Doomsday Supermarket

Chapter 9 - What You're Asking

Chapter 9 · 1,373 words

Jax came back the next morning alone. No team, no haul. Just him, walking through the entrance with the unhurried stride of a man who'd had time to think.

"You want to go through the list?" he said, leaning against the counter. "You want to know what you're actually asking for."

Wren nodded. He'd been waiting for this.

Jax pulled the paper from his jacket, Wren's prerequisite list, still folded from yesterday. He'd annotated it in pencil, small precise notes in the margins.

"Healing tissue first." He tapped the line. "You already know this one. The creatures that produce healing tissue, they're regenerators. Cut one open and it starts closing before you've finished the cut. The tissue degrades fast after death because the creature's own biology is trying to rebuild it. You need to harvest within an hour, maybe less, or it's useless to you."

"How do you kill one fast enough?"

"You don't kill it fast. You kill it precise. One shot to the central node, there's a cluster of tissue about here." He put his hand on his sternum. "Miss by an inch and it keeps regenerating and you've got a creature that heals through damage. We've had one chase a team member for two hundred meters while regrowing half its body."

Wren wrote it down. *Regenerators. Central node kill. Harvest within 1 hour.*

"Acid glands." Jax moved down the list. "Ambush predators. They hunt near your perimeter, probably drawn to the light, honestly. They sit under debris, wait for something to walk past, and spray. The acid is corrosive enough to eat through carapace in seconds. We harvest the glands from the head cavity."

"How dangerous?"

"They hunt in our area. That's how dangerous. We've lost equipment to them. One got Malik's boot last month, dissolved the sole and half the leather. If he'd been a second slower pulling his foot back..." Jax didn't finish the sentence. "They're doable. But they're not safe, and they're not easy to find on demand."

Wren wrote: *Ambush predators. Near Store perimeter. Corrosive spray. Doable but risky.*

Jax moved down the list. Psychic cores came from mind-type creatures his team called whisperers, because they got inside your head and made you hear directions that weren't real, voices of people who weren't there. The core was a dense node of tissue inside the skull that glowed when you cut it open. They'd encountered them twice. First time, Rook started walking the wrong direction and Elowen had to grab him before he wandered into a nest. Second time, they saw one from a distance and left. They'd never harvested a core.

The bio-luminescent spores came from cave dwellers in the tunnel systems under the old city, about a day's travel east. Blind creatures that hunted by vibration. The caves were tight in places, dark all the time. Your lights attracted them. Your noise attracted them. Everything the team needed to survive down there was the same thing that told the creatures where they were.

Wren wrote both assessments down. *Psychic cores: whisperers, rare, psychic interference, never harvested. Bio-luminescent spores: cave dwellers, day's travel east, never attempted.*

Jax's finger moved to the last item. He set the paper down and looked at Wren directly.

"Reinforced carapace plates. You want us to go after what?"

"The armored ones," Wren said. "The territorial ones."

"The ones we've tried to kill twice and failed." Jax's voice was level, but the words carried weight. "The creature is big. Bigger than anything we've engaged. The carapace is thick. Our weapons bounce off. We tried concentrated strikes, we tried finding gaps in the plating, we tried luring it into a position where we could attack from below. Nothing worked. First time, it charged us and we ran. Second time, it was already wounded from something else and still threw Malik fifteen feet when he got too close."

Fifteen feet. Wren pictured a man that size, thrown like a bag of tools.

"The plates are part of its hide. You'd need to kill it and then cut the carapace free, which means getting close to something that's already proven it can throw your people."

Silence. Wren looked at his annotated list. Five items. Five hunts. The first two were difficult but within the team's capability. The third was a problem of availability and nerve. The fourth required entering terrain that actively worked against them. The fifth was something Jax's team had already failed at twice.

"Okay," Wren said. "What's it going to cost?"

Jax had been waiting for this. He shifted his weight, one hand on the counter, and Wren recognized the posture. It was the same stance he'd used during the first negotiation. The one that meant the real conversation was starting.

"Right now, we sell you what we find. Easy hunts, known routes, predictable risk. You pay us the interface price, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. We're both okay." He paused. "You're asking us to change what we hunt. To go after things that are harder, more dangerous, and in some cases things we've never beaten. That's not a routine delivery. That's a commission."

"I understand that."

"So the pricing changes. Not just for the specific materials you need, for everything. If we're taking on higher risk, we need higher return across the board. Otherwise we're just eating the cost of your shopping list."

Wren's stomach dropped. He knew what Jax was asking before the man said it.

"Favorable terms," Jax said. "On all future deliveries. A discount, call it a risk premium. We bring you the materials you need, including the ones that might get us killed, and in exchange you pay us above interface value on the standard hauls. Twenty percent across the board."

Twenty percent. On every transaction, every delivery, every haul of carapace fragments and acid glands and healing tissue for as long as the agreement lasted. Wren's mind raced through the numbers. His revenue margin was already thin. Twenty percent less on every delivery meant twenty percent less flowing into the defense budget, the department unlock fund, the audit progress.

"That's a lot," he said.

"That's the risk."

"If I agree to this, my defense budget—"

"Is going to be tight. I know. But if you don't get those materials, you don't unlock those departments, and your defense budget doesn't matter because you fail the audit anyway."

It was a clean argument. Wren hated how clean it was. Jax had identified the exact pressure point, the audit deadline, and was applying force to it with the precision of someone who'd been thinking about this since yesterday.

"Ten percent," Wren said.

"Fifteen."

"Twelve."

Jax considered it. "Thirteen. And we get first access to any processed goods the Store produces once those departments unlock."

Wren stared at him. The man was negotiating for products that didn't exist yet, from departments that weren't even unlocked. But the logic was sound. Processed goods would be more valuable than raw materials, and Jax wanted a piece of that future value.

"Done," Wren said.

They shook on it. Jax's hand was rough, calloused, warm. His grip was firm but not aggressive, just solid. The kind of handshake that meant a deal, not a friendship.

After Jax left, Wren sat at the terminal and ran the numbers. Thirteen percent above interface value on all standard deliveries, plus first access to processed goods. The revenue projection was grim. Every credit that went to Jax's team was a credit that didn't go to defense, to department unlocks, to the audit fund. The Store would remain physically vulnerable for longer. The perimeter lights might dim. The barrier might weaken.

But without the materials, the departments didn't unlock. Without the departments, the audit failed. Without passing the audit, nothing else mattered.

He'd traded long-term revenue for present supply security. The math was defensible. The feeling was worse.

Wren looked at the countdown on the status display. The number hadn't changed. It was still a vast, intimidating distance from zero. But now every day of that countdown carried a cost he hadn't accounted for when he started. The supply was locked in. The hunts would begin.

And the bill would keep coming.

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