He made the mistake of grabbing onto a metal strut at the edge of one set of shelves. The face of the strut moved, changing in angle, and jerked upward. A machine had taken a blade and camouflaged it to look like the red-painted metal surface, and it managed to carve deep into Jackson’s mentor’s hand. The machine that controlled the blade moved. It wore a cardboard box.

Dot made a mental note of that as she remained frozen, watching.

The people were running, gathering together. They narrowly evaded the machines, using corners and their small size to stay clear as the machines from the fridge wall careened down the wide aisles.

It didn’t matter. They were already dead.

She could hear the gasps and shrieks. Here and there, weapons were deployed. Sprays of darts, more blades from innocuous surfaces, wire.

The gasps became more numerous, the sounds strained, and the activity of the scavengers slowed. The ones who realized what was happening didn’t have the words to report it to the others.

Gas. Invisible, odorless. They gasped and used everything they had to try to draw air into their lungs, but the machines were putting something heavier than oxygen on the ground floor of the store. Now they drowned.

Dot had lost family to this very same thing. She had seen how painful it was, and she had known how painful it was to watch someone she cared about die that way.

She took her time picking through the boxes of vitamins, putting them in her bag. It was nice that the gummy vitamins didn’t rattle. She picked up other things as she navigated the shelves, including bandages and some random bottles.

An explosion drew her attention.

Someone in a costume.

Another explosion, followed by two more, and one of the big machines from the fridge wall collapsed.

Apparently alerted by one of the dying, the woman in costume climbed up onto the shelving units, to get to higher ground where there was air. She threw a blue light out of her hand, and it detonated on impact with the next machine.

Back at the fridges, some of the fridges and surrounding wall had already been reconstructed. Two more of the large cube-shaped machines squeezed through the gaps in the wall that were still there, before getting their wheels under them and hurrying in the direction of the woman in costume.

Dot moved closer to the ground to get a look. It was important to know just how far gone this building was.

The entire area behind the fridges was gone. Green flashing lights, wires, computers and metal twisted into shapes that helped it to provide a framework. Machines were working slowly and steadily to refine and develop things.