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The mark on her wrist won't stop glowing.
Ivy's sitting against the fountain base, one hand pressed over the burn scar that's pulsing like a second heartbeat. Her knife's on the tile next to her boot. She hasn't picked it up in five minutes. That scares me more than the blood did.
"How long?" I ask.
She doesn't look up. "They pinged it ten minutes ago. Maybe less. Depends how fast they move."
"And they're coming here."
"Yeah." Her voice is flat. "Debt marks are two-way. I show up somewhere new, stay longer than an hour, they get coordinates. It's in the contract."
I want to move a wall. Grow spikes. Do something that feels like protecting her. But I burned everything I had left keeping her alive, and the mall's still trying to pull itself back together. The fountain's water is barely a trickle. Half my lights are out. I've got maybe enough charge to unlock one more room.
"So we lock the doors," I say.
"You can't lock them." She finally looks up. Her face is pale under the grime. "I tried your front gate on the way in. It opened."
"That's different. You weren't hostile."
"They won't be either." She laughs, and it sounds like breaking glass. "They'll have paperwork. Repossession notice, legal retrieval, whatever. Your mall reads intent, right? They're not coming to kill me. Just take me. Clean hands."
I don't have hands, clean or otherwise. I've got tile and rebar and a couple of flickering bulbs. I've got a tiny monster the size of a potato who's currently sitting on the snack cabinet like a gargoyle, watching Ivy with big round eyes.
"There's gotta be something," I say.
Ivy shakes her head. She's not arguing. She's just tired.
"I shouldn't have stayed," she says quietly. "I knew better. I just—" She stops. Breathes. "I thought I had more time."
"Time for what?"
"To figure out what happened to my brother." She touches the knife hilt, doesn't pick it up. "He sent me a message three months ago. One line. 'Found it under Moonrail. Don't come.' Then nothing."
"And you came anyway."
"Of course I did." Her jaw tightens. "Wouldn't you?"
I would. I did. I died trying to get somewhere on time and woke up wired into a dead mall's bones. So yeah. I get it.
"He was here," I say. "Your brother. Wasn't he."
Ivy's head snaps up. "How do you know?"
"I don't. Not for sure. But you crashed my gate looking for something, and it wasn't coffee." I wish I could pace. I wish I had a body that could do something other than think and watch. "If he was here, maybe I can find traces. Logs. Security footage. I don't know what I've got yet, but—"
"It doesn't matter." She cuts me off. "I'm leaving."
"No."
"Yes." She grabs the knife, gets to her feet. Her leg buckles and she catches herself on the fountain edge, breathing hard. "I'm not getting you killed. You saved my life. I'm not paying you back by bringing a extraction team through your door."
"They're already coming."
"Then I meet them outside." She pushes off the fountain, takes two steps toward the gate. "You lock up behind me. Shut everything down. They don't care about the mall. They want me."
"And if they kill you?"
She stops.
"You said it yourself," I push. "You're worth more to them breathing. But what happens when you can't pay? What happens when they get tired of waiting?"
Her shoulders are shaking. Not crying. Anger, maybe. Or just exhaustion.
"I'll figure it out," she says.
"Or you stay, and we figure it out together."
She turns around. Her eyes are too bright.
"You don't even know me," she says. "Why do you care?"
Because you're the first person who's walked through my doors in however long I've been here. Because I'm so tired of being alone I can feel it in the mall's walls. Because when you bled on my tile I felt it, and I'm not letting you go back out there to die.
I don't say any of that.
"Because it's my door," I say instead. "And I get to decide who's welcome."
She stares at the ceiling. At the cameras. At me, I guess, even though she can't see me.
"What's your name?" she asks.
I hesitate. I've been the mall for so long I almost forgot I used to be something else.
"Noah," I say.
She closes her eyes. When she opens them, something's shifted.
"Okay, Noah." Her voice is steadier now. Colder. "If I stay, you promise me something."
"What?"
"If this goes bad—if they get in, if I can't stop them, if I lose it—you lock me out. You seal every door between me and your core. You don't try to save me. You don't burn yourself down again." She takes a step closer to the nearest camera, and I can see the scar on her wrist still glowing under her sleeve. "Promise me."
I don't want to promise that.
But she's not asking because she doesn't trust me. She's asking because she does, and that's somehow worse.
"I promise," I lie.
She knows I'm lying. I can see it in the way her mouth twists. But she nods anyway.
"All right," she says. "Then tell me what you've got. Traps. Locks. Monsters. Something."
"Not much." I run through my available systems. It's a short list. "I can open the coffee shop. There's a healing runework in the back counter, I think. Old retail magic. Might give you a boost."
"That's it?"
"I've got Mallow."
We both look at the tiny fluffball on the snack cabinet. He chirps.
"Great," Ivy mutters. "A potato and a broken vending machine. We're going to die."
"Not helping."
"I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to be realistic." She limps toward the coffee shop gate, testing her weight on the bad leg. "How long to get that runework active?"
I focus. The coffee shop's been dark since I woke up, but I can feel the bones of it. Old spell-lines in the tile. A charging circle behind the counter. It's faint, but it's there.
"Give me two minutes," I say.
"You've got one."
I push. The mall pushes back, sluggish and sulking, but it listens. The coffee shop's sign flickers. Once. Twice. Then it catches, and pale blue light spills across the corridor.
The front doors rattle.
Ivy goes still. Her hand drops to her knife.
"That was fast," she whispers.
I stretch my senses toward the entrance. Three people. No, four. All of them armed. Two carrying something long and metallic—battering rams, maybe, or pry bars. One holding a tablet that's glowing the same sickly color as Ivy's wrist.
The fourth one's holding a briefcase.
"They've got papers," I say.
Ivy swears under her breath. "Demolition or retrieval?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yeah." She draws the knife. "One means they're taking me. The other means they're taking everything."
The front door shudders. I didn't lock it. I can't lock it, not without a hostile reading, and they're not hostile.
They're just here to collect.
The door swings open.
Ivy steps into the coffee shop's blue light, blade up, shoulders squared.
"Hey, Noah?" she says quietly.
"Yeah?"
"If we live through this, I'm gonna need you to explain how a dead mall ended up with a name like yours."
I would laugh, but the collectors are walking in, and the one with the briefcase is smiling.
"Ivy Rowan," he calls. His voice echoes. "You're three months and forty-seven thousand marks overdue. We're here to settle your account."