Doomsday Supermarket

Chapter 18 - Exclusive Terms

Chapter 18 · 980 words

The Store was quiet in the middle of the cycle. No customers at the counter. The processing station between batches, its humming field dormant. The pharmacy and weapons counter stood stocked but unvisited. Wren was at the terminal, reviewing the transaction log, when Jax came in alone.

No team behind him. No pack. No gear. He walked to the counter and stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at Wren the way he looked at a price he was about to challenge.

"Office," Jax said.

Wren glanced at the empty store floor. No one at the entrance. No shapes approaching through the perimeter light. He nodded and led the way to the manager's office—a small room behind the loading dock that the Store had repurposed from a storage closet. A desk. Two chairs. The terminal was wall-mounted and couldn't be moved, but the Store interface was accessible from a secondary display here.

Jax sat down. Wren sat across from him. The door was open; the Store floor was visible through the gap.

"I've been thinking about the arrangement," Jax said.

"The thirteen percent?"

"The arrangement." Jax's voice was careful. The careful of someone who'd rehearsed what he was going to say. "My team brings the most materials. We take the hardest hunts. We lost Rook to a regenerator spasm getting your healing tissue. Malik nearly lost an arm to an acid spray six weeks ago. We've been hit, thrown, chased, and burned."

Wren waited.

"The Store depends on us." Jax leaned forward. "You know it. I know it. The prerequisite list—every hunt on it came from my team. The psychic cores, the spores, the plates—nobody else is going to get those. You know that."

"Jax."

"I want exclusive supplier status."

The words landed in the small room like something physical. Wren didn't respond immediately.

"Define it."

"First right of refusal on all material purchases. When my team brings materials, the Store buys from us before buying from anyone else. Preferential pricing—two percent above the interface value on standard materials, on top of the thirteen. And a formal agreement that the Store will not accept competing deliveries of the same material type without giving us the opportunity to match."

Wren's mind moved through the Store's rules. He'd read them a hundred times. The interface had stated them clearly on the first day.

*The Store cannot refuse any customer who can pay.*

That included suppliers. Any entity presenting valid monster materials in acceptable condition was a customer. The Store was required to transact with them.

"Jax, I can't do that. The Store can't refuse any customer who presents valid payment."

"The rules say you can't refuse a paying customer. They don't say you can't choose who you buy from."

"If I give you first right of refusal and then refuse someone else because you didn't want to match, that's the same thing."

"Then refuse them on a technicality. Quality threshold. Timing. I don't care how you do it."

Wren shook his head. "You're asking me to build a system that turns away paying customers."

Jax's face went cold. The expression of someone who had already decided what the answer would be and was waiting to see if they were right.

"My team takes the risk. My team does the hunts nobody else will do. The Store gets the materials because we go out there and bleed for them. Exclusivity is what that's worth."

"I know what it's worth." Wren kept his voice level. "You're the most important supply relationship this Store has. But the framework doesn't permit it."

"Then the framework is broken."

Wren looked at the walls, at the terminal, at the building itself. "I can't change that."

Jax stood up. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't slam anything. He just stood, and the movement was final in a way that made Wren's chest tight.

"You're choosing the rules over the people who built this place."

"I'm choosing the rules that keep the Store operating. If I start refusing suppliers, the System—"

"The System isn't in this room." Jax looked at him. His eyes were cold. The look of a man recalculating. "You know what this means."

"I know what it means for the Store. I'm asking you to think about what it means for—"

"For my team." Jax's voice was quiet. "We'll think about it."

He walked to the door. Paused. Didn't turn around.

"You've got a good operation here, Wren. Don't forget who made it possible."

Then he left. His footsteps crossed the store floor, passed through the automatic doors, and were gone.

Wren sat in the office. The Store's systems hummed around him—the terminal, the processing station cycling back to life in the back, the pharmacy's climate control, the weapons counter's sealed display case. All of it running. All of it indifferent to what had just happened.

He'd chosen the rules. Again. The same way he'd chosen the currency rule over the family who couldn't pay. The same way he'd chosen the open market over a single supplier's loyalty. The rules were consistent. The rules were fair. The rules didn't require him to navigate the mess of human obligation and debt and gratitude.

But Jax was right about one thing. The Store's supply chain existed because of his team. Because of their hunts, their injuries, their willingness to go after creatures that other people ran from.

And now Jax was recalculating.

Wren went back to the counter and sat down. He picked up his scrap paper. The prerequisite list was still there. The remaining hunts were still there. And the only team capable of completing them had just walked out the door with a cold look in their eyes.

He wrote: *Jax — exclusivity refused. Relationship: damaged.*

He stared at the words. Then he added: *Prepare for delivery reduction.*

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