Chapter 5
VI
She doesn’t run straight into them. That’s the first thing she gets right.
The group waiting near the old sporting goods store is obvious from my vantage point above—five men this time, spread across the corridor in a loose arc.
They wear masks pulled from the ruins of a Halloween pop-up that never bothered to close.
Plastic wolves. A flayed deer face. One cracked porcelain doll with a mouth frozen open too wide.
Idiots.
They’re loud, too. Boots scuffing. One of them raps his knuckles against a metal gate like he’s bored already. They want to be seen. They want her to panic.
She sees them before they see her.
I watch her slow half a step, not enough to draw attention. Her head tilts. Her stride adjusts. She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t sprint. She lets the distance compress just enough.
Then she cuts sideways into a shoe store instead of retreating.
Good.
The masked group reacts late. Two of them surge forward, eager, knocking shoulders as they funnel into the entrance. One laughs. Another makes a sound through his mask that’s supposed to be threatening.
They’ve already lost her.
The shoe store is a disaster from where I can see with shelves collapsed, boxes burst open, single sneakers scattered like debris. Mirrors still cling to the walls, cracked into jagged shapes that fracture movement. She uses them.
She ducks low, weaving through displays, letting the men follow the noise of their own bodies. One trips. Another curses. The wolf mask slams into a shelf and snaps it sideways, leaving it hanging crooked.
She doesn’t look back. She climbs.
The back of the store has a maintenance ladder bolted into the wall, half hidden behind a fallen endcap. She’s on it before they notice, hauling herself up with clean, economical movements. No hesitation. No wasted effort.
I adjust my position and continue to follow.
She emerges onto the mezzanine level and pauses, just long enough to check her angles. The pause costs her seconds. One of the masked men sees her.
He howls.
She doesn’t flinch. She moves again, choosing height over distance, cutting across a narrow bridge that once held seasonal displays. The railings are gone. The drop is ugly. She crosses without looking down.
That’s some gutsy shit.
She waits until the last possible second before changing direction again, forcing the men to commit before she disappears through a fire door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
The door slams.
The men hit it hard, shoulder-first, laughing and swearing. One of them fumbles for the handle, gloves slick against the metal. They’re still clustered, still thinking like a pack instead of a net.
I don’t intervene. I don’t need to.
She doesn’t stay behind that door. She slips out the side through a storage corridor that dead-ends into a loading bay. I know the space. It smells like weed and oil and old cardboard. The lighting back there barely functions.
She waits. Counts. Listens.
By the time the masked group finally bursts through the fire door, I know she’s already gone, slipped out through a broken service hatch and back into the mall proper, using the chaos the guys brought with them as cover.
By the time they realize it, they’re shouting at each other, frustrated, embarrassed. The doll-mask slams his fist into the wall. The deer-face laughs too loudly.
We should just kick out these jackasses. They add nothing to The Rot except occasionally getting us some good provisions. Fresh meat is a pretty goddamn nice treat every now and then, so we let them stay. For now.
The girl didn’t just evade them. She used them.
That shifts the math.
Fuck, I love a smart girl. I reach inside my jeans to adjust my growing dick.
I follow her again, irritation threading through my focus. She’s burning energy now, but she’s choosing where to spend it. That’s adaptability. The kind that survives longer than it should. Hell, maybe she’ll be the Hunt’s winner. Then we can find out why she’s really here.
But it’s more likely she’ll become a Runt. That’s just how the odds work.
Sorry, not sorry.
She slows near the old department store atrium, slipping into the shadows, pressing herself into the architecture.
Two pair of naked mannequins in the front windows are positioned into sexual positions, one with a male behind a female on her knees, and two females sixty-nine-ing it.
Probably the work of the dopey president-mask guys.
She waits while two more masked figures pass below, this pair wearing crude bone masks, antlers wired on crooked. Their movements are quieter. Better.
She doesn’t move until they’re gone.
Smart.
I lean forward against the railing and watch her hands.
They’re steady. No shaking. No frantic gestures. She’s breathing through her nose again, controlling the pace. She’s learning the rhythm of the Hunt in real time.
That’s when the attraction hits properly. Not the abstract kind. Not curiosity. Recognition.
Her body carries her strain differently now, muscles tight, ready, heat rolling off her in waves I can see even from here. Sweat darkens her collar, glints along her temples. She’s alive in a way most people in Rothwell aren’t anymore.
It annoys the hell out of me. This isn’t what I want to be tracking. I don’t need complications. I don’t need distractions. I don’t need a runner who makes me recalibrate.
I shift my stance and cut across the catwalk, angling ahead of her instead of following. This isn’t about catching her yet. It’s about seeing how she reacts when the board changes.
Below, she hesitates as the corridor ahead darkens unexpectedly.
I’ve already closed the path.
Her head lifts. She scans left, then right. She doesn’t see me, but she knows something moved. Her shoulders square. Her weight shifts onto the balls of her feet. Ready.
I exhale slowly through my nose and tap once against the railing this time. Not a signal. A test.
Her head snaps up. She doesn’t run. She smiles. Just a flash of teeth before she moves again, cutting into another shadowed passage, daring whoever’s watching to keep up.
My mouth curves before I stop it. I don’t like this. I follow anyway. Because now I’m certain of one thing.
She’s playing me like I’m playing her.
And she’s going to cost me more attention than I want to give.