Zack's POV
It's the Northwood Mall.
The red door creaked behind us. Then, it vanished.
Damn, we can't go back to the pentagon now, and we're stuck in this place.
The sight in the mall was eerily normal, as if we had simply walked into a shopping center on any given day. The polished tiles gleamed under the bright fluorescent lights, reflecting the towering storefronts lined up on either side. Clothing stores, electronics shops, pharmacies, and even a food court stretched into the distance. Large banners advertising long-forgotten sales dangled from the ceiling. It should have been comforting.
But it wasn't.
Arya took a sharp breath. Her hand went to her temple as if something was off, as if she were sensing a disturbance. She knelt to the ground and touched the floor.
That's weird.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I don't know…I was just trying to — uhm — well, I thought it was an illusion," she murmured, scanning the space warily. "But it's not." She stood up and shake off the dust from her hands and pants.
The way she said it sent a chill down my spine. I had trusted her instincts before, and they were rarely wrong. If she had expected an illusion but found nothing, then this place was even stranger than it seemed.
"We should gather supplies while we can," Ellie suggested. "Food, weapons, medical kits, anything useful."
We nodded, splitting up into groups.
Mark, Ellie, and Jake went towards the food court on the upper ground floor, while Arya, Ambrose, and I headed towards the pharmacy and general stores. Clark and Nicole took the upper level, where the department stores and sporting goods sections were.
But as we searched, an unsettling feeling began to gnaw at me. Something about this place wasn't right.
"Arya, you said it wasn't an illusion," I muttered as we moved through a convenience store. "But does this place feel... real to you?"
She hesitated before answering. "That's just it. It is real. But some things don't make sense."
I followed her gaze. At first glance, everything looked untouched, abandoned like any other mall would be in an apocalypse. But then I noticed it — the shelves weren't ransacked. The food wasn't spoiled. Everything was perfectly in place, as if someone had just restocked it for us.
Too perfect.
"A trap?" I asked.
"Or a test," Ambrose murmured. "This system doesn't give us anything for free."
Arya frowned and brushed her fingers over a bag of chips on a shelf. "Some of this stuff… it's too neat. Someone was here before us. Or something."
A shiver ran down my spine. We continued searching in silence until Ambrose stopped in his tracks. "Over there."
We turned to where he was pointing. On the wall near the frozen goods section, scrawled in jagged,
red letters, was a message. It was written with blood.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Beneath it, another line, hastily written, almost desperate.
DO NOT TRUST THE SYSTEM. IT LIES.
My throat went dry. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Who left this here?" Arya whispered, stepping closer. "And where are they now?"
We exchanged uneasy glances before continuing our search, more wary than before.
Jake's POV
Mark, Ellie and I went to the food court together when Mark made an interesting discovery.
"This door is locked," he muttered, jiggling the handle of a small, high-end electronics store. "It won't budge."
"Try breaking it," Ellie suggested.
I narrowed my eyes at the keypad lock beside it. "No, this is different. It's not just a regular lock." I pointed at a small inscription on the panel.
Access Restricted. Requires 2 System Tokens to Unlock.
"What the hell is a System Token?" Mark asked.
Ellie crossed her arms. "I know just as much as you are."
"If that's the case, this room probably has something valuable inside," I noted.
I thought about my new ability, the battle trance. It said I could reduce pain for 10 seconds and minor speed boost for 30 seconds. With that, I could jam the lock without feeling much pain.
"Wait, let me try to break it," I said, then, they went out of my way. I clenched my two fists like the activation protocol said. I felt this surge of energy running through my body. Then, with all my force, I kicked the door.
But, it didn't budge. Then, I started kicking it continuously until Ellie finally stopped me.
Ellie grabbed my arm, her grip firm. "Jake, stop! You're wasting your energy."
I exhaled sharply, my chest heaving. My body still hummed with the lingering effects of the battle trance, but the damn door hadn't even cracked. Whatever was keeping it shut wasn't just a regular lock — it was enforced by the system itself.
