The Last Patrol at Merebrook

I took the job because my savings had dwindled to just over GBP300, and my final-service pay from Catterick Garrison was not going to stretch much further. My Veterans UK and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme paperwork was stalled somewhere in the machinery of government, tangled in forms and decisions I could not navigate quickly enough to keep the lights on. So when I saw the advert for overnight security at Merebrook Shopping Centre - forty hours a week, GBP10.50 an hour, statutory holiday entitlement, workplace pension, and staff discount and enhanced sick pay after a three-month probation - I drove out there that same afternoon.

The centre stood off the A38, about twenty minutes south of Birmingham, on the Worcestershire side of the conurbation. It squatted beyond a slip road and an access road in an expanse of cracked tarmac built for roughly eight hundred vehicles, back when the place had drawn proper crowds. Now perhaps a dozen cars clustered near the main entrance, belonging to employees of the handful of businesses still operating in the separately licensed section.

The building itself looked tired. Two storeys of beige concrete and faded blue trim, the sort of 1980s construction that had aged badly. Half the exterior lights were out, leaving dark patches across the facade.

I went through the main doors at two in the afternoon on Friday, 13 January 2023.

The interior was no better. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, many of them flickering or dead. The floor tiles had that speckled pattern designed to hide dirt, cracked in places where the foundations had shifted. A directory stood near the entrance, one of those backlit displays with white lettering on black panels. It listed what seemed to be dozens of shops.

Straight ahead, a central escalator connected the ground floor to the first. It was not running. The metal steps sat motionless beneath a film of dust.

The management office was tucked behind a former biscuit shop whose empty windows still bore faded decals of chocolate chips. Margaret Hales met me there.

She was perhaps fifty-five, heavy-set, with greying brown hair pulled back from her face. Wire-rimmed glasses reflected the overhead lights when she looked up from her desk. She wore a blue blouse and dark trousers, professional but worn, with a management pass hanging from a lanyard around her neck.

"Daniel Mercer?"

She stood and offered her hand.

"Yes, Ms Hales."

Her handshake was firm but brief. "Have a seat. This won't take long."

The office smelt stale, of old coffee and printer toner. Filing cabinets lined one wall. In the corner stood a water cooler with an empty bottle that looked as though it had not been replaced in days.

Margaret sat down again and took a folder from a drawer.

"You've got military experience." She glanced at my application. "That's useful. We need somebody disciplined, somebody who can cope with the monotony. Night work here is mostly walking and watching."

"I can do that."

"The job is straightforward." She folded her hands on the desk. "You patrol the corridors every two hours, check the doors and make sure nobody has got inside who shouldn't be here. We sometimes get rough sleepers trying to shelter in the alcoves. Occasionally teenagers think it would be clever to break in and vandalise the place or have a party. If you encounter anyone, you call the police. You don't engage unless you have to protect yourself or somebody else. Understood?"

"Understood."

"There's a security office on the first floor with monitors for the cameras we still have operational. Most of the system is dead because of budget cuts, but a few feeds work. You'll spend most of your time there between patrols."

She slid a heavy key ring across the desk.

"Main doors, security office and authorised maintenance areas. Don't open anything else unless there's an emergency."

I picked up the keys. They were cold and heavier than I had expected.

"The paid shift is ten at night until six in the morning, Wednesday through Sunday. Forty hours. Wages are paid fortnightly. You'll see more activity at weekends, what little we get."

She paused and studied me through her glasses.

"Any questions?"

"How many businesses are still operating?"

"Seven, all on the ground floor. Poundstretcher, a nail bar, a mobile phone repair shop and a few others. They're short-term clearance tenants on monthly licences, confined to a section that has separate certification and services. The rest of the centre is formally closed to the public. It's not what it used to be."

That matched what I had seen on the way in. A dying shopping centre in a region full of them, replaced by retail parks and online shopping.

"When do I start?"

"Tonight, if you're ready. I'll take you round before the shift, show you the route and the security office, then you're on your own."

I needed the money.

"I'm ready."

She nodded and stood. "Let's go."

Margaret walked me through the building while the January daylight faded outside.

The ground floor formed a long rectangle, with shopfronts on both sides of a central corridor. Most were empty, their metal grilles pulled down or their windows covered in brown paper. The businesses that remained looked sparse: a Poundstretcher under harsh fluorescent lighting with little stock on its shelves, a nail bar with two chairs and peeling wall decals, and a tax preparation service that probably saw most of its custom during only a few months of the year.

Heavy temporary partitions and locked cross-corridor doors separated those licensed units from the closed wings. Margaret let us through with one of her keys, explaining that management and security still required access throughout the centre. Insurance demanded a minimal security presence, and enough electricity, ventilation and CCTV had been retained for monitoring, inspections and maintenance.

We climbed the motionless escalator, our footsteps echoing from the metal steps.

The first floor was worse. Longer stretches of vacant shops faced one another across the corridor. Some had lost their glazing entirely and revealed bare shelves, exposed plasterboard and uncovered electrical boxes. The air was musty and noticeably colder, as though the heating had been shut off in the unused sections.

The security office was a converted storeroom near the eastern end. Margaret unlocked it and switched on the light.

Inside were a desk, a wheeled chair with a torn seat and four small monitors mounted on the wall. Three displayed grainy black-and-white live pictures: the main entrance, the car park and a corridor on the ground floor. The fourth showed static.

"That camera has been out for months," Margaret said. "We're meant to be getting it repaired."

I did not believe her, but I kept that to myself.

She showed me the logbook, a spiral-bound notebook in which I was to record patrol times and incidents. The last entry was from three weeks earlier. The previous guard had written Quiet night in a hurried, untidy hand.

"What happened to him?"

"Walked out without notice. Just stopped turning up."

Margaret's tone suggested that this was not unusual.

"The one before him lasted two months. It's boring work, Daniel. A lot of people can't handle the quiet."

Boring sounded fine to me. I had endured enough excitement to last a while.

She finished the induction walk and left well before ten. I spent the remaining time familiarising myself with the office, the keys and the route.

At 22:00, I began my first paid shift.

The shopping centre felt different at night. The overhead lights that still worked created islands of visibility separated by long stretches of shadow. My boots echoed on the tiles, the sound travelling down the empty corridors.

I checked doors, tested grilles and shone my torch through darkened shopfronts. Everything remained still and quiet.

After my first three shifts, Friday through Sunday, I had the beginnings of a routine. When I returned on Wednesday for the first night of my second week, it settled properly into place: patrol at midnight, another at 02:00 and the last at 04:00. Between rounds I sat in the security office, drank coffee from a flask and watched the unchanging feeds.

Sometimes I heard noises - creaks and groans from the building settling, the hum of the ventilation serving the occupied section, distant traffic moving along the dual carriageway. Nothing threatening.

Margaret had been right. It was boring.

But something about the place did not sit properly with me.

Just after midnight on Wednesday, 18 January, during my fourth shift, I was walking the ground-floor corridor when I noticed the shopfront three units down from Poundstretcher. I had passed it repeatedly during my first weekend.

It had been empty every time, its windows dark, with nothing inside except bare walls and a loose electrical socket hanging from its mounting.

That night the glass was clean. Display racks stood beyond it, filled with trainers arranged in neat rows and visible even in the dim corridor light.

I stopped and stared through the window.

The faded sign above the entrance read Sole Trader. I could have sworn it had not been there before.

