Every official I’ve ever looked into from that period was complicit. Every single one. Some more than others. Some with better excuses. But complicit.
Fuck them.
Vi’s father was the mayor. Not a clerk. Not a mid-level functionary.Mayor Renner. The man at the top of a machine that ate this city alive. The idea that he sat in his chair and somehow kept his hands clean is the kind of story people tell themselves when they can’t accept what their family did.
We pass through a service corridor. The floor changes from tile to bare concrete where someone pulled up the original surface for some other project. A mannequin torso sits propped against the wall at the far end, shirtless, one arm missing, the other posed between her legs like she’s playing with herself. The younger Rotters, those with too much time on their hands,love doing shit like this. They crack themselves up putting the mannequins in all sorts of vulgar poses.
Hey, if that’s how those bozos want to express themselves, fine by me. I guess they have to entertain themselves somehow. It’s not like we have fucking Netflix here.
Vi’s pace picks up the closer we get. It’s barely perceptible. But I’m watching her and I catch it, the acceleration of someone close to something they’ve been waiting for.
It bothers me.
Not the hope itself. Hope is human. Irrational, but human. What bothers me is that she’s building weight on a foundation I’m almost certain won’t hold. She’s investing belief filtered through grief and need and the desperate wish that at least one thing in her life before the Rot was real.
I know what that does to people. I’ve watched it happen. They chase the proof, they find something that looks close to the belief they’re banking on, and they weld themselves to it. And when it crumbles, which it always does, they lose the version of themselves that needed it to be true.
I don’t want that for her. I don’t want to see her hurt.
But what I want is irrelevant. What matters is the operational reality. We go to the meeting. We assess the source. We examine whatever Alice produces. And when the documents turn out to be incomplete, or circumstantial, or the desperate preservation of a man trying to rewrite his own history before the walls closed in, I’ll be ready.
I’m already composing my response. Calm. Measured. Factual. I’ll acknowledge what the documents show without overstating what they prove. I’ll point out the gaps. I’ll note the absence of the one thing that would actually matter, the evidence that someone else was responsible for the decisions her father is blamed for.
I’ll be fair and precise and she’ll hate me for it. May never forgive me.
She’ll hit the wall. She’ll grieve. And she’ll move on, the only thing that keeps people alive in the Rot.
I’m doing her a favor, expecting the worst while she expects the best. She just doesn’t know it. I tell myself that as we reach the east wing stairwell, as Vi takes the first step up, her hand finding the railing, her body leaning forward with an urgency she can’t hide.
I’m doing her a favor. I follow her up the stairs and almost believe it.
13
STING
The service doorwith the red A is exactly where Alice said it would be. Recessed behind a collapsed display rack that someone shoved against the wall, half hidden by a sheet of corrugated plastic leaning at an angle. You’d walk past it ten times without seeing it, which is the point, and damn smart on Alice’s part.
I go first. The door gives with a metal groan, opening into a space that used to be something like a maintenance closet, or manager’s office from a store that no longer exists. Eight feet by ten-ish with cheap, paneled walls, a folding table, two plastic chairs, and a milk crate turned upside down as a third seat. On the far wall, a pipe runs floor to ceiling with a slow drip staining the concrete beneath it.
Alice is already there.
She’s standing in the far corner, four steps from the door. Her back is to the wall and her hands are at her sides, fingers pressing flat against her thighs. Shaved head. Scar across thecheek. Eyes moving fast, first to me, then Armen filling the doorway, then to Rogue. Vi steps through, holding her breath.
Alice looks afraid.
The fear is in her posture, in the angle of her shoulders, and how her weight is distributed, slightly forward, slightly left, oriented toward the door. She chose this room for its invisibility, but right now, she’s trapped in it with three men who could end her without raising their voices, and she knows it.
I take one of the plastic chairs. The gesture is deliberate, putting myself below her eye line, reducing the threat profile. Armen stays standing but leans against the wall near the door, arms loose, posture open. Rogue crouches beside the milk crate, resting his forearms on his knees.
Three men making themselves smaller. It’s a courtesy, not a habit.
Vi crosses to Alice. “Thank you for doing this,” she says.
Alice nods once. Her eyes flick to me again, then back to Vi. She’s decided that Vi is the person she’s talking to. The rest of us are just something she has to endure.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Alice says.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” Vi replies.
