Dust still hung inside the manager's office when Adrian stepped over the broken panel and aimed his light toward the opening. A concrete stairway descended behind the wall, with a metal handrail following it into the darkness.
"After you," he told Dmitri.
"How generous."
Dmitri went first with his MP7A1 raised, and Adrian followed several steps behind while Rex stayed between them. The reinforcing soldiers came after that, spaced far enough apart that nobody would trap the person in front if they had to retreat quickly.
The stairway curved down for several floors before ending at a metal door with an ordinary lock.
Adrian leaned toward it. "Should I, or should you?"
"I'll do it."
"Very competitive today."
Dmitri worked the lock until the mechanism clicked, then pushed the door open from the side. The hinges screamed loudly enough to make everyone tense, but nothing charged them from the other side.
A narrow corridor stretched ahead, and Dmitri leaned just far enough past the doorway to check the first section.
"Ready your guns."
They moved through the doorway, and Dmitri stopped after several steps because the green image in his night vision had become unnecessarily bright. He pushed the goggles up and found fluorescent lights still running farther inside.
"Separate power line," Adrian said. "Or backup power."
"Either way, useful."
The corridor opened into a larger hallway lined with metal doors, some partly open and others locked. More passages branched deeper underground, but Dmitri checked the time on his wrist module before he got interested.
The display read 3:25 PM, and Hans wanted everyone back before four, and Dmitri had already spent most of the day clearing Building Two, fighting the fat infected, and returning here for a second search.
"We check this section only, then we leave."
Adrian sighed. "There goes my underground adventure."
"You can complain tomorrow."
Four infected security guards wandered into the hall before anyone started opening rooms. Dmitri dropped two with suppressed shots while Adrian took the others, and the bodies hit the floor with little more than a few dull thumps.
"Rubbish," Dmitri muttered.
"Very dramatic."
"Start searching."
Adrian looked toward Rex and complained, "That's unfair. You have a dog?!" but he still moved to the first locked room while Dmitri took the one beside it. Both Scouts needed several minutes to open the doors. Dmitri entered one filled with crates and metal cases, and when he lifted the nearest lid, boxed ammunition stared back at him.
"Guns, parts, ammunition."
The System soldiers did not need ordinary replacement ammunition for their own refresh cycle, but the stockpile could still matter for survivors, captured weapons, or trade. Dmitri searched the nearby desk and found transaction papers tied to a business called Jaggos Arms Shop.
"Commander might know this place." He packed the documents and moved on.
Adrian emerged from another room waving a folder. "Heh, what do you think?"
"Please don't say treasure map."
"Blueprints."
Dmitri left the ammunition room and crossed over while Adrian opened the folder enough to show the title blocks. "Not the apartment buildings. This basement. There are employee records, resident records, private ledgers, some cash entries that look very unofficial... your manager friend was a busy man."
That was enough to pull Dmitri away from the ammunition room. "He's not my friend. Secure it."
"You say that like I was going to leave it here."
Other rooms produced maintenance equipment, spare supplies, first-aid kits, canned food, and a small emergency shelter with several notebooks that appeared to belong to the manager.
Dmitri flipped through one diary without trying to read the whole thing. "Take these too. Hans can decide if they're useful."
"Yes, sir."
A Conscript from Victor Brandt's group approached with both hands around a small gold bar.
"Sir, we found this."
Dmitri stared at it for a second longer than he meant to.
"A gold bar..."
Adrian leaned over his shoulder. "Commander is going to love this basement."
"Put it back in the bag before he smells it from upstairs."
The Conscript almost laughed. "Yes, sir."
They marked the rooms they had checked and left the remaining corridors alone. The place was larger than Dmitri expected, and the discovery of a separate powered underground section made it tempting to keep going, but the clock was already moving against them.
"This could be useful as a base," Adrian said while they regrouped. "Protected, powered, plenty of storage."
"Maybe. We don't know what the rest of it contains yet, and I don't like sleeping somewhere with three unexplored corridors behind the wall."
"Fair point."
Dmitri checked the time again. "Everyone, move out. We come back tomorrow."
They returned to the surface carrying the first recovered documents, supplies, and valuables, leaving the hidden passage marked and secured behind them.
...
By sunset, the apartment complex had finally gone quiet again.
Hans stood near his window and watched patrols return while the cleanup crews carried the last bags inside. The day's fighting had exhausted everyone, and even the new soldiers looked ready to stop moving for a while.
"Today's victory probably deserves something." Hans stared into his refrigerator, but there was not enough food for another proper feast, and he had absolutely no idea how military commanders rewarded soldiers after surviving a giant zombie and a horde.
"A speech? No. That sounds awkward." A salary bonus was even more ridiculous now that normal money barely mattered.
"System, you're making it hard to manage people."
------
[ Acknowledgment and rest are sufficient for current morale conditions. ]
------
Hans squinted at the prompt. "That sounds suspiciously like 'figure it out yourself.'"
He checked the remaining drinks instead and found a few cans of beer.
"Okay then. One each for the people who actually want it, food for everyone else, and nobody gets drunk while we're surrounded by zombies. Good enough."
That sounded much more reasonable than a speech.
...
At the gasoline-station diner, the survivors had spent the same evening watching the apartment complex from behind their barricades.
The gunfire, explosions, smoke, and steady movement of armed soldiers had answered one question clearly: somebody organized was living over there, but whether that was good news remained the problem.
Five people gathered behind the diner counter while the rest tried to sleep or ignore their empty stomachs.
"We cannot go near those soldiers for now," Marco said, lowering his voice so it would not carry through the room. "You still don't know who they are. Military deserters, bandits wearing uniforms, people who found guns, anything."
Elena folded her arms. "And if we stay here, what then? We're running out of food. Some of the others are already talking about leaving on their own."
"She's right," a bespectacled young man added. "They've probably seen us anyway. We saw their fire days ago, and after today's shooting there's no way they haven't checked this direction."
Marco rubbed his face. "Being seen doesn't make them friendly."
The bespectacled young man adjusted his glasses. "I know, but waiting doesn't make us safer either."
The argument went around the same circle for several minutes until Marco finally gave up.
"We approach in the morning, slowly, with our hands where they can see them. If anything feels wrong, we leave."
Elena exhaled. "That's all we're asking."
Marco looked through the narrow gap in the barricaded window toward the apartment buildings.
"If anything bad happens, don't say I didn't warn you."