Mall of Madness Issue #1: Suture's Real Emergency

It’s been getting colder. This sleepy Sunday morning is especially windy, a loud howl rushing outside of the window of this little apartment bedroom. A draft comes in through the window and chills the room, something the landlords haven’t bothered to fix. Then again, all the glassworks and window companies could still be backed up.
Sleeping on the floor had come rather chilly with the cold air sinking down to the bottom of the room. The cold wood beneath the thin rug saps the heat from the body even through a blanket and a pile of pillows. That sleeping arrangement isn’t the greatest anymore.

Not strictly necessary for me to sleep, but it’s enjoyable even if I can go without it. Even if your body doesn’t have to sleep, the mind needs to rest sometimes. And my Angel shows me all kinds of visions in my almost-dreams. The shapes of other capes’ passengers I’ve seen, but in greater detail. Replaying fond memories like they’re the first time.

At first I thought it might be awkward, when Cerberus invited me to share the bed with them. It’s already struggling to contain the triplets curled up in it, always sprawled out in a tangle come morning. I had been right too, the first night I accidentally got kicked off the side of the bed and met with a rude awakening. At first.
They don’t really need to sleep either, I’ve learned. It’s something to do with the way our passengers connect to us? But it’s just so comfy. And what would we even do all night?
The tangle of warmth is leagues better than the floor. Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad. Now, against the idea of getting up and changing in the awful breeze invading the room, I pull the blanket close and shuffle up against whoever is behind me. There’s no feeling like sleeping in, tucked into a warm bed, on a cold morning.
A hurricane coming in from the ocean couldn’t moved me.

And yet. I groan aloud when I hear the quiet beeping, and reach over to slap the alarm clock on Cerberus’ pink and black nightstand. The sleep button depresses, and my arm drags it off of the stand, down onto the floor. The beeping doesn’t stop though.
Realizing what it is, I slip down until my upper body is hanging off of the bed and reach underneath, grabbing a white and red helmet tucked beneath and rolling it out to me. My eyes still closed, I pull it on and activate the communicator inside. “Wha?”
I can hear a vaguely familiar voice sniffling on the other end. “Majestic? I need help. It’s serious and I don’t know who else can get here in time!”
“Suture?”

A pair of pale hands drags me back from the icy floor and under the covers. I’m not worried about Cerberus seeing me in my helmet anymore, they’ve known for a while now. Cecilia overheard it after I talked with Technique back in the attack at Clarendon High. Those ears are no joke. “Shh,” she tries to shush me into returning to sleep.
I kind of want to, but if it’s actually an emergency… “Suture, what is it? It’s,” I look at the clock. To my surprise it’s only five in the morning, it feels like we’ve been lying in bed a lot loner than that. “It’s five. What do you want?”

Sucking back another sniffle, Suture sounds seriously stressed out. “I was- I was shopping at the mall last night when I had a wardrobe accident. I hid in one of the store backrooms and, and then they closed for the night and I’ve been stuck.” She pauses in her story and I hear some rattling. “The mall opens in two hours and I need a shirt, but- there’s nothing here in my size. And I can’t get out, and-”
“Suture,” I cut her off and sit up, shifting mentally to a fully awake state with ease. “You can just cut your way out of the store shutter with your claws.”
“But I could get in serious trouble for that, or- or for streaking! I need someone to get me a shirt from home and, do you know how to pick locks?”

“I know how to pick locks.” From behind me, a now awake Cerberus sets her head on my shoulder and her ear flattened up against my helmet, listening into the call. “Is this Suture?”
“Cerberus? Why are you there?”
Before this discussion can get anywhere, I cut in and hastily agree. “Alright. We’ll come break you out of the mall- I remember where your house is, how do we get in?”
“Oh, there’s an emergency key buried in the flowerpot out back. Just use that!”

By the time Cerberus and I get ready and sneak out of the apartment building, my car’s remote driving system has made it halfway to us. We walk through the back streets to meet it partway between here and there, and it comes squealing to a stop on the empty early morning street ahead. The doors pop and I get inside, two Cerberus leaping and sliding over the hood and trunk to slide in on the other side and the last triplet getting in behind me.
“Buckle up, we’re hitting the gas.”
“Who needs to buckle up?” Cecilia leans forward in the passenger seat, gripping the cushion. There are already some scars in the material from her claws on past occasions. She might not mid flying through the windshield, but I don’t want to be fixing it again, so I have the seatbelt stretch across each of their chests and click into place. Cecilia pouts and leans back into the car seat. “Fine, mom. We’ll use the seatbelts. Now put it to the metal!”
Tires wail and my Eagle takes off for the nicer suburbs of town, where Suture’s house is.