My watch showed 00:40.

I had walked this route at the same time on three previous nights. The shop had been completely empty. Now it contained merchandise.

I moved closer and pressed my face to the glass. The trainers looked real, fresh from their boxes: white leather and vivid colours arranged on black display plinths. Yet no lights were on inside. Nothing moved, and there was no sign of how or when anyone could have stocked the place.

My pulse quickened.

I tried the door. It was locked. The glass felt cool beneath my palm.

I stood there for perhaps five minutes, trying to make sense of it. Then I moved on and completed the patrol.

Back in the security office, I searched the logbook for any mention of a new tenant or a delivery. There was nothing. The last entry before mine remained that note from three weeks ago.

On Thursday night the shop was empty again. Bare walls, no racks, only the same dark shell I remembered from my first weekend. Dust covered the windows.

I stopped and slowly turned around.

Everything else in the corridor appeared unchanged: the same broken tiles, the same flickering lights, the same locked grilles across the other empty units.

On Friday, the merchandise returned, but this time it was clothing rather than footwear. Racks of shirts and trousers stood beyond spotless windows, arranged as though somebody had only just finished dressing the display.

My hands felt cold.

I took out my mobile phone and photographed the interior through the glass. The flash reflected from the window and washed out most of the picture, but shapes remained visible behind the glare: racks, clothing, perhaps a mannequin.

I went to the directory near the main entrance. Under the beam of my torch, the black panels listed the businesses alphabetically. Sole Trader was there, but it was shown as Unit 217 on the first floor. I had been looking at it on the ground floor, in what should have been Unit 109.

The directory also listed a Frankie & Benny's, a Vision Express sunglasses concession, Borders and Spudulike. I had walked every corridor on both floors several times. I had never seen any of them - not open, not closed, not even vacant units with their old signs left above the doors.

On Saturday I brought a notebook and mapped the centre myself. I walked the whole ground floor and recorded every shopfront in order.

Poundstretcher. Empty unit. Empty unit. Nail bar. Empty unit. Tax preparation. The empty unit that sometimes contained merchandise. Mobile phone repair. Empty unit. Empty unit.

The first floor was much the same, only more thoroughly abandoned. When I finished, I could account for eighteen units on the ground floor and twelve on the first: thirty physical shopfronts in all.

The directory listed thirty-eight.

The numbers were not even close.

On Sunday evening, before the centre closed, I found Margaret in the management office typing at an ageing desktop computer.

"Can I ask you something?"

She looked up. "Problem?"

"The directory by the main doors lists businesses I haven't seen on my patrols. Frankie & Benny's, Borders, others. Are they old listings that were never replaced?"

Margaret's expression did not change.

"Probably. The panels date from when the centre was fully occupied. We never got round to updating all of them."

"But some of the units aren't there. I can't even find the empty spaces where those shops should have been. The numbers don't add up."

"You're working in poor light, Daniel. It's easy to get turned around in here."

Her tone was patient but dismissive, the way one might speak to someone who had made an obvious mistake.

"Give it time. You'll become familiar with the layout."

"There's a shopfront on the ground floor that changes from one night to the next. Sometimes it contains merchandise. Sometimes it's completely empty."

"Changes how?"

"As though somebody is stocking it and clearing it again, but the door is always locked and I never see anyone inside."

Margaret removed her glasses and cleaned them on her sleeve.

"The lighting plays tricks. Shadows, reflections from the car park lamps. You're probably seeing the same empty unit and interpreting it differently depending on the angle or the time."

"I took photographs."

"Show them to me next week. We'll work out what you're seeing."

She replaced her glasses and turned back to the computer.

"Anything else?"

I stood there for another moment, frustration tightening my chest, but she had already dismissed me. Her fingers moved across the keyboard.

"No."

I returned to the security office and opened the photographs on my phone. Friday's image showed a dark shop window, broken by the white flare of the flash. Behind it were the indistinct shapes of racks and clothing, and something that might have been a mannequin.

The picture was blurred and difficult to interpret.

I sat in the torn chair, stared at the monitors and tried to convince myself Margaret was right. Dim lighting. Shadows. An unfamiliar building.

But I had conducted night patrols in far worse conditions overseas. I knew how to observe, how to retain situational awareness and how to notice inconsistencies. I had learnt patrol routes around Lashkar Gah until every wall, junction and likely firing point was fixed in my mind.

Something was wrong with Merebrook.

My eighth shift, Sunday, 22 January, felt ordinary until I reached the food hall at twenty past midnight.

I had completed the ground-floor patrol, checked the main-door locks twice and confirmed that Poundstretcher's grille was secure. Then I climbed the dead escalator, my boots striking each metal ridge with a hollow clang that echoed through the building.

The first floor smelt stronger than usual. Mould, with something sweet beneath it. Rotting fruit, perhaps, though I had never found the source.

The food hall occupied the northern wing. Twelve fixed tables stood on the tiled floor, most of them missing their chairs. One curved counter had once served Chinese food, its menu board still hanging crooked above it. Another had sold pizza, but its serving window was boarded with plywood. An Environmental Health closure notice issued by the district council was fixed to the wood, its corners curling with age.

Someone was sitting at one of the tables.

I stopped.

My hand went to the torch on my belt, although the overhead lights were on. Fluorescent tubes buzzed above the abandoned pretzel stand, tinting everything a sickly green.

The woman had her back to me. Straight black hair fell past her shoulders. She wore an ivory blouse, charcoal trousers and low-heeled court shoes. Her hands were folded on the table as though she were waiting for somebody to bring her order.

"Excuse me."

She turned.

She was young, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with delicate features and a bewildered expression. Her eyes widened when she saw me.

"Oh, thank God."

She stood so quickly that the chair scraped across the floor.

"I've been looking everywhere. Can you tell me how to get to Mayfair Jewellers? I'm supposed to be at work."

I approached slowly, keeping my posture open and non-threatening.

"I'm Daniel Mercer. Night security. The centre has been closed since ten."

"Closed?"

She looked around the food hall and then back at me.

"No, I work here. Mayfair Jewellers, on the first floor. I can't find it."

"What's your name?"

"Leanne. Leanne Shah."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hand was shaking.

"I've worked there for eight months. The shop is beside the fountain, but I can't find the fountain either. Everything looks different."

By then I had patrolled the building twenty-four times over eight shifts. I had walked every corridor, checked every door and mapped the layout against the impossible directory.

There was no jewellery shop on the first floor, and there was no fountain. I had seen a circular outline in the tiles near the centre court, where one must once have stood.

"How did you get in, Leanne?"

"I..."

She stopped, her forehead creasing.

"I don't remember. I was just here, looking for the shop."

"The building is locked. Main doors, fire exits, service doors and loading bay. All secure."

"That doesn't make sense."

Her voice tightened.

"I work Tuesday to Saturday, nine until six. My manager is Helen. Helen Markham. She's probably wondering where I am."

Her confusion sounded genuine. She was not drunk or high. She was simply and completely lost.

"Show me where you think the shop is."

She nodded quickly, relieved to have somebody helping her.

"Yes. All right. It's this way."

Leanne headed towards the centre court with purpose. I followed, watching her posture. She moved without hesitation, as though she knew precisely where she was going. At the corridor junction she turned right and passed three vacant shopfronts secured behind metal grilles and chains.

She stopped outside Unit 214.

"It's here."

