After turning the windows back on, I walked around the room with Ana. She still had the revolver in her hands and was prepared to use it, though it wasn’t cocked, so she couldn’t accidentally pull the trigger and break one of my windows.

The first floor was only a single room, but there was a staircase over on the northeast side. It was just a generic wooden one, nothing fancy, except maybe the fact that there was another staircase underneath it. From the northern side, you could go up to the second floor, while the southern end was the basement entrance.

In case you forgot, the house is a waterfront property, and it’s on the northern side of the island. Thus, the front door was the one I entered, and it was on the northern end of the house. Makes it a lot easier to explain than if the building was angled weirdly, facing the southwest or some shit.

The northern half of the first floor was basically a living or dining room. While the southern half was a combination of a kitchen and bar on the eastern side, with a walled off bathroom on the western corner. By kitchen and bar, I mean there was a large counter, with some tall metal stools on one side. Inside of the surprisingly large kitchen area, there was a big freezer and fridge. Not a combination fridge-freezer like most people have, but two entirely separate appliances. They looked like seven foot tall and four foot wide metal coffins.

The one on the left was the freezer, which actually had an ice-maker that ‘worked’. My father had to walk down to the store almost every day, in order to buy bags of ice… Yeah, it was ridiculous. There was also a nice mechanism on the outside that would allow me to basically do what I did pretty much my whole life: Press the mug against the trigger and the ice would drop out.

Next to that was a counter, with some cabinets above and below it. Then a huge sink, with two separate stainless steel basins. The left side even had a fucking garbage disposal built into it! I’ve honestly never had one of those before, in my entire life. To the left of that, was a similarly extra-large dishwasher. The significance is that I could wait longer before needing to do the dishes, but I also ‘needed’ to wait longer, or I’d be wasting a lot of water.

The counter went along the corner of the wall, and there were cabinets both above and below it. By that, I mean the kind that are connected to the wall and kind of suspended there. After washing my hands of course, I took my time opening each of them, but they were all empty. It’s a good thing I brought so many dishes, silverware, pots and pans. Of course, I was planning to wash everything first, before using anything.

There was no microwave, but well, I kinda expected that. I didn’t bring one with me however, so I was just planning to order one and have it delivered. It wasn’t a high priority though. After all, there was an electric and a gas stove, with two separate ovens. This was on the kitchen-counter side of the ‘bar’. If you’re wondering why anyone would need both a gas and electric stove, well, sometimes you only have access to one or the other. The same reason why there were multiple emergency generators, some worked on batteries, while others were gasoline powered.

There was something else I noticed… The house kinda smelled terrible, and by that, I mean it smelled like bleach. As if someone had recently just cleaned the whole place. I’m not a detective though, so I had no idea how many hours it had been. If they had the place closed up, then it could have been a whole day.

“Fuck, I feel sick…” I complained as I walked over to the back door of the house. It was similarly metal, without even a peephole. However, I could easily see outside through the big five foot tall window to the right. As I was about to open the door to air the place out, Ana saw something suspicious. 

There was another hill at the back of the house, but it wasn’t very steep. And the treeline started before the hill even ended. So I could only see about twenty meters. Still, that was enough to notice a fucking person lurking in the woods!

“Shit! I really should’ve brought my phone!” I grumbled as I immediately hid behind the wall, with the gun in my hand, pointed up at the ceiling. When I peeked out the window again, that creepy silhouette was gone. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man, woman or a goddamn demon… Just made me remember that the island wasn’t as uninhabited as I hoped.

“All I know, is that I don’t want people to see me running around naked, covered in cum.” I snickered and locked the backdoor as Michael; it had a regular lock on the doorknob, then one of those chains and even a heavy bolt. Considering the wall was probably reinforced concrete and the door seemed like steel, I wasn’t too worried about anyone breaking in there. The more concerning matter were the windows, but I figured I’d ask Infinity about that shit once I grabbed my cellphone.

The southwestern side of the first floor was a bathroom, like I said before. And it was pretty large. There was only a single window in there, which could be opened only from the inside. On one side, there was a big-ass jacuzzi-style square bathtub in a corner near the window. The kind with water jets and other random tidbits. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a tub guy. And definitely didn’t want to fool around, waiting for that thing to fill up. Oh, and a large shower was on the other side of the room, with a single toilet in between..

There were two toilets, right next to each other. I thought one might actually be a bidet, but nope, just a second shitter. It didn’t really make much sense though, because there was another bathroom upstairs. Well whatever, it was nice that the seats were the kind I liked. Long and with a hole at the end, so I could potentially piss and shit at the same time. If necessary.

I sighed and murmured to myself, “I guess we gotta split up. You stay in the house and I’ll… Why the fuck am I even saying this out loud?”

Ana went upstairs, while I went back outside and headed down the concrete staircase. It felt really strange going up and down at the same time, but it wasn’t particularly complicated. I figured Ana was relatively safer than my original body, since I was completely exposed, out in the open and unarmed.

When I reached the boat, the first thing I did was grab the cellphone and look at it. I mean, it was pretty obvious.

[∞: We have warned you not to leave this device behind… Regardless, you do not need to feel so alarmed. Although your neighbors live quite a distance away from you, some of them perform tasks that require them to travel often. For example, some of them clean houses. However, their services are relatively expensive.]

“I wasn’t interested in hiring a maid anyway.” I snickered, shoving the hunting knife, gun-case and first aid kit into the somewhat empty cavity behind the guitar amp. Yeah, if you’ve never seen one before, some amps have an opening on the back. I used to put guitar picks, extra cables and other random items inside… Back when I would take it with me to practice sessions or wherever.

[∞: There is a Community Forum where you can find various services, or provide them. However, not everyone has the internet… Some do not even possess electricity. Either by choice, or in order to complete a task/test.]

“I hope you realize that I can’t survive without electricity, and I’ll probably go crazy without internet…” I grimaced a bit, or maybe ‘cringed’? Either way, I shoved the phone into a bag of relatively clean clothes and said, “I really don’t have time to talk right now. I need to get all these fucking bags and shit into the house before those god damn birds come back!”

The amp was the same weight as that forty pound dumbbell, but it was much harder to carry due to its size and shape. Still, it had a handle, and as long as I didn’t care about getting ‘dirty’ at that point, it wasn’t that bad.