"Come on, we're just wasting our time here. Besides, there are other thing useful around here," Mark said.
"Let's look at that other electronic store. Maybe, they have something we can use," he added, then started walking.
I sigh heavily, composed myself and followed them.
The three of us walked toward another electronics store, this one smaller and less flashy. Unlike the locked one, this store's entrance was wide open, its sliding doors stuck midway as if they'd lost power.
The place was ransacked — empty shelves, scattered wires, and overturned boxes. But some items remained, mostly old stock or things that had been deemed useless by whoever was here before us.
Ellie sifted through a pile of discarded gadgets. "Most of this is junk," she muttered. "Broken chargers, dead batteries —" She suddenly paused and pulled something from the mess.
A walkie-talkie.
She turned it over in her hands, inspecting it. "Looks intact."
Mark reached for another buried in the rubble. "There's three of them," he said, handing one to me and one to Ellie.
I frowned as I weighed the device in my hand. "Will it even work?"
Ellie pressed the button on the side, and static crackled to life. We all froze, waiting. The faint hum of the mall's eerie silence stretched around us.
Mark also flipped the switch from the ones he got. A faint static buzzed through the speaker. "They still work," he noted.
Ellie glanced at me. "We should keep this."
I nodded. "Yeah. Could come in handy later. If we get separated, these could be useful."
"There are also flashlights in here, huge ones," Ellie exclaimed as if she found gold or something.
"They're still working."
"I'll take one of those, please, thanks" I said. Then, Mark grabbed another one. Ellie was still digging on the shelves, finding something we can use.
I walked further into the store, trying to see if there is something else, while Mark stayed with Ellie.
As if on cue, a sharp clatter echoed from the food court outside.
I stiffened. I ran towards them.
Mark's fingers curled around his weapon. "Is that one of us?"
I exchanged a glance with Ellie. Her posture had gone rigid, her eyes scanning the dimly lit space beyond the doorway.
The silence that followed was unnatural.
I gripped the walkie-talkie tighter. "I don't know, but… we're not alone," I murmured.
Zack's POV
As we were walking down the hall, we passed some several stores like the ones back home. Brands I used to recognize, places I had visited countless times. But now, they felt like hollow shells of what they used to be.
Ambrose walked beside me, scanning the area with a calm intensity. He had that eerie stillness about him, like a predator assessing its surroundings. Meanwhile, Arya kept glancing at the ceiling, as if she expected something to drop from above.
"Something bothering you?" I asked her.
She hesitated before answering. "Yeah. There are cameras."
"Look." She pointed up.
I followed her gaze to the ceiling, where a security camera was mounted in the corner. Its small, red light blinked at us, alive and operational.
"That's not right," I muttered.
"Why not?" Ambrose asked, watching it with an unreadable expression.
"This place looks abandoned, but the cameras are still running," Arya said. "Which means someone — or something — is watching us."
I exchanged a glance with Ambrose, whose face remained impassive. "The system."
I scanned the ceiling and counted at least three more cameras, each one blinking in perfect synchronization. They weren't just recording — they wanted us to know we were being watched.
Ambrose took a step forward. Without warning, he lifted his hand and waved at the nearest camera.
I tensed. "What the hell are you doing?"
He smirked. "Saying hello."
The red light flickered rapidly, almost like… a response.
Arya's fingers twitched near her weapon. "That's not normal."
I instinctively shifted closer to her, my own pulse quickening. "Nothing about this place is normal."
I looked at Ambrose and I felt this irritation. It seems like he thinks this is a game, but it's not. It's about our lives and his acting so immaturely. I am still not over it, he thought I would let this go? Hell no. I want answers, but right now, I should focus on myself first and this one hell of a place.
Before anyone could say anything, we heard a screeching sound almost coming from the upper ground floor where Jake, Mark and Ellie had gone.
Ambrose tensed, his eyes narrowing. "I know that sound," he muttered. "It's the same thing that attacked me before. It sounds like there's more of them here."