Yellowed newspapers covered the inside of the windows. One visible headline concerned a district council election in 2009. The door was glass in a metal frame, without a sign or business name. Through a gap between the sheets, I could see bare concrete where the floor tiles had been removed.

Leanne placed one hand against the glass.

"No. This is wrong. This is the right location. The sign is blue, with gold cursive lettering. We have a display case just inside the entrance. Engagement rings. Three rows of wedding bands behind the counter."

"There's nothing here."

"There has to be."

She seized the handle and pulled. The door remained locked. She pulled harder.

"Helen opens at 08:45. I come in at nine. Sophie starts the middle shift at ten. The safe is in the back room. We keep the expensive pieces there, anything over GBP2,000."

I watched her face. She was not lying. She believed every word.

"Leanne, when do you last remember being at work?"

"Today. This morning."

She released the handle and faced me.

"I worked until six. We had a customer choosing anniversary bands. She bought a white-gold set with a diamond inlay. GBP1,500. I processed the sale, Helen locked up the inventory, and I clocked out."

"What's today's date?"

"22 March."

"What year?"

Her eyes lost focus for a moment.

"2013."

Ten years earlier.

Something cold moved through my chest.

Leanne stood in front of me, solid and real, wearing clothes that appeared ordinary until I examined them closely. Then the fabric seemed subtly wrong - too crisp, cut in the style of office clothes from a decade earlier. Her low-heeled court shoes were scuffed, with pointed toes and small bows of the sort I had not seen since my sister stopped shopping at the centre near our childhood home.

"Leanne, it's 22 January 2023."

"That's not..."

She shook her head.

"No. That doesn't make sense. I just left work. The centre is full. There are customers everywhere. The food hall has five restaurants. There's always a queue at the Chinese place at lunchtime. The fountain has coins in it. Hundreds of them. People throw them in."

"The fountain is gone. The food hall is closed. Most of the shops are empty."

"You're wrong."

Her voice cracked.

"This is Merebrook Shopping Centre. I know this place. Borders is downstairs near the west entrance. Field & Trek is opposite the arcade. There's a Frankie & Benny's where the entrance divides. You can smell the burgers cooking when you come in."

She was describing the directory. Every shop she named appeared on that board downstairs. Borders, Unit 109. Field & Trek, Unit 226. Frankie & Benny's, Unit 101.

All of them were gone.

"Tell me about the other shops."

Leanne seized on the question like a lifeline.

"The Vision Express sunglasses concession is upstairs near the toilets. The manager is Callum. He's always trying to persuade people to try the expensive Oakleys. There's The Candle Shop - you can smell it from three units away. Next is on the ground floor, a big corner shop. They've just put out the spring stock. There's The Entertainer, and GAME next door."

She kept talking, naming fifteen businesses and describing their positions exactly as they appeared on the directory. She supplied details about employees, stock deliveries and daily routines. She knew the woman who managed the pretzel counter and remembered which days they made cinnamon-sugar pretzels. She described the arcade machines by the east entrance and said the Time Crisis cabinet always swallowed pound coins unless you jiggled the slot.

Every detail made my skin tighten.

This was not knowledge acquired from glancing at a directory. It was lived familiarity, the sort that came from working somewhere for months. Leanne knew this shopping centre as I had known the patrol routes around Lashkar Gah: every building, every junction, every checkpoint, every place where locals set up their stalls.

But the centre she described did not exist. It had not existed for years.

At last she stopped talking, breathing hard.

"You believe me, don't you? I'm not mad. I work here. I know this place."

I did not know what I believed, but Margaret's explanations about bad lighting, reflections and unfamiliar corridors could not account for Leanne.

I took her lightly but firmly by the elbow.

"Come on. We're leaving. I'll take you to the main doors."

She followed without resisting, her court shoes quiet on the cracked tiles. We descended the escalator to the ground floor. Fluorescent lights hummed above us, casting a yellow-grey wash over the vacant shopfronts.

The main entrance should have been forty-five metres ahead. I had locked those doors myself at 22:15 and tested them twice. They were standard glass double doors fitted with panic bars, with a clear view of the car park beyond.

We came within six metres of where they should have been, and I stopped.

There was only a blank wall.

Beige concrete, the same texture as the exterior. No doors, no glass, no panic bars. Solid wall where the entrance had stood three hours earlier.

Leanne made a small, confused sound.

I turned us around and headed for the east fire exit, near Poundstretcher and its locked grille. I had checked that door at midnight. It had been secure and had looked out towards the side car park and the bins.

We reached the corridor. The exit should have been nine metres away at its far end.

I walked the full length, my boots echoing on the tiles. Leanne's breathing became faster beside me.

The corridor ended at another blank wall.

No door. No illuminated exit sign. No panic bar. Only beige concrete with a water stain spreading across it like a malformed flower.

"Where...?" Leanne began.

"Maintenance exit," I said, without answering her question.

I led her towards the north-west service corridor, where a door should have opened onto the loading bay. I had a key for it. Margaret had specifically identified it during the induction.

The service corridor smelt of old grease and cardboard. Our footsteps changed pitch on the concrete floor. I counted the doors as we passed them: supply cupboard, electrical room, manager's office for the former pet shop.

The loading-bay door should have stood at the end.

Instead, I found an unfamiliar maintenance room with its door hanging open. It was perhaps two and a half metres square and packed with cleaning equipment: mop buckets, bottles of industrial detergent, and a metal shelving unit holding half-empty containers of floor polish.

It had the dimensions and arrangement of a cupboard, not a loading bay with vehicle access.

I checked my mental map. This corner should have opened to the outside. It should have contained a roller shutter and a concrete platform for deliveries. I had walked the perimeter on my second shift and counted every external access point.

Leanne pulled free of my hand and backed against the corridor wall.

"What's happening?"

"I don't know yet."

I took us back towards the centre, then south to the fire exit near the site of the dead fountain. That door should have opened into the southern part of the car park, facing the access road from the A38.

We passed empty shopfronts. Leanne looked into each dark space behind its metal grille or papered windows, turning her head as if she saw something different from what I did.

The south corridor ran for about twelve metres. It ended in another wall.

The illuminated fire-exit sign still hung from the ceiling, its green arrow pointing directly at solid concrete.

I pressed my hand to the wall. It was cold, slightly damp and entirely real.

My pulse accelerated.

Training told me to control my breathing, assess the situation and identify the problem. But training assumed that physical spaces obeyed basic rules. It assumed doors did not disappear or become walls between patrols.

Leanne sank to the floor opposite the vanished exit. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

Over the next twenty minutes I tried two more ways out: the north-west service entrance and the fire exit near the old BHS anchor unit. Both were gone. One had become a blank wall; the other opened into a shallow maintenance cupboard that ended in concrete.

We returned to the security office.

Leanne sat in the torn chair while I studied the monitors. The exterior camera showed my car in its usual place near the main entrance. It also showed the entrance itself.

The glass doors were intact on the screen.

From inside the building, they no longer existed.

I lifted the desk phone. It gave a dead line, as it had since my first shift. Margaret had told me that the security line was disconnected and that I should use my mobile in an emergency.

My phone showed two bars. I dialled 999.

The call connected and rang twice before dissolving into static.

I tried again. The same thing happened.

I called Margaret's number from the contact sheet. Static.

Leanne watched me with hollow eyes. She did not ask what it meant.

