4 Chapter 4: The Scent of Meat

These floating surveillance devices are quite small, capable of floating in the air or staying fixed in one place. He rushed back to the terminal and arranged the three floating monitors at his door, in the corridor, and the third one silently roamed the entire building. After all this, David, exhausted, lay down on the ground. His room now had only the table that had appeared earlier, so for now, he had to make do with the floor. Finally full and hydrated, he could rest and sleep peacefully. Since the extreme cold hit, David had barely slept properly.

Joking aside, the temperature in Emeraldon was around minus fifty degrees, sometimes even dropping to minus sixty or seventy. Moreover, the buildings in Emeraldon had thin walls with poor insulation. Without electricity, he shivered daily, barely able to sleep, always worrying whether he'd wake up again. Many had already frozen to death in their sleep.

Now, with upgraded doors, windows, walls, and a constant temperature suit, he could finally lie in bed and sleep. If only he had a soft bed and pillow. David thought to himself before drifting off to sleep.

David lived alone in Emeraldon. His parents had died in a car accident three years ago, the year he graduated from college. Since then, he hadn't returned to his hometown but settled in Emeraldon, where his university was. With his parents' inheritance and a substantial compensation, plus his stable job, life had been decent for the past three years. If not for the extreme cold, he might have bought his own house in Emeraldon, found a wife, and lived his life.

But now, everything was different.

...

While David slept, unbeknownst to him, the aroma of the Michelin-star meal he had conjured spread from his room into the corridor. The first to notice were his neighbors. David lived in a luxury community with two households per floor and eighteen floors in total; he was on the seventeenth.

His relationship with the neighbors across his apartment was decent before the cold snap; they exchanged a few words when meeting during commutes. They had a cute, pretty daughter, but David didn't expect that the sweet girl before the disaster would deceive him. It wasn't easy for him to open the door to a pitiful six-year-old girl asking for help. Unfortunately, the world no longer had such innocence.

The scent of the feast seeped through the door crack into the 1702 family's room. Lying in bed, under blankets, trying to conserve energy and warmth, the family of three smelled the aroma. They huddled together on one bed, shivering, with signs of burning something for warmth in the room. In these conditions, not burning something meant freezing to death.

"Daddy, I'm hungry again," the little girl said pitifully.

The man's face darkened. "Mia, hold on a bit longer. We only have one pack of sausages left. Let's eat them tomorrow, okay?"

"But I'm too hungry to sleep," the girl said, clutching her stomach in the dark room. "And... I'm so cold."

"Maybe we should light a fire for a while," the woman suggested. "Tomorrow... I'll go and beg neighbor for more food. It's not fair. We only got a little bit when we tricked David into opening his door, and he had so much food."

The man sighed, "Okay, that's all we can do."

Then they suddenly smelled a delicious aroma. A hot, steaming scent! When was the last time they smelled food like this? It seemed like roast goose, mixed with other meats. They couldn't tell exactly due to their long starvation, but it was definitely meat!

Where was this meat coming from? And cooked so deliciously?

The man got up from the bed, shivering despite his thick coat. "I'll go check it out!"

He quietly put on his shoes and crept out. The woman hesitated, then followed.

But as she stepped out, she saw her husband returning. "What happened? Do you know where the smell is coming from?"

"You won't believe this. It's coming from David's room!" the man exclaimed.

David? The neighbor across?

Thinking of David, the woman's eyes showed a hint of remorse. They had no choice then; they were starving, and so were the others downstairs. They had to trick David to keep everyone alive. They hadn't planned to empty his house, but when they opened his door and saw the remaining food, people's greed made them forget all previous agreements.

This wasn't the first time they'd done something like this, targeting homes with only one occupant. There was no choice; being outnumbered mattered. Like their family, even though Mia was young and couldn't fight, a grown man and a woman of the same age had more strength than one person. Locals and outsiders were different. Locals had known each other for years, so they didn't turn on their own while there were still outsiders and solitary dwellers around.

"But isn't he supposed to be..." the woman started.

"Shh..." the man interrupted. "I got the key to David's room. No matter how he survived, he must have more food hidden somewhere we didn't find before."

"Let's not tell anyone, sneak in, and then..."

A fierce look appeared in the man's eyes.