Screams, screeches, and the sounds of fighting occasionally rang out from the levels above us. We had our own level to worry about, so we did our best to ignore it.

  For now, we stuck to the plan: check each store, clear it out, move on.

  The new items really helped. Chaz's Glamthing let us know which stores had shoplins, and having actual weapons—a bow, even!—reduced the time we spent flailing at downed enemies like they'd just deleted our save files.

  I pulled the head off my mop and used a knife to cut a sharp point out of the plastic. Chaz put his busted sword away and reluctantly did the same.

  We started at the staff door and went clockwise, passing Gateway's shutters on the way. There was an elevator in the northeast corner, followed by a bottle shop; Gateway's parent company owned that too, so a shutter behind the elevator linked the two. The only reason we hadn't opened it was because we couldn't tell if it had shoplins.

  It did, but they'd blasted champagne into their faces like it was victory milk and gotten absolutely wasted. We took them down, no problem.

  The customers were dead, but the cool room was locked. I knocked on the door and found the owner—a stout, balding man who had sensibly started hitting the sauce once he'd realised the situation.

  "Hey, Max. Gateway's safe. You wanna go there or fight shoplins with us?"

  Max chugged the rest of his latest can and tossed it aside. "I wouldn't mind taking down a few of those bastards."

  Kara passed him a sharpened plastic broom. "Welcome aboard!"

  Val coughed. "Hey, ah, you mind if me'n the crew grab a few—"

  "You eighteen?" Max asked, before stopping and thinking about where we were. "Ah, who gives a shit, do what you want."

  "Hell yes!"

  There was a rattling behind the counter. Troy was opening the shutter.

  "I'll watch the door for you," he said, raising a new bow proudly.

  As long as he doesn't follow us, I thought, and moved on.

  Next store: Hair and beauty salon. The survivors had won and were huddling behind the shutter, scissors in hand.

  "Oh, so it's not just my hair they mess up," Kara said cheerfully.

  I knocked on the window. "You alright?"

  "No," someone called out.

  "Fair enough. There's more survivors in Gateway if you wanna eat."

  "Yes, please!"

  We sent them through the bottle shop.

  Third store: Pharmacy. Some shoplins, some dead. The survivors had locked themselves in a glass-doored storage room behind the prescription counter. When we knocked, the pharmacist in charge—an older man with glasses and a stern expression—appeared and pointed it at us.

  I waved. "Hey. We're from Gateway, and—"

  He looked me up and down, then at the teens.

  "We're not giving away drugs," he scoffed.

  "...Okay, never mind, you can stay there," I said. "Have fun."

  The teens flipped him off, and we moved on.

  Fourth store: Variety store. Massacre.

  Dead staff were everywhere. One of them was slumped on top of a shelf, which was actually a little impressive. Glamthing glowed.

  "No splitting up," Kara said.

  I raised my shield. "Got it."

  There were several packs in here. The first group were nice enough to charge as we went in—they lost one shoplin to Red's bow before getting to us, and then we cleaned them up.

  The second group we accidentally baited, when a drunken Max charged in and challenged them to a fight to avenge his store. They actually came out, which was nice for us. Bad for Max, since he got slashed a couple times, but he was drunk enough to power through it.

  The last pack waited until we walked through the store and tried flanking us through the aisles, but thanks to Glamthing, we knew they were coming.

  [ Shoplin Binge!

  Defeat 25 Shoplins.

  Reward: +$50, +1 ZETTAMALL? Starter Crate ]

  The aisles restricted our movement a little, though. I grabbed a hefty-looking wrench to use on shoplins that got in close.

  The system running this place was pretty generous, at least for now—as long as we made some kind of effort to participate in the fight, we received kill credit and the associated rewards. The teens had formed their own party (which they'd named Val's Pals) and Max wasn't in either, but that didn't seem to matter.

  We were doing well so far, but our injuries were starting to pile up again. We regrouped at the counter to catch our breath.

  The cashier was slumped behind it, blood pooling around him. We'd only seen dead staff in here.

  I double-checked, just in case. "Anyone see a dead customer?"

  Nobody had. Did they escape?

  Red poked the cashier with her foot. "Should we do something with these?"

  "I dunno, I don't like lookin' at 'em," Val said. "But maybe we should..."

  I studied the corpse. He'd put up a fight—his fingers were stained with pink blood—but a shoplin had got him in the ribs. Who was he? Would the people who knew him ever find out about this?

  I crouched and patted him down until I found a wallet.

  Kara raised her eyebrows. "What are you doing?"

