His mouth shifts beneath the mask, something that might be amusement. “Not really.”
He steps into the room and reaches for my wrist again. His grip is firm, familiar now in a way that twists my insides.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Somewhere you can actually rest,” he replies.
“That wasn’t rest?”
“Do you want to stay in that shitty little closet? I’m sure it can be arranged.”
I don’t respond.
The corridor is dimmer than before, the lights spaced farther apart. The air feels cooler here, damper, like we’re moving deeper into the Rot’s underbelly. My knee aches with every step, the joint stiffening despite the brief reprieve.
I stumble once, and Sting’s hand tightens at my back, steadying me without slowing our pace.
“Slow down,” I mutter.
“You’re fine.”
“My knee isn’t.”
“I know.” His voice is flat, unbothered. “You’ll survive.”
We pass fewer people here. The corridors feel emptier, quieter, the sounds of the Rot muffled by distance. Somewhere far off, I hear voices, low, indistinct, but they fade as we move.
Then I hear it. Footsteps. Not ours. Someone else’s. Behind us.
I glance back over my shoulder and see a figure moving through the dim light. Not hurrying. Not hiding. Just... following. My pulse quickens.
It’s her.
The girl from the work hub. The one I punched. She’s maybe twenty paces behind us, her stride unhurried, her arms loose at her sides. She doesn’t look away when I meet her eyes. She just keeps walking.
“Sting,” I say.
“I know.”
His hand presses more firmly into my back, but he doesn’t speed up. Doesn’t turn around. Just keeps moving forward like she’s not even there. But I can feel the tension in him now. The shift in his posture. The way his fingers curl slightly against my spine.
“Looks like she’s following us,” I say.
“Yup.”
“What for? She can’t do anything to me.”
“Maybe not. But she wants you to know she’s there.”
A burst of adrenaline runs through me. “I’ll beat her ass,” I scoff.
“Keep walking,” he says.
So I do.
But the footsteps don’t fade. They stay steady, deliberate, matching our pace like a shadow we can’t shake.
The corridor narrows further, the walls pressing closer, the ceiling dipping lower. The light from the last fixture barely reaches this far, casting everything in shades of gray and black.
