"Neither of us?" Zarek asked with a smile. He seemed completely relaxed, but somehow that only put Zade and Marx even more on edge.
"Your word choice intrigues me a lot, Mr. Ashborn," Marx eventually said.
"And why's that?"
"You pick out the most interesting things, and your replies to them are equally as interesting. Listening to you speak makes me feel like you're an easy target, but the more I dig into it, the more dangerous I feel like you are.
"Originally, I wanted to keep you close and observe you from afar. But it seems I've already overstepped one of your boundaries and you've long picked up on it. You're very intuitive in ways that seem impossible for an 18-year-old."
"Who knows, maybe I'm an old man in spirit, too."
Marx chuckled. "How about we work together?"
"Are you sure about that?"
"I have a feeling that if I choose any other path, I'll have to watch my brother die, and I don't want to do that."
"Just your brother? You're quite confident."
"Well, he's closer."
Marx said the words with a light touch in his tone, but it didn't belie the seriousness of them at all. There was a matter-of-factness to his tone that just felt natural.
"I see."
Zarek suddenly understood something. Only a man with a mind like Marx could have possibly done that with the Talent Zarek had his eye on. It would certainly take someone like this.
The question was… was it just Marx's mind that was so flexible? Or did he have a Talent that was helping him out a great deal?
The answer to that wasn't so simple to Zarek. What he did know was that Marx was sharp in ways that went beyond human reason… even when the Godsfall Apocalypse was taken into account.
"What do you see?" Marx asked curiously.
"You're willing to give it up even though you don't know what it is?"
There was a flicker in Marx's eyes. Indeed, Zarek was sharp.
"I guess that would depend… but ultimately, yes. Because whatever it is, I don't know of it yet. That either means you have sharper insight than I do, or you have methods that I cannot understand. If that's the case, then you can probably help us go further than I can alone."
Zade looked to his elder brother, a slight light of confusion in his eyes. He couldn't quite understand what was happening right now. This wasn't their original plan at all, but Marx seemed to have flipped everything on a dime.
But it was true… neither of them knew what Zarek could possibly want.
Ironically enough, even Zarek didn't know exactly how to get what he wanted either. All he knew was that at some point, quite soon, Marx and Zade would stumble into it.
All that said, even Zarek didn't expect that Marx would make such a choice.
After looking at the man for a while, he chuckled.
"Alright," his gaze shifted over to Priya. "It looks like you got me an easy win this time, babe."
Marx's gaze flickered again. It was a simple line, but it made one thing obvious. Zarek knew why Marx had reached his conclusions. Even this hadn't slipped his notice.
Priya, though, blinked in confusion. Of all of them, she was the one with the least experience. Plus, it was impossible for her to recall every official her father had ever interacted with—there were too many.
However, she still accepted Zarek's head pat with grace and a slight roll of her eyes. She would definitely be grilling him about this later.
"Can you tell us what it is now?" Marx asked.
"You know I can't do that," Zarek said with a grin. "But I can extend you an olive branch."
"Oh?"
"Three nights from now, there will be a heavy rainfall similar to the one that happened on the day all of this started."
The eyes of both brothers became exceptionally serious all of a sudden.
"Beneath that rain, even those who managed to not become one of the zombies might fall down that path. The rainfall is a very concentrated and potent form of the energy that turns people into those monsters. But that isn't your only worry either. Not only will it make those relatively immune to the energy turn, but it will also make the monsters that already exist significantly stronger.
"If I'm correct, right now the vast majority of them are still in the F's, but that's because they don't have enough food to go around. They advance by eating other members of their kind, staking out near energy resources, and eating us, but there usually aren't enough of those.
"This is the other way they evolve."
"What do we do?"
"I would advise you draw out new boundaries, or solidify the ones you're aiming for within those three days. Most probably, the smaller the area you have to defend, the better.
"Find treasures you can use to cover your bodies and protect against the rain in case you need to go out. But more importantly, you'll probably need to invest in ranged units that can fire from cover. Otherwise, you'll be overrun."
Marx and Zade both listened to this quite seriously.
If Zarek was telling the truth, this was huge. But also… if he was lying, why would he choose a date as short as just three days?
This was a chance… a chance to—.
"I also wouldn't think about taking great advantage of this right now. Although there is a chance you could use this to make the city your own, I don't think you want that right now. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out why. In fact, if I were you, I would be deciding how much I want to leak to the other powers so that they'll be prepared too."
The two brothers looked toward one another.
"… How do you know all of this?" Zade asked slowly.
Zarek smiled, took Priya's hand, and then left.