The neon sign was still lit.

  Not fully—half the letters were dead, the others flickering erratically, their letters bleeding red in the chemical downpour—but it was unmistakable, hanging at a crooked angle above the shattered dome entrance like a corpse that refused to stop twitching.

  ETERNAL MALL — SHOP TILL YOU DROP

  The joke had aged badly. Acid rain needled through their helmets as Chen and Flora stumbled into the skeletal remains of its entrance archway. The air changed the moment they crossed the threshold—cooler, heavier, reeked of dust and mold. The dome’s entrance arch had partially collapsed sometime in the past decade, spilling slabs of ferrocrete and twisted rebar into a jagged funnel that narrowed the approach into a single, ugly choke.

  Six Hellwraith bikes tore through the chemical fog, their chrome-plated chainsaw attachments screaming like mechanical banshees. Their riders hunched over handlebars slick with rain and blood, armors painted with the eight-eyed skull emblem of their warband. Behind them came ten foot soldiers—arrived by truck, dropped down a corner away from their targeted entrance. Their boots pounding the ferrocrete in a tribal rhythm that echoed off the domed ceiling.

  "Down!" Chen snarled.

  He slammed into Flora mid-stride, tackling her behind the overturned corpse of a vendor kiosk. The kiosk had once sold novelty soda cups; now it was a slab of bent alloy and carbonized plastic. Bullets chewed through its far side a heartbeat later.

  Chen didn’t hesitate. He shouldered the double-barrel shotgun, the engraving on its casing catching the hellish glow of burning debris. The first shot tore through the bike’s front tire, shredding rubber and flesh in one wet explosion. The rider flipped backward, his chainsaw embedding itself in his own chest before detonating in a spray of hydraulic fluid and blood. Shrapnel from the bike’s frame caught two other raiders in the throat, collapsing them like marionettes with cut strings. One bike skidded into the remains, its rider impaled on twisted rebar.

  Screams echoed off the dome’s broken ceiling.

  Chen ejected the spent shell with a sharp , the casing hissing as it hit the acid rain—slipping through the broken ceiling of the atrium six stories above. He switched to the corporate assault rifle slung across his chest—its matte-black finish already pitted from the corrosive downpour. Three precise shots punched through the visor of a Hellwraith lieutenant, the man’s head snapping back as crimson mist bloomed behind him. Then he walked the iron sight across a Hellwraith gunner trying to return fire behind a fallen bike. The man jerked once, then folded backward, armor sparking as rounds punched through.

  The charging stopped.

  Gunfire replaced it—sloppy, furious, suppressive. Rounds snapped past the kiosk, chipping concrete, filling the air with powdered stone. The Hellwraiths pulled back just enough to re-form.

  Chen popped out again.

  "I’ll cover you!" he yelled, shoving Flora toward the relative safety of a collapsed pillar. "Drag those corpses back. Loot their shit!"

  Flora’s voice came clipped and precise through the comms despite the tremor in her hands: “Using enemy weapons is not compliant with Republic rules of engagement—”

  Chen’s armored fist cracked against the back of her helmet with a metallic . "Emergency fucking exceptions! LOOT THE DAMN CORPSES!"

  Flora recoiled, her ice-blue eyes wide with shock behind her cracked visor. For a split second, Chen saw something beyond the Republic’s perfect soldier—a flicker of something compared to the Flora Rosenkrantz that he knew. Then she nodded sharply, darting forward with mechanical precision.

  She came back fast—too fast. Three bundled bricks of plastic explosive slapped onto the kiosk beside him, plus a Hellwraith assault rifle still warm from its last owner’s hands.

  Chen blinked.

  The Hellwraiths regrouped, their heavy machine gun opening up with a deafening

  that shredded concrete into lethal shrapnel. Chen slapped the plastic explosive onto the archway’s remaining load-bearing pillars, the sticky putty adhering to ancient rust. Flora’s finger hovered over the detonator.

  "Now!" Chen barked.

  The explosion was a physical thing—a wall of sound and heat that punched the air from their lungs. The archway collapsed inward with a groan of tortured metal, burying four more Hellwraiths under tons of concrete and rebar. Dust billowed outward like a living thing, swallowing the entrance whole.

  For half a second, there was silence. Then Chen was already turning.

  "Multiple entrances," Chen gasped, dragging Flora to her feet, hauling her forward as she was still ripping another belt of explosives from a corpse. "They’ll flank us! Shoot and run. No stopping. Go, GO!"

