You put on your usual jacket and baggy pants, making sure the scar on your leg is properly covered. The bots might be able to detect the damage right through the pants texture, but it makes you feel just a little safer. The rest of your inventory is filled with junk and spare items, with everything useful stashed away in the smuggling compartment.

“Let’s go. Feel free to sleep, I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

He nods, already drifting off to bed. You load yourself back into the apartment hallway, then make your way down into the main lobby. No servitors are collecting metadata today, since yesterday’s incident has been neatly resolved.

You stick to rooftops as always, until you get close enough to the nearest mall. None of these system-run places have proper names. This is just Mall 109, and nothing else. Once you clamber down the side of a building and step back onto the street that leads to 109, you're hit by a prompt.

<HELLO, MARNIE! WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACTIVATE SHOPPING MODE?>
>Yes
>No

>No

You dismiss it with an impatient wave of your hand. You're not interested in taking part in the redirection protocol, or using the easy-purchase function. Part of the joy is in window shopping, and seeing if there's anything at all that can fascinate you from behind the holographic screens.

"We're here, Phascomon."

He stirs within the Linker on your wrist. Still wrapped up in a blanket, he tunes in to your goggles and observes the view through your eyes.

After yesterday's fiasco, you're wary of the subnet that runs parallel to the mall itself. You keep looking around for any sort of statue, symbol, or control center that could hold an entrance like the one Commandramon opened up for you yesterday. Even though you know you're being paranoid, some part of you is screaming that DarkTyrannomon might claw his way back out onto the street.

"You okay? Been freezing up for a while."

"Huh? Yeah. Sorry. Let's go in."