Chapter 18: Apartment 29A

Nineteen Minutes Ago~

Ding!. Opening!

The elevator’s chime rang through the corridor of the twenty-ninth floor of ’The Grand’. As the doors opened, Harvey was seen standing with his pistol aimed, his gaze vigilant as his eyes roamed the space before him.

Mildred, with large knives in either hand, cautiously made her way out, her stance battle-ready for optimal response as she advanced into the corridor.

The corridor was decently large, with four doors in total, two on either side. Each door in this high-rise building contained an apartment suite with a maximum allowed capacity of five individuals. Meaning that behind each of these doors, there might be as many as five people.

The corridor was eerily quiet; Harvey and Mildred had been expecting to come upon a gruesome scene, but as far as their eyes could see, it was just a clean corridor, with a single cleaning caddy sitting right outside the door with the number 29D.

"Which first ?" Harvey said calmly from behind.

"Let’s go alphabetically."

Mildred responded as she moved over to the apartment to their immediate right, with the designation of 29A. Standing to the side, she gave three slow knocks to the door with her left hand still holding on to her large knife as she announced in a calm but cautious tone.....

"Mr Russel, it’s Mildred from the penthouse. Are you okay?"

The top ten floors of The Grand(Twentieth to Twenty-ninth) are the most expensive and most difficult to procure apartments in the building. So anyone living in these accommodations wasn’t ordinary.

As their immediate neighbors, Harvey and Mildred were meticulous enough to know everyone who lived on these floors personally, even if it was only in passing. And for the lower floors, they also held a detailed collection of information about its residents.

Russel Blaine, the owner of apartment room A of the Twenty-ninth floort, is a famous actor and celebrity who’s lived at The Grand for many years. He had no family residing with him and only the occasional visits from special friends.

"Mr Russel, is everything alright inside?"

Mildred called again after receiving no response the first time. It was the weekend and Russel was always home around this time. In fact, they had seen him earlier in the day on the ground floor, carrying with him some bags of groceries into the general elevator.

Mildred cast a look at Harvey, who had his gun pointed in the general perimeter in case of any surprises. With a nod from him in understanding, she brought her hand to the door handle and pushed down, but it was locked.

"Breaching"

Mildred announced as she returned her knives to the drop-leg holster around her thigh, and proceeded to pull out a semi-digital device that had wires running out of them from a second strap, along with some precision lock-picking tools.

The doors of the building were a combination of modern digital and manual locks, guaranteed to be fully secured, but after less than a minute had passed with Mildred going to work on the door, she returned the tools to her strap, positioned herself again to the side, her knives removed from the holster and now in her hands, she placed her hand on the handle and pushed down— the door creaked open.

She waited a few moments before advancing inside; the apartment was a standard two-bedroom suite with an expansive living room, the furnishings all top of the line and state-of-the-art. Every other apartment except for the penthouse comes with similar standard furnishings unless the resident opts for more personalized decor if they fully purchase the apartment rather than rent.

"Mr Russel?"

Harvey remained outside as Mildred walked into the living room, calling out calmly, eyes peeled and weapons at the ready. She suddenly paused in her step as her high-heeled boot stepped on something. Lowering her gaze, she noticed it was a pair of blue female panties.

However, that wasn’t all. There appeared to be a path lined with discarded clothes and shoes, both a man’s and a woman’s, leading all the way to one of the bedrooms a few feet away from the kitchen.

Mildred followed the trail of discarded clothing, inching closer to where she assumed was the master bedroom, Harvey following behind for wide-area cover, as the unmistakable sounds of low growling and soft cracking of bones began to emanate from the half-closed door in front of them.

Grrrruhh...Crunch

As they drew closer, the sounds grew louder. It was clear there was a mutant inside that room, putting both of them on high alert. However, the mutant wasn’t charging out of the room at them as they had expected, probably because of the other chewing sounds they were hearing, Mildred thought.

She pushed the door wider by the hilt of the knife in her left hand, the other positioned at the ready— but the scene that came into view was more than disturbing. Slowly, the knives she had held up began to come down, her gaze locked onto the scene before her with both pity and horror.

"Mr Russel..... Ela."

Mr Russel had a lot of special friends that came over to play occasionally. Among them was Ela, who was also his favorite, as she came around the most. To the extent that she even shared greetings with Mildred whenever their paths crossed on the ground floor of the building.

"I am so sorry... nobody deserves this."

Mildred intoned somberly as she brandished one of her knives, Harvey watching from the entrance as she moved closer to the source of the growls and munching, her blade going up and speedily coming down with as much force she could muster for a clean puncture through skull— Pshsssh.

Mildred retrieved her bloodied knife, turning her back from the scene and following after Harvey as they exited the room towards the living room exit door.

Inside, the master bedroom had descended into a peaceful quiet. Two naked bodies lay dead on a large mattress soaked in blood: a middle-aged man with half his body eaten, and a mutated lady with chunks of flesh sticking out of her jutting teeth, arms and legs bound by ropes of bondage play; both their members still connected in a passion that had ended in gruesome horror.

Outside in the corridor, Mildred looked at the exclusive penthouse elevator with worry.

"We can’t turn back now. We were lucky.... We finally got one—"

"But we need more, Mildred."

Harvey spoke calmly from behind, and Mildred nodded, reluctantly removed her gaze, pushing down the need to ride back up that elevator as she approached the second neighbor’s door—

Knock knock knock.