“Can younottalk about my dick, please? It’s weird as hell.”
Valen exhales a long plume of white breath through his balaclava. “I’ve never— Whatever.”
“Never had chlamydia? Yeah, me neither, asshole.” My mouth twists under my mask. “Fuck!I’m nervous.”
“Me, too.”
“You can’t be nervous, Valen. Youcan’tbe. I’m the one that has to…do this.”
Even behind the mask, I can see the expression he makes. That flat, pointed stare of his.
Guilt crawls up my throat. “I mean—yeah, you did all the work setting itup.”
He palms his gun tucked into his waistband. “My knees are starting to hurt.”
We crouch lower behind the bushes outside theThetaManor dungeons. My quads scream.
“When’s the security going down?”
Val shoves his hoodie sleeve up and checks the time on his complicated, and likely expensive-as-fuck, watch. “In about two minutes.”
My heartbeat spikes. Close enough that I can taste fear. Is this my last night alive?
“Hey… How was the escort?” he asks like we’re just making everyday conversation.
“What?”
“Sheila. Was she nice?”
My face scrunches behind the mask. “She was a prostitute, Valen. She let me fuck her and gave mechlamydia. I don’t know. Sure? She did her job.”
“They rotate.”
“What’s that mean?” I scan the windows and check for any movement. The woods surrounding us are dark. Pitch black. And still.
“The women in her line of work. They rotate who carries it each year. I had to hack clinic records to find which of their clients caught it and?—”
“I don’t care. I mean…Thank you, but I just don’t want to talk about how I got an infection from Sheila, the sex worker.” My throat grows tight. “On purpose.”
“Okay,” he says softly. “We won’t.”
With a sharp sound, the lights everywhere dim. Until the giant Gothic structure in front of us looms like a black hole.
I grip Valen’s arm before he takes off. “I have to do this, right?”
He freezes. Deep and careful, he whispers, “If you want to be president. But not justthis, Apollo. TheThetashave to catch it, too.”
My chest throbs. This is what I wanted. What I sacrificed my body, mydignity, for.
“Let’s move,” I say, nodding toward the basement door.
We crawl, low and fast. Once there, he uses a pick set to unlock the regular bolt, then slides it open for me. From our recon on Red Nights, their bi-annual orgy, we know they have a house gimp tied up on a bed at night. Sometimes, she’s strapped to a bench for their free use. Either way, she’s two doors down and usually guarded by a freshman.
Valen’s hand is already on his gun.
But as we approach, the metal folding chair outside the wooden door is empty. I glance through the iron bars into the room. A candle flickers, casting haunting shadows against the stone walls. The bed is neatly made with no one in it, and my heart sinks, until I spot an object near the back…
Standing near the weeping stone wall is an A-frame bench with an elderly woman strapped to it by her wrists and ankles. She seems to be resting. And unaware.
