Bagel could feel the presence of the two men. Technically they worked for Gladys through him. She was his intermediary. But he hadn't met them before. Or he didn't recall. A lot of people filtered through and there was only one talking cat for a while. But they were staying there waiting for something and they wouldn't say anything. Sure, they'd ordered food but that was to be expected. If they worked for him even through Gladys, he'll be happy to feed them. He was of course going to pay them but the two men, the black shirts and blue pants were clearly here waiting for someone.

When Gladys came in, she gave Bagel the briefest of a nod and then she turned and went all the way to order her own lunch before spending 2 minutes deciding what drink to buy. She bought her drink of to the front and and smiled at Bagel.

"The two new guys are here. Mike and Tony, I put the two of them in charge of 816."

The men nodded respectfully.

"Just so clear. Bagel, we've got several people that want to move in immediately. Most of them are adventurous guild members that were stranded here and not able to go back to their original homes. Now that travel's opening up again, they are happier staying with us.

"Travel has opened up again? So all the people that have been stuck in the wrong neighborhood can get to the right one?"

Bagel hadn't heard enough about people who were stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time and we're not paying for it. Two months in New Jersey didn't feel like it was far away until you realized that you couldn't get there, except through battling hundreds of mobs and potentially on foot.

The food situation had changed drastically. You couldn't buy food at everywhere. Shelves were bare except where workers kept them restocked. The supply chains that had fed humanity for years had broken down. And we're only now getting back online. In fact, Bagel was looking at getting something delivered that he hadn't seen in a while. And even that it was just a delivery truck that he was going to use to fill up the former competition. At least according to the phone call he had gotten.

"I've got a shipment coming," Bagel said. "Can you guys unload it? The delivery guys finally figured out how to make stuff work."

"You want us to stock up your competition?" Gladys said. "It hasn't been open for ages."

"It was either that one or send it to the Amish market. They don't need it but you can check. It's going to be a lot of packaged goods."

"Not the best thing to only eat processed foods but we don't have much choice. Do we have a time frame for the delivery?"

"Around two pm. If you can handle this, since it's diagonally across from 816?"

Gladys put her clipboard down.

"What's the plan with Erminas, long term? Is this going to be another store or more of a warehouse?"

Bagel sniffed the air. "I'm glad you asked because we have a theory that we want to try out. Basically the bodega restocks to where it was when I activated the card. If we stock up the building before we activate it, then we can create a set point for the workers to refresh it."

What are the things that irked Bagel the most was that he hadn't been able to find another place that spawned workers or Cooks. It was like they had been made specifically for his deck. He knew that he could get them in a dungeon sometimes but other than that, they were very rare. Perhaps it was because they could work independently and autonomously, they were almost always. They were almost always the reward from a boss monster. And the long term, if they didn't figure out a way to feed everybody, then things would get really ugly. This was his Olive Branch to actually get someone to come in and do that for him. The delivery company had actually been very relieved to hear that if he was going to take more of their products, apparently they could now take credits.

"I'm going to need you to pay them if I'm not around though I fully intend to pay them."

"Understood, boss. How much are we talking here?"

"Four hundred credits."

Gladys straightened her glasses. "You'll be there."

"I'll be there."

"You'll smooth things over."

He realized that it felt like she knew what she was doing and he was going to let her do that. Cuz otherwise, why would he have hired her. He needed him to be there, he would be there. He had to check to make sure that she wasn't supposed to trick. But he did feel like he would be doing that so he might as well go along with it. It was like she gave him a head. Pat and he accepted it and then all of a sudden he was willing to go along with her commands.

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It actually fell nice. He felt like she might give him some direction.

"Is there anything else you need me to do?"

"That'll be all for now. If you just showed up to this then I think we'll be good. Plus, don't you want to talk to them about further orders?"

Bagel paused, hoping that She would got the hint.

"Do you want me to take over this ordering business? If so, you're going to need to let me get into contact with these people. I can't just do this through word of mouth. Either let me be in control of it or are going to have to have you be here every time."

He was going to have to go up some amount of control anyway so he might as well give it to someone that had so far seemed trustworthy.

---

It used to be a packed store. It had a more extensive bar for smoothies and little things that you could order adjacent to some movies. There was a sign that let you know that acai bowls were the new in thing. Then there was a grill that was larger than the one that Bagel had. It wasn't by much but it was still better than nothing.

