CHAPTER SIX
REN PLUTO
The air in the bathroom was thick enough to drink.
The only sounds were the buzz of the dying fluorescent light and the drip... drip... drip... of the leaky rust-stained faucet.
Ren was in the shower stall. Nyx was in the doorway.
She hadn't just kicked the door. She'd breached it. The lock was a splintered memory. The frame was cracked. The cheap metal bolt lay on the grimy floor, bent into a useless L-shape.
She hadn't been trying to get in.
She'd been proving a point.
Point. Fucking. Made.
Ren's heart was a rabbit—stupid, frantic, hammering against his ribs. He could feel the journal, a hard square block of guilt, digging into his spine through his blazer.
He couldn't fight her. He knew that. He'd seen her on the ferry. She was all coiled, economic muscle. A pro. He was a street fighter—dirty, desperate, effective in alleys and kitchens with broken bottles. But this? This was a clean head-on confrontation.
He'd lose.
He couldn't lie. She was too smart. She hadn't just seen him. She'd watched him. Same as he'd watched her. She'd seen him find the hole. She knew.
"Five seconds," she'd said.
He'd taken ten.
She took one step closer. Black combat boots silent on cracked tile. Inside the bathroom now, letting the broken door swing wide.
Behind her, in the main room, Ren could see the rest of them. The liabilities.
Ravi, face pale, hands half-raised like he might stop a bullet. He wasn't looking at Ren. He was looking at the door. At the broken frame. His handler brain already calculating fallout.
Jules had finally stopped crying. Now he just stared, eyes wide and vacant with shock.
Zelie wasn't scared. She was intrigued. Leaning against her bunk, arms crossed, a small dark almost-smile on her face. Like she was watching a show she'd been waiting for.
And Maven. A ghost pressed against the far wall. As far from the violence as she could get. Her face was blank.
Too blank.
Don't trust the mice.
The warning from the journal screamed in Ren's head.
He looked back at Nyx.
She was the immediate threat. She was the one in his face.
"You're making a scene." Ren's voice came out low. Gravel. "You like the attention?"
"I don't like being lied to." Nyx didn't raise her voice. It cut straight through the silence like a blade. "I saw you. The floor. The eighth bunk. You found something. And you hid it. From me."
"I don't owe you shit."
"You do now." She jabbed a finger—not at him, at the room. At the cameras. "You think they didn't see that? You think they didn't see you hunch over that hole like a dog with a bone? You think they didn't see you drag the mouse into the corner? You're hot, 498. A flashing red warning light. And you're in my unit. That makes you my problem."
She was right.
Fuck. She was right.
He'd been so focused on Maven, on the journal, he hadn't thought about the optics. He'd looked guilty as sin.
And Maven... she hadn't just been a witness. In the eyes of the camera, she'd been his accomplice. He hadn't just implicated himself.
He'd implicated her.
Nyx took another step. Inside the shower stall now. The space was so small he could smell the cold damp air coming off her.
"Last chance." Her voice dropped to a hiss. "I already asked nicely once. What... did... you... find?"
He had to choose.
Lie. She'd break his arm.
Fight. He'd lose, and she'd take it anyway.
Or...
Or he could tell her.
He had a journal that said the island was a slaughterhouse. A warning not to trust the mouse. Three vials of a drug being pumped into the air. A locket with a secret.
A whole goddamn conspiracy.
And he was holding it alone.
He stared at her. Her eyes were flat. Black. Unreadable. She was a killer. He knew it.
But she was also the only other person who hadn't been crying, preening, or panicking. The only other wolf.
"A book." Ren's voice came out raw.
Nyx didn't blink. "A book."
"A journal."
"From who?"
Ren swallowed. The air was thick with bleach. "The girl who was in this room before us. The one who had the eighth bunk."
He saw it. A flicker. The barest micro-expression in her eyes.
The eighth bunk wasn't a spare. It was a grave.
"What did it say?" she whispered.
This was the moment. He could lie. Give her half.
Don't trust the mice.
He couldn't tell her that. Not yet. That was his.
He had to give her the other thing. The big thing. The thing that would chain them together.
"It's a farm," Ren said.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"This." Ren jabbed a thumb at the wall. "The school. The island. It's not a school. It's a farm. They're not grading us, Nyx. They're harvesting us."
He watched her face. Her expression never changed.
He kept going. Had to.
"The fog." The words tumbled out fast and low. "It's a drug. The journal called it Coudhayes. It makes everyone slow. Numb. It collects the pain."
"Collects it for what?"
