Chapter 20 #2
Stairs descended into black. I went first, gun drawn, feet landing silent on the painted concrete steps. Nines followed with the light, her phone’s LED throwing harsh shadows.
Halfway down, the smell changed. The smell of come was overpowering and it was cold enough to see your breath.
At the bottom, we stopped. Nines inhaled sharply behind me, and I steadied the gun in both hands, bracing for whatever passed as weird in Vegas at three a.m.
It wasn’t just the cold that made my skin crawl down there. It was the way the concrete had been painted, once, an antiseptic eggshell now worn down to the aggregate by endless foot traffic and bleach. The air had that metallic tang, like a wet penny dissolved in hydrogen peroxide.
The five of us made it to the bottom of the stairs as a unit. Selene went in front, head high and pistol drawn; Aces on her flank, hand glued to the butt of her own gun; Nines behind, phone camera at the ready; Joker covering the rear and me in the center, both hands free and ready for work.
The basement wasn’t large, just a single room running the length of the building.
What you noticed first was the trough: stainless, about thirty feet long, two feet wide, with low partitions breaking it into a series of shallow basins.
The trough was full. It ran the entire space, with a lip designed for overflow and a drain at the far end.
My stomach flipped, not from the volume, but from the engineering—someone had designed this on purpose.
Someone had calculated optimum flow rates, splashback, and chemical neutralization.
There were six of them in the trough. All women, all in various stages of undress.
I recognized the cuts right away: the blue-on-silver patches of Queens of Chaos, the same ones who’d nearly clipped my rear wheel on the I-15 last month.
Their vests hung on wall hooks or lay bunched in their laps, and their boots were lined up in a neat row on the dry side of the room.
A few still had their socks on, toes curling as they tried not to shiver.
They didn’t look at us at first. Instead, they sat in the trough like they’d been there a while, eyes glazed, hands resting on their knees.
One of them was reading a battered paperback—something by a guy named Max Street.
Another smoked a cigarette, the embers arcing when she tapped them into the runoff.
Selene cleared her throat, voice amplified in the tiled box. “Gather your things,” she said. “This is over.”
The Queens looked up, not scared, not even annoyed—just tired.
The tallest of them, a woman with a shaved scalp and a tattoo that ran from temple to jaw, stood up with the kind of economy you only get from years of constant fighting.
She didn’t bother to cover herself, gobs of liquid come running down her tits, stomach and pussy.
“We have a permit,” she said, an absolute lie. At least she tried.
Joker snorted. “Yeah? Is it laminated?”
The Queen’s lips curled. “It’s digital. I can show you.”
Selene didn’t flinch. “That’s not how permits work.”
Aces stepped forward, hands at her sides but posture loaded. “What’s the permit actually for?”
Shaved-head Queen blinked, weighing her answer. “Storage,” she said, after a beat. “There’s not enough onsite at our facility. This is just temporary.”
Nines made a note on her phone. “Do you have a chain of custody?”
The Queen shrugged. “As soon as it leaves the tube, it’s not our problem.”
Behind her, one of the other women exhaled. “Fuck’s sake, just let us out. It’s not even a felony.”
“Define ‘it,’” Joker said. “Because if you mean this, I think you’re lowballing.”
They all climbed out, one by one. No dramatics.
Just the flat dignity of people who knew they’d been caught at something and had zero intention of making it a scene.
I watched the way they stepped—deliberate, refusing to look down at what sloshed in the trough.
One of them slipped and performed a come splash that would have made an Olympic diver smile.
She stood, her hair shiny and sticking to her face.
“This is fucked up,” Nines said. “Who does shit like this?”
“People,” I said. “We all have our vices.”
Selene chuckled while waving the Queens out of the room. “I once dated a guy who wanted to wear a fucking diaper and suck on my tits.”
Aces barked a laugh. “I had a guy who kept bugging me for anal sex. I told him, ‘You first.’ Guy bought an eighteen-inch strap-on. I wore his ass out.”
