I stand. Step back. Reassert distance before it collapses on its own.
“Don’t slump,” I say, neutral again. “It’ll make your knee worse.”
Her mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something drier. “Concerned?” she asks.
A test.
I meet it without flinching. “Practical.”
She holds my gaze another second longer than necessary, then looks away first. Not defeated. Strategic.
I move on before the moment stretches into something that requires explanation.
Behind me, I feel it—the shift. The way guards register that something happened even if they didn’t see it clearly. Attention sharpens. Space recalibrates.
I don’t look back. I shouldn’t have touched her at all. I know that.
The Rot runs on distance. On systems that don’t care who you are as long as you end up where you’re supposed to be. The second you start correcting posture instead of restraints, you’ve crossed into dangerous territory. Making the Runts comfortable?
It just isn’t done.
My hands remember the feel of her shoulder. My mind catalogs her reaction without permission. Some traitorous part of me is already thinking in terms of keeping her steady instead of keeping her in line.
I resent all of it.
That’s how mistakes begin. That’s how people get compromised.
I reach the end of the line and stop, back to her now, breathing slow until the irritation burns down into something colder and more manageable.
Behind me, I hear her shift again—correctly this time. Not slumping. Not straining. Balanced.
I don’t turn around. But I know she’s watching me. And I know I’ve just drawn a line I shouldn’t have stepped near.
The problem is?—
I’m not sure anymore whether I crossed it, but I do know I’ve just made myself readable.
20
VI
They don’t lockme in a room, as I thought they would.
That’s the first thing I notice.
No doors slamming shut. No cells. No dramatic separation from the rest of the Rot. Instead, I’m moved to a place where I can clearly be seen, on the edge of a wide strip that opens into one of the mall’s old department stores. Ceiling sky-high as far as the eye can see. No privacy, and yet I’m not exactly on display, either.
Containment, not confinement. With a side of isolation. These fuckers know what they’re doing, with all their psychological game-playing bullshit. I’m sure they want me to cower and cry. Beg for my freedom or something stupid like that.
As if I would give them the satisfaction.
I’m seated on a low concrete block that used to hold a planter. Someone cut the dead wiring for the grow lightsyears ago. The soil’s gone. Just an empty square of stone lined with smelly scum, as gross as anything else around here. My wrists are still bound behind me, ankles loose enough to shift but not run.
Like there’s anywhere to go.
My captor stands in front of me, still masked. It’s not lost on me that he’s been, shall I say, hanging out? I mean, I don’t see any of the other Rotters lingering around the girls they’ve captured. He’s not looming, per se. Just playing it cool. But I see him, and I’m pretty sure he sees me seeing him.
“Armen,” he says at last, voice calm, like we’re being introduced at a dinner party instead of the edge of a cage.