  "Looking for ID," I said. "I feel like someone should remember these people. Their names, at least."

  I opened the wallet. His name was Saggitairious Raywilliam Smith.

  "Jesus Christ."

  [ De Rigueur Mortis

  Find a customer's corpse and take their stuff.

  Reward: +1 WARCRIMES Pillage Crate ]

  [ A WARCRIMES Pillage Crate! Contains a selection of WARCRIMES items. May also contain up to 3 crates carried by customers who died in this mall. ]

  "I was just talking about the body," Red said. "It's going to smell."

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "Not yet," Kara said. "Decomposition takes a while to really get going. This Jesus guy is gonna be pretty ripe tomorrow..."

  "Not just him," Joe signed, and pointed at the ASS in the plaza.

  I decided not to ask how Kara knew that. "Shit, you're right. That's a lot of guys. I don't think we can bury them..."

  "We could wrap 'em in cling film," Val suggested. "I saw that in a movie."

  "I don't think that's for the smell, though," Red said.

  "We could just pick a store and stuff them in it," Kara said.

  "How about the back rooms?" Chaz said. "Let them go on break one last time..."

  Kara pointed at him. "Let's go with that!"

  I nodded and grabbed Saggitairious's legs. "Okay, but I'm not going to pose him or anything."

  "Can we at least put him in a chair?"

  "Sure."

  In the southeast corner of the plaza, past the variety store, a short corridor led away from Gateway towards a car park exit. There wasn't much else—a sealed maintenance door, a small, empty nail salon, an emergency fire hose, and a side-corridor leading to the toilets. The shoplins had stolen the cleaning cart from a closet in there.

  I approached the exit carefully. It was just a glass wall with some automatic doors in the middle, and the car park beyond was shrouded in darkness. This mall was built in a hilly region, so Level One was technically underground, and someone had killed the lights. All I could see were the safety bollards on the other side of the doors and the dim outlines of abandoned cars.

  The automatic doors didn't open, but there was a manual-open button to the side. I hovered my hand over it.

  "Do... do we try for my car, or..."

  Chaz flicked on his flashlight.

  Bodies lay strewn across the ground. Cars sat empty and open-doored in the aisles, sometimes crashed into each other. One car had rammed into a nearby pillar, crushing some poor bastard in the process.

  At the back, mostly obscured by vehicles, something huge with pitch-black hair was hunched over behind a car. We could only see its back, but it moved like it was eating something off the floor.

  As the flashlight passed by, it stopped and began to turn...

  Chaz turned the light off. "Okay, no, that's yabai."

  "Yeah, bye!" I fled towards the toilets.

  The others joined me in the corridor, where I stayed just out of sight and listened. We heard the sound of feet—more than two. Something growled close to the doors.

  "grrrrr..."

  We stood there for a while, holding our breath, backing away quietly...

  Then there was a snort, and the creature padded away.

  I exhaled. "Phew..."

  Chaz turned towards the toilets. "I need to empty my bowels, just in case..."

  Most of the group went with him. I stayed in the corridor to keep watch and gather my thoughts.

  Thanks to those hills, all the exits were upstairs. At this end of the mall, the exit was on Level Three. The rest were on Level Two, but they were pretty far—and considering how thoroughly escape had been denied so far, I doubted it would be worth the trip.

  The others returned as I fretted, now with a whole group of survivors. I recognised some of them as customers who had fled Gateway in the initial attack.

  Kara waved. "We found more types of guy!"

  "They tried to leave but there's a ton of shoplins out there," Chaz said. "Let's leave it alone, I reckon."

  I bit my lip. The more we learned about our situation, the more doors closed. What could we do but keep trying, though?

  [ We Get It, You're "Virtuous"

  Rescue 10 people in your starter mall while continuing not to ask for appropriate compensation.

  Reward: +1 Warm, Fuzzy Feeling ]

  The plaza's south side was taken up by a medical center and a dental clinic, with a tobacconist's between them in case anyone wanted to give their doctors more work. We were getting tired, but some of the newcomers decided to stay and fight with us.

  The fights in the medical center had gone to Team Human. When we knocked on the glass door at the entrance we were greeted by a doctor, an older man with glasses and a stern expression—

  "We've seen you before, haven't we?" I asked.

  "That was probably my brother," the doctor said. "We saw you through the glass. You're from Gateway?"

  "Yes we are, sir," Chaz said.

  The doctor relaxed. "Well, we feel pretty safe in here. How about an exchange? We can help your wounded in exchange for supplies."

  I accepted a handshake. "Done."

