The key.

It was in the tall one’s inner jacket pocket, wrapped in a square of black cloth like something precious. Zero pulled it out and held it up.

It was a metal key, about the length of my palm, heavier than it looked. The shaft was octagonal, and the teeth weren’t teeth exactly. They were a small cage of interlocking prongs, each one tipped with a bead of the same blue material as the Core Stones. The bow was etched with a symbol I didn’t recognize. Not the snake of the gang. Something older. A spiral wrapped around a vertical line.

It made my skin prickle when I looked at it too long.

’Plot device alert. Ding ding ding.’

I’d read enough web novels and written enough of my own to know exactly what this was. This was the thing the author drops in Chapter eleven that doesn’t pay off until Chapter eighty.

A grunt gang member did not carry a key like this in an inner pocket wrapped in cloth unless it was worth more than everything else on his body combined.

"Zero. What does that open?" I asked, hoping she knew something about it.

She was frowning, which I’d learned was rare for her. "I don’t know."

"You don’t know?"

"I’ve never seen one like this. The material is expensive. The symbol is familiar but I can’t place it." She responded.

"Then what’s a Black Snake foot soldier doing with it?"

"That," she said slowly, "is a very good question."

She held it out so I took it. The metal was warm like the Core Stone, but the warmth felt different. Less like a living pulse and more like something was watching me through it.

I wrapped it back in its cloth and tucked it into my inside pocket, against my chest.

’Keep that very close.’

"We’ll figure it out later," I said. "We’ve got a bigger door to deal with."

...

I stared at the vault door and did the math.

It was massive, round, steel, two feet thick, with hinges that belonged on a battleship. The wheel-and-dial combination in the center had been seized by a hundred and fifty years of rust into one solid chunk.

"How are we getting in? Please tell me you brought explosives in that harness." I asked her.

In response, she just grinned at me. "I brought something better."

"What?"

She held up her hands.

I blinked. "You’re joking."

"I’m really not, darling."

"That door is two feet of steel."

"Mm."

She rolled her shoulders, stepped up, and set both hands on the edge of the locking wheel. For a second nothing happened. Then the metal started to scream.

It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard. A high, grinding, tortured shriek of steel being asked to do something it wasn’t designed to do. Rust flaked off in clouds. Something inside the mechanism popped, then another, a whole cascade of failing tumblers.

Zero grunted once and pulled harder.

The entire locking assembly came out of the door.

She tore the wheel, the dial, and a hundred and fifty years of precision engineering out in one smooth motion, and let the tangled mass clatter onto the floor.

The door swung inward with a sigh, like it was relieved to finally open.

I stood there with my mouth open for an embarrassing amount of time.

"What?" she said, glancing over her shoulder.

"You just...you just ripped..."

She chuckled in her melodious voice, "Sugar boy, you just dropped a ceiling on a D-rank. Don’t get impressed by the easy stuff."

"That was not easy!"

"For me it was." She brushed her hands off against her fishnets. "Come on, darling."

...

The vault was clean as hell. Wait, was Hell clean? Did the Devil himself cleaned it or had some servants do it?

In any case, the air inside was dry and still. The moss hadn’t made it in here. Neither had the radiation. The pressure on my lungs eased the moment I stepped across the threshold.

Zero produced a pen-torch and clicked it on. The beam swept across the room, and my brain just stopped.

I was looking at a hundred and fifty years of untouched money.

Rotting canvas bags of paper currency, most of them collapsed into mouldering piles. Useless, obviously. But behind them—

’Oh. Oh my sweet lord.’

Gold bars. Rows of them, stacked neatly along the left wall. I crossed the room in three strides and put my hand on one just to make sure it was real. The weight was absurd.

"Zero."

"Mm-hmm."

"Zero, tell me I’m not hallucinating."

"You’re not, darling." She laughed at my silliness, but I couldn’t care less.

"There are like forty of these."

"Forty-three. Plus the smaller ones below. Those look like half-kilos." She pointed out.

"I’m going to have a heart attack." I really might.

"Not before you get these home."

Silver on the next shelf. Bars, coins in rolled tubes, ornamental silverware in velvet cases. Beyond that, a separate case with jewellery. Necklaces, rings, loose gemstones in labeled envelopes, a tiara that looked like it belonged in a museum.

This could make King of a nation. Alright, a little exaggeration, but damnation so much money.

I noticed that Zero was watching me with a very specific expression. I turned and caught her leaning against the shelf, arms crossed under her chest, a slow unrepentant smile on her lips.

"Enjoying yourself, darling?"

"I am having the best day of my entire life." I replied honestly.

"Better than getting kissed by me?"

I paused, then said. "Okay, tied."

"Mm. Wrong answer."

"I’m willing to renegotiate."

She pushed off the shelf and stepped closer. "Are you? You seem awfully focused on those shiny yellow bricks."

"They’re very compelling bricks."

"I’m very compelling too." She whispered softly.

"You are extremely compelling. You ripped a vault door off with your hands while I watched, and I would like to speak to a therapist about some of the feelings I had during that."

Her eyes lit up. "Feelings, Lukas?"

"Complicated, mixed, deeply inappropriate feelings."

"Tell me more."

"Absolutely not." I looked away.

"Spoilsport."

She started going through the shelves methodically. There was more in here than just the obvious. Rotting document folders, bound ledgers, sealed deposit boxes lined along the back wall in a grid.

And on one of the lower shelves, almost overlooked, a single metal bar that wasn’t gold or silver.

I picked it up. It was heavier than gold for sure. Dark gray, almost black, with a faint oily sheen, cold to the touch.

"Zero. What is this?"

She took it and her eyebrows went up. "Huh."

"That’s not a reassuring huh."

"It’s a surprising huh." She turned it in the torchlight. "It’s a pre-collapse military grade material. They stopped making this alloy a decade before the Fall. I’ve only seen pieces this size in museums."

That sounded tuff.

"What does it do?" I asked.

"Conducts energy without loss. It was used in the power cores of the first wave of enhanced weapons. The kind of thing gangs like Black Snake would kill for, and can’t make anymore." She handed it back. "Keep this one very close too, darling. This and the key."

’Two plot devices in one Chapter. Going to need a bigger inventory slot.’ i was jolly.

I slipped it into my pocket next to the wrapped key. Both of them sat heavy against my ribs.

Now, it was time to move these things. For that, I’ve decided to be a bit honest with Zero. If I was really considering a relationship with her, then trust was necessary.