Despite what you would think, everything was not still and motionless. Huge fans embedded in the walls were constantly turning, circulating the cold air. Small crystals were suspended in the wind, and deposited themselves into strange formations, covering the floor in cold and alien shapes. The yellow lights that seemed to belong to a submarine could only shed a dim light, not enough to warm the freezing darkness around them.
Neither Jhin nor Melissa were dressed for the cold. As soon as they got in, Jhin started the chainsaw he picked up in the woodworks aisle on floor B12F and they huddled around it, its small motor giving them a weak warmth.
But, despite that, they continued. The last few floors had been uneventful. They didn't meet many other beings, and when they did they tried not to fight them, instead simply leaving them be.
Now that they knew that these creatures were the inhabitants they wanted to save, they felt a great guilt for all the ones they had killed. Suddenly, their acts had another weight behind them. But Melissa had multiple times thought, did that knowledge really change anything ?
They knew, sure, but if they didn't, would the act of killing these creatures be any different ?
That, they couldn't answer.
Melissa was plagued by doubt. She was no longer sure of who she was, nor of if what she did was righteous. Of course, she told herself, the boss was evil. It was like a compass to her. But she didn't know where she was in relation to that compass. Was she as evil as the boss ? Was she an innocent victim, a bystander who got involved against their will ? Was she even more evil than the boss ? After all, they had killed the inhabitants of the town, whereas the boss had only transformed them...
Jhin was not incapacitated by this. Of course, he asked these questions as well, but their answer did not matter. During their life, he had not been a paragon of virtue. The question of his identity was not as important to him as well. It was also a question, but it wasn't important. They knew what they wanted. They wanted to get out of this mall, and they wanted money, and fame, and control, and all of that was outside of the mall.
So, uneventfully, they found the elevator.