7. The Mall

Conroy delivers Turner by hovercraft to an unfinished desert mall chosen as the extraction venue. They argue about exfiltration: Conroy favors a ground-effect plane, but Turner demands a jump jet he will interface with directly. Conroy departs for the coast to procure it, leaving Turner at the silent, exposed site within Maas’s probable recon footprint.

Turner advances through the derelict structures, fighting intrusive sensory flashbacks, and locates the point team—Sutcliffe, Lynch, and Webber—who brief him on their covert landline, sentry rotation, water limits, and the staged breakdown that justified their presence. Turner confirms strict control over Hosaka’s medics, maintaining a five-meter rule for security.

Assessing internal risks, Turner challenges Lynch about being Conroy’s embedded watcher, warning that any unauthorized transmission could doom the operation. Lynch denies it, but Turner mentally tags him as Conroy’s plant and insists on tight emissions discipline, stressing they are inside the enemy’s surveillance envelope.

Lynch leads Turner to Hosaka’s portable neurosurgery pod, screened under a hot steel roof to mask infrared. The sealed unit sits on detachable rubber tires with external waste handling; the sleeping medics inside are monitored by the pod’s motion. Webber provides Turner a shoulder rig for his revolver, and Turner notes Ramirez, the console jockey, among the crew resting under mimetic tarps.

As dusk falls and the team settles into night routines, Turner consolidates command and contemplates the coming defection, battling nausea as images from Mitchell’s biosoft dossier surface unbidden, underscoring both the biological stakes and the operation’s fragility.