Two bodies slammed onto the bathroom floor and the fight that had been interrupted continued. Harid had made his move first and used his advantageous position to put his right arm around the girl's neck and his legs around her waist. Although the fall caused a lot of pain to his back due to their combined weight, he did not let go and began to strangle the girl.

  She grabbed his right hand with both of hers and tried to free herself, but she was not stronger than him and his other hand helped him to thwart her attempts to free herself.

"This time, I will really kill her!" Harid thought and his own way of thinking scared him. What was he thinking? He was not a murderer! Sure, what she had just done justified his anger, but he could not get out of his head that he was the one who had started everything.

Suddenly, the pressure against the girl's neck lessened and she pulled all air she could into her lungs.

"Stop struggling, or he will return." Harid said, both of them breathed heavily while lying on top of each other.

"Why don't you finish it scum? I won't escape this time." She responded venomously.

"Just give me a break, it was a misunderstanding!" He blurted out, but had not convinced even himself.

"Misunderstanding?! It was an attempted murder!" She replied and tried to reach for his face with some kind of malicious intention. He responded by putting pressure on her neck again and she had to use her both hands to prevent her neck from being crushed.

"Let it go already! Can't you see I am trying?! I can kill you right this moment, but I won't. Be reasonable." He released the pressure again and left her coughing.

"Are we good? I threw you to that knight and you tried to drown me in a toilet. One, one?" He asked, but she had not responded, he heard just her heavy breath intermixed with an occasional cough.

"Don't be stubborn." He urged her, he knew that the most sure way would be to kill her, but he was reluctant to do it. Not mentioning that another few kicks into that damned steel walls might alert the knight again and something was telling him that he would be more thorough the second time.

"Fine. We are alright." She said in a robotic voice.

"That is a relief. I will let you go, just do not act stupid." He said and released his grip on her. She immediately stood up and opened the door, walking out of the cramped space. Harid's eyes lingered on the locking mechanism of the door and frowned. All of this could have been prevented if the lock actually worked.

  He walked out too and when he looked around, he noticed that the wrench that previously had attracted their attention was no longer there. He peeked out of the bathroom, but could not see the half-Asian girl anywhere. He slowly walked out of the public bathrooms and passed around a shattered window that led outside. He wanted to return to the service tunnel without delay when there was a sudden loud noise of a siren.

It was a fire alarm!

"Damned vengeful bitch!" Harid cursed, realizing who had most likely just activated the alarm. He was not sure if the alarm was activated for the whole subway or just for one station, but he could not guess how many horrors would be attracted by its sound. He looked outside and saw a figure in the distance that ran away to an adjacent building to the station.

"She decided to leave the subway and sabotaged me along the way." He mumbled and decided to leave the station as well. He jumped thought the broken window and ran to a gargantuan building that was next to the station. Although he was unable to read the signs, based on the occasional pictures of food the building had painted on its walls, it had to be a shopping mall.

  Running across an open street was risky, but he knew that sooner or later he was bound to take risks anyway to get food and there was no reason to delay his hunt for food, especially with the ringing alarm behind his back. It took him just a few seconds to get near the entrance that consisted of shattered glass door and he took a peek inside. He saw the apocalypse inside though the broken door and felt an unpleasant feeling running up his spine, a premonition that he was not going to find any food inside.

  Before he could ponder some more about the situation, a familiar figure that had entered the mall with eagerness before him made a hasty retreat, bolting through a door while looking behind her back.

Harid did not need to be a genius to know what that meant.

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"They have to be inside!" He whispered and immediately changed his direction.

But where?

  He had little time to take in the beauties of the haunted city that looked like an ordinary modern city that had been rebuild by some grossly incompetent architect, upgraded by future technologies and mind boggling devices on a whim. It looked like a puzzle that someone had failed to put together properly, but went with the result anyway.

  He was sure that going back to the subway was no longer an option, as the station had to be swarming with the armored monsters already. Running along the street any longer was out of the question, it was the same as asking to be spotted by something. Next to the shopping mall were apartment buildings and despite their windows being broken, the ground floor windows had steel bars that prevented him from jumping through one of them.

"Stupid paranoid people." He continued running along the barred windows and looked behind. There, the half-Asian girl from before was on his heels.