We’re on the approach. Charlie is crouched on the backseat with her hand on the back door handle, ready to jump out. As we speed in front of Suture’s house, she launches herself from the car with my drifting U-turn and does a roll, smoothly transitioning into a sprint behind the house. Caroline switches to the other back seat so she can hop right into the side facing the house, speeding up our departure.
We have sixty minutes left before the mall opens, employees will definitely be there before it ever opens, and it’s in the opposite direction.
Tension turns into anxious waiting as Charlie takes longer than expected. I try to lean forward and peek around the side of the house. “What’s taking her so long?”
“There were five different potted plants outside,” Caroline says from the back seat. “She had to dig through all of them to find the key.”

Shortly after, Charlie comes sprinting back out onto the lawn and dives into the door I open with a mental command, landing against Caroline in the back seat with dirty hands and some potting soil in her hair, but an XL pink shirt clutched to her chest. “Let’s go!”
The Eagle revs up and starts accelerating again, taking off towards the mall. With no other cars on the road, I can push her as hard as she can go and hit her top speeds. Anyone sleeping on either side of the street is surely getting a rude awakening from the growl of my engines.

With the skills Baby taught me, I skid around the corner onto the mall street and rocket down the asphalt. Each of the Cerberus sisters readies herself for the same maneuver again, shooting out of the moving car one by one and doing gymnastic maneuvers. Or accidentally roadrashing her face in Caroline’s case- but she bounces back from it quickly enough and the brush with the pavement doesn’t even slow her down.

I bring the car around and hop out next to the mall’s side doors. Caroline and Cecilia have both extended their claws and are using the narrowest parts as a pair of lockpicks, fiddling inside of the mechanism. I check my watch, and we still have forty-five minutes until it opens.
“I’ll distract mall security,” Charlie says, handing me Suture’s shirt. The door clicks and Caroline opens it, allowing the rest of us to run in ahead. According to Suture, she got locked inside of the McDonald’s after she hid inside of the women’s washrooms. So we make a beeline for the food court, while Charlie goes for the security office.

“We’re just about there Suture, get ready,” I tell her after calling through my helmet.
“Oh thank goodness! You’re a lifesaver, really! I would have died from embarrassment like this!” Guess that makes twice, then. When we get to the food court, the Cerberi start picking the lock on the shutters of the McDonald’s. I keep watch for what it’s worth, even though their senses are better than mine.

“Something’s wrong,” Cecilia says. The restaurant’s shutter comes open, but the Cerberi both step back and hold their stomachs. I’m not sure what they mean, but I run inside and quickly toss the pink shirt to Suture, who’s crouched behind the counter covering herself with her claws.
“What do you mean something’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel Charlie anymore.”
“Me either,” Caroline is looking in the direction of the security office with fearful eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cerberus afraid before. I leave the store to stand with them, and feel a chill run down my spine.
>You must run.
“What?” There is an urgent need to run, to escape this place coming from Angel. I can’t just leave without Charlie though, and-

I’m interrupted by footsteps from the door to the parking lot we left open. When I turn around, I can’t help but scream at the sight of a tall, deathly emaciated man billowing dark smoke. Caroline reaches over and puts a hand over my mouth, shushing me. “It’s just the Janitor.” I pull her hand away and take a breath, then look closer. The long coat the man is wearing does look familiar, with a Gameboy sticking out of one of his pockets. One of those cool ones with the see-through casing.
“Oh. Oh, you’re right. Sorry about that,” a little embarrassed for screaming at the man, I clear my throat and turn away.
“It’s alright. You kids should get out of here and- ah, Miss Gray. You’re looking lovely today,” the man begins speaking gravely in a gravelly voice, then changes tune when Suture walks out tugging down her new shirt to cover her belly. Remembering himself, the Janitor shakes his head free of any intrusive thoughts and adds, “And you should definitely get out of here as well.”

“We can’t leave, a Cerberus is still in here somewhere and we lost track of her,” being called a kid gives me some pause, worried that the Janitor might have figured out my identity. Then again, something about his attitude feels trustworthy to me.
“Leave that to me,” he stares into space for a split second and then backpedals, “Nevermind.”
“Huh?” Cecilia holds her head askance with her ears twitched to the side.
“I tried something, but it didn’t work,” the formerly calm and collected Janitor is looking a lot less confident now. “This is not good.” He reaches up and adjusts his hat, then explains in a shaky voice, “In about an hour when the mall opens it turns into the epicenter of a zombie infestation that sweeps into the city. There are Endbringer level casualties before it is stopped.”

