Chapter Text
Grimy hands clutched at Charlotte’s leg for a moment before the man was hauled back down into the crowd. She cringed away from his touch—or tried to. There was nowhere to move. The discarded store mannequin tangled her bare feet, and shattered glass lay all around. Every direction was filled with clawing hands and leering eyes. The man hadn’t even cared about Charlotte. He had been reaching to paw at the woman beside her, a woman half naked and fully high who had just pulled off her blouse to try on the next piece of clothing someone had thrown at her.
Charlotte’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. It was like watching her zaydee on a bad day, tremors keeping him from holding anything. She pressed her palms flat against each other, but the trembling just got worse, overwhelming every attempt to control herself. She was helpless. Helpless to escape the men who’d snatched her off the street. Helpless to stop the Merchants from bringing her here. Helpless even to keep her body still. Her fingers kneaded themselves into the neck of her sweatshirt.
The worst part was that she could smell it. She hadn’t been able to smell or taste anything for the almost three weeks since Leviathan had, had…. But now there was so much filth and sweat and violence around her that the reek of it actually registered. A mixture of rancid milk and sharp vanilla and overpowering cinnamon. How could anyone stand it? She could feel it permeating the air, feel it sinking into her clothes, her skin. Had that man wiped something on her? Had his hands been smeared with something? She already felt so disgusting, but to smell like these people now, and to know what they wanted from her, the prospect of even closer contact… she barely avoided throwing up. Utterly helpless. The only option was to hide, to be boring. She folded in on herself as much as possible. Don’t make eye contact, don’t be interesting, don’t look at –
Suddenly a man was in front of her. Charlotte flinched away, but he stepped after her and Oh, God, his arms were around her waist! There was a heave and a twist, and then his shoulder was digging into her stomach and she was screaming.
“I’m buying this one,” he hollered.
She didn’t hear the rest because she was too busy flailing and kicking and it wasn’t doing any good, and then he jumped down from the ‘stage’ and all the air went out of her lungs. The mob transformed into a brawl all around them, while she gasped for breath, and then she screamed again. She saw another man pull a knife on the one carrying her, but two girls jumped out of the crowd and attacked him before he could do anything. A few people looked like they might try to take her from her current kidnapper, but most just laughed at her panic. Why, why, why?! Why was this happening? Why were people like this?
When he finally put her down, Charlotte found herself backed up against a wall outside the mall restrooms. The large man was squatting in front of her with his arms crossed, with two nice-smelling teen girls beside him. But beyond those three there were only a few people between the bathrooms and the broken glass doors of a side entrance. If she ran now, she might make it.
Before she even took a step, the blonde girl with the rosemary perfume was already holding up a hand to stop her. “You’re safe,” she said. “We’re not doing anything to you.”
Charlotte wiped her eyes, panting a moment until she had enough breath to say, “But—”
“She’s right,” the man spoke, standing, “You’re as safe as you’re gonna get for the next little while.”
“Oh god,” Charlotte sobbed. Safe. She hadn’t really believed it was possible. No more reaching hands, no more filthy smell. Without even thinking about it she moved forward, ready to give him a hug. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t thank him. Thank her,” the blonde said, tilting her head at the other girl, the one who smelled like olives. “We wouldn’t have gone out of our way to help if she hadn’t been stubborn.”
With a final sob, Charlotte threw her arms around the other girl, and the world exploded. The olive scent expanded through the city in a wide swath around them, and Charlotte had a brief sense of a texture in the smell, could briefly feel it begin contracting toward them in the center, before the girl shoved her and she was stumbling back into the wall.
“What the hell?” The girl’s shout echoed through the hall, distorted in Charlotte’s ears by a droning buzz. “What was that?”
“What did she do? What did you…” the rosemary blonde demanded, trailing off. “You don’t know. You didn’t know.” She snapped her head around to the one who’d shoved Charlotte. “Taylor, stop! She didn’t know. Still doesn’t. I’m not sure what she does yet, but it’s not harmful, wasn’t an attack. You need to get it together.”
Olive girl, Taylor apparently, was standing absolutely still. The large man beside her had fallen into a fighting stance, staring around at the hallway which was suddenly full of buzzing insects. The drunk teens down the hall were shouting about gross bugs.
“Taylor,” the other girl said, again. “Someone’s going to… shit!”
She was cut off by a loud crackle erupting from speakers throughout the mall. A string of unintelligible profanity followed, laced with names and orders, but Charlotte wasn’t listening. She’d finally recognized the girl, having heard her name. Taylor. The locker girl. The one who’d been shoved in with all that rank stuff that was eventually carted away in biohazard bags. The one who went so mental they had to have a group of cops and paramedics haul her away. The one Emma Barnes had warned everyone away from. And now she had spiders crawling out of her hair.
And all of Charlotte’s fear came rushing back. She wasn’t safe. The big guy had rescued her from the display window, but he’d done that on the apparent orders of a teenage girl. That wasn’t something that happened. Not unless….
“You’re—” Charlotte couldn’t even complete the thought.
Then the tirade blaring through the sound system finished with an angry scream. “Kill them! Find the Undersiders! Turn Skitter inside out, along with anyone she’s with.”