“Oh, I like this one,” someone says.
“Yeah,” another agrees. “She’s got teeth.”
They talk over me after that, like I’ve already been filed underhandled. Discussing pace. Location. Who almost lost me. Who didn’t.
“She bit you?”
“Barely broke skin.”
“Worth it.”
“She’s got some nice tits.”
“Sure does.”
I stare straight ahead and refuse to shrink.
This is what they want, not obedience yet, not submission. Reaction. Cracks. Proof they can get inside my head.
They don’t get it.
They can take my body. They can decide where I sleep, where I stand, who touches me and when. They can dragme through this dead mall like a trophy or a warning or a lesson.
But they don’t getthis.
I keep my spine straight. I don’t answer when they speak around me like I’m furniture.
Pride is what I have left.
The mall opens around us as they walk me out of the narrow corridors and back into wider spaces. Ceilings lift. Sightlines stretch. Emergency lights flicker back on in thin, sickly strips along the floor, outlining paths I no longer get to choose.
The noise drains out of the Rot. Just the hum of power and the steady rhythm of boots moving in time.
At first, my brain tries to make meaning out of it.
Is this how they signal the end?
Is this what winning looks like from the inside?
Then the truth settles, heavy and undeniable.
If the Hunt were over, they wouldn’t be walking me like this.
If there were no one left running, there would be ceremony. Declaration. A shift I could feel in the air. The Rot wouldn’t be this… indifferent.
Which means others are still out there. Still running. Still bleeding for the Favor I wanted.
The thought lands hard, then fades just as quickly.
Not my problem anymore.
Whatever happens next, whoever wins, whoever gets the answers, whoever forces the Rotters to pay attention, none of it belongs to me now.
The Hunt continues.
I don’t.
We pass places I ran through earlier, now stripped of urgency. The lingerie store where I hid. The shoe shop with the collapsed boxes. The bookstore littered with torn pages and footprints that all point one direction now.
