Chapter 3 Chapter 3

The first thing Leo noticed when he gained consciousness was the smell.

Not rot. Not chemicals. It was something worse than both. It was like a fridge that had been unplugged years ago and then sealed up before anyone dealt with what was inside. It felt cold and stale and it was still wrong in a way that was hard to describe.

He was lying on the tile.

His back hurt. His head hurt. His chest hurt in that specific way from where something had torn at him in the dark before he passed out.

He opened his eyes. He saw a white ceiling panel. The lights were buzzing. There was nothing giving him a cue of where he was.

He pushed his body up onto his elbows. He had this disgusted and irritated look on his face.

The gray tile floor he was on had some black specks in it. The kind of floor you see in a mall or an airport or a school from the nineties. Someone had spilled something dark near him a long time ago and just never came back to deal with it. A stain about the size of his forearm.

He looked around.

The storefronts were empty. The metal gates were all pulled down. A fountain was in the middle of the floor with no water in it. There was a sign hanging from the ceiling that said FOOD COURT with an arrow. The letters used to be red. Now they were just a darker version of the same gray as everything else.

He was in a mall for sure. But that mall had absolutely no business existing.

The air there was too still. Not like the dead air pockets back home. Those felt hungry and patient, like something waiting for you to step into them. This one was different. This felt like the whole building was holding its breath.

Leo pressed his palm on the floor for support and got up on his feet. He put one hand on a pillar and held on. The pillar was cold. Way too cold, like this place had been sitting here for a hundred years with no heat, no people, nothing coming in from outside.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said.

His voice echoed. The echo kept going longer than it should have. It came back from walls that were further away than they looked.

Then a number showed up in his vision.

Sanity 98%

It was sitting there at the edge of his sight. Like a notification he couldn't get rid of.

"What is that?" he said. He rubbed his eyes to check if he was just seeing things or it was real.

He then turned in a slow circle. The mall went in every direction. Hallways going left, right, straight ahead. Escalators going up to a second floor and down to a lower level he couldn't see from where he was. There was a big concrete plant pot with things in them that had been dead so long they'd turned to powder.

"Hey!" he shouted.

Just the echo.

"Where am I?" He was looking at the mall from both corners of his eyes.

His voice came back from three directions. None of them sounded right. It was too flat, too hollow, like the sound was being sent back to him from somewhere dark. It sounded horrific.

He started walking.

His boots were squeaking on the tile. It was still wet from the railyard. He looked down at himself. Same jacket, same jeans, same shirt with the coffee stain on the sleeve he'd been meaning to wash for two weeks. Everything was exactly the same. Except he wasn't in Newark anymore.

He walked past a store that used to sell phones. Gate down. Through it he could see the display counters and the dust sitting on top of everything. A mannequin in the window. Woman, blonde wig sitting crooked, one arm up like she'd been reaching for something when everything stopped.

Leo walked past.

The mannequin's head turned.

He stopped. His eyes widened in shock. His face ran out of blood. He swallowed hard. His heart did something bad in his chest. He turned back slowly to check

The mannequin was facing the other way. Into the store. Like she'd never been looking at him.

"I imagined that," he said out loud. It was monosyllabic and his voice was shaking.

He kept walking.

The mall shifted.

Not a lot. Just enough. The hallway ahead of him was longer than it had been a few seconds ago. The fountain was closer. The food court sign was further. He blinked and everything went back.

"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."

Music started playing. That specific type of music they used to play in malls. Soft rock with all the edges filed down. It was coming from everywhere and nowhere specifically because the speakers were built into the ceiling and the building is too big.

The speakers crackled. The music skipped. Then kept going like nothing happened.

Leo stopped in the middle of the floor. He looked up at the cameras in the corners. At the empty upper walkways. At the dead plants and the dry fountain.

"I know you're watching," he said.

Nothing.

"You sent that message. You pulled me down here. You've been in my dreams for months." His voice was shaking but he kept going anyway. "So come out. Stop hiding. Show yourself."

For a moment nothing.

Then the air changed. It becomes heavier and colder. The lights flickered once. The music cut out right in the middle of a note.

The voice came from inside his head. Inside his chest and inside the walls.

"Bold. They usually cry first."

Leo spun around. Nobody was there.

"Where are you?" His voice was beginning to steady. His face was starting to burn with rage.

"Everywhere. Nowhere. Behind the desk you keep dreaming about."

No real gender to it. Just flat and bored. Like someone reading out the fine print because they had to.

Leo's hands went into fists. "Let me go now." He said through his teeth

"No. Hahahaha.”

"I didn't agree to this."

"You touched the sigil. That's the agreement."

"I touched a wall. That's not a contract."

"It is in this jurisdiction O little boy."

Leo laughed. It came out half a laugh, half something else entirely. "Jurisdiction. You're a thing in a suit behind a desk and you're talking to me about jurisdiction."

The air pressed down on him. His ears popped. Lights flickered again.

"You are Player seven million four hundred forty five thousand two hundred twelve. Your urban entropy has been requisitioned. Debt one existential constant. Interest accrues immediately."

"I don't know what any of that means."

"You will eventually,” he said slowly.

Leo looked around. The mannequins were facing him now. All of them. Every storefront. Heads tilted. Painted eyes all pointed straight at him.

He pointed at the nearest one. "This is a joke right? You pulled me out of my actual life to stick me in a dead mall with a bunch of plastic dolls?"

