Taking a little extra time to develop new contacts is rarely wasted effort. At worst, you end up with a much better idea of the person you’re dealing with, and the world they live in. And at best, you end up with a helluva lot more support than you would have had otherwise.

This was the latter. The Steward was so delighted with the discovery of Squelch that he offered to assign a few of his men to use in our favor. I let Azure loose, finally, and allowed him to take a peek inside The Steward’s mind as that set of circumstances could screw us just as easily as it would screw Sunny. Other than some… unrealistic… ideas about the benefits a long-term relationship could yield, the upside being that he was thinking long term, no hints of betrayal or plans to sell us out.

The downside was, he suspected I was the Ordinator. I didn’t know how other than guesswork, rumors, and whatever the hell his patron was whispering in his ear. The suspicion didn’t seem to carry the usual stigma. He seemed to see it as a potential benefit and point of leverage—from the system’s announcement the Ordinator was presented as a powerful threat. But the nature of the announcement alienated him, made him a target. And pragmatically, the Steward was more interested in him as an ally than a ticket out.

Either way, I had no intention of confirming it for him. The Driftless were in deep shit, the sort of shit I couldn’t afford to get mired in with everything else on my plate.

But, if things ever went cataclysmic and left me completely burned with everyone I knew either dead or gunning for me, I had a place to go.

There was a slight comfort in that.

They escorted us through the Galleria proper, finding the interior almost entirely transformed. The skeleton of the mall itself was still there, glossy floors, escalators—some of which were still working—but almost everything else was altered. On the ground floor, there was a massive communal crafting area superimposed over the wide-open space that was once a large skating rink. A few storefronts were untouched, but most were heavily modified, glass windows removed, replaced with finished wood or brick, adorned with a three-digit-number placard placed somewhere on the front.

Commercial turned residential.

And unless I was misinterpreting the purpose of the handful of tanks that towered at regular intervals, they had running water going as well.

All of it was far more elaborate, clean, and permanent looking than I’d expected. It was no wonder the Driftless were so attached to this place, clinging to it stubbornly despite the hostility of the surrounding environment.

They’d put down roots.

“Check it out.” Our civilian escort grinned. The sides of his head were shaved, remaining hair curving up and bouncing as he walked, like a cockatiel’s crest. Went by Cisco. He pointed the muzzle of his fuck-you-very-much shotgun toward the center floor. The weblike metallic piping and spouts arranged over plots of dirt arranged directly beneath the skylights were immediately recognizable.

“Hydroponics.” I raised an eyebrow.

“Are you growing weed?” Sae asked, suddenly very interested. “Please tell me you’re growing weed.” When I gave her a skeptical look, she shrugged. “What? I haven’t been able to take a damn breath since this shit started.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Hah, I wish.” Cisco shook his head. “Be nice to get a proper chill on. There are some herbs and medicinal shit, but it’s mostly food. We wanna be independent of the market ASAP.”

“You don’t trust the market?” I asked.

“Do you trust food that magically appears in your pockets after you pay for it with Monopoly money?” Cisco shot back, then seemed to hesitate. “Maybe that’s unfair. Supposedly, girl who runs it did everyone a solid when she slashed the prices of healing items during the fucksposition.”

“Probably saved my ass.” Max admitted.

“I dunno. Just seems like a bad idea to take it for granted.” Cisco continued. “The cabal of divine dingos running this show have changed the rules more than once. And from what little I know, merchants get most of their inventory from nowhere, shipped in on the sky fairy express. What if, at some point, the powers that be decide they want us a little more desperate, a little less prepared, and start limiting the merchant’s inventory?”

“No more shipments on the sky fairy express.” Sae said wryly.

“That’s what I’m saying, sister!” Cisco exclaimed, either unaware of Sae’s irony or unaffected by it.

Buried beneath a significant portion of tinfoil, he had a point. The small, unstable economies that had developed around the city at large were almost entirely dependent on merchants. If whoever was running the game disabled merchants, or hell, even hamstrung them, everything would go to shit in short order.

“Self-sustainability is the way man.” Cisco reaffirmed, talking to himself more than any of us.

Astrid—who’d been mostly silent up to this point—suddenly spoke up. “Are you taking us in circles so you have more time to spew hippie shit, or are we close?”

“Stop it.” Astria hissed.

I shot Astrid a look. This confirmed we needed to have a talk after the mission. There was a serious bug up her ass, but taking that out on our hosts wasn’t going to help anything.

Thankfully, Cisco didn’t seem to take it personally. “It’s a big mall little girl, we’re getting there. Chill.” He glanced over at Sae. “Tense group.”

“Why do you think I wanted weed?” Sae groused.

“Fair ‘nuff.”

Most of the population of the Galleria were shut up inside, given the late hour, though there were a handful out and about. Many ignored us, though I felt a handful of lingering looks.

Up ahead—

“Body.” I stopped in place, immediately tensing. Up ahead, a middle-aged man in civilian clothing splayed out on the ground, one leg at an odd angle. Scarlet pooled around his head, but there was no shine to it. The blood had dried.

“Yup.” Cisco said grimly. “Jumped about a week ago.”

And you just left him there?

“And you just left him there?” Astrid said, aloud.

Cisco nodded slowly, smirking a bit. “Tell you what, girl boss. Walk over and see if you can figure out why we left him there.”

“Astrid, hold. Proximity?” I snapped, looking to Max.

“Close.” Max squinted at his UI. “But I’m getting conflicting readings.”

The difference between a coin flip and near-guaranteed success. But why?

I glowered at Cisco in the way I found made most people exceedingly uncomfortable. “Given that we’re on good terms with your Guild Leader, it would be prudent to tell us what we’re walking into.”

He took a step back, holding up a hand defensively. “It’s not a trap, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just weird. Some sort of persistent area-of-effect. Our magic types can’t hack it. No one really knows what it does, other than that it affects memory and seems to be limited to a small radius around this section of the ground floor. Can’t dispel it, can’t identify it.”

“Be my eyes?” I asked Azure.

“You got it, boss.” Azure chirped back. There was an odd sensation, as I felt him take root in my mind, my vision fraying at the fringes

I approached the body.