Chapter 3
VI
Something nags at me.
Mara’s story makes sense. Kind of. The guilt, the searching, the Rotter at the security gate, all of it. But there’s a gap in the middle that she stepped over without stopping, something I almost didn’t notice.
Guilt got her to the door. Guilt made her ask around, knock on doors, pester strangers. Guilt is an engine that runs hot but burns out fast. It only takes you so far.
It doesn’t keep you sleeping in dead zones for weeks, circling the Rot when a man with a scar on his chin tells you that people who go looking tend to disappear. Something else does that. Something she hasn’t told me.
I look at her. She’s staring at the water bottle again, her thumb tracing the label in slow circles. Her face is calm, too calm, the kind Mara puts on when she’s choosing what to share and what to keep to herself.
I know that face. It’s one I’ve been on the receiving end of many times. But I keep my questions to myself, at least for now. The guys don’t need any further reason to give her the heave-ho.
Armen moves first with barely a gesture. I catch the tilt of his chin toward the far corner of the room. It’s minimal but very on point, a communication that works among people who’ve been reading each other for a long time.
Sting gets the message, crossing the room without a word, his walk that of a man who doesn’t rush because rushing implies a loss of control and Sting doesn’t do that. Rogue pushes off the wall and follows, his movement looser, but his eyes have gone flat in a way I don’t often see with him.
What’s happening?
The three of them stand in the far corner in a huddle. Armen’s back is to us, Sting faces sideways, one eye on the room, with Rogue angled somewhere between, his head dipped, listening.
Their voices drop. They’re not whispering, but are speaking just low enough that the words lose their edges and blur into something I can only hear bits of.
But I’ve become a good listener since I entered the Rot. My weeks inside have taught me to catch fragments, at least enough to know what the hell is going on around me. I don’t hear everything they’re saying, but the few words I do catch spell out all I need to know.
Liability.
That’s Sting.
Perimeter.
Armen.
Can’t just let her walk.
I don’t know whose mouth that came from. Doesn’t matter. All three of them are thinking it.
Mara’s been watching the guys since they gathered in the corner, her eyes tracking their body language, their dropped voices, and the awkwardness of a conversation she’s not invited to.
She doesn’t know the Rot’s rules. She doesn’t know the hierarchy, the protocols, the invisible lines that govern who speaks, listens, and decides.
But she knows power when she sees it and knows her immediate future lies in their hands.
“They’re deciding what to do with me,” she says. “Aren’t they?”
Her voice is steady. The steadiness of someone who knows that the next few minutes will determine her fate and that she’ll face it with her eyes open.
As if she has a choice.
I don’t lie to her. I don’t lie to Mara, not even when the truth was cruel and the kindness of a lie would have been better.
“Yeah. They are.”
She nods once. Slow. Processing. “What are the options?”
I shake my head. I don’t know which of us is more nervous. “Don’t know yet.”
“But the options are not good, are they?”
“They’re not… going to be simple,” I say. “You’ve seen this place. You’ve seen the club. You know I’m… with these guys. That’s a lot of information they don’t want a stranger to have.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“I know that but they don’t.”
She looks at me with an expression I haven’t seen from her before. Not fear, exactly, but something like it. As if she’s realizing she may just have wasted her time coming to “rescue” me, and that she’s put herself in some grave danger.
She’s not wrong.
“Vi,” she says. “Are you safe with them?”
The question should be easy to answer but it isn’t.
“Safe might not be the right word,” I say. “Protected, claimed, and watched would be better.”
“That’s not really the same thing.”
“No,” I agree. “But it’s what I’ve got, and it’s as close to safe as I think I’m gonna get.”
I leave it at that. It’s just too hard to explain some things.
But I feel the question she’s not asking, the one on the tip of her tongue. She doesn’t even need to say it out loud.
Do you want to leave? Are you stuck here?
Something about that grates, as if I’m too stupid to see what’s right in front of me. But on the other hand, I’d probably ask the same of someone living in as strange a situation as I am.
In the corner, I hear Rogue’s voice change slightly, not louder, just sharper, his point being made.
Armen responds in that low, even register he uses when he’s trying to manage a situation.
Sting says nothing, but his tension is clear by the flexing of his fingers, as if he’s bleeding off irritation.
Whatever Rogue said, it looks like Sting doesn’t like it.
Mara watches them the way I watched them in my first days inside the Rot, trying to decode their speech and movements. But, she doesn’t have the time to learn it like I did. She doesn’t have any protection, either. She has me, and right now, I don’t think that’s worth a hell of a lot.
My protection, the protection I get from the guys, does not extend to her, that much is clear. This reunion with my oldest friend is reduced to a cost-benefit analysis happening fifteen feet away in voices I can’t quite hear.
The conversation breaks.
Armen turns first. His expression is settled and whatever argument he made, he’s finished making it. He gives me a look I can’t fully read. It’s not cold or warm, just… resolved. Like some sort of decision has been reached.
Rogue follows. His hands are in his pockets and his posture is loose, but his eyes have that sharp, quality they get when something is about to happen. I search his face and while he catches my gaze, holding it for a moment, he returns no expression.
Then there’s Sting, whose eyes find mine across the room.
And just like with Rogue, I can’t read them.
He looks at Mara. Then at me. Then at Mara again.
Her grip tightens on my hand, sharp enough to hurt, and I realize this reunion isn’t going to be what I thought.