Off the main space was a side door, no handle, just a deadbolt and a row of shiny new padlocks. I could hear a sound from the other side: not shouting, but rhythmic thumping, like someone pounding a fist against the wall.
Selene nodded at the lock. “Spade?”
I pulled a utility blade and popped the first lock, then the second, then the third.
The door swung in with a rush of air and the sound hit us full-on: a chorus of angry, exhausted male voices.
Inside were another dozen men, same setup as the floor above, only these were stripped to the skin and locked into their chairs by padded cuffs.
The suction machines were still running.
No screens, no distractions, just the relentless, mechanical extraction and the faces of men who’d figured out what this was and how it ended.
One of them—late forties, sharp eyes—locked onto me and spat a wad of saliva onto the floor. “You here to finish the job?”
I didn’t answer, just started cutting the cuffs with the blade, moving chair to chair. Some of them tried to cover themselves. Most didn’t bother.
Joker leaned in the doorway. “Nice place. You guys do birthday parties?”
The first man snorted, half laugh, half sneer. “Depends on the cake.”
It took under a minute to clear the room. The men shuffled out, blinking in the light, arms crossed over their chests or hanging loose at their sides, a few with come dripping from the one-eyed monster. Aces herded them to the base of the stairs, then up, all without a word.
Back in the main room, the Queens had gotten dressed. They made a line in front of Selene, arms folded, not defiant, not cowed, just waiting for orders.
Selene faced the Queen, who had a shaved head. “You’re done here,” she said. “Tonight. You’re out of the valley by sunrise.”
The Queen nodded, no smart reply this time.
“If you come back,” Selene continued, “I won’t be this polite.”
There was a pause, and then the Queen grinned—wide, animal, almost proud. “Wouldn’t expect you to be.”
Nines handed the Queen a folded sheet of paper. “This is your cease and desist. You don’t sign, we burn it down anyway.”
The Queen took it, read the first line, then handed it back. “We’re not lawyers.”
“Neither are we,” Aces said.
It was a bad standoff—one with no honor, just logistics and tired people who didn’t want to spend the night in lockup.
The Queens filed past us, single-file, boots wet, faces unreadable.
At the base of the stairs, one turned and looked back.
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes lingered on me, long enough that I remembered her from somewhere—a scuffle outside a roadhouse in Henderson, maybe, or the time we’d both gotten kicked out of the same county fair for fighting in the pie tent.
When they were gone, Selene checked the time. “Fifteen minutes. Get it done.”
We moved like an assembly line. Joker and Aces started hauling the vials out of the freezer, smashing them into a rolling trash bin. Nines dumped every logbook, hard drive, and printed receipt into a metal can, then doused it with acetone.
I circled the floor with a red gas can, splashing it across the machines, the chairs, the wall where the corporate logo used to be. The smell mingled with the bleach and the sick-sweet residue of the operation, making my eyes water.
The men from the basement gathered at the front door, shivering in their paper slippers, waiting for instructions. Aces handed each one a windbreaker and a slip of paper with a phone number. “Call if you need a ride,” she said. “Or a lawyer. Or a nurse.”
None of them made eye contact, but a few nodded, holding the numbers like tiny lifelines.
When everything was soaked and ready, Joker dug a matchbook from her pocket, struck one, and handed it to me.
“Ladies first,” she said.
I flicked the match onto a puddle by the main desk.
It caught instantly, blue and orange rippling up the vinyl.
We watched as the fire moved, liquid and bright, rolling through the aisles, curling up the walls and devouring the machinery.
The buzz of the pumps was gone now, replaced by the soft roar of the building eating itself from the inside.
We stood on the sidewalk and watched it burn. No sirens yet; the city had seen enough fires to wait for a second alarm. Selene checked her phone, then nodded once. Job done.
The men filtered off into the darkness, some walking, some just standing and staring at the flames. I caught the eye of the one who’d spat at me earlier. He raised his chin a little, like he wanted to say thanks and couldn’t quite bring himself.