I put down the phone and looked at the monitors again. The interior camera showed an empty corridor, unchanged from every previous night. The exterior feed showed glass doors, the car park and distant trees beyond the cracked tarmac.

From the outside, everything appeared normal.

"You should rest," I told Leanne. "I'll work this out."

She did not answer. She only stared at the screens.

The centre released me at some point before dawn, though I could never identify when the doors returned. At 05:46, the main entrance was suddenly where it belonged. Leanne was no longer in the chair. I searched for her until the end of the shift and found nothing.

I told myself I should not return. Then I thought of the stalled compensation paperwork, the GBP300 in my account and the fact that Margaret would call it a walkout without notice. More than that, I knew Leanne had been real.

I went back on Wednesday, 25 January.

At 01:17, I found a man on the ground floor near the entrance to the old food hall. He stood with his arms folded, staring at a papered shopfront.

He was a large man, perhaps a little over 1.8 metres tall, broad and stocky, with a middle beginning to soften. He wore a polo shirt and chinos, the unofficial uniform of retail management.

"Excuse me," I said.

He turned.

"You see this? The grille should be up by now. I've got stock arriving at six."

"The centre is closed. You need to leave."

"I'm the manager." He jerked a thumb towards the empty unit. "Field & Trek. Graham Pike. I've got three pallets of camping equipment arriving in four hours, so I'd like to know why my grille won't open."

I looked at the shopfront. It appeared exactly as it had on every patrol: metal grille lowered, yellowing newspapers taped inside the glass, darkness beyond.

"There is no outdoor shop here."

Graham stared at me.

"What the hell are you talking about? I've managed this branch for six years."

The conversation followed the same pattern as mine with Leanne: insistence, confusion, rising fear.

I asked him the date.

"8 November 2016."

On Thursday, 26 January, at 02:30, I found an elderly woman in the food hall. She wore a floral dress beneath a stained apron, her white hair arranged in a neat bun. She stood behind the plywood-covered bakery counter, her hands resting on the boards as though she were waiting for customers.

"Can I help you, dear?" she asked when I approached.

"You can't be here. The centre is closed."

"Oh, I know it's late." She smiled, gentle and warm. "I'm only finishing the morning preparation. The cinnamon rolls need time to prove before we open at nine."

"What's your name?"

"Moira Evans. I work at Baker's Corner, love. Right here. Twenty-two years now."

She gestured towards the plywood.

I asked her the date.

"19 July 2014."

Across my next three worked shifts, Friday through Sunday, I encountered five more people.

One was a teenager who insisted that he worked at GAME. Another was a middle-aged woman searching for the Borders where she bought a crime novel every month. A young man in a food-hall uniform said he needed to open Spudulike for the lunchtime rush.

Every one of them described thriving shops, crowds of customers, seasonal decorations, back-to-school promotions and Christmas events. They knew the names of employees, delivery rotas and regular customers. They spoke about Merebrook with the intimate familiarity of daily experience.

None of them could see the empty shops, cracked tiles or dead escalator as I saw them. When I pointed to newspaper-covered windows, they described merchandise displays. When I showed them lowered grilles, they saw open entrances.

They were not lying.

Nor was it delusion, at least not the kind from which somebody might be reasoned back into a shared reality. They existed in other versions of the building, in personally significant days from years earlier, and they could not perceive anything beyond them.

I tried to lead each of them to an exit. Every attempt ended the same way: blank walls, maintenance cupboards and corridors terminating in concrete.

They were not rough sleepers trying to escape the cold. It was not mental illness. It was not trespass. It was nothing for which I could construct a rational explanation.

At 04:00 on Sunday, 29 January, I sat in the security office watching Leanne, Graham and Moira together in the food hall on the live corridor feed. They barely interacted. Each seemed trapped inside a different memory of Merebrook, on a different remembered date, yet they had still gravitated towards one another, as though proximity offered some instinctive comfort.

The monitor showed them clearly. It also showed the empty food hall around them: boarded counters, fixed tables and cracked flooring.

Something had gone terribly wrong in this building.

Something trapped people inside memories. Something made exits disappear and allowed different versions of time to occupy the same space.

I had accepted GBP10.50 an hour to walk a route, check doors and watch monitors. Now I was trapped whenever Merebrook chose to close around me, just as Leanne, Graham, Moira and the others were trapped.

Whatever the place had become, it did not let go.

Still watching the screens that Sunday morning, I noticed something I had missed before.

A small button sat on the right-hand side of the main display panel. It was made of dusty grey plastic, and its faded label read ARCHIVE.

My finger hovered over it.

Margaret had never mentioned an archive during the induction. She had shown me three live feeds and the fourth monitor's static, but she had said nothing about stored footage. I had assumed the system did nothing except display the cameras that remained operational.

I pressed the button.

The main monitor flickered, then changed to a menu of dates stretching back through the years.

The interface looked ancient: blocky text, no graphics, the sort of system that should have been replaced long ago. January 2023 appeared at the top, followed by December 2022, November, October, then earlier months and years.

I scrolled down. The list continued through 2021, 2020 and 2019.

My chest tightened.

I had assumed the grainy feeds and flickering displays meant the whole installation was barely functioning. Yet the system had been recording for years and storing everything. Even the failed fourth camera had worked in the older footage, allowing the archive to show four historical angles.

I chose a date at random: 14 October 2021, 02:30.

After several seconds of stuttering, four camera views filled the screen. They showed the main entrance, car park, ground-floor corridor and first-floor food hall. All were grainy and bleached by fluorescent light, but clear enough.

The entrance feed showed the glass doors I locked every night. A heavy-set man of about forty stood inside them wearing what appeared to be a cleaner's uniform. He pushed the panic bar, pulled at the door, stepped back and tried again. His mouth moved, but the system had no sound.

I switched to the ground-floor corridor at the same timestamp.

A young woman in business clothes walked towards where the entrance should have been. She stopped at a wall, turned around, walked back, then returned to the same point. Again and again she followed the same path, with the same turn and the same bewildered pause.

I fast-forwarded in five-minute increments.

She continued walking.

At 03:15, she finally sat against the wall with her head in her hands. The cleaner kept trying the doors until 04:20, when he walked out of frame.

I selected another date: 3 March 2022, 00:00.

The food-hall camera showed three people. I recognised one immediately.

Graham Pike sat at one of the fixed tables, wearing the same polo shirt and chinos. His hands were folded and he stared into nothing.

At 00:47, he stood, walked to the food-hall entrance and remained there for eight minutes before returning to the table. At 01:15, he did it again with precisely the same timing and movements.

My hands felt cold against the desk.

I opened more recordings, choosing dates and times at random. The pattern persisted.

People wandered the corridors, checked doors that led nowhere, sat in the food hall and followed patrol routes through the empty centre. Some I recognised from the previous week: the teenager who claimed to work at GAME, the woman searching for Borders, the young man from Spudulike.

Others I had never seen. An older man wore a security uniform different from mine. Two women wore retail tabards. Another man had on a food-hall apron.

Then I found Leanne.

The footage was dated 7 August 2021 at 01:40. She stood outside Unit 214, where Mayfair Jewellers had not existed for years. Her black hair and ivory blouse were unmistakable, although the washed-out footage flattened the colours.

She knocked on the glass, tried the handle, stepped back and stared at the empty window as though she saw a display I could not.

I moved forward one week, to 14 August at the same time.

