I spent a few more minutes listing two thousand Croc Coins—a hefty chunk of my total surplus—through the auction house in lots of fifty, then I set an outrageous fee to get ’em. Fifty Silver Loot Tokens, ten Gold Tokens, or two Gem-grade Tokens or better. Per lot. I also capped purchases at one lot per account per day, hoping that would keep the Lord of Coin from swooping in and buying the whole shebang before lunch.

  But he wasn’t the only variable in play. A handful of former Franchisees—folks with zero loyalty toward the Flayed Monarch or the Syndicate—had already come sniffing around, eager to “forge new partnerships.” Which was polite corporate-speak for “please don’t kill us, we’ll totally sell your merch.”

  I listed another five-hundred Croc Coins in lots of fifty and whitelisted my shiny, new “partners,” ensuring they were the only ones who could buy that batch. I kept the one-lot-per-day restriction, but dropped the price to a much more agreeable ten Silver Loot Tokens. The friends and family discount. Enough to cover our operating expenses, but cheap enough to grease the wheels. In my mind, it was an easy way to jumpstart the commerce train while quietly reminding everyone that life was a lot easier on my side of the aisle.

  As for my regular customers, in theory, they wouldn’t feel much of a squeeze. Croc Coins were already freely circulating through the store, and most of them bought directly from me anyway. But if the Lord of Coin and the Syndicate wanted to stay relevant, they’d need to pony up, quick, fast, and in a hurry. I had no doubt they’d be able to afford the price, and I’d be raking in Loot Tokens hand-over-fist in the meantime.

  Now, all I needed to do was sit back and watch the cockroaches scramble.

  With a giant grin plastered across, I left the kiosk hub behind. As much as I wanted to drop an ass load of Loot Tokens and Croc Coins on cool new shit, with the markets unofficially shut down for the time being, I’d need to bid my time until things were back up and running. Besides, why spend money buying stuff I probably didn’t need anyway, when I could just make everything for free at the Forge?

  I slipped out of the breakroom feeling mostly good about things.

  That lasted all of five seconds and ten steps.

  “There you are,” a man huffed, planting himself squarely in my path. “I’ve been trying to track you down for hours—no thanks to this one.” The man jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at Taylor, the twenty-something college girl from Oklahoma State University, who normally worked the concession stand.

  Clive was in his mid-fifties or early sixties and looked like something dragged out of a bad Tolkien rip-off. Long, wispy white beard, elaborate robes stitched with silver runes, a big ol’ staff crafted from a gnarled length of wood with an emerald the size of a robin’s egg perched on top. He was like an off-brand Gandalf. If Gandalf had been a grumpy, retiree from Boca Raton who ate dinner at 4:30 and had a hard-on for lodging customer complaints.

  Clive was one of our newer additions who’d wandered in from the 49th floor, and though he wasn’t the most powerful, he was certainly the most annoying.

  “Ajax is trying to gouge me,” Clive grumbled darkly. “It’s unthinkable! Unethical! Outrageous! First, he increased monthly rates by a flat ten percent and now he is insisting I pay a pet fee. A pet fee! That’s no way to run a business. And your customer support, if you can even call it that”—he openly glared at Taylor—“has been less than helpful. Better than that nightmare pony creature you have working the checkout counters, but I expect more for the price I’m paying to be here.”

  “Sorry, Dan,” Taylor said, not bothering to hide the open glower she directed at Clive. “I tried to tell him that Ajax is the general manager now and could deal with the issue, but he insisted on speaking with you personally.”

  “Well, of course I did,” Clive barked, “Ajax is the one who told me I had to pay the pet fee in the first place! He’s insisting that my boy Brutus is peeing on everything.” He reached down a weather-beaten hand and stroked the head of an enormous wolf, waiting patiently by his side.

  Even sitting, the creature nearly came up to Clive’s shoulders.

  “He is peeing on everything,” Taylor replied, planting hands defiantly on her hips. “Even the Brownies are having a tough time getting the odor out of the sheets. The entire room smells like you splashed rancid bong water everywhere. It’s super gross.”

  I shot a look at Clive and arched an eyebrow. “Well?”

  The man grumbled for a moment before his shoulders finally sagged.

  “Fine. Yes,” he admitted. “My little Brutus does have a tendency to mark his territory. He is a dire wolf, after all. But”—he wagged a finger at me in the most patronizing way possible—“it wouldn’t be an issue if you had more reasonable accommodations for pets, you know. You’ve got a full bar and grill, and an entire spa for god’s sake, but no place for pets to relieve themselves without leaving the store? What do you expect me to do, hmmm? Venture out into the barren snow drifts on 49 every time Brutus needs to do his business?”

  “Yeah,” I replied flatly. “Or you can take him for walks in the mall. I don’t give a shit if he pees on every fountain on the third floor, but I don’t want him ‘doing his business’ all over the hotel rooms. Taking your dog for walks is part of responsible pet ownership, Clive.”

  “The floors are crawling with Aspirants and vampires,” the old man muttered.