“We get to fight a zombie apocalypse?” ears perking up, Cecilia turns to me with her tail wagging. “It’s just like Dawn of the Dead. Let’s go find the gun store!”
“Cece, Charlie could already be infected!” I point out, and her eyes go wide, tail stopping in its place.
“She is right about one thing,” walking next to us, the Janitor towers over all of us girls. “We need to get to the gun store. Even getting close to the zombies for too long can infect you, it doesn’t take a bite like in the movies. There are special infected as well. Like in Left 4 Dead.”
“Left for what?” Suture asks, holding her claws together nervously. The Janitor starts to answer, then just waves an arm.
“I can explain later. Think of it as zombies with powers.”

Once again, I find myself traveling through the eerily dark hallways of this large building, filled with deathly quiet and an all-encompassing sense of dread. We reach the gun store and the two Cerberi start to pick the lock, the rest of us keeping watch. I draw my sword, even knowing it won’t do much good. I could throw it at one of them, maybe. “What more do you know about the zombies? Should we get word out?” I interrogate the Janitor while clutching the weapon with white knuckles, fearing for Charlie’s safety.
“I’ve already notified a colleague in the business,” the Janitor straightens his jacket. “They can mess with powers. Make ours’ weaker, and their powers stronger. And if they see you about to use a power on them, they can turn it back on you.”
“How are we supposed to beat that?” I grouse, looking back to see the dog girls’ progress. After what feels like an eternity they pull open the shutter and reveal a wide selection of firearms, all secured and none of them loaded. That security casing wasn’t designed to hold up against Cerberus’ claws, though.

We shut the store behind us and the Janitor produces a big electronic lantern from somewhere, placing it on a counter so we can see. I’ve never used a gun before, but it’s as good a time as any to learn. Suture stays back and listens at the door while the rest of us arm up.
“I’ve never used one before but I know how they work from watching enough detective movies,” the Janitor gives me a quick primer, Caroline listening in alongside me. She must imagine herself an action hero, picking up and loading shells into a shotgun. I’m not sure I can handle that kind of recoil, so I grab a handgun of the same model the Janitor chose, following his directions loading it and checking the safety.
“There are no propane tanks,” Cecilia returns disappointed after searching the back rooms of the gun store. She cuts a rifle out of a display case. None of the alarms are going off, so somebody else must have cut the power to the building already. It scares me to think about zombies being smart enough to cut the power. Like some other mind is controlling them. It must be another cape.

***The Candy Store***
A girl is standing outside of a humble storefront, just down the street from Clarendon High School. She bounces on her feet, eager to purchase her pick-me-up after a long night of patrol. The sound of a hard surface rapping upon the glass of the storefront window where shelves of candy are on display causes her to yelp and jump.

Instead of running away, the pigeon sitting on the windowsill looks up at her. There is a note tied to its foot, and she bends down to untie it, pulling back the sleeves of her kimono so that they do not droop onto the ground. Unfolding the note, she reads it aloud. “Warrior, the city needs your help. An S class threat is about to emerge from the West Bay Shopping Mall. Signed, the Condor.”
The girl holds the note to her chest, heart beating rapidly. “Oh dear. Oh no.” There comes a jingle from the store’s glass door, and an old man familiar to her in both of her identities steps outside pulling a jacket on to shield against the early morning chill.
“Is something wrong, miss Diva?”

***The Supermarket***
Walking through rows of grocery items with her cart, a young woman sweeps the cans and bags gladly into her cart. She’d been fortunate to discover that the power was already out when she arrived, meaning no security. She could finally restock her food supplies with non-perishables, and even enjoy some sweets from the candy racks by the cash registers.
Detection motion to her left, she turns and can see another girl with long white hair and pointed ears. One that she knows, one with an appetite ravenous enough to match her own. Only this time something is different. Trails of green sludge drip down her hair and cling to her skin, and the whites of those red eyes that gleam in the dark are jaundiced yellow. Wearing a smile she starts to walk towards the hooded girl.

Metal servos scream loudly into the silence of the store, and a junky humanoid machine rams into the dog-eared girl from behind, pinning her to the ground with a hefty foot made from industrial machinery. Its bear trap shaped jaws open and a speaker announces, “KEEP YOUR DISTANCE. THE INFECTION IS AIRBORNE.”

***The Parking Lot***
On this morning, a scaled body crawls through the parking lot of West Bay Shopping Mall on a set of six bulging, muscled limbs. Rearing back onto his hind legs, the lizard finds one of the side entrances already hanging open. “What good luck,” he thinks to himself. His father’s birthday is near and he would like to get something nice, but the kill order on his head makes it difficult to shop normally without bounty hunters trying and failing to shoot him. The usually run away when their bullets fall off, flattened.

The lizard checks the bag carried around his shoulder and makes sure that he brought money with him. He will pay for what he takes, knowing that his father disapproves of robbery. “It is a nice night for shopping,” he thinks innocently to himself, a hissing whistle passing through his scaly lips as he strolls into the open, closed mall.