"A friend of mine was with me, but she took off on her bike. I don't know which way she went."

"I thought it was a costume party. Where are you coming from?" 

"What do you mean, where?"

"It doesn't have the symbols for danger or being a one-way door so I think at least the immediate surroundings are safe, not sure how far you can walk without danger though."

"Well, apparently the elevator that brought you to the party was something like a teleporter and there were such installations in several cities. Alice and I came from California and Lysander here came from Massachusetts."

"I think I can handle it. We should probably carry water around, actually, and food, I didn't think of that."

"Me and Stiles are from California too. Have you guys seen signs of anyone else, who might have brought us here?" 

"Well I have a backpack, maybe we can find one for you too, or if we're keeping mostly to the paths we can bring stuff with us on a cargo-rack when biking or something."

"No, this place is eerily empty for how big it's looking to be. Do you have any idea how far you had to bike to get here?"

"Maybe both, then? Non-essentials in the cart in case we have to leave it."

"I don't know, around twenty miles. Where in California?"

"Yeah, sounds like a good plan."

"Near Los Angeles, that's a pretty long bike ride to take with no destination in mind."

They head out.

Bikes?

"It wasn't that bad. Kind of exhilarating. I probably won't be doing something like that again, though."

There's a bike store relatively close to the mall lobby. "Wow, these are really nice bikes." They are, they have disk brakes and good gear systems.

"I consider myself pretty fit but I wouldn't want to do that at a whim, so that's understandable."

"Nice. Let's start gathering supplies."

"I really should try to find Stiles, before she gets too far."

"Where would she go? Down another one of these paths?"

"She did want to go outside. But we just came all this way, I'm not sure."

"Sure." Riley side adjusts a bike to fit her and then attaches a cargo trailer. Then she consults the vague map she's drawn in one of her notebooks. "I'm ready when you are. First stop CVS."

"How far back did you lose her?"

CVS it is. Pain relief, vitamins, any ointments and creams and rubs that seem vaguely helpful...gum can't hurt, really.

"If we find any cameras, we're stopping. A phone doesn't cut it."

"I just went to look at the stores, couldn't have been a quarter mile. She must have gone in the other direction, I would have seen her."