The back of the store has a maintenance ladder bolted into the wall, half hidden behind a fallen endcap. She’s on it before they notice, hauling herself up with clean, economical movements. No hesitation. No wasted effort.
I adjust my position and continue to follow.
She emerges onto the mezzanine level and pauses, just long enough to check her angles. The pause costs her seconds. One of the masked men sees her.
He howls.
She doesn’t flinch. She moves again, choosing height over distance, cutting across a narrow bridge that onceheld seasonal displays. The railings are gone. The drop is ugly. She crosses without looking down.
That’s some gutsy shit.
She waits until the last possible second before changing direction again, forcing the men to commit before she disappears through a fire door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
The door slams.
The men hit it hard, shoulder-first, laughing and swearing. One of them fumbles for the handle, gloves slick against the metal. They’re still clustered, still thinking like a pack instead of a net.
I don’t intervene. I don’t need to.
She doesn’t stay behind that door. She slips out the side through a storage corridor that dead-ends into a loading bay. I know the space. It smells like weed and oil and old cardboard. The lighting back there barely functions.
She waits. Counts. Listens.
By the time the masked group finally bursts through the fire door, I know she’s already gone, slipped out through a broken service hatch and back into the mall proper, using the chaos the guys brought with them as cover.
By the time they realize it, they’re shouting at each other, frustrated, embarrassed. The doll-mask slams his fist into the wall. The deer-face laughs too loudly.
We should just kick out these jackasses. They add nothing to The Rot except occasionally getting us some good provisions. Fresh meat is a pretty goddamn nice treat every now and then, so we let them stay. For now.
The girl didn’t just evade them. She used them.
That shifts the math.
Fuck, I love a smart girl. I reach inside my jeans to adjust my growing dick.
I follow her again, irritation threading through my focus. She’s burning energy now, but she’s choosing where to spend it. That’s adaptability. The kind that survives longer than it should. Hell, maybe she’ll be the Hunt’s winner. Then we can find out why she’s really here.
But it’s more likely she’ll become a Runt. That’s just how the odds work.
Sorry, not sorry.
She slows near the old department store atrium, slipping into the shadows, pressing herself into the architecture. Two pair of naked mannequins in the front windows are positioned into sexual positions, one with a male behind a female on her knees, and two females sixty-nine-ing it. Probably the work of the dopey president-mask guys.
She waits while two more masked figures pass below, this pair wearing crude bone masks, antlers wired on crooked. Their movements are quieter. Better.
She doesn’t move until they’re gone.
Smart.
I lean forward against the railing and watch her hands.
They’re steady. No shaking. No frantic gestures. She’s breathing through her nose again, controlling the pace. She’s learning the rhythm of the Hunt in real time.
That’s when the attraction hits properly. Not the abstract kind. Not curiosity. Recognition.
Her body carries her strain differently now, muscles tight, ready, heat rolling off her in waves I can see even from here. Sweat darkens her collar, glints along her temples. She’s alive in a way most people in Rothwell aren’t anymore.
It annoys the hell out of me. This isn’t what I want to be tracking. I don’t need complications. I don’t need distractions. I don’t need a runner who makes me recalibrate.