"This is your first mission. The Hollow Mall. Complete it and you may earn an ability. Fail and you will be consumed."

"Consumed how."

"The mall is hungry. It has no't eaten in a while."

Leo's mouth went dry. He swallowed. His throat clicked.

"I want to see my father," he said.

The voice paused.

"Your father is not available."

"Then let him go. Let both of us go. I'll forget the wall existed. I'll go home and never go near the railyard again. Just let him out."

"That is not how the Game works."

"I don't care how it works." His voice cracked. He hated that. "You took him from me when I was twelve. You left a boot on the tracks and let my mum spend three years calling the morgue every single Tuesday. You don't get to tell me how anything works."

His eyes were wet. He wiped them fast.

"Your father touched the sigil. He was not drafted. He was processed differently."

"Processed. What does that mean? Where is he?"

The voice didn't answer.

Leo stepped forward. "Tell me where my father is."

"Play the Game and you will find out."

"I'm not playing anything until you answer me."

"Then you will die here alone in a mall that doesn't exist. And your mother will spend the rest of her life looking at your empty room wondering why you stopped coming home."

Leo stopped breathing for a second. He took a step backward.

The voice went softer. Almost gentle. That somehow made it worse.

"Play the Game. Maybe when it's done you go home. Maybe your father goes with you."

Leo looked up at the ceiling. At the camera lenses. At the lights threatening to go out.

"You're lying," he said.

"Possibly."

"You're definitely lying."

"Then you have nothing to lose by playing."

He stood there. His chest was tight. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. He thought about his mum that morning. Her hand on the table. Her tired eyes. You're going to get yourself hurt.

He was already hurt.

He thought about Jin in her flat watching people argue silently on the telly. You've completely lost it.

Maybe.

He wiped his face. He took a breath and let it out slowly.

"Fine," he said with his eyes tightly brunched and his mouth tightly pressed together.

"Fine?"

"I'll play the game." He said with intense frustration.

"Good."

"But not for you. Not because I'm scared of you." He pointed at the nearest camera. His finger was shaking. He kept it up anyway. "I'm doing it because my dad taught me to tie a climbing knot. He said always leave a loop in case you need to come back. So I'm going to play. I'm going to get through it. Then I'm going to find him. And we're both going home."

The voice went quiet.

"Your father taught you that?"

"Yeah. He did."

"Interesting."

"What's interesting about it?"

No response. It was gone.

The music came back. The lights stopped flickering. The air warmed up just enough to still feel completely wrong.

And the mannequins started moving.

One at a time. The blonde in the phone store turned her head. The man in the clothing store lifted an arm. A child-sized one in a toy store Leo hadn't even noticed before pressed its hand flat against the glass.

Leo backed up.

"What the hell," he said quietly.

The hallway ahead of him stretched out longer. The fountain got closer. The food court sign moved further away. The floor tilted slightly and he stumbled sideways.

“Whoow.” He caught himself on a pillar. It was warm now. It definitely wasn't warm before.

A screen appeared in his vision.

Mission 1. The Hollow Mall.

Objective: Reach the Anchor Room.

Reward: Ability Unlock — Threshold Memory. Warning: Do not touch the mannequins.

He read it twice.

"Do not touch the mannequins," he said. "Really great advice. So helpful. Cheers."

The child mannequin in the toy store pressed its face against the glass. Its plastic cheek went flat against it. The smile stayed exactly the same.

Leo turned and ran.

Behind him he heard a gate going up. Metal on metal. Then another. Then another.

He didn't look back.

He ran past the fountain. Past a shoe shop. Past an escalator going upward with nobody on it.

The hallway split. “Left or right?” He said out loud.

He went left.

The hallway got longer as he ran. The end kept moving away. His boots slapped the tile. His breathing went hard and fast. The scar on his palm throbbed.

He looked back. There were three mannequins. The blonde, the man, the child.

They weren't running. They were just walking but keeping up.

"They're just walking," he gasped. "They're literally just walking. I can outwalk mannequins. This is fine. This is completely fine."

The hallway shifted again.

The end was behind him now. He was running the wrong way. He skidded and nearly went down. He got himself back.

The mannequins kept coming.

He turned and ran back.

There was a door at the end. Plain white with a handle with nothing written on it.

He got to it and grabbed the handle and pulled.

It was locked.

"Come on." He rattled it hard. "Come on." He was sweating profusely now.

Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

He looked at the door and looked at them.

Do not touch the mannequins.

He had no plans to. But dying in a mall that didn't exist wasn't part of his plans either.

He stepped back from the door and faced them. They stopped when he stopped. All three in a line. Same smile on every face.

"Okay," Leo said. "Think. Think. Think.”

The one on the left tilted its head.

He stepped back and his heel caught something. A floor grate. He looked down. Loose. Dark underneath.

The one on the right took a step toward him.

Leo dropped to his knees and got his fingers through the grate and pulled.

The child mannequin stepped forward.

He pulled harder. The skin on his fingers tore. The grate came up an inch. Just enough.

Five feet away.

Leo shoved the grate aside, dropped his legs into the hole and let himself fall.

He fell into the dark.

Above him the child mannequin looked down through the hole.

It wasn't smiling anymore. Its mout

h was open. And where the teeth should have been there was just static.

Leo landed on something soft that moved under him.

He scrambled back fast. His hand went into something wet.

He couldn't see anything at all. But he could hear breathing.

Not his.

Something was down there in the dark with him.