Chapter 24
VI
I find Armen after the second shift change.
He’s in the Skylight Room, alone, doing something I’ve rarely seen him do—read.
In his hands is an actual book, a paperback, with the cover torn off, pages soft from being passed around the Rot hundreds of times.
He doesn’t look up when I enter, but I know he heard me. Armen always hears.
“I’d like to go to the club tonight,” I say.
It’s not a question or a request, but more of a statement, delivered from the doorway with my gaze on him and my voice level. It feels good. I don’t usually go around the Rot telling people what I want. Runts don’t get to do that.
He looks up, studying me for a moment. Not the quick, tactical scan I get from Sting, or the lazy, curious once-over Rogue gives.
Armen looks at me with the patience of someone who thinks before he speaks.
I know he’s trying to read what’s underneath my words, but there’s really nothing to analyze.
My request is about as straightforward as they come.
I want to go to the club with the guys and have them fuck my brains out.
“Alright,” he says, folding the corner of his page and closing his book.
He has no questions or conditions, no are you sure or is this a good idea or any of the deliberation I’ve come to expect when one leaves the Rot. Just alright, as if he’s been waiting for me to ask and the only question was when I would.
I nod, turn, and walk out.
In my room, I change, but not into anything special.
Here, I don’t have a closet full of options.
My wardrobe is whatever the Rot provides, functional stuff, layered for warmth, chosen for durability rather than fashion.
But I swap my oversized work shirt for something fitted and dark.
I pull on a top that sits closer to my body than anything I’ve worn in weeks, run my fingers through my hair, and look at myself in the small mirror someone hung on the back of my door.
I look tired, no big surprise there. The days since Mara arrived have carved themselves into my face, in part thanks to late nights with Dad’s papers, arguments with Sting, and the grief that surfaces at random moments, pulling me under before I can brace for it.
There are shadows under my eyes that weren’t there a month ago and my cheeks are thinner.
But my eyes are clear, and there’s something in my expression that I haven’t seen in a while. It’s not anger or grief, but something harder to name. I’m looking at the face of a woman who’s making some decisions about her life in a place where people like me don’t get to do that.
I know what I’m doing. I know exactly what I’m doing and I know exactly why.
The days since Mara showed up have been consumed by other people’s lives.
Dad’s papers. Alice’s testimony. Mara’s doubt.
Sting’s certainty. I’ve spent every waking hour chasing the story of a dead man and arguing with a living one, and somewhere in the middle of all that, I lost track of myself.
The actual, physical, present-tense me. The woman who exists inside this body right now, tonight, separate from Mayor Renner’s daughter and the best friend and the Runt and the evidence-chaser and all the other roles I’ve been filling.
I’m drowning in loss, in Dad’s handwriting, Mara’s guilt, Sting’s measured refusals, and the endless, grinding weight of trying to prove something to people who’ve already made up their minds.
I need to feel something that isn’t sorrow.
I need to feel something in my body that my brain didn’t put there.
The club is the one place where power doesn’t come from hierarchy or evidence or who’s louder in an argument. It comes from want, and from walking into a room and deciding what happens next.
The other times we’ve gone, the guys initiated our visit. I don’t remember who usually suggested it, but the decision would be made and I’d go along. Not unwillingly or forced, God no, I’ve always wanted to go. I’ve been swept up into the guys’ momentum, their schedules, and their desires.
Not tonight, though, tonight I’m in the driver’s seat.
Mara catches me on the way out. She’s in the corridor, heading back from wherever she’s been, the work hub, probably, where she’s taken to showing up voluntarily, earning her place the hard way because that’s how she rolls. She sees me and her eyebrows go up.
“You look… different,” she says.
The smear of lipstick I’m wearing, something I earned from another Runt by taking on one of her shifts, is a dead giveaway.
“Um, yeah. I’m going out.”
Sounds so strange to use those words. Most people in the Rot don’t just “go out.”
“Where ya off to?” she asks playfully.
“The club. With the guys.”
She raises one eyebrow, not in judgment because Mara doesn’t judge, not after the conversation we had about masks and sex and the complicated truth of what the guys are to me.
Rather, there’s a flicker of something like curiosity or recognition.
She can see the intent in my face the same way Armen did.
“Well, have fun,” she says, patting my shoulder.
“Thank you, I’m planning on it.”
I head to the agreed-upon exit. I spot Armen first, leaning against the wall, jacket on, his posture no longer that of a Rotter at work. Rogue arrives next, running a hand through his messy curls, that cute half grin on his face. When he spots me, the grin widens a fraction.
“Well, well,” he says.
Then Sting joins us, coming down the corridor with his precise, unhurried stride, his face neutral like it always is.
His eyes find me, looking me up and down. His assessment takes about one and a half seconds, and his expression doesn’t change at all, not even slightly, which is how I know I’ve affected him.
If it hadn’t, he’d have looked away already.
Then the guys grab their masks from their pockets, the bone-white skeleton masks they wore the first night I met them, and my core swings into overdrive. They pull them on with little adjustment, and look at me as if to ask are you ready?
Fuck yeah, I’m ready.
We walk. Actually, I let the guys set the pace because it’s all I can do to keep from running like a hungry puppy toward his food bowl, so desperate am I to blow off steam.
“Are we staying at the safe house tonight?” I ask.
“We gave it up,” Sting says from behind me.
“What? Why?”
“Someone had been in it. Things moved and a window we’d secured was open. We couldn’t determine who it was, so we shut it down.”
“When?”
“Couple weeks back. Traded the location to a crew from the north corridor in exchange for supply access. Better use for it than a place we can’t secure.”
That bothers me more than it should. The safe house was the first place outside the Rot where I felt like the four of us existed as something real. Not the Rot’s founders and their Runt. Just people. Together.
But Sting’s already moved on, and I stash the loss away with everything else I’ve had to let go of since coming here.
The route to the club is familiar by now. Out through the loading dock, across several blocks of broken-down Rothwell to the unmarked door that leads down to the venue. Armen leads, and Rogue flanks, our usual formation.
Sting walks behind us.
I can feel his attention on my back. The weight of it, specific and constant, tracking my movement the way he tracks everything.
He’s watching the way I walk, the way my fitted top sits across my shoulders, the way my hair moves.
I know this because I know Sting, and I know that the more controlled he is, the harder he’s working to maintain it.
Let him watch.
The night is chilly outside the Rot. I feel it on my face and arms, but I don’t pull my jacket tighter.
The cold is refreshing, sharpening the edges of everything, including the broken pavement under my boots, the distant sound of wind through hollowed-out buildings, and the anticipation of what I’m about to do.
For weeks, I’ve been the daughter chasing her father’s ghost. The friend absorbing Mara’s guilt. The Runt making her case to men who hold the power. Tonight, I’m none of those things.
The club door appears in the dark. Armen reaches it first, knocks, and waits. The door opens.
I walk in ahead of all of them.