Chapter 15
VI
I don’t stop moving right away.
I put distance between myself and the girl who tried to sell me out, duck hard into shadows, and let the sound of her and her captors cover my movement. Her screams finally fade.
I can’t see what they’re doing to her, nor do I want to, but I can tell it’s not clean. It’s not quick.
I keep going.
My breath hitches with something ugly and sharp.
Yeah, you thought you could fuck me up.
Not today, lady.
I move slower now, controlled, the way you do when you think you’ve learned the rhythm of a place.
Like how you can walk around your own house in the dark because you know where everything is.
The lack of light is not as scary now. It’s manageable.
I hug the wall, count steps, listen for the gaps between movement above and below.
I did that.
I outplayed her.
The pride sneaks in quiet and poisonous. It tastes like relief at first. Like proof.
I can do this. I’m badass.
I picture the end of the Hunt for a heartbeat too long.
The Favor I’ll be owed when I win. The way it’ll land heavy and undeniable in my lap, the way they won’t be able to dodge me once it’s owed.
Doors opening. Names spoken without flinching.
The truth dragged out of whatever office or boardroom it’s been rotting in.
I think about my father standing straight while men talked down to him like he was already a footnote.
No one will speak to me like that. Ever.
A corridor stretches into the dark, the air colder. I slow another notch, listening. Nothing obvious. No boots. No signals. Just the low hum of the Rot breathing around me.
Confidence settles in my bones.
That’s when my foot clips something solid. Plastic cracks under my boot, loud as a gunshot in the quiet.
Fuck.
The sound rings and rings, bouncing off tile and metal and glass. I stop again, heart slamming, every nerve screaming to move and not daring to.
Too late.
Hands hit me from both behind and the side at once.
I go down hard, the impact knocking the breath out of me in a sharp, humiliating burst. My injured knee slams tile, and white pain shoots up my leg while I muffle a groan. Something locks across my shoulders. Another force wrenches my arms behind me, iron-strong and unyielding.
I fight.
I claw and kick and twist, teeth snapping blind. I connect with skin and bite down hard.
Salt floods my mouth.
Blood.
Someone exhales sharply, more surprised than hurt, and an arm slides under my chin, levering my head back until my neck strains and my teeth are forced apart.
I thrash again, furious now, rage burning through the shock. Hands multiply, so many of them. Legs brace. Bodies crowd in, efficient and practiced, every movement countered before it finishes.
I can’t tell how many there are.
Three? Four?
It doesn’t matter.
They don’t rush.
They don’t shout.
They contain.
The dark presses in, absolute and smothering. I can’t see my own hands. I can’t tell which way I’m facing. All I have is pressure and restraint and the sound of my breath tearing in and out of me.
This wasn’t supposed to happen here.
Not like this.
I was supposed to win, goddammit. I’ve already lost so much. I just wanted one little break. Is that so much to ask?
I see my father’s face flash sharp and unwanted in my head, eyes steady while men talked over him like he wasn’t even in the room. The memory stings worse than the pain. The shame I felt then hits again, hot and sour.
I should have done more.
I should have pushed harder.
I buck again, fueled by that rage, by everything unfinished. For half a second, one grip slips. I wrench sideways, scraping skin, nearly free—
—and then a knee wedges in, pinning my thigh. Another arm snakes across my chest, locking me down completely.
A soft click sounds near my head.
“How… how did you find me in the dark?” I whisper as if I’m still hiding.
Then a voice, low and almost amused. “Night vision, Vi.”
My name lands like a blow.
Everything in me goes cold.
They’ve been watching the whole time.
Every hiding place. Every stumble. Every stupid little calculation I made in the dark.
The pride I was riding on collapses all at once, not piece by piece but in one big crash. The Favor. The questions. The future I built on surviving long enough to demand answers.
Gone.
My movements slow, not because I’m giving up but because understanding lands heavy and final. It hurts. Badly. Inside and out.
This is it.
This is what getting caught means.
I’ve heard what happens to Runts. Not details. Never details. Just the way voices drop when the word comes up. The way women stop being counted and start being managed. The way some disappear into the Rot and others come back altered, like something essential was traded away without consent.
Property. Labor. Leverage. The thoughts stack up, ugly and relentless.
I don’t die here. I become something else.
Grief punches through me harder than fear. It spreads fast, thick and suffocating, filling my chest until breathing hurts. Dying would’ve been cleaner than this. Dying would’ve ended it. Dying would have been sweet relief. The easy way out.
But no, I don’t get that privilege. Instead I’m stuck here, alive, with the kind of shit that doesn’t end.
A light snaps on. Not bright, nor kind. Just harsh and close, carving jagged shadows across concrete and bodies. My eyes burn as faces and figures resolve around me.
Masks. Not the cheap plastic shit I’ve seen all night like animal heads, cracked dolls, presidential faces. These are different.
Bone-white. Smooth. Custom-made.
They cover the lower half of their faces—jaw, teeth, cheekbones—leaving eyes exposed above the sculpted bone. The grin is permanent, carved and skeletal, like something that used to be human and isn’t anymore.
Three of them. All identical.
I’m guessing these aren’t random hunters. These are the ones who run the place.
Hands tighten. Someone hauls me upright, efficient and impersonal. My feet scrape once before I’m lifted properly, carried between them like I weigh nothing.
I quit fighting. Not because I want to. Because it’s over.
My plans unravel in my head, thread by thread.
The Favor I dreamt of dissolves, slips through my fingers like sand at the beach.
The doors, the ones I was determined to pry open will now stay shut.
The truth remains buried, hidden from me forever.
All the things I told myself I’d earn evaporate like I never deserved them to begin with. Maybe I didn’t.
Maybe I was arrogant. I thought I could outthink a place built to break people.
The Rot hums around me, satisfied. Smug with triumph.
Fuck you.
I swallow and force my breath steady. I won’t plead. I won’t give them that. I won’t scream or cry. I’m not like the other girls. And I sure as fuck won’t beg.
The lantern swings forward, illuminating a corridor I haven’t seen yet, deeper, narrower, wrong in a way I don’t have language for.
Nausea swirls in me. This isn’t just capture. This is processing.
Whatever comes next will decide what kind of Runt I become.
Because I don’t get a say.