In a dark hallway, the old flickering light barely showed the walls and the path. The faint light barely outlined the surrounding walls and the corridor's shape.
Tony followed the man down the hallway, carefully stepping around trash and dirty water on the floor.
The foul smell was so strong it almost made him want to throw up.
"I really can't stand this. Even if it's a slum, I can understand a bit of dirt and mess, but why does it have to smell so bad?"
The man replied in a muffled voice, "I'm not sure either. Maybe one of the rooms has a rotten corpse."
"...Awesome."
Tony stuffed his nose early on.
"Why would anyone be stupid enough to hide a corpse in their own home and let it rot and stink like that?"
"It's not always someone hiding a dead body at home. Maybe they just died in the room. The landlord said there have been cases before where addicts overdose on drugs or gang members hiding out ended up rotting away in their rooms."
"They actually dare to rent places like this?"
"You could always choose to go book a presidential suite in a luxury hotel downtown or sleep under a bridge or in a dark alley."
"Suddenly, this place doesn't seem so bad."
Tony said quickly.
The man stepped forward and pulled out his keys to open the door, but Tony suddenly reached out and stopped him.
"Wait a second. Who's at home with you?"
"My wife."
"How do you plan to introduce me to her?"
"I can say you're a new friend I met."
"What's my name then?"
"..."
The air in the corridor suddenly grew awkward.
Tonny couldn't quite keep a straight face, "Honestly, with your brain, being a criminal has no future, or rather, staying in Gotham has no future."
The man's face flushed a little, but he still bit back his anger and asked, "Then what's your name?"
"My name is Tony Smith."
"I'm Drake Lane."
"Then I'll call you Drake. By the way, you're not an archaeologist, are you?"
"Archaeologist? No, I'm not. I'm a software engineer. Why do you ask?"
"30 years old?"
"33."
Tony instantly caught on. He casually made a gesture to go ahead and open the door.
"Still… you don't seem like the kind of guy who should be stuck living in a place like this."
Drake, who had just inserted the key into the lock, fell silent for a moment. Then he looked up at Tony and said, "I'm going to tell you something, but once you're inside my home, don't bring up this matter."
"Alright."
Suddenly, Drake pulled out the key and instead led Tony back into the stairwell.
"Come on, let's talk on the rooftop."
There was no light in the dark corridor just a little moonlight and the glow of the city coming through the windows, barely lighting up the stairs.
Their footsteps echoed, making the silence feel heavy.
After reaching the fourth floor, Drake pushed open an iron door.
The two stepped onto the rooftop, overlooking the surrounding buildings and streets in darkness.
The only sound was the soft patter of leftover rain falling into puddles.
"So... how did you end up here?"
"It was because of my wife."
Drake casually grabbed a worn-out metal chair nearby, wiped off the water on it, and sat down.
The cold metal made him shiver, but it also helped him feel a little more awake.
"As I said, I used to be a software engineer in Metropolis. I was about to be laid off at thirty-three, and before that happened, I hadn't really figured out where to go next. I never imagined coming to a godforsaken place like Gotham. For about six months before I was laid off, my wife had been coughing and losing hair. I urged her to go to the hospital, but she refused, saying she needed to focus on her work—until the day she came back from the hospital holding a diagnosis."
"We didn't think it was anything serious before that and thought it was just a small illness. However, the diagnosis said she had a rare disease, and the treatment and medication costs were very expensive."
Drake's head was nearly buried in his chest. He gripped his hair tightly with both hands as if trying to ease his guilt through the pain.
He continued, "I nearly emptied all my savings but still couldn't save her. Her hair almost completely fell out, and two months ago, she started coughing up blood constantly. She could hardly sleep at night, and her internal organs began to fail. We were utterly helpless. That's when a specialist told us about Dr. Victor Fries in Gotham—a brilliant genius and cryogenicist who successfully found a way to keep his own wife alive using cryogenic technology."
After hearing this, Tony's mind was on the verge of exploding. He knew this was a deeply sad story, but he felt an overwhelming urge to just run away instinctively.
Dr. Victor Fries… most people didn't know him by that name.
They knew him as Mr. Freeze.
Tony believed that no one in this world is born evil. While there may indeed be some exceptions to this rule, Victor Fries was not one of them.