"Oh god, she will definitely pay me back. She must not catch up to me!" A though appeared in his head and he sped up to keep his lead.

  When he turned his head back, he spotted an unusual sight. There was a ladder propped up against the building, leading to one of the windows of the second floor that was shattered and had no bars. Someone might have had a similar problem to Harid before, but he was not sure if the people had been trying to get out or in.

It did not matter, he needed to get off the street quickly.

  Harid reached the ladder and began quickly ascending its rungs with haste, the occasional creaking sounds made him uneasy. It was an old wooden ladder and it was without doubt past its projected service life. When he was in the middle, he felt a sudden vibration running through the wood and knew that the friendly girl that was following him had just began climbing after him.

  After what felt like an eternity with him constantly checking the street for danger, he finally jumped through the window and turned around to monitor the girl's progress.

  It was a stroke of misfortune that when he had been jumping through the window, his joy caused him to use too much force and the wooden ladder cracked in the middle. The two moldy poles of the ladder had not been torn apart, but were cracked and the bottom half of the ladder leaned askew against the building's wall with the top half running directly up, supported by the broken half. It was unclear how long the broken wooden ladder would last and the girl that had almost reached her destination tried frantically to get to the window before it broke for good.

  She ascended very fast, but her violent movements caused the unstable ladder to start sliding to the side. She reflexively reached for Harid's hand, who was leaning out of the window while following her progress and grabbed him tightly by her hand with her one leg dangling in the air and the other supported by the half-fallen ladder.

  As the ladder was able to provide less and less support for her weight, Harid had to do his utmost to not fall out of the window. He had not actively reached out to save her, but it could not be said that he opposed the idea. He had simply hesitated for too long and the situation decided for him. Before he knew it, he found himself being held by the girl by his hand, resisting her weight that threatened to force him out of the window.

"Be a man for a second and pull, asshole!" She growled angrily when she saw that instead of trying to pull her up with all he got, he had been staring into the distance where he seemed to had spotted something.

"Let go bitch, it is him! We will both die!" Harid not only did not pull her up, but tried to let her go.

  Unfortunately for him, she used her other hand too to grab his and he was unable to get rid of her. She looked in the direction he had been looking and gulped while her only leg supporting her weight to some extent slipped and began flailing in the air.

"Do it now or I will take you down with me!" She said resolutely and Harid realized that it would be easier to pull her up than to get rid of her.

People that were about to die could be really clingy!

  Without further delays, his fingers enveloped her hand and he earnestly tried to heave her up. With the help of her legs, it was easier than he had expected and soon, the both of them collapsed on the floor of the room.

"You are the worst." She spoke after a while.

"Shut up, he will hear you." Harid responded, still anxious about what he had seen.

"The knight will not hear us, you can unplug your pee hole, coward." She snorted, not even looking at him.

"He has a halberd, so shut up already." Harid's trembling voice was quiet and barely audible.

"And what? Halberd, sword, spear, what difference does it make?" She glanced at him sideways, mockery in her voice.

"Stupid, you have obviously never met one with a halberd, they are on a different level. Ordinary ones are a joke compared to them, so start whispering or I will choke you to death. This time for sure, I swear it!" He whispered, firing his words rapidly one after another while looking into her eyes.

"Crazy scum." She said and turned away from him, but was no longer speaking in a loud voice.

She tried to stand up, but gave up for some reason midway and continued to lie next to him instead.

Sun moved slowly, reaching almost the horizon before Harid dared to speak again.

"What is your name?" He asked after what seemed to be eons, he did not dare underestimate the knight-commander, especially when they had nowhere to hide from an enemy of that level.

"Are you not talking to me? Yeah, I get it. I have done something terrible, but you got overboard with that fire alarm you know? I thought we were one, one, but then you go and try to kill me? You are actually in my debt now. It is two-two, but I have one save." He turned to look at her and found out that she was asleep.

"Huh, I am wasting my breath." He mumbled, but could not get their crazy relationship out of his head.

"Shouldn't I kill her when she sleeps? She tried to get rid of me twice and I do not think that she won't try again in the future." He thought about it for a time, but fell asleep due to exhaustion as well before he could reach any conclusion.