  He glanced at the teens. Val frowned.

  "What?"

  "Just to be clear, we're not giving away drugs—"

  "For fuck's sake!"

  Once we'd established that our group was free of drug-crazed teens, we had the doctor take Max and moved on.

  The tobacconist's was small and empty—the shoplins had stabbed the shopkeeper and left for the plaza, where we'd stomped them earlier. I needed a break, so I volunteered to drag the body into the back room while the rest moved on.

  Once he was tucked away, I sat at the counter and checked my interface. I'd been ignoring a notification for a while now. Apparently, I'd levelled up.

  [ William Tombaugh, Customer [104/B]

  Level: 2 [Level Up!]

  EXP: 68/150

  Basics

  Type: Sol-Human

  Job: TBD

  Bot: Eligible!

  Stats

  Might: 3

  Brains: 5

  Finesse: 4

  [Expand for details...]

  Assets

  Health: 9/11 [+3!]

  Funbucks: $520

  Loot Crates: Slurp Nurse Legally Required Apology Crate, WARCRIMES Pillage Crate, WARCRIMES Bronze Sponsor Crate, ZETTAMALL? Starter Crate ]

  I expanded my stats, just to see what would happen, and got a new window with a much more detailed breakdown. Way too detailed.

  There were only three stats, but each one was divided into three categories—Might had Strength, Constitution, and Prowess, for example. Each category had a list of hundreds of secondary stats.

  Agility. Accuracy. Speed. Bargain Sense. Cognition. Lucidity. Marketing Susceptibility. Eighth Sense. Pain Resistance. Personal Brand. Determination. Chutzpah. Battle Aura. Perception. Passive Perception. Finesse again, for some reason. Corruption. Discipline. Flexibility. Elasticity. Euphoria. Brainal Circumference. My eyes glazed over just looking at them.

  Most were rated at 0, and the ones that weren't topped their lists:

  [ +3 Adaptation, +2 Perception, -3 Spirit, -5 Responsibility ]

  [ Each secondary stat has its own benefits, and combines with the others to determine your primary stats. Secondary stats can be improved through training, therapy, or some of the incredible gear found in the ZETTAMALL?. ]

  Descriptions of each secondary stat popped up when I looked at them, but the idea of reading it all made me seriously consider all the getting stabbed I could be doing.

  Luckily, I was saved by a knock at the entrance. Kara was a little bruised, but still standing.

  "Will! Hey!"

  I grinned. "Hey. You look like shit."

  Kara grinned. "Thanks, you too! We cleared the dentist's."

  "Any trouble?"

  "Just more shoplins. We found more guys hiding in the back though! And we even found some nice pillows. We can sleep in the Gateway tonight. If only the boss was here to see his dream come true!"

  "That's... good?"

  "Probably," Kara said. "But then we found something else. I think you should take a look at this."

  In the southwest corner of the plaza, a wide hallway ran westward into the central plaza. Or it was supposed to, anyway.

  As I approached it, a hazy red force field faded into view. Warning icons moved across it, and a message appeared when I got closer.

  [ For your convenience, access is unavailable until Day 2. ]

  I looked down. The bodies of people who had tried to flee this way were lying at my feet.

  I looked left. There was only one more store before the barrier: a travel agency called Grand Escape. Chaz and the other survivors were laying the corpses in it, but there were too many to move all at once.

  "We're cooked, aren't we?" I said.

  Kara tilted her head at Grand Escape. "At least someone's escaping, eh? Eh?"

  "Kara, no."

  I put my hopes of escaping in a box and set it aside for now. I didn't know what Zeddie and his bosses wanted, but we weren't leaving until they got it.

  Chaz stepped out of the agency and passed me a bag of wallets. "Here. You wanna try clearing upstairs anyway?"

  I turned around and looked up. I could hear fighting on Level Three, but I could only see shoplins on Level Two. Whenever someone stepped out into the middle of the plaza to retrieve a body, the shoplins jeered and threw broken glass at them. They seemed to be waiting for us to come to them.

  "Can that be a problem for Future Us?" I asked. "It's almost eight and I'm hungry."

  Kara pointed at the last unchecked store, a chicken shop between the barrier and Gateway. "Let's get some chicken and regroup."

  "Could you get me some?" Chaz asked. "I've been banned from that place ever since I got fired for making the roast chickens do ninja poses."

  I pulled him along. "Chaz, the mall is being wrecked by little guys in polo shirts. They're not going to uphold that."

  [ STATUS

  TIME: Day 1, 7:59 PM

  CUSTOMERS: 719/1167 ]