Leanne stood in the same place and performed the same actions. Knock. Try the handle. Step back. Pause in confusion.

I checked September, October and November. Every week, sometimes twice in one week, she appeared on the first-floor camera searching for her shop. The gestures and pauses repeated. Even without sound, I thought I could see her mouth forming the same questions she had asked me.

I moved through December 2021 and into January 2022. Leanne continued to appear, but something had changed.

I returned to the earliest recording and compared it with the later footage. Her face looked older, though only slightly. There were small changes around her eyes, a different set to her jaw - the sort of change invisible from one day to the next but obvious across many months.

Her clothing had changed too, though she always wore the same outfit. In August 2021, the blouse and trousers looked crisp, with clean lines and fabric that held its shape. By March 2022, they showed wear. The colour had faded, the hems had begun to fray and the court shoes were more heavily scuffed.

By July, the deterioration was obvious. By October, one sleeve had torn near the shoulder.

She never appeared in different clothes. She simply returned in the same outfit as it slowly wore away, walking the same route, asking the same questions and searching for a shop that no longer existed.

I searched for Graham next.

His claimed date was 8 November 2016, but the archive showed no trace of him then. His first recorded loop began in late March 2020, shortly after the date I would later learn mattered more than any of the dates the trapped people remembered.

In the earliest recording, Graham looked only a little younger than he did now: fewer lines around his mouth, less grey in his hair, a straighter posture. His polo shirt looked new.

I moved forward to 2021. The shirt collar had begun to fray. In 2022 there was more grey in his hair. By the footage from the previous week, nearly three years after his first appearance in the archive, the changes were unmistakable.

He had aged inside Merebrook while believing it was still 8 November 2016.

My stomach turned.

I searched for the others and traced them backwards through the recordings.

The teenager from GAME first appeared in April 2020. In the early footage he looked about sixteen. Three years later he looked closer to nineteen, the same graphic tee growing more faded each time he returned.

Moira Evans claimed it was 19 July 2014, but she did not appear in the archive until April 2020. The difference between her first recording and the woman I had met was less than three years of physical ageing, not nine. Her remembered date was not the beginning of her imprisonment. It was simply the day her loop had chosen for her.

I watched her floral dress fade from bright colours to washed-out cloth, its seams loosening, threads trailing and buttons disappearing one by one.

Then there was the elderly man in the unfamiliar security uniform. His first appearance was on a post-closure recording from October 2020. He had arrived for a night shift months after the disaster and never appeared to leave. I watched him patrol the empty corridors month after month, then year after year, his uniform gradually fraying while he followed the same route with the same methodical precision.

Some people disappeared from the footage after a while. I tracked one woman through nearly two years of recordings, then she simply stopped appearing. There was no departure and no change in her routine. She was present in one month's archive and absent from the next.

The same thing happened to others. Months or years of footage, then nothing. Most remained, though, wandering the same paths and repeating the same actions. Their faces seemed to age, their clothes deteriorated and their routines never varied.

I sat back in the torn chair. My hands were shaking.

They did not look like ghosts. The former guards, at least, had entered the building alive. They appeared to be real people trapped here, living through the same moments again and again while time moved forwards around them. Their bodies changed. Their clothes wore away. But their minds stayed locked in whatever day they thought it was, following whatever routine they believed they were meant to follow.

And Leanne Shah had been in the archive for eighteen months. Every few days she searched for Mayfair Jewellers, asked the same questions and received the same useless answers from a building that could not respond. Her face had altered and the fabric of her clothes had faded, yet she remained convinced it was 22 March 2013.

I looked at the live monitor feed. Leanne sat in the food hall with Graham Pike and Moira Evans. All three were trapped in separate streams of memory, each inhabiting a different version of what Merebrook Shopping Centre had once been.

The archive menu still glowed on the main screen. Years of people wandering these corridors, checking doors that led nowhere and searching for shops that no longer existed. They seemed to change while believing they were living ordinary working days.

I had been employed here for ten days. Eight worked shifts. My own image appeared throughout the recent footage: patrolling corridors, testing locks, sitting in this office, following my own routine and establishing my own pattern.

The realisation struck cold and hard.

This was what happened here. This was what Merebrook Shopping Centre did. It took people and trapped them in loops, in memories, in phantom versions of itself.

And it did not let go.

Months became years while people changed inside these walls. Their minds remained fixed in the past as they followed the same paths, asked the same questions and searched for things they would never find.

I was inside it now.

The exits were gone. The desk phone gave a dead line. My mobile could show me the outside, but it could not lead me there. I had no idea how long it would be before I began walking my own loop, checking my own doors and following my own routine while the years passed. My uniform would rot and my mind would remain locked in January 2023.

At 06:00 on Monday, 23 January 2023, I sat in the security office staring at the archive menu. I could not leave. I could not call anyone. There was nothing to do but keep looking.

After two hours of cycling through camera footage, the computer itself caught my attention. An ancient Dell tower stood beneath the desk, humming steadily, its casing warm against my leg.

I minimised the archive programme and found a basic desktop covered with folders labelled PAYROLL, ROTAS, MAINTENANCE LOGS and INCIDENT REPORTS. I opened INCIDENT REPORTS. Its subfolders went back to 2008. The most recent was dated March 2020.

Inside were PDF files labelled with dates and times.

15 January 2020. Water leak near the old BHS entrance. Plumber contacted.

3 February 2020. Shoplifting incident. Teenager detained and released to parents.

9 March 2020. Electrical short in food hall. Circuit breaker reset.

Then 22 March 2020.

The file was much larger than the others. I opened it.

A scanned document appeared, bearing the letterhead of Mercia Retail Estates Ltd. It was an incident report with handwritten sections and additional typed notes. My eyes caught on the summary at the top.

At approximately 20:47 on 22 March 2020, emergency services responded to Merebrook Shopping Centre following automated carbon monoxide detector alerts. Upon arrival, police, fire and ambulance crews discovered catastrophic concentrations of carbon monoxide throughout the building. At 20:35, a security lockdown system installed for a serious armed-threat scenario malfunctioned and engaged electronic locks across the site. Illegal modifications to the fire-exit controls, failed fail-safe releases and unauthorised management overrides prevented several panic bars from releasing. Approximately twenty people were believed to have remained inside. Seventeen fatalities were confirmed at the scene.

The carbon monoxide had entered the ventilation system after a standby generator flue was incorrectly reconnected during maintenance.

I read the summary again.

22 March 2020. Nearly three years ago.

Seventeen fatalities.

My hand felt cold against the mouse. I scrolled down to a list of victims identified by name, age and last known location.

Leanne Shah, 23, Mayfair Jewellers employee, found in the first-floor corridor near Unit 214.

Graham Pike, 38, Field & Trek manager, found in the food hall.

Moira Evans, 65, Baker's Corner employee, found behind the bakery counter.

There were names I had not yet encountered.

Aiden Wong, 19, GAME sales assistant.

Susan Draper, 41, Borders assistant manager.

Peter Sykes, 53, maintenance worker.

Seventeen names in all.

I sat back in the torn chair. It creaked beneath me.

Carbon monoxide was odourless and colourless. It made you tired and confused. By the time you understood that something was wrong, you might no longer be capable of saving yourself.

The lockdown had sealed the doors, but no lawful British fire-safety system should have been able to hold them like that. Someone had interfered with it. Someone had defeated the releases and overridden the safeguards that were supposed to keep every fire exit usable.