"RNUKE." The word felt like poison in his mouth. "It's a process. They're feeding on us. Our trauma. Our fear. Our rage. The classes, the ranks, Blackwood—it's all designed to make us break. And the system feeds on it. We're fuel."
The only sound for a long stretched second was the drip... drip... drip... of the faucet.
Ren was shaking. Waiting for her to laugh. Call him crazy. Punch him in the face.
Nyx just stood there. Breathing. In. Out. Slow.
Calculating.
"Prove it," she said.
Ren's heart hammered. Prove it.
He didn't show her the journal. Wasn't giving that up.
He reached into his jeans pocket—the one she hadn't seen. His fingers closed around cold smooth glass.
He pulled out one of the vials.
Held it up between them. The black-purple sludge inside clung to the glass, thick and viscous. COUDHAYES scratched into the label.
Nyx's eyes locked onto it. She didn't look at him. Just stared at the black liquid.
Ren could see gears turning. The girl from the eighth bunk. The journal. The drug. The farm.
It was crazy. It was insane.
And it was the only thing that made any goddamn sense.
"Okay," Nyx said. Flat.
Ren's head snapped up. "Okay? That's it? Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." She finally looked at him. Her eyes were different. Not just cold anymore. Dead. "So we're livestock. Pigs in a pen waiting for the knife. Makes sense. I always wondered what the catch was."
She... she believed him.
Ren almost laughed. A raw, terrified, ugly sound. She believed him.
"What else?" she said.
"A phone." Ren's voice was hoarse. "Dead. And this."
He pulled out the chain. The locket.
"The journal said there's a message inside. A glitch. A way to crash the chair. Whatever that means."
Nyx looked at the locket. Didn't take it.
"So." Her voice was quiet. "We have a secret. A big lethal secret."
"Yeah." Ren breathed. "We do."
"And we have a problem."
She wasn't talking about RNUKE.
She stepped out of the shower stall and pointed at the door. At the shattered frame. At the splintered wood.
"What..." Ravi's voice was a high thin terrified squeak. He was at the threshold, wringing his hands, his face the color of old milk. "What are we... what are we going to do? About the door? Nyx, Ren, they'll know. We'll get in so much trouble. They'll kick us out. A Purge. They'll Purge us."
He was right.
A destroyed door. Day One.
This wasn't a fine. This wasn't a warning. This was willful destruction of Institute property. A fifty-point penalty, easy. Maybe more.
This was guaranteed Erasure.
"Oh, you're all so, so stupid."
The voice was light. Amused. From the main room.
Ren turned.
Zelie was on her top bunk, cross-legged, painting her nails. The bottle of black polish balanced perfectly on her knee.
She was smiling.
She looked up, eyes bright and reptilian, and blew on her nails.
"You're panicking, 455." Her voice was a lazy drawl. "It's ugly."
"Ugly?" Ravi sputtered. "Zelie, they're going to erase us!"
"No, sweetie." She capped her nail polish. "They're going to erase them."
She pointed one long perfect black-tipped finger.
First at Nyx.
Then at Ren.
"You see." Zelie leaned forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr. "You can't fix it. You can't hide it. The cameras saw. The logs know. You're both flagged for a Tier One Violation."
Ren's stomach twisted. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means." Her smile widened. "That I've been reading the rulebook. The one you all used as a coaster."
She hopped off the bunk. Stocking feet. Walked over to Ravi, movements fluid and predatory, and plucked his student handbook right out of his blazer pocket.
Ravi was so stunned he just let her.
"Page forty-seven." Zelie purred. "Section Four. 'The Severance Clause.'"
She opened the book. Didn't even look for the page. Knew exactly where it was.
"Any student who witnesses a Tier One Violation—say, the willful destruction of Institute property—" She read, eyes scanning. "Is encouraged to report the transgression directly to the Dean."
She looked up. Smile dazzling.
"The reward for this demonstration of loyalty? A one-hundred-point rank boost."
Ren's blood turned to ice.
A hundred points. Enough to get Zelie out of the Pig Pen. Enough to get any of them out.
"And." Zelie's voice dropped. "The student or students who are reported?"
She snapped the book shut. The sound was a gunshot in the silent concrete room.
"Automatic. Academic. Erasure."
She looked from Ren to Nyx.
Looked at Ravi. At Jules.
Her gaze even slid to Maven—still pressed against the far wall, face a blank white unreadable mask.
"So." Zelie's voice was full of terrible joy. "The real question isn't how we fix the door."
She held up the handbook.
"The question is: which one of us is going to get the points for it?"
The silence that followed was absolute.