  “Responsible. Pet. Ownership,” I said again. “And this is the Backrooms. Danger comes with the territory. Besides, no one said you had to get a pet wolf.”

  “A pet? A pet!” Clive raised his nose in the air at the sheer indignity of it all. “Brutus isn’t just a pet. He’s a trained service animal.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” I replied, eyeing the shaggy behemoth.

  “I have diabetes,” Clive insisted, “and he alerts me when my blood sugar gets too low. Or maybe you think diabetes is some sort of great, funny joke, do you?”

  I closed my eyes and prayed to sweet baby Jesus for the patience not to blast a hole through his chest with Hydro Fracking Blast.

  “I’m from Ohio,” I said, “trust me I know exactly how serious diabetes are. But no one is saying you need to get rid of Brutus. All were asking for is a pet fee, which seems pretty reasonable, considering he isn’t house broken.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you’re going to start charging a pet fee for everyone else then?” Clive huffed. “Wulfgar is always bringing in his dire wolves, and I don’t hear anyone complaining about them.”

  “Wulfgar isn’t a resident,” I countered. “He lives on 49 and only comes in to shop and, so far as I can tell, his wolves never piss all over the aisles like a leaky firehose.”

  “Well, I’m not the only one with a pet,” Clive pouted. “Asher bonded one of those Mall Rats and Alva definitely has a pet of some sort. I don’t know what exactly—she keeps it locked away in her room, just across the hall from mine—but I hear whatever it is skittering around in there at all hours of the day. It’s very unnerving and probably a safety hazard.”

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  “Says the man with the giant dire wolf,” Taylor muttered.

  I sighed.

  Clive was a petulant man-baby, but he wasn’t wrong. We did have a pet problem—though I used the term “pet” in the loosest sense of the word.

  There were a number of Relics that allowed Delvers to capture and control non-sentient Dwellers—like some sort of fucked-up version of Pokémon—and I’d had to loosen some of the restrictions about what could enter the store. Although random Dwellers were still barred, I’d made a number of specific exemptions for bonded Dwellers like Brutus.

  “Alright,” I said, tossing up my hands. “I’ll look at acquiring someplace for the pets to do their business inside the store, but the maintenance on it isn’t going to be free—someone is still gonna have to clean up the mess—so you’re still paying the pet fee and if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to take your business elsewhere.”

  “Take my business elsewhere?” he squawked. “But there’s nowhere else to go.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “That’s the law of supply and demand in action. I have all the supply, so I get to make all the demands. And if you don’t like it, I’m sure there are plenty of other Delvers who’d be happy for a shot at a premium suite and won’t be such a gigantic pain in my ass.”

  “There’re thirty people currently on the wait list,” Taylor said, illustrating my point.

  “Thirty?” I asked in disbelief, running a hand through my hair. “Are you shitting me? I just added an entire block of rooms.”

  Thanks to several new store expansions, I’d finally been able to unlock a few more of the store’s upgradable perks, and right at the top of the list had been Modular Replication.

  Unlike some of the other upgrade options, which only let me duplicate basic building materials, this one let me copy entire rooms and snap them onto the store like magical Lego blocks. The tradeoff was that every new addition subtracted from my total available square footage, which was apparently the cosmic equivalent of a zoning permit.

  Still, it was worth it.

  I’d already expanded the Soul Forge, upgraded the spa—ten new showers and twice as many toilets—and tacked on another twenty hotel rooms. Five luxury suites and fifteen standard double-queens, though apparently that still wasn’t enough.

  “No, no,” Clive backtracked immediately. “There’s no need to be so hasty. I didn’t say I wouldn’t pay, just that everyone should have to pay. You know, as a matter of store policy. It’s not fair that Ajax is singling me out. If the rule exists, it should apply to everyone equally.” He hesitated for a beat, then just couldn’t help himself. “And that includes Alva and whatever horror she is harboring in her room.”

  “Stop deflecting,” I snapped.

  “I’m not deflecting,” he replied stiffly. “I’ll admit that Brutus may be a problem, but someone really needs to do something about her. Whatever she’s hiding in there is half the reason my good boy pees everywhere in the first place. He’s establishing healthy boundaries. And, before you say anything else, if you think the stink coming from my room is bad, you haven’t had the misfortune of walking past her door.”

  “Duly noted, Clive,” I growled. “I’ll have someone look into it. Now if there isn’t anything else that requires my specific, undivided attention, I’ve got other things to take care of.”

  “Of course,” Clive said, his lips stretching into an unnaturally wide smile. “Thank you for handling this situation with such grace.” He bowed with a flourish of his robes and swished away, Brutus padding along beside him, silent as a shadow.

  “Jackass,” Taylor muttered under her breath as she watched the man leave. “Sorry again,” she said, this time to me. “I keep telling people not to bother you, but everyone seems to think that the Discount Dan is the only one who can solve their very specific problem.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said, waving away her concerns. “I know you guys are doing your best to hold down the fort and keep things running. Can’t be easy with all the new Delvers flooding in.”

