The Cycle Continues: Alice in Borderland Novel

5) Four of Spades [2] ✮

===Niko Chenay===

"Okay, everyone stay silent." I whispered.

The three of us had hid behind the checkout counters, putting up several wooden beams and panels as gunfire cover.

"So now do we just wait for them to come to us?" A woman in a skirt muttered from under the checkout counter.

"Precisely." A businessman responded. "It's easier to defend yourself and attack from one central position instead of going out and hunting them down. You're just going to get picked off with gunfire that way."

"And then," a climber woman added, "If we see them, we sneak up, and finish them off!"

A round of gunfire went off, a series of four bangs in a single shot, sending a flinch and a wave of chills rolling down my back.

"Automatic rifle." I whispered. "This game is no joke."

Suddenly, another round of gunfire echoed. The resonating sound made all of us jump, and I perked my ears at where the noise emerged from. Peeking my head above the counter, a man with a raised gun made his way down into an aisle. The same aisle the two kids were in.

"I'm gonna—" I paused. I needed all the enforcement I could get, but there would be no way anyone would come with me if I said it was to help the kids I saw earlier.

"That man on the Yin team is clearly preoccupied with someone. We can use this as a careful opportunity to sneak up on him."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" The climber asked.

"If we succeed, we get that person's gun." The businessman said. "I'm all in for this plan."

'Yes!'

"Okay, let's not waste anymore time." Keeping myself low, I emerged from the counter with a knife and made my way down the halls as gunfire continued from the aisle, and the sound of breaking ceramic filled the air, mixing with the gunfire into an screeching chorus of bangs.

I arrived at the aisle and found it a mess of clay shards, debris, and liquid. The man had his back turned, shooting into the shelves, with each shot resulting in a spray of razor-edged pot fragments.

Me and the climber had made it about halfway when a dousing of liquid fell from the top of the shelf, and the man turned to dodge it only to be met with our faces.

We paused, before immediately jumping to the sides as the man open fired. The woman and businessman arrived at the aisle and dove behind the shelves at the shooter's advancement. I rewired myself to charge, but the man, in his slight pause to fire at us, had yet another dousing of the liquid poured onto him. And this one made direct contact.

He shrieked, stumbling forward and tripping against thin barbed wire, collapsing onto the ground with a thud as the liquid—now safe to assume an acid—ate away at his body, leaving raw streaks of bloody red across his face, back, and limbs. The figure from the shelf top poured another dousing, renewing the agony of the man. The climber charged in, kicking the gun out of his hands, before the businessman finished the job and plunged an axe into his back.

The figure from the top of the shelf climbed down; it was Zakū. The person hiding in the shelf was his partner who also emerged.

"The standings have updated. Yin team: Three. Yang team: Eleven."

Zakū grabbed the gun without saying a word, then searched the man's corpse, pulling out two more guns and three packs of bullets. He took one of the spare guns and, after shaking the contents of every box, took the largest box of bullets on the man, quickly sliding it open to examine its insides.