Ren could hear his own pulse. Feel the journal burning against his spine. The vials heavy in his pocket. The locket cold against his thigh.
He looked at his unit.
Ravi: horrified. Caught between his desperate need to please and his terror of consequences. He'd crack. Soon.
Jules: still curled, still watching through his fingers. Useless. Possibly dangerous in his uselessness.
Sayer: hadn't moved from the window. Hadn't spoken. Might as well be furniture.
Maven: pressed against the wall. Face blank. Eyes... watching. Always watching.
Don't trust the mice.
And Zelie. Standing there with the handbook and a smile, holding their lives in her perfectly manicured hands.
She could do it. She could walk to the door right now, press the call button, and sell them both for a hundred points.
Nyx's hand drifted to her baton.
Zelie saw it. Laughed.
"Oh please, 495. You think I'm stupid? You think I'd try to fight you?" She tucked the handbook into her back pocket. "I'm not the one who breaks things. I'm the one who uses them."
She looked at Ren.
"You're interesting, 498. I'll give you that. Walking into a room full of strangers and immediately making enemies with the top rank? That takes something." Her head tilted. "Courage. Stupidity. Hard to tell which."
She walked toward him. Slow. Deliberate. Stopped inches from his face.
Close enough that he could smell her perfume—expensive, floral, completely wrong for this place.
"I'm not going to report you." Her voice was low. Private. "Not tonight."
Ren said nothing.
"Tonight, I'm going to watch. I'm going to learn. And tomorrow, when you do something else stupid—and you will—I'm going to be there."
She smiled.
"And when the moment is right? When the points are highest and the risk is lowest?"
She patted his cheek. Light. Condescending.
"I'll cash in."
She turned. Walked back to her bunk. Climbed up. Resumed painting her nails like nothing had happened.
The room stayed frozen.
Then Nyx moved.
She walked past Ren, out of the bathroom, across the main room. Stopped at the door. Examined the shattered frame. The broken bolt. The splintered wood.
"We need to fix this," she said. Quiet. To no one in particular.
"Fix it?" Ravi's voice cracked. "How? With what? We don't have tools. We don't have—"
"Shut up." Nyx's voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Ravi shut up.
Nyx looked at Ren.
"You. Help me."
It wasn't a request.
Ren walked over. Stood beside her. Looked at the damage.
The bolt was completely destroyed. The frame was cracked in three places. The wood around the lock was splintered into kindling.
No way to fix it. Not really.
But maybe...
Ren crouched. Looked at the floor. At the gap between the door and the frame.
"The bolt's gone," he said. "But the latch mechanism is still there. Barely."
Nyx crouched beside him. Saw what he saw.
"If we can wedge something in here," she said, pointing, "hold the door closed from the outside—"
"Someone on the inside can push it out," Ren finished. "It won't lock. But it'll look locked."
"From a distance. Through a camera." Nyx nodded. "It might buy us time."
"Time for what?" Ravi's voice was small.
Neither of them answered.
Nyx stood. Looked around the room. Her eyes landed on Sayer—still by the window, still staring at nothing.
"Hoodie string," Nyx said.
Sayer didn't move.
Nyx walked over. Reached out. Sayer flinched—actually flinched—but didn't stop her as Nyx pulled the drawstring from her hoodie. Long. Durable. Black.
Nyx walked back to the door. Knelt. Threaded the string through the latch mechanism, around a pipe on the other side, back through.
A tourniquet. A makeshift lock.
She pulled it tight. The door held.
Not locked. But held.
"That won't last," she said. "But it might last tonight."
She stood. Looked at Ren.
"We need a real plan. Tomorrow. After classes. Somewhere without cameras."
Ren nodded.
Nyx looked at the rest of the unit.
"Everyone on their bunks. No one talks. No one moves. If I hear so much as a whisper, I'll make Zelie's little reward look like a vacation."
She didn't wait for responses. She walked to her bunk. Sat down. Back to the wall. Baton in her lap. Eyes on the door.
Ren moved to his bunk—the one with the compartment underneath. Sat down. Felt the journal pressing against his spine.
He looked across the room.
Maven was on her bunk. Back to the wall. Knees pulled up. Watching him.
Their eyes met.
She didn't look away.
And in that look, Ren saw something that made his blood run colder than any journal entry.
She wasn't scared.
She was waiting.
Don't trust the mice.
Ren lay back. Stared at the ceiling. Felt the weight of the vials in his pocket. The locket cold against his thigh. The journal heavy against his spine.
Tomorrow, the real work began.
Tonight, he had to survive his own unit.