I opened the archive for 22 March 2020 and selected 20:00. All four historical camera angles were available because the failed camera had still been working then.

The centre looked almost exactly as it had during my first week: empty shopfronts, cracked tiles, a broken escalator and failing lights. It had already been in severe decline, with only a small number of tenants left. Yet people moved through it as though they could see something fuller than the derelict building recorded by the cameras.

A woman walked near the main entrance. A man in a polo shirt sat in the food hall. Someone stood behind the counter where the faded Baker's Corner sign had once hung.

At 20:35, they began reacting in the same confused way. The woman near the entrance approached the glass doors, pushed the panic bar and tried again with both hands. The man in the food hall stood and hurried towards the camera before passing out of frame.

By 20:47, people had begun to collapse. Some sat down against walls. Others leaned across tables or folded where they stood. By 21:15, nobody in any of the four camera views was moving.

I closed the footage and found another folder labelled NEWS COVERAGE. It contained subfolders for March and April 2020, followed by later updates.

There were saved pages from the Birmingham Mail, regional Midlands news sites and even a report from The Times. The headlines described the deaths, the investigation into breaches of building regulations and fire-safety law, and the claims brought against Mercia Retail Estates and the ventilation contractor.

A report from June 2020 said Merebrook Shopping Centre had formally closed. The building had been sealed pending litigation, the coroner's proceedings and a decision on demolition. Limited electricity, ventilation, CCTV and management access had been retained so that the structure could be monitored safely.

Another article, dated August 2020, explained that Mercia Retail Estates had contracted a minimal security operation to deter trespassers and satisfy the conditions imposed by its insurers while the district council considered planning and demolition applications. Margaret Hales was named as the day manager responsible for recruiting and scheduling guards at the vacant property.

I sat with both hands resting on the desk.

Margaret had hired me to patrol a building where seventeen people had died. Their bodies had been found almost three years earlier, scattered through corridors, behind counters and around the food hall.

She had given me keys. She had shown me round. She had described the previous guards as men who had walked out without notice.

She had not mentioned the deaths. She had not mentioned what happened to people who entered after them.

I searched through more articles and found a detailed investigation published in October 2020. During routine maintenance, the standby generator flue had been disconnected. It was then reconnected incorrectly, sending exhaust into an intake serving the centre's ventilation system. Carbon monoxide spread through the building within minutes.

The same evening, the security lockdown system malfunctioned. It had been installed for use during a serious armed-threat incident, but investigators discovered illegal alterations that allowed management controls to override circuits connected to the exits. Several fail-safe releases had not been maintained. When the electronic locks engaged, the panic bars did not release as required.

The report described gross management negligence, breaches of fire-safety duties and years of ignored warnings.

A sidebar listed all seventeen victims with photographs.

Leanne Shah smiled in her picture. She had black hair pulled back from a young face, and the image looked as though it had been taken for a staff pass. She was twenty-three and had worked at Mayfair Jewellers for eight months.

Graham Pike's photograph showed him in a Field & Trek polo shirt. He had a broad face and a confident expression. He was thirty-eight and had managed the shop for six years.

Moira Evans looked like the woman I had met, but the photograph showed fewer lines in her face. She was sixty-five and had worked at Baker's Corner for eleven years.

There was Aiden Wong from GAME. Susan Draper, who had spent her loop searching for Borders. A young man from Spudulike. Every face stared out from the article, alive and smiling, accompanied by an age, a job and a few details about the family left behind.

All of them had died on 22 March 2020.

I stood and walked to the security-office door. Beyond it, the first-floor corridor lay beneath flickering lights and water-stained ceiling tiles.

Leanne was somewhere out there. So were Graham and Moira. They walked the corridors looking for their shops, convinced it was some personally significant working day from years before the disaster. Leanne thought it was 22 March 2013. Graham believed it was 8 November 2016. Moira had given 19 July 2014.

Those were not the dates they had died. They were older memories chosen by the loops, ordinary working days their minds had retreated into when the gas confused them and the building took hold.

They did not know they were dead. They could not see the empty shopfronts, the decay or the years that had passed. In their minds they were still arriving for work, opening shops and serving customers.

They were trapped inside the building that had killed them.

I returned to the computer and opened the archive again. In footage from August 2021, Leanne stood before the empty Unit 214 and knocked on glass that was no longer there. She had been dead for seventeen months and was still searching for Mayfair Jewellers.

The centre had become something wrong. It was no longer merely a building. It was a prison for consciousness, awareness, whatever fragment of a person might remain after the body stopped working.

The victims' phantom clothes deteriorated. Their faces seemed to register the passing years, but their minds stayed frozen in borrowed dates from 2013, 2016, 2014 and other points in the centre's past. The building kept those memories turning. It would not let them see what had happened. It would not let them understand. It would not let them leave.

I thought about the exits becoming blank walls. The calls breaking into static. The directory listing shops that had vanished years ago.

The centre was doing all of it. Keeping people inside. Keeping them confused. Keeping them moving through empty corridors while the years accumulated and their memories remained fixed.

Seventeen people had died here on 22 March 2020, and every one of them was still here.

I sat in the torn chair, staring at Leanne's photograph in the article. She could not perceive her own death. None of them could.

The centre made certain of that.

I shoved myself away from the desk hard enough to send the chair rolling into the filing cabinet. I had to get out now.

The articles remained open on the monitor, Leanne's face watching from the screen. I did not look at it again. I snatched up my keys and hurried through the first-floor corridor towards the central escalator. My boots struck the metal steps, each impact echoing between the empty shopfronts.

The main entrance stood about forty-five metres ahead when I reached the ground floor. I had walked this route dozens of times across eight shifts. It was a straight line down the central corridor: beige walls on either side, cracked tiles underfoot and fluorescent fittings buzzing overhead.

I covered perhaps thirty metres in fifteen seconds, keys already in my hand as I searched for the right one.

The corridor bent left.

I stopped.

There was not supposed to be a bend. The main entrance should have been directly ahead, with glass doors, panic bars and the car park visible beyond. I had locked those doors at 22:15 the previous night and tested them during every patrol.

Now the corridor curved away as though it had always been built that way.

My pulse quickened. I turned towards the escalator. It looked nearly forty metres behind me, although I had only moved about thirty metres from it. The dimensions did not add up.

I walked back, counting my steps. I reached thirty-two before arriving at the bottom of the dead escalator.

When I turned again, the corridor stretched ahead and curved gently left at roughly forty metres.

"No," I said aloud.

My voice sounded flat in the empty space.

I walked forwards again, faster this time. The passage bent gradually for another thirty metres, then straightened.

It ended at a blank beige wall. A water stain spread from ceiling to floor.

It was the same wall I had found when the east exit first disappeared.

The main entrance should have been there. Beyond it should have been the cracked tarmac of the car park, with my vehicle in the third row.

I took out my mobile phone and opened the exterior camera feed through the security application I had set up during my second shift. The image loaded slowly on two bars of signal.

My vehicle was exactly where I had left it. The main doors were visible behind it: glass panels, panic bars, closed but intact.

From outside, the entrance existed.

From inside, I was standing where it should have been, facing a stained wall.

My hands began to shake. I thrust the phone into my pocket and headed for the east fire exit near Poundstretcher. I knew the route without needing to think: back past the escalator, right at the corridor junction, then straight to the door.

I made the turn and walked forty metres.