He was originally a brilliant scientist and love his wife. They were like perfect partners but his wife got very sick with a disease that no one in the whole world knew how to cure her.
Victor was very stubborn and didn't give up. Instead of succumbing to despair, he started to study his wife's illness, hoping to find a cure.
However, his wife was already gravely ill and didn't have much time left.
Then Victor used his talent and knowledge to create a high-tech cryogenic chamber for her. This cryogenic technology allowed him to suspend her life in a frozen state, giving Victor more time to find a cure.
Unfortunately, the company funding Victor's research decided to terminate the project for a reason, causing a big conflict between Victor and the company.
The conflict triggered a major accident when the cryogenic equipment in the lab malfunctioned and leaked hazardous gases.
Luckily, Victor survived the explosion, but he was no longer the same. His cellular structure was irreversibly altered, turning his body that could only survive at zero temperatures.
To survive, Victor crafted a special cryogenic suit and developed an ice-based weapon, and he began exacting vengeance on all those responsible for the accident.
...
Tony let out a sigh. "Do you have some kind of grudge against the doctor who gave you that advice?"
"…No. Why do you ask?"
He could tell that Drake genuinely paused to consider his relationship with that doctor.
"Then do you know what happened to Victor Fries?"
"I heard that after a lab accident, he and his wife both went missing."
Luckily, he hadn't come into contact with Mr. Freeze yet. Otherwise, Tony would seriously have to start preparing to skip town.
"So, what are you planning to do?"
"I don't know. It took me so much effort to finally settle down here with my wife… and now I've lost all hope again."
Drake clutched his head, nearly breaking down as he muttered to himself, "I don't know, I don't know... I just wanted to get some money today… enough to pay for next month's medical bills."
He sat on the rooftop, suddenly bursting into tears and cursing loudly, "And then, damn it, I ran into you! I actually believed your bullshit and thought you could help me, even brought you home! I'm such an idiot, I can't save her— I'm useless… I'm just completely useless… sob sob."
Tony didn't stop him.
He knew Drake had been holding in all his pain and stress for too long, and letting it out through crying was actually good for his mental health.
Tony pulled over another metal chair, casually wiped off the water stains, and sat down.
The coldness of the chair went straight through his clothes and stung his skin a little.
He looked at the blurry city lights in the distance and sighed softly in the dark.
"It seems bad things always seem to happen to people who already have it the hardest."
...
"Click."
The sound of a key turning in the lock echoed. The rusted iron door creaked open, scraping dryly as it moved.
"Drake?"
"Camila, I'm back."
Tony and Drake entered the room together and saw a skinny, hairless woman slowly making her way out from inside.
She appeared very weak and had to steady herself against the wall as she walked.
When she saw Tony, surprise flickered across her face. After Drake introduced him, she gave Tonny a gentle smile.
Even though she was so thin, and her face was pale with hardly any color, her smile was soft and kind.
Tony could tell that she was someone full of sunshine and happiness in the past. He looked at her and guessed that she might only have about three months left to live, maybe even less.
He wasn't a doctor, but just by looking at her, anyone could see she was very, very sick.
The inside of the house wasn't as messy as he expected.
Even though the furniture was old and left behind by the previous tenant, everything was still usable.
Drake and his wife seemed used to living here and didn't seem to complain or act like they didn't like the place.
As Tony surveyed the room, he noticed Mrs. Camila slowly pull a handgun from behind her and then quietly place it back into a drawer in her room.
It was clear that if it hadn't been Drake who just opened the door, whoever entered would likely have had the barrel of that gun pressed against their head first.
A few seconds after spotting the gun, Tony thought.
'Wait... was Drake's gun even real?'
Then he saw Drake walk into his bedroom, pull out the gun he used during the robbery, and then take a magazine out of his pocket.
He put both the gun and the magazine into a drawer.
'Well, at least it was a real gun, but when the barrel had been pressed against his head, the gun didn't have a magazine inside.'
Tony glanced at his system store and the new save point he had purchased was still unused.
He thought it over for a moment longer, then immediately used the save point in this small house.
[Save point successfully activated.]
[This save point can be loaded up to 20 times with no time limit. The user will be able to load from this save point when they're about to die or not.]
[The user can have up to five save points at the same time and can cancel them whenever they want. They can also use money to move the save point to a different time or place, or they can choose to delete it and get a refund.]