I can barely see Rogue smiling behind the half-skeleton mask. “Told you she’d be trouble. Let’s go.”
“She hasn’t earned it,” Armen says, low and firm.
My gaze snaps to him. “Earned what?”
Sting doesn’t answer right away. His grip tightens just slightly on my wrist, not painful but unmistakably controlling. “She needs to see,” he says finally.
“No,” Armen says.
“She’s new.”
“And permanent,” Rogue adds lightly.
Sting’s eyes never leave mine. “I got a feeling about her.”
Rogue snorts. “You always say that right before shit goes sideways.”
“And when have I been wrong?” Sting counters.
I can feel the tension between them, some unspoken hierarchy shifting and testing.
Armen exhales sharply. “You bring her in and she’s not just a Runt anymore.”
“That’s the point,” Sting replies.
My pulse kicks harder. “Hello,” I say, looking between the three of them as they talk about me. “I’m right here. And bring me where, anyway?”
They ignore me.
Sting meets Armen’s stare head-on. “Trust me, man.”
Armen holds his gaze for a long moment, then curses under his breath.
“Fine,” he says. “But if this blows back on us?—”
“It won’t,” Sting cuts in.
Rogue chuckles. “This is either genius or the dumbest thing you’ve done.”
“Move,” Sting says.
He doesn’t wait for me to argue. He pulls me with him.
We don’t go toward the busy corridors. Instead, he veers into a narrow service passage tucked between two old storefronts. The light shifts immediately, dimmer, harsher, buzzing fluorescent strips overhead. The air smells like mold.
The mall feels different back here. Older. Hidden. We pass closed utility doors, faded labels barely readable. One door is blocked by stacked crates, another by a rusted cart. Sting pushes through a narrow gap I wouldn’t have noticed was there at all.
Behind it is another corridor. Then another.
Who the hell designs these places?
Each turn pulls us farther from the Rot I know and into something quieter, more secretive. My heart pounds as realization sets in. This isn’t part of the public Rot. This is something else.
“How many people know about this?” I ask.
“Not many,” Rogue replies from behind me.
“Most don’t need to.”