Unfortunately, it had been picked clean. It was going to take several trucks to fill this place up. Bagel was afraid that he would have to fight people to stock it up before they even could use it as a viable option.

"I can see how they set up the seating area here which is great. We can make this like a soup kitchen," Gladys said, moving around the area like a caged animal.

Bagel accompanied her of course trying to find the best spot to lounge. The counter here where one was supposed to check out was a square a smack dab in the middle of the store. It was clear that there had been many things piled up there and based on the amount of rappers on the ground it was mostly specialty chocolate.

"You don't want me to try to do something special here?"

"How long would it take you to fill this entire store? Like really. You're going to have people on load and stock it in 2 hours and then have someone walk in with a warehouse card and take over it? I don't think that's going to work. But we don't have enough data."

"If we have a team of 40 people standing by, I can pay them each two credits for what a few hours of work? All we have to do is tell them where everything's going to go."

Gladys tapped on the glass separating the grill from whoever would be ordering food.

"It's pretty obvious where everything needs to go. But this doesn't sound very data driven. Nobody that's used a were-house has talked about it in the deck builder forums. At least not to the specificity."

It would have been a lot easier if Bagel could have consciously remembered how things were. All he knew was that he could reset and restock what had been there. It was locked to when he had connected himself to the store through his deck. At least that was what he thought. And based on what the card said, he was pretty sure that he couldn't do much about that.

"The thing is that I can't add something to the store and then have it be added to the restock list. I'm stuck with what was there. Even if we empty out the bodega and bring everything over here, what does that do? Just doubles our capacity?"

A flash of something insane passed over Gladys's face. "If we can start doubling our capacity for food then that would be such a boon. Okay, new plan. We ransack the bodega with everything we have there. Bring that all over here and then you restock the shelves. The drink fridge in the back? Next to the alcohol? We can restock that. We just need to get the delivery company to actually bring us the things that we don't have."

"They're coming back in two days."

"I'll get an all hands out meeting for the guild. They're going to be so ecstatic if we can actually pull this off. So we need the delivery company to bring as much as they can and then we need a person with the were-house card... I think we have enough information."

Gladys scribbled again on her clipboard for a minute or two as she walked around. Bagel wanted to look at what she had written desperately. He kept being close to in line with it but he never quite had the angle right. She was always angling her writing up and he was only 3 or 4 ft off the ground at best. Eventually, he would get an idea of what she'd written.

"All right. So the next question I've got for you is who is going to be the one who uses the were-house card?"

Bagel stopped. He was so close to being able to see what she was writing but she turned and looked at him and pulled her clipboard back towards herself. With it facing her, he had no chance. It would have been great for him to actually get to know what her plans were about his plans but perhaps next time, he would get a look.

"I actually need to talk to the NYPD about that. They told me they had somebody. We're going to be sending another team to West Virginia if this keeps up. The warehouse cards are becoming so important that we might need to send our own people."

"You want me to get a team together to go all the way to West Virginia in this? That's a long ass way when you and I both know the interstates are not going to be serviceable. But I suppose if they only drive in between spawn times then it's potentially..." Gladys searched for a word among the wreckage of the former grocery store. "It's potentially going to be a massive undertaking. We're going to need hundreds of them."

"That's why the city center team down as soon as they could. We're going to need to get some drones over there. The were-houses are actually difficult to kill."

"That's not at all what I expect you to say. But if we can get drones to go that far then maybe we can get them to pick up warehouse cards. I'm going to need to speak to... Khaleesi was it?"

"She is in charge the drones operations for the adventurous guild yes."

Gladys scribbled something down and Bagel almost could see it. "And she's only what like sixteen? What does a girl have to do to survive the Apocalypse huh?"

"Clearly she's doing a lot. But she's related to Raul, who you know."

Bagel jumped down from the counter he was on and slunk over to the bench seating next to the line of tables and chairs. He was so close that he could taste it. He just wanted to see her hand writing for once. But then she tucked it away and then they moved on.

"Let's head up to drones and scones. I feel like we've got some questions for them," Gladys said holding out the door. As if to punctuate what was going on, several drones flew by, taking their time to inspect the area for spawns.

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