  That might’ve been underselling it a bit.

  The store was damned near bursting at the seams. Jakob liked to call it “growing pains.”

  To me, it felt a hell of a lot more like passing a metaphorical kidney stone.

  Even with all the new wings and additions I’d bolted on, we were struggling to keep up with the influx. With the Kiosk Network under my control, travel between floors had become easier than ever, and what used to be a trickle of customers had turned into a full-on stampede.

  New faces arrived every day, sometimes from floors we’d never even contacted.

  “It’s a nightmare,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “Ajax has us all stretched so thin we just can’t keep up. He’s got me working doubles at the concession stand and picking up extra shifts at the spa. The workload is killing me, and I’m not getting paid enough as is.”

  “That, at least, I can help with,” I said. “You’ve been working here longer than anyone, so I think a bonus is in order.” I opened my spatial storage, pulled out a pouch filled with fifty Croc Coins, and tossed it to her with a grin.

  She opened the bag and peeked inside, a curious expression on her face.

  “Thanks, but I’ve already got a ton of these,” she said.

  “Trust me,” I said, “the value on those is about to go through the roof. When you get a chance, go poke around one of the kiosks and see what you can buy. Give it a day or so, but I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a shrug before sending the bag to Spatial Storage. “But it’s not just about the money. I barely have time to sleep, and I haven’t left the store in weeks.”

  “Why do you even want to leave?” I asked. “The store’s got everything you could need. Food, rooms, a spa.”

  “Yeah, everything except experience points,” she said morosely. “I’m only level 13, Dan. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t want to be stuck as a cashier for the rest of my life. Do I like leaving the store?” She grimaced and shook her head. “No. Obviously not. It’s a nightmare out there. But I also don’t like the idea of being at the mercy of people who are stronger than me. Besides,” she added softly, “I can see the writing on the wall. Everyone can.”

  “Oh yeah? And what writing is that?” I asked.

  “The Monarch is coming for us and now the Syndicate is too,” she said matter of factly. “There’s a target on your back a mile wide and if anything happens to you…” she trailed off. “Well, it’ll be bad for everyone. Especially for those who can’t defend themselves. I’ve heard stories about what happens to people who cross the Syndicate and the only thing worse than being a cashier forever is ending up as a blood bag for vampires. When things finally hit the fan, I want to be ready to fight.”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” I said, offering her my most reassuring smile.

  “That’s what everyone says right before something bad happens to them,” she replied. “Listen, you’re a good boss, and you’re tough, but no one’s safe here. Not even you.”

  I wanted to argue with her, but the words froze in my throat.

  Truth was, she was right.

  Just a few hours ago, I’d been one wrong step away from bleeding out on a food court floor.

  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll talk to Ajax about the staffing issues—see if we can’t get the schedule cleaned up. Do you want me to talk with Temp about going on a raid with the Roomkeepers? She’s getting ready to launch an expedition and it could be an easy way to earn some levels?”

  “With those, broholes?” Her lips curled up in clear disgust. “Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I appreciate the thought, but I’ll definitely pass.” Her eyes narrowed. “They keep trying to recruit me to be part of their stupid cult, but I have exactly zero interest in what they’re peddling.”

  I couldn’t really blame her.

  There was no question, the Roomkeepers were good at hunting Aspirants and, after a training op down on floor 24, most of them were strong enough to take the fight to the Syndicate, but they were… intense was the only word that really fit.

  Though pushy was a good alternative.

  “But if you could put in a good word for me with Wraith or some of the 49ners,” Taylor said, practically bouncing on her toes, “I’d appreciate it.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Any idea about this Alva lady?” I asked, steering the conversation in a safer direction.

  Taylor winced and her shoulders sagged. “Not sure, though there’s definitely something off about her. A bunch of the other guests have been complaining, too—not just Clive. He’s just the most obnoxious about it. Weird noises. Bad smells. But she’s paying rent on time, so who knows.”

  “And no one’s gone to check on her?” I asked.

  “Sorry, Dan,” she replied with an apologetic shrug, “but we don’t have time to do health and wellness checks for every guest. Like I said, there’s just too many people and not enough staff to go around.”

  “Any chance you can look into it for me?” I asked.

  “I would,” she said, “but my next shift starts in ten minutes, and Ajax’ll doc my pay if I show up late. He can be a real dick. But, since you’re doing me a favor, I can ask him about it once I get off work.”

  I thought about it for a second then shook my head. “No, I’ll handle it. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. I’m sure he’s loitering around the bar. I’ll poke my head in and ask him about it when I get a little time.”

  “You’re a lifesaver, boss,” she said, already slipping on her work apron.

  She gave me one last quick wave before jogging off toward the front of the store.

  I set off in the opposite direction at a much more leisurely pace. I added both Alva and the staffing issues to my ever-growing list of things to take care of, then pushed them to the back of my mind as I headed for the forge. I’d already hit Theo and the Syndicate in the wallet, now it was time to see about making some weapons that would hit ’em right in the face.