Nearly half an hour after the murders a yellow and red van appeared in front of the apartment. By then both me and Tara were sitting on the rooftop exhausted. I hadn’t pulled up my pants, and Tara’s hand was on my dick, gently rubbing the tip of it. She was deep in thought and hadn’t spoken a word after swallowing my cum, and I was too tired to even speak.

“That’s our cue,” she said after the van honked its horn in front of the apartment. “Pull up your pants sweety, I don’t think going bottomless would be very professional.”

“Very funny,” I said, shuffling with my trousers. “Who are they? Another gang to kill us?”

“That’s Damage Cleanup. The crew responsible for cleaning up our messes. They are neutral. But before meeting them we have things to do. We need to divide the kills. I killed the gang leader and you did the crew member, so we need to take their IDs and register it to the system as kills. That’s how we get the XP.”

“I planned the kill too you know! Shouldn’t I be getting some XP?”

She turned around and stepped beside me with a seductive smile. “And you got a blowjob for that Alex. I bent and sucked your dick like a whore. You should be giving me XP for that.”

She descended the ladder.

“Was that your first blowjob?” I asked, following her.

“No, but the best one I’ve given for sure.”

It sure was. But I wasn’t about to say that to her. I needed to be in control. If I bent too much then it wouldn’t take long for her to take advantage of me...if she wasn't taking advantage of me already.

When we came back to the room the clothes of the body was crumpled. Tara had made a mess while searching for his phone.

“This is how you register a kill,” Tara said, pulling her phone and taking a picture of the dead guy’s face. “This photo gets sent to the main server. The face gets matched with the participants, and then that guy’s phone gets checked to see if he is alive. If he isn’t we get the kill.”

“But how does the phone know if the guy is alive or dead?”

“Who knows? As long as I get the XP I don’t fucking care.”

I looked at the guy’s phone. She might not care, but I did. But now wasn’t the time.

“Little Ryan,” Tara kicked the corpse. “This is for stealing my XP,” she kicked again. “This is for killing my crew.” Another kick. “This is for uploading my topless pic to the internet.”

“Wait, he was the one who uploaded a topless pic of you to the internet?”

“Yes, and then I killed one of his team members. And then he came searching for me.”

So that’s how the story went. But before I could speak Tara pulled my phone and walked downstairs. I followed her.

From the balcony I saw the Damage Cleanup crew already at work. They were pulling the corpse of Ryan’s teammate from the road while another man dressed in a yellow and red uniform was scrubbing the bloodstains on the pavement.

“This is how Unet is hidden from the rest of the world,” Tara said as we walked. “Whenever there is a crime these guys clean it up and pay the local authorities to keep a blind eye on the incident.”

“All for free?”

“Free for small shootouts like this. But if you plant bombs, do mass killings or kill someone in the public they charge extra.”

I wasn’t sure whether I was happy or sad to know how the game expanded. When we were near the corpse Tara took a photo of the guy from my phone, and then gave it back to me.

A few seconds later the phone buzzed with a notification.

“You said you manage the budget,” Tara said. “I stole all the money Ryan had and sent it to you.”

“Good idea,” I said, my eyes on my earnings.

“Good day!” A man in a yellow shirt and black pants came and bowed to us. “Is everything done? Damage Cleanup will be taking control of the situation.”

“Thanks,” Tara nodded. “There’s one body upstairs.”

“We’ll get to work ma’am.”

They dumped the body of Ryan’s teammate onto the van, and then moved to the bikes.

“We’ll have those,” Tara said, keeping her hand on it. “You see, we don’t plan on staying here for long.”

The man nodded then walked inside the apartment.

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” I said, looking at the strange motorcycle with stickers and markers written around it.

“Don’t worry, I do. We’ll dump the other one somewhere and come back for it later.”

“Never knew you could ride bikes.”

“Never did until last week. But when you have a bounty you start to learn things you thought you couldn’t do.”

I had to agree. I sniped and killed a man. A few hours ago I was planning a fucking vacation. We started walking back to the apartment, with me silently following Tara.

“Now Alex,” Tara turned to me near the stairs. “That was the first night of our partnership. Now that your bounty has increased and this is registered in the cameras there are going to be people coming after you. But with me, you can also learn how to survive. And in turn, I can learn how to unfuck myself from this situation and plan my finances better. For that I need you, and you need me. We are officially in this game now. Our old lives are gone, and our new lives will involve shooting, murdering, stealing, and…” she came close to me and kept a finger on my mouth. “Fucking. I’ll let you bend me down and fuck me like a whore. And you’ll help me fuck the lives of everyone who decided to pull me down. Are you with me?”

I looked into her eyes, and then to the room in my apartment. It was too late to turn back, but I could still kick her off and go somewhere far. I had earned enough money to spend the rest of my life in peace.

But…

I recalled the times I was lonely in my apartment. Working alone, watching TV alone, jerking off alone….and I didn’t want that life back.

“Be my girlfriend,” I said, gripping her by the hand. “I don’t want us to be just partners. I want us to be something more.”

Her eyes widened. She stood a few seconds staring into my eyes. There was a faint blush in her cheeks. Then she stepped close to me, gently lifted herself and kissed me in the lips. Her lips felt like honey, and I grabbed her and pulled her close. She smelled of blood mixed with a subtle hint of perfume. But I didn’t care. I was kissing Tara - the girl I’ve had a crush on all these years.

I didn’t stop kissing. Each second our tongues explored each other, and her hands wrapped around mine, pulling us in a tight embrace.

I could stay like this all day-

“Ahem…”

I snapped back to attention. Both of us pulled back. Behind us was the Damage Cleanup crew carrying Ryan’s dead body. We quickly moved away from the stairs. Their faces were red, and they scuttled past us without meeting our eyes.

“That was fun,” I said after a short awkward silence.

Tara smiled, then linked her hands with mine. “Well boyfriend, let’s start our new life by getting the fuck out of here.”