noticed too late because of their intense fight and now they had only seconds to hide.

  Both of them stood only a meter away from each other and they rushed back from where they have left a few seconds ago. When they were in front of the toilet again, she closed the door quickly.

"Where. .. ?" He wanted to ask why she had chosen the same door, but he fell silent as the footsteps made by steel boots stopped in the entrance of the public bathroom.

One of the monsters made of golden metal was already there.

  She had obviously entered the same space as him because it was dangerous to waste a precious second on opening another door when one had already been opened. They glared at each other with murder in their eyes, but their fear of the golden knights was stronger than anything else. After a moment, they heard a heavy sound and Harid saw a plated kneecap through the gap under the door. The knight had knelt down and there could be only one purpose for him doing that.

  Harid immediately sat on the toilet and lifted his legs to prevent the knight from noticing him, it was almost a reflex because he had done exactly the same before. A split second later, he realized that the girl whose face looked like a zombie was going to give them away and quickly pulled her onto his lap. She plopped down on her butt awkwardly and gave him yet another murderous stare, but clearly realized why he had done it and lifted her legs off the ground, following his example.

He could not see what the knight was doing, but imagined him peeping under the door, something that was hard to picture in his head..

  And indeed, it seemed not to be the knight's style to peep. A split second later, a giant blade sliced above the floor and nicked the toilet that was damaged and tilted slightly to the front. Harid prayed to all the gods that the toilet would hold. With the new angle, the non-zombie girl's butt began sliding to the front, slowly leaving the top of his knees and he hurriedly embraced it with his hand to prevent her fall. She instinctively hugged him with one hand too and Harid had to grip the pipe mounted on the wall to keep himself from falling off the toilet.

Meanwhile, the knight stood up and walked slowly away, satisfied with his investigation or moving to look elsewhere for the source of the previous racket.

They remained motionless, locked in their awkward position.

At some point, Harid judged that the knight was far enough with his footsteps no longer audible and he moved decisively.