Chapter 4: Customer Service is a Nightmare

Chapter 4: Customer Service is a Nightmare

The Continuum Corp building was a sterile white knife stabbing at the perpetually bruised twilight of Neo-Veridia’s sky. It didn’t belong here. Amongst the gargoyle-encrusted tenements and flickering neon chaos, its clean lines and pristine glass were an architectural insult. It was a place without shadows, and in my line of work, a place without shadows is where the worst monsters hide.

“So, this is the place,” a low voice growled beside me.

Lyra swung off her bike, the leather of her pants creaking like a promise of violence. She’d shown up less than an hour after I’d called, a feral grin on her face. A direct assault on a mysterious new power in her city was a hunt she couldn’t resist. My ribs still sent a dull, throbbing protest every time I breathed too deeply—a souvenir from our ‘negotiation’.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked, her amber eyes scanning the building’s unnervingly perfect facade. “Smells like nothing. No life, no magic. Just… cold.”

“Kenji’s diagnostic AI doesn’t lie, and it got one hell of a slap on the wrist for peeking behind their firewall,” I said, rolling my shoulders. “This is their nest.”

Elara stood a little behind us, clutching the Chronos Cube. She was a beacon of nervous energy, but there was a new, hard set to her jaw. The digital counterattack at Kenji’s shop had shown her that hiding wasn’t an option. The Epoch Wardens weren’t just hunting her; they were a plague, and she held the cure.

Our goal was simple: get in, find out what a department store needed with a temporal engine and an army of dust-bunnies, and get out. Preferably without becoming a missing persons report ourselves.

The front doors were massive panels of smoked glass that should have slid open automatically. They remained stubbornly, unnaturally still. There was no lock to pick, no keypad to bypass.

“Allow me,” Lyra grunted, cracking her knuckles.

“Wait,” Elara said, stepping forward. “It’s not locked. It’s… paused.” She held up the Chronos Cube. The obsidian surface seemed to warp, the reflections on its face swirling. She placed a hand on the glass, her glowing runes pulsing in time with the Cube’s low hum. “It’s a temporal ward. It exists in a moment that has already passed. You can’t force a door that isn’t in the same ‘when’ as you are.”

She closed her eyes, concentrating. A low thrum filled the air. The runes on her skin flared, and with a soft shhhhlick that sounded like time itself snapping back into place, the doors slid open.

The inside was even worse than the outside. It was a vast, multi-leveled retail space, impossibly bright and silent. Gleaming white floors reflected the perfectly diffused lighting from an unseen source. Soft, generic music played from hidden speakers, a melody designed to be forgotten the instant you heard it. Displays of elegant, arcane-looking clocks and timepieces stood like silent metal soldiers on glass shelves. And there were mannequins everywhere—posed in eerily lifelike stances, dressed in expensive, tailored suits.

There was no dust. There were no staff. There were no other customers. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature snaked its way up my spine.

“I don’t like this,” Lyra snarled, her senses on high alert. “It’s a tomb with good lighting.”

“We need to find the building’s core,” I said, my hand resting on PEACEMAKER. “The source of the power. Kenji said basements are good for that sort of thing.”

We started walking, our footsteps echoing unnaturally in the cavernous space. We passed an aisle labeled ‘Pocket-Watch Paradigms’ and turned a corner into ‘Grandfather Paradoxes’. Ten minutes later, we passed ‘Pocket-Watch Paradigms’ again.

I stopped, holding up a hand. “Okay, something’s wrong.”

“You think?” Lyra growled. “I feel like a rat in a maze designed by a god with a sick sense of humor.” She suddenly took off, her powerful legs eating up the ground as she sprinted down the long, white aisle. She ran for a full thirty seconds before vanishing around a distant corner. Three seconds later, she shot past us from the direction we’d just come, skidding to a halt.

“It loops,” she spat, her eyes glowing with frustrated rage. “The whole damn floor loops.”

I pulled a piece of chalk from my pocket—a habit from my early ghoul-hunting days—and drew a large X on the polished floor. We walked. Five minutes later, we were standing on the X again.

“It’s not just a loop,” Elara whispered, her gaze distant. My Slayer’s Sight was useless here, blinded by the sterile temporal energy, but she seemed to see something else. “The space is folded. The path forward isn’t a straight line.” She held the Cube before her. The humming intensified. “The currents of time are… tangled. But they all flow from one direction. That way.” She pointed towards a blank, featureless wall between two display cases.