  They stumbled deeper into the mall’s department store wing, racks of skeletal clothing displays forming a labyrinth of potential ambush points. Dead neon signs from bygone eras flickered reflections through the gloom—, , —a maze of abandoned consumption. Clothing stores lined both sides, their glass fronts shattered, shelves toppled into crooked corridors of fabric and plastic. Mannequins lay decapitated in heaps, torsos half-melted by old fires.

  They rounded a corner and slammed straight into a three-man Hellwraith squad taking cover behind a toppled mannequin display. Both sides froze for a heartbeat of mutual shock.

  All five of them screamed.

  "COMMIE FAGGOTS!" screamed one raider, fumbling for his rifle. His equipment snagged on a hanging rack of designer suits, sending them fluttering like ghosts. The trigger of his weapon got caught by a piece of fabric as he tried to fumble it out. The weapon misfired. Rounds tore into the foam ceiling, sending chunks raining down. Chen swore and ducked as debris exploded around him. Flora curled behind a piece of debris that was once a part of a massive suspended decoration mascot.

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  Chen raised his shotgun, its barrel against a wooden rack. He fired the shotgun through a clothing rack, the Drake Shot rounds didn’t slow—it tore through folded jackets, plastic hangers, and bone alike, turning two Hellwraiths into a single expanding cloud of shredded, flaming matter that painted the far wall red.

  The last raider dove behind a cashier counter, his voice cracking with terror: "AAHH! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!"

  Flora moved before Chen could react. She pitched a scavenged grenade underhand. It arced perfectly, detonating right in the air above the counter with a concussive . The explosion punched the entire structure downward into the floor, pulverized it entirely. The screaming raider died in a shower of shattered glass and melted plastic. The shockwave leveled a shoe store display nearby, turning it into a twisted heap of mannequins with missing limbs.

  Chen snatched spare magazines off the corpses, tossing them to Flora. "Keep running! They have numbers—we need distance!"

  As they sprinted, Chen’s boot crunched through a nest of radiation-mutated rats. The creatures squealed and scattered in all directions, their glowing green eyes vanishing into the shadows. Flora flinched at the sudden movement, her hand instinctively flying to her pistol.

  They crashed through double doors into a two-level gym complex—sweat-stained mats, rusted dumbbell racks, a boxing octagon rising from the center like an altar. Punching bags swung lazily from chains, disturbed by their passage. Heavy metal music blared from a portable speaker left by the Hellwraiths—distorted guitars and guttural vocals providing a soundtrack to the impending massacre.

  Gunfire erupted.

  Six Hellwraiths poured in from the opposite entrance, their weapons already spitting fire. Rounds sparked off the boxing ring’s steel railings as Chen and Flora dove for cover behind a stack of weight plates.

  Chen flanked right, moving with the fluid precision of a man who’d spent lifetime in combat zones. He leaned around the corner of the ring and fired—two shots in rapid succession. The first round caught an RPG carrier in the chest, detonating his weapon in a fireball that sent shockwaves through the room. Punching bags toppled like felled trees, their sand filling the air with gritty clouds.

  Flora suppressed with her looted assault rifle, her shots precise despite her injury. Two Hellwraiths crumpled, writhing on the ground, clutching shattered kneecaps. Her magazine clicked empty.

  A rocket flew by, the passing shockwave knocking Flora to the floor, and it slammed into the glass screen behind them. Glass shards rained down like diamond hail, cutting through his outer layers. Chen Feng tasted blood in his mouth. A flashbang sailed over the boxing ring, detonating with a blinding . White light flooded his vision. He staggered but didn’t fall—muscle memory guiding him as he chambered another two rounds into the shotgun and fired from the hip. The shotgun blast reduced a charging enemy to a fine, expanding, burning red mist that coated the ring’s canvas in a slick sheen.

  Chen felt the cloud of burning vapor rather than saw. Another rocket screamed past a heartbeat later above their heads, clipping the mirrored wall. The glass exploded, shards raining down like knives.

  The Hellwraiths fell back, voices raw.

  "Fuck you! These two commie losers are CHEATING!" a Hellwraith screamed, his voice echoing through the ringing in Chen’s ears. The raiders retreated, tripping on overturned treadmills, cursing in a dozen dialects.

  Flora slumped against the wall, gasping hard. Blood seeped through her torn uniform where glass had found its mark. Chen grabbed her arm, hauling her upright.

  "NO REST!"

  They hit the stairwell at speed.

