Chapter 16
VI
They bind me. Not hurried. Not rough. Just deliberate.
My wrists are pulled behind me and secured with something that doesn’t bite but doesn’t loosen either. My ankles follow, enough restraint to keep me upright, but not enough to let me forget where the control is. Hands stay on me as we move, guiding, correcting, reminding.
I don’t fight it. There’s no point now.
That’s when the talking starts.
One of the hands at my shoulder loosens just enough to be deliberate. Another tilts my chin up, not roughly, just enough to make sure I’m facing forward.
“Aren’t you going to bargain? Try to strike a deal?” a voice taunts, casual, almost bored.
Another chuckles. “They always do.”
I keep my mouth shut.
Someone clicks their tongue. “Come on. You ran hard. You earned at least a request.”
A pause. They’re waiting for it. The tears. The promises. The frantic throwing away of dignity.
“Beg,” another voice says, closer now. “Makes this part easier.”
I laugh.
It scrapes out of me rough and ugly, more bark than sound. My throat burns when I speak, but I don’t lower my head.
“Shut your fucking mouths. Pigs.”
For half a second, the space stills.
Then they laugh.
Not cruel. Not sharp. Delighted.
“Oh, I like this one,” someone says.
“Yeah,” another agrees. “She’s got teeth.”
They talk over me after that, like I’ve already been filed under handled. Discussing pace. Location. Who almost lost me. Who didn’t.
“She bit you?”
“Barely broke skin.”
“Worth it.”
“She’s got some nice tits.”
“Sure does.”
I stare straight ahead and refuse to shrink.
This is what they want, not obedience yet, not submission. Reaction. Cracks. Proof they can get inside my head.
They don’t get it.
They can take my body. They can decide where I sleep, where I stand, who touches me and when. They can drag me through this dead mall like a trophy or a warning or a lesson.
But they don’t get this.
I keep my spine straight. I don’t answer when they speak around me like I’m furniture.
Pride is what I have left.
The mall opens around us as they walk me out of the narrow corridors and back into wider spaces. Ceilings lift. Sightlines stretch. Emergency lights flicker back on in thin, sickly strips along the floor, outlining paths I no longer get to choose.
The noise drains out of the Rot. Just the hum of power and the steady rhythm of boots moving in time.
At first, my brain tries to make meaning out of it.
Is this how they signal the end?
Is this what winning looks like from the inside?
Then the truth settles, heavy and undeniable.
If the Hunt were over, they wouldn’t be walking me like this.
If there were no one left running, there would be ceremony. Declaration. A shift I could feel in the air. The Rot wouldn’t be this… indifferent.
Which means others are still out there. Still running. Still bleeding for the Favor I wanted.
The thought lands hard, then fades just as quickly.
Not my problem anymore.
Whatever happens next, whoever wins, whoever gets the answers, whoever forces the Rotters to pay attention, none of it belongs to me now.
The Hunt continues.
I don’t.
We pass places I ran through earlier, now stripped of urgency. The lingerie store where I hid. The shoe shop with the collapsed boxes. The bookstore littered with torn pages and footprints that all point one direction now.
Toward me.
I see traces of the other girls.
A dropped shoe near a gate.
A torn sleeve snagged on metal.
A smear of blood drying dark on tile.
I don’t linger on it. They want me to see just enough to understand where I stand in the hierarchy of things.
Captured.
Accounted for.
Done.
We reach an open space near one wing of the mall, where the ceiling rises high and broken skylights leak dull gray light.
A shopping cart lies on its side and in the distance, I spot an old phone booth with the receiver yanked out.
A small fountain sits dry and cracked at the center, coins fused to its basin with rust. Holiday decorations cling to the railings above—plastic garlands, faded bows, a single strand of tinsel dangling loose.
This used to be where Santa sat.
I remember standing in line here as a kid, my father’s hand warm and steady on my shoulder, the smell of pretzels and cinnamon buns heavy in the air. I remember thinking the man in red looked tired. Like he’d heard too many wishes he couldn’t grant.
I wonder whose wish gets granted this time.
They stop me at the edge of the fountain. Hands adjust my stance, turning me outward, making sure I’m visible from every corridor that feeds into the space. From above. From the shadows. I feel eyes on me—not hungry, not rushed. Evaluating.
This is what the end looks like.
No triumph. No explanation. Just the certainty settling into my bones that whatever I was before the Hunt doesn’t exist anymore. Runner. Player. Woman with a plan.
All gone, like a fucking loser.
My knee throbs in time with my pulse. Exhaustion finally catches up now that there’s nowhere left to go. My throat burns from breathing too hard for too long.
I don’t cry. I won’t give them that.
But grief still arrives, heavy and unavoidable. Not sharp. Not dramatic. Just the slow collapse of something I’ve carried too long.
The Favor.
The answers.
My father’s name cleared.
All of it moves on without me.
Someone else will win. Someone else will be owed. Someone else will get to stand in front of the Rotters and demand truth.
I won’t even hear about it.
A presence steps closer behind me. Not touching. Just close enough that I feel heat, smell sweat and metal and the Rot itself.
My bindings hold.
Somewhere deeper in the mall, a sound echoes, movement, distant and alive. The Hunt is still happening.
Just not for me.
I lift my chin, stare out at the dead mall and the watching shadows, and let the last of the run drain out of my body.
I didn’t win. I didn’t lose. I was removed. Neutralized. Erased.
Someone steps in close behind me and says, “Let’s go.”
And the Rot swallows me whole.