The club is the one place where power doesn’t come from hierarchy or evidence or who’s louder in an argument. It comes from want, and from walking into a room and deciding what happens next.
The other times we’ve gone, the guys initiated our visit. I don’t remember who usually suggested it, but the decision would be made and I’d go along. Not unwillingly or forced, God no, I’ve always wanted to go. I’ve been swept up into the guys’ momentum, their schedules, and their desires.
Not tonight, though, tonight I’m in the driver’s seat.
Mara catches me on the way out. She’s in the corridor, heading back from wherever she’s been, the work hub, probably, where she’s taken to showing up voluntarily, earning her place the hard way because that’s how she rolls. She sees me and her eyebrows go up.
“You look… different,” she says.
The smear of lipstick I’m wearing, something I earned from another Runt by taking on one of her shifts, is a dead giveaway.
“Um, yeah. I’m going out.”
Sounds so strange to use those words. Most people in the Rot don’t just “go out.”
“Where ya off to?” she asks playfully.
“The club. With the guys.”
She raises one eyebrow, not in judgment because Mara doesn’t judge, not after the conversation we had about masks and sex and the complicated truth of what the guys are to me. Rather, there’s a flicker of something like curiosity or recognition. She can see the intent in my face the same way Armen did.
“Well, have fun,” she says, patting my shoulder.
“Thank you, I’m planning on it.”
I head to the agreed-upon exit. I spot Armen first, leaning against the wall, jacket on, his posture no longer that of a Rotter at work. Rogue arrives next, running a hand through his messy curls, that cute half grin on his face. When he spots me, the grin widens a fraction.
“Well, well,” he says.
Then Sting joins us, coming down the corridor with his precise, unhurried stride, his face neutral like it always is.
His eyes find me, looking me up and down. His assessment takes about one and a half seconds, and his expression doesn’t change at all, not even slightly, which is how I know I’ve affected him.
If it hadn’t, he’d have looked away already.
Then the guys grab their masks from their pockets, the bone-white skeleton masks they wore the first night I met them, and my core swings into overdrive. They pull them on with little adjustment, and look at me as if to askare you ready?
Fuck yeah, I’m ready.
We walk. Actually, I let the guys set the pace because it’s all I can do to keep from running like a hungry puppy toward his food bowl, so desperate am I to blow off steam.
“Are we staying at the safe house tonight?” I ask.
“We gave it up,” Sting says from behind me.
“What? Why?”
“Someone had been in it. Things moved and a window we’d secured was open. We couldn’t determine who it was, so we shut it down.”
“When?”
“Couple weeks back. Traded the location to a crew from the north corridor in exchange for supply access. Better use for it than a place we can’t secure.”
That bothers me more than it should. The safe house was the first place outside the Rot where I felt like the four of us existed as something real. Not the Rot’s founders and their Runt. Just people. Together.
But Sting’s already moved on, and I stash the loss away with everything else I’ve had to let go of since coming here.
The route to the club is familiar by now. Out through the loading dock, across several blocks of broken-down Rothwell to the unmarked door that leads down to the venue. Armen leads, and Rogue flanks, our usual formation.