The corridor ended at a junction I had never seen before. I could go left, right or straight ahead.

I had patrolled the centre for eight nights. There was no junction here. The passage should have continued directly to the east exit.

I chose the way ahead and walked another thirty metres.

I emerged at the entrance to the northern food hall on the first floor.

I had gone upstairs without using a staircase or escalator.

My breathing accelerated. I pressed my back against the wall beside the food-hall archway and tried to slow it.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Four counts each way.

It was a basic stress-control technique, something drilled into us during training and used often enough on patrol routes around Lashkar Gah. It did little to help.

The building's layout was changing. Not in one dramatic movement, but through small, relentless alterations. Corridors bent where they should have remained straight. Distances stretched. Familiar routes ended in the wrong places.

This was what had happened when I tried to lead Leanne, Graham and Moira towards the exits. They had followed me through passages that terminated at blank walls and cupboards that should not have existed.

Now it was happening to me.

I pushed away from the wall and searched for the central escalator again. I descended to the ground floor and turned towards the north-west maintenance corridor. My key opened the service door, the same one Margaret had issued on my first afternoon and identified as giving emergency access to the loading bay.

The passage beyond ran for six metres and ended at a door marked ELECTRICAL - AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

On my previous shift, this corridor had been twice as long, with supply cupboards on both sides and an unfamiliar maintenance room full of cleaning equipment at the end. During my first week, it had led to a loading-bay door with a panic bar and a concrete platform beyond.

Now it ended at the electrical room.

I tried the door. It was locked, and none of my keys fitted.

I returned to the main corridor and went south towards the place where the fountain had once stood, following the route to another fire exit. The corridor continued far longer than it should have. My boots struck cracked tiles for what felt like seventy metres before I reached an illuminated fire-exit sign.

Its arrow pointed right.

I followed it into a corridor I had never seen. It was scarcely more than a metre wide, with water stains and dark streaks running down both walls. I walked five metres.

The passage ended at a cleaner's cupboard. Its door hung open, revealing a mop bucket and shelves of cleaning supplies.

There was no exit.

I turned back. The corridor behind me now stretched for twelve metres instead of five.

I counted thirty steps before reaching the main passage again.

The dimensions kept changing. The centre grew, shrank and rearranged itself as I moved through it.

I tried the south service entrance next, then the fire exit in the old BHS anchor unit, then a first-floor maintenance door I had checked during my first week. Every route took me somewhere wrong.

I found blank walls, cupboards, rooms that should not have existed and corridors that bent back upon themselves.

Forty minutes later, I stood at the bottom of a stairwell I had just climbed from the ground floor. The door at the top opened on to the ground-floor corridor, six metres from where I had started.

I had climbed an entire flight and remained on the same level.

My shirt clung to my back with sweat. I leaned against the stairwell wall and pressed both palms to the concrete. It was solid and cold beneath my hands.

This was not a dream. It was not a hallucination.

The building was real. The changing layout was real.

I was trapped.

The dead victims had been trapped in their memory loops since the disaster. The guards had entered later, alive, and some of them had been absorbed into patrol loops of their own. The archive showed the older man ageing across the shorter interval since his post-closure shift, his uniform coming apart as he repeated the same route.

The carbon monoxide had killed Leanne, Graham, Moira, Aiden, Susan, Peter and the others on 22 March 2020. Yet they were still here, searching for shops and preparing for shifts that would never begin. They followed remembered routines from earlier years while the centre held them in the moment before comprehension.

And now it had me.

I pushed myself away from the wall and returned to the main corridor, forcing my breathing into something steadier. I had to think. There had to be some detail I had missed, some pattern or weakness in whatever was doing this.

The directory stood near the dead central escalator. I stopped before it and read the list again.

Thirty-eight units.

Frankie & Benny's. The Vision Express sunglasses concession. Borders. The Entertainer. GAME. Field & Trek. Mayfair Jewellers. Baker's Corner. All the places Leanne, Graham, Moira and the others remembered.

Yet I could account for only thirty physical shopfronts in the current layout.

The old directory included businesses that had vanished long before the disaster. Some had been replaced. Others seemed to correspond to spaces that no longer existed at all. When Margaret had conducted my induction walk, the seven remaining businesses had been genuine short-term clearance tenants operating within an isolated, separately certified section of the centre. Their temporary licences were referenced in the management records. That limited area had its own approved access and was due to close permanently at the end of the month.

Everything else should have been empty.

But the directory still listed the lost shops as though the building could not release any version of what it had once been.

I thought about the archive footage. Leanne knocking at empty Unit 214, searching for Mayfair Jewellers. Graham standing before a bare shopfront, expecting an inventory delivery for Field & Trek. Moira moving behind a boarded counter as she prepared to open Baker's Corner.

They saw the shops. They saw Merebrook as it had existed in memories important to them, even when the dates they named were years before their deaths.

Their minds filled the empty spaces with what used to be there. They could not perceive the decay, the abandonment or the passage of time. The building kept them confused and unable to understand how long they had been wandering.

I was beginning to experience the same process. First the exits disappeared. Then the corridors moved and the layout altered whenever I tried to leave.

How long would it be before I stopped noticing?

How long before I began walking the patrol route on instinct, convinced it was still Friday, 13 January 2023, testing doors and watching cameras while months passed?

Then years.

My uniform would slowly fray from my body while I continued to believe I was working my first night.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and tried to concentrate.

The archive had shown it happening to others: a gradual decline, repetitive movement, changing faces and deteriorating clothes while their minds remained fixed in whatever day they believed it to be.

The old security guard had been patrolling since a later post-closure shift. Not eleven years, as the corrupted archive menu had first made me think, but long enough for the difference to show. Long enough for the building to wear him down thread by thread.

Leanne had been searching for Mayfair Jewellers in the surviving footage for eighteen months, knocking on glass that did not exist, unable to see the paper-covered windows or the bare concrete where fittings had been stripped out.

I lowered my hands and looked along the corridor.

Empty shopfronts stretched in both directions. Metal grilles had been pulled down. Brown paper covered the windows. Fluorescent lights buzzed above me.

How long before I stopped seeing the emptiness?

How long before my mind filled it with remembered shops and customers moving across the cracked tiles?

The centre was collecting us.

Seventeen people had died here on 22 March 2020. The carbon monoxide had killed their bodies, but something about the sealed building, the poisoned air and the slow confusion of suffocation had bound what remained of them to this place. The failed exits had trapped them physically, and the centre had trapped them again in memory.

The later guards proved it no longer needed carbon monoxide. It had learned how to take anyone sent inside.

Now I was joining its collection.

I walked towards the escalator, placing each foot deliberately and trying to hold on to what was real. I could still see the cracked tiles, the failing lights and the empty units with faded signs above their locked grilles.

I knew that would not last.

The centre had already begun working on me. It shifted corridors, hid exits and stretched distances until escape became impossible. Soon it would change what I could see, then what I could remember, then what I believed about where I was.

I would become another figure in the archive, walking a patrol route through empty halls, checking doors that led nowhere and sitting in the security office while the years passed. My uniform would rot and my face would age in the monitor's reflection.

Just another presence in the collection, wandering Merebrook for ever, convinced I was doing my job.

The radio on my belt crackled.

Static hissed from it, then Margaret's voice came through with impossible clarity.

"Daniel, are you there?"

I snatched up the handset. The radio had not worked once since she gave it to me.