As we approached the wall, a sound made us freeze. A soft, plastic click.

It came from behind us. I turned slowly. One of the mannequins, a bald male model in a grey suit, had its head turned, facing us directly. I could have sworn it was facing the other way a second ago.

“Did you see that move?” I asked in a low voice.

“No,” Lyra said, a dangerous snarl in her voice. “But I’m about to make it move.”

Suddenly, another click echoed from our left. Another mannequin had turned. Then another. And another. All around us, the silent plastic figures were swiveling their heads, their blank, painted eyes fixing on us. The pleasant, forgettable music faltered, replaced by a low, static hum.

Then they moved.

It wasn't a fluid motion. They jerked to life like puppets on a string, their limbs snapping into place with unnatural speed. They stepped off their platforms, their polished shoes making no sound on the floor. One moment they were twenty feet away, the next, they were ten, flickering across the space between heartbeats. A time-stuttering advance that was impossible to track.

Lyra let out a roar of pure, primal rage and met the first one head-on. Her hands, now tipped with thick, black claws, tore through the mannequin’s suit and the hard plastic beneath. She ripped its head clean off, but the body kept coming, arms swinging.

PEACEMAKER barked, the sound a thunderclap in the sterile hall. My first silver-cored bullet blew a hole the size of my fist in a mannequin’s chest. It stumbled, its internal clockwork grinding… and then the hole sealed itself, the white plastic flowing like liquid to fill the gap. Time within the creature itself was reversing the damage.

“Jax! Their chest!” Elara cried out. My Slayer’s Sight, finally breaking through the interference, saw it too. A faint, violet glow deep within each mannequin’s torso. A temporal heart.

“Aim for the glow!” I yelled.

Lyra needed no more encouragement. She drove her claws deep into her opponent’s chest, ripping out a small, pulsing glass orb. The mannequin instantly froze, then collapsed into a pile of inert plastic limbs.

The rest were on us. I fired again, this time aiming for the core. The bullet shattered the orb, and the mannequin dropped. But there were dozens of them. They were silent, relentless, their numbers overwhelming. A plastic hand clamped onto my arm with surprising strength. I smashed its face in with the butt of my revolver, buying myself a second to reload.

A shimmering blue shield erupted around Elara as two mannequins converged on her. They hammered against the runic barrier, their fists cracking against the hard light. She was gritting her teeth, the Cube held high as she focused on maintaining the shield.

I saw a flicker of movement above. On the second-floor balcony, more mannequins were stepping up to the railing. But they didn't take the stairs. They simply stepped off, falling in a slow, unnatural drift, their bodies suspended in a localized time dilation field.

We were trapped and about to be overwhelmed.

“The wall!” Elara shouted, her voice strained. “It’s the only way!”

I understood. We had to break through. While Lyra became a whirlwind of claws and fury, holding the main line, I emptied my revolver into the blank wall Elara had pointed to. The bullets sparked and ricocheted. It was just a wall.

“It’s an illusion!” Elara yelled. “You have to believe it’s not there!”

It was the kind of mystical nonsense I hated, but we were out of options. Closing my eyes, I holstered PEACEMAKER, took a breath, and charged headfirst at the solid wall.

For a terrifying second, I felt the jarring impact of plaster and steel. Then, the sensation dissolved, replaced by a strange, cold tingling, like plunging my arm into static. I stumbled through, breaking out into a dimly lit, metallic corridor.

“Lyra! Elara! Come on!”

Lyra sent one last mannequin flying with a brutal kick before disengaging and diving through the illusion. Elara dropped her shield and scrambled after us just as the mob of plastic horrors converged on the spot where we’d been standing.

The temporal illusion shimmered and solidified behind us, sealing us in. We were in a service hallway, the air heavy with the thrum of powerful machinery. The sterile white was gone, replaced by brushed steel and glowing cables. In the middle of the corridor, ghostly images flickered in and out of existence—a warlock screaming silently, a vampire dissolving into ash, a young Fae noble clutching his throat. The victims. Kenji’s missing persons. They were echoes, trapped in the temporal machinery of this place.

And at the far end of the hall was a single, massive door, like the entrance to a bank vault. It was etched with the same symbol we had seen on Kenji’s monitor: the serpent eating its own tail. The humming was louder here, a deep, resonant bass note that you felt in your bones.

We had fought our way through the nightmare of the shop floor. We had found the building’s core. And behind that door, I knew, was the horrifying truth and the monster pulling the strings.