  They stumbled toward the stairs just as more Hellwraiths rushed to the shattered ground-floor entrance. Second floor: weight machines and treadmills arranged in precise rows, their belts coated in dust. Chen slammed two racks of barbells over the edge, then pointed to the weight machines near the stairwell. "Don’t let them use this staircase—Flora, MOVE!"

  They barricaded the stairwell, shoving racks and machines. Flora slipped, pain flaring, but didn’t scream. Five hundred kilograms of metal crashed down the stairs in a thunderous avalanche. A lone Hellwraith who’d broken formation too early screamed as the weights crushed his leg before burying him completely. His muffled cries echoed up the stairwell.

  Flora wiped sweat from her brow, leaving a crimson smear. "How long will that hold?"

  "Long enough," Chen gasped, already moving toward the second-floor railing.

  Below them, fifteen Hellwraiths flooded the ground floor, their gunfire creating a storm of brass and steel that chewed through reinforced glass. Firing into every shadow. Chen peeked from the reinforced glass guardrail and popped up, fired once—a single Drake Shot round that punched through the glass, the incendiary pellets didn’t bounce—it left behind a jagged hole.

  Someone screamed below.

  One raider beneath the floor was engulfed in flame. The ammo he carried cooked off violently, detonating in a chain that blew the man apart. Shrapnel tore into at least two others, molten metal splashing across their burning clothes. They frantically brushed off the melted brass, one of them running around, flailing.

  "Holy shit! HOLY SHIT!" echoed from below.

  Flora moved to follow up, but Chen yanked her back just as a storm of bullets shredded the glass railing where her head had been. Rounds shattered the remaining glass railing, sending crystalline fragments dancing through the air like malevolent fireflies.

  "This buys us seconds," Chen rasped. "Go!"

  They sprinted down the second-floor corridor, past abandoned storefronts with shattered windows. Neon signs started flickering through the smoke—, , —their promises of a better life reduced to toxic ghosts.

  Behind them, the Hellwraiths howled: "BURN THEM! BURN EVERYTHING!"

  Chen skidded to a halt before a cluster of elevators. One dinged to a stop with eerie politeness behind the closed aluminum doors.

  He didn’t hesitate. He fired the shotgun straight through the closed doors. The blast punched inward with a wet , followed by screams and the violent cooking-off of ammunition. Flames erupted from the elevator cabin, casting the hallway in flickering orange shadows.

  Flora stopped. She stared at the carnage, her face pale behind her cracked visor. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

  The elevator doors collapsed inward, revealing five charred corpses still twitching amid the flames. Molten plastic dripped from melted equipment.

  "Chen Feng!" Flora’s voice cracked with something beyond protocol—pure human horror. "You didn’t CONFIRM the targets! What if there were neutral civilians inside?!"

  Chen whirled on her, his face tight with fury behind his visor.

  "Holy shit because you’re right—I can’t even argue—BUT WE’RE ABOUT TO DIE and you’re thinking about ?!"

  Flora slapped him. Chen caught her wrist before her strike would land. "No time. You can court-martial me after the fight."

  They ran. Behind them, the burning elevator played heavy metal from a half-melted music player, the heavy brass and drum sending tremors through the floor despite being engulfed in fire.

  .

  The entire dome shuddered. Fire spread across the lower designer stores like liquid gold, consuming designer boutiques and luxury apartments. Concrete groaned under its own weight. A chunk of ceiling crashed down twenty meters behind them, blocking their retreat.

  A new voice cut through the chaos—a deep, guttural roar amplified by a vehicle-mounted speaker. A Hellwraith Legate stood atop his command vehicle, his black armor gleaming with unnatural light. Faint tattoos glowed beneath his skin—pale imitations of Erebus’s power, but still terrifying.

  "Seal every exit!" the Legate bellowed. "Capture them ALIVE!"

  Nearly a hundred Hellwraiths poured into the lower levels, their boots pounding the floor in unison. Above them, engines roared. The Legate’s convoy looped around to an elevated interchange ramp—a pre-Collapse skybridge connecting to the sixth floor. They accelerated, tires screeching on the rain-slicked concrete.

  The dome’s structural integrity alarm blared—a mechanical death knell that echoed through the burning complex.

  CRASH.

  The lead vehicle punched through the sixth-floor glass wall in a storm of crystalline shards. More vehicles followed, their headlights cutting through the smoke like searchlights from hell. Engines echoed through the collapsing dome as the final trap snapped shut.

  Momentum. Relentless.

  The hunt was on.