Emily pushed the flattened metal gate with more force than she intended; the lock that should have resisted her was already gone, yanked away like a promise someone had broken hours ago. The chain clattered at her boots and the mall swallowed the sound, a cavernous hush that felt wrong in her bones. Of all the places to be sent alone, she thought, chest tightening as the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and winked like tired eyes. This is my job. Stay sharp. Don't be ridiculous.
She stepped inside on reflex, flashlight in hand, radio clipped to her shoulder buzzing faintly against the fabric of her uniform, and the smell hit her first: old popcorn, mildew, and something metallic beneath it that made her stomach flip. The storefronts were skeletal, mannequins frozen in half-smiles and fiberboard displays bowed under dust. Her footsteps echoed too loud. Shadows pooled between pillars like spilled ink. It's just a building. It's just a building, she muttered, the words small and brittle.
She moved down the corridor slowly, palms damp against her flashlight's handle. Every scrape of a shopping cart, every whisper of a loose ceiling tile made her heart hop in her throat. Her mind supplied noises where there were none, the creak of a vent became boots crossing an atrium, the drip from a skylight became a voice calling her name. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone. It felt like a litany and a lie at once.
After ten minutes, or ten heartbeats; time was slippery here, she heard it: low, fragmented voices from somewhere ahead, like someone speaking into a radio in another room. Her whole body stilled. She rounded a corner and saw a gate between two stores, the kind that rolls down in front of windows. It wasn't fully closed; a sliver of shadow bled through the gap. A muted conversation leaked from the other side, urgent, clipped. Emily's fingers flexed on the flashlight; she wanted to call it in but the air pressed on her, begging discretion.
She shoved the gate aside. The metal shrieked, protesting, and light from a flickering emergency exit painted the scene in thin, sickly strips. Three figures hunched in a circle: one leaned against a pillar, a man with scuffed sneakers and a face like someone who'd stayed awake too long, Marcus. Beside him, a woman cradled her arm as if pain were still warm, Elena. And between them, a silent presence that froze Emily more than the others did: du, eyes wide and still, mouth set as if they had swallowed a scream.
They looked up as the gate banged open, all three faces a map of fatigue and fear. Marcus's voice, hoarse and quick, spilled into the sudden quiet. "We thought someone closed it on us. There was, someone, we lost Pete back by the food court. We heard—" He stopped, the words crumbling, replaced by a raw, animal intake of breath. Elena's hands shook; she gripped her arm harder, knuckles white. "Screams. It sounded like—" Her voice cracked and she glanced at du as if hoping they'd fill the silence with something steadier.
Emily's mouth felt dry. Her training supplied phrases, protocols, calm. Her body remembered steps and checks like a muscle memory. But underneath the uniform, under the neat braid and the badge, something small and human and very loud whispered run. She swallowed it down like bile.
She took a breath that steadied her fingers. Her flashlight landed on Marcus's sneakers, then Elena's trembling hand, then on the place where the last scream had cut off the night. She could smell the phantom of it, copper, fear, the smell of something wrong.
Her voice came out lower than she'd meant, threaded with the professional edge she cultivated and the tremor she couldn't iron away. "What is going on here?" she asked, meeting du's eyes directly, searching for a foothold in the chaos that might be steadier than her own racing pulse as she herself was visibly scared by now.