"Yes. I'm here."

"Good. I just wanted to check in on your first night. Are you settling in all right?"

First night.

The words sounded wrong, but I could not hold on to the reason.

I stood beside the directory, the keys heavy in my other hand.

"Yes," I said. "I'm doing fine."

"Excellent." She spoke with the professional warmth she had used during the induction walk. "Let me run through the basics once more, just so everything is clear. Your patrols are at midnight, 02:00 and 04:00. Check all the doors and make sure the grilles are secure on the operational shops. Keep an eye out for anything unusual."

I nodded although she could not see me.

"Understood."

"The main concerns are rough sleepers trying to shelter inside and teenagers looking for somewhere to vandalise or have a party. We have had trouble with both in the past. If you find anyone, call the police. Do not engage unless somebody is in immediate danger. Observe and report."

"Right."

"Your security office is on the first floor, east side. There are four monitors. Three carry live feeds from the main entrance, the car park and the ground-floor corridor. The fourth is static because that camera failed years ago. Log anything unusual in the book on the desk."

The instructions felt familiar, as though I had heard them before.

Of course I had. Margaret had explained all of this during the induction walk before my paid shift began. She had hired me that afternoon.

That was right, wasn't it?

"Are you still with me, Daniel?"

"Yes. Sorry. Just taking notes."

I was not taking notes.

"No problem. It is a lot to remember on your first night, but you will settle into the rhythm quickly enough. Your pay is GBP 10.50 an hour, paid fortnightly by bank transfer. You have statutory holiday entitlement from the start. The staff discount, enhanced sick pay and workplace-pension arrangements apply after the three-month probation, subject to the usual eligibility rules."

"All right."

"You have my number if anything comes up, but most nights are quiet. Walk the route, check the monitors and the shift will pass quickly."

"Sounds good."

"I'll leave you to it, then. Good luck tonight."

The radio clicked off.

I clipped it back to my belt and stared at the directory. Thirty-eight units were listed, most of them dark and closed for the night. The temporary shops had shut at 21:00, and I had locked the main entrance myself at 22:15.

At 22:15 tonight. My first shift.

I walked past the dead escalator towards a shopfront three units down from Poundstretcher. The windows reflected the fluorescent lights and my own shape moving through the corridor.

I stopped and looked at myself in the glass.

My uniform was crisp, with sharp creases down the front of the shirt. The dark blue cloth was clean and unwrinkled. The shoulder patches sat straight. The utility belt showed no wear, and my black boots shone beneath the lights.

Everything looked new.

I touched the fabric over my chest. It felt stiff, the way a uniform felt straight out of its packet.

Something about that was wrong.

The thought slipped away before I could complete it.

I studied my reflection for another moment. I was lean, with a close military haircut, and the uniform fitted properly. Margaret had taken my measurements when she hired me and said the supplier would have one ready.

Good attention to detail.

I turned from the window and set off towards the main entrance to begin my patrol. The central corridor stretched ahead beneath regularly spaced fluorescent fittings. Beige walls. Cracked tiles. About forty-five metres to the glass doors.

From there I would cross the ground floor, testing every grille and door before going upstairs.

Standard patrol. Basic security work.

My hand brushed something in my pocket. I took out my mobile phone.

The lock screen showed Friday, 13 January 2023.

My first night on the job.

A memory flashed through me: sitting in the security office, staring at a monitor and reading something about seventeen people. A generator. Doors that would not open.

I reached for the thought, but it dissolved, leaving only a faint sense of unease.

Probably nerves. I had done enough night watches in the Army and stood guard at Catterick Garrison more times than I could count. I had learned patrol discipline in places far less forgiving than a shopping centre, including routes around Lashkar Gah.

This would be easier. A climate-controlled building instead of Afghan heat or a freezing Yorkshire night. No threat of incoming fire. Just walk the route, test the locks and watch for trespassers.

Simple work. GBP 10.50 an hour.

My savings were down to just over GBP 300. Veterans UK and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme paperwork was still dragging on, and my final-service pay would not last for ever.

I needed the income. I could not afford to be fussy.

I approached the main entrance.

No. Wait.

The corridor curved left.

I followed the turn, my boots echoing on the tiles. I must have become confused. It would take a few nights to memorise the whole layout. Merebrook was a large two-storey centre with more corridors than it first appeared to have.

The curve straightened, and I found myself back at the central escalator.

I stopped and frowned.

That made no sense. I had been walking away from it, hadn't I?

My mental map felt indistinct. I had completed the induction with Margaret and seen the entire building, but whenever I tried to picture it, the details shifted.

The main entrance was that way.

No, the other way.

Forty-five metres from the escalator. Or fifty-five.

The exact distance would not come.

It did not matter. You learnt a building by repetition. Walk the route often enough and your feet remembered even when your mind did not.

Muscle memory.

I checked my watch.

23:47.

Close enough to midnight to begin my first patrol. Margaret had said midnight, 02:00 and 04:00.

I climbed the dead escalator, my boots ringing on the metal steps. The first floor smelt of mould, damp carpet and stale air.

The food hall lay to the north, the security office to the east, and empty shopfronts extended in both directions. Most businesses had gone. The centre had declined over the years, as so many had. Retail parks and online shopping had finished off places like this.

Margaret had explained it during the interview. Mercia Retail Estates retained minimal staff to maintain the building and supervise the seven short-term clearance tenants operating in the separately certified section. Poundstretcher downstairs, a nail bar, a mobile-phone repair shop and a few others. Enough activity to keep part of the site open for the moment, though final closure was approaching.

The security-office door stood open.

Inside were the desk, the torn swivel chair and four monitors fixed to the wall. Three displayed live feeds: the main entrance, the car park and the ground-floor corridor. The fourth showed static.

The exterior feed showed my vehicle in the third row of the car park. The corridor camera showed locked grilles and empty space. The static feed remained unchanged.

Everything was exactly as Margaret had described.

I sat and pulled the logbook towards me.

The last entry was dated three weeks earlier. I narrowed my eyes at it.

That could not be right.

Today was 13 January. Three weeks earlier would have been late December.

The previous guard had walked out without notice. That was what Margaret had told me. The position had remained empty until she hired me.

I turned back through earlier entries. They contained routine notes about quiet nights, secured doors and no incidents, written in several different hands.

The guard before me had left.

Past tense.

I was the new guard.

This was my first night. A fresh start.

My head felt thick, as though I were trying to think through cotton wool. I was probably tired. It had been a long day.

I had driven down from Catterick that morning.

Or yesterday.

It did not matter.

I stood, leaving the logbook open on the desk. It was time to patrol.

Check the first floor, then work down to the ground floor. Margaret's instructions had been clear. Every door, every grille, every fire exit. Watch for rough sleepers and teenage vandals. Call the police if I found anyone. Do not engage directly.

My keys jingled as I stepped back into the corridor. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead.

That institutional buzz reminded me of night watches on base. Different building, same routine. Walk the perimeter. Check the access points. Maintain security.

Simple work.

I headed towards the food hall, my boots echoing through the empty centre. A darkened pretzel counter stood beneath its lowered shutter. Twelve fixed tables occupied the open space, their seats arranged in rigid groups. Beyond the windows lay a car park originally built for roughly eight hundred vehicles, now almost entirely empty.

Everything was quiet. Everything was still.

Just another night shift.

The first of many.

I kept walking, ready to do my job.