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There’s no finish line here, just the start of another round.

And I am starving for it.

Chapter Eight: Bentley

My watch beeps a warning, the digital chime interrupting our silent march. The time is irrelevant; the fact of its urgency is not. The Ministry of Design’s control center waits, its doors at the far end of the corridor sealed tight and smooth.

I glance at Samuel. He walks two steps behind, streaked with sweat and the blood drying at his throat. His hands are raw, knuckles split, skin dusted with my fingerprints and cum. He doesn’t meet my gaze. I can’t tell if that’s defiance, compliance, or exhaustion. Maybe all three.

We reach the control room. My badge unlocks the door with a hiss. Inside, the world is exactly as I left it. The screens are dark.

The only difference is the big WARNING flashing across the screens as the cameras reboot and the live feed demands to be turned back on.

I feel Samuel behind me, his presence a heat signature even when I refuse to look at him. I want to order him to stand at parade rest, or to leave, but the ritual demands a return to normal.

He is now one of us.

Or will be as soon as I write my final assessment and sign off.

I step to the master console, fingers already tingling with the need for control. The keyboard is cool, the keys low resistance, designed for hands that never hesitate. I tap in my login, then access the security matrix. With a click, the steel doors all lift, and the house upstairs will be free of the dungeon once more.

The logs are blank for the last forty-three minutes. The patch I ran is working—no live feed, no record, not even a system heartbeat to indicate that I broke protocol. For now, the Custodian’s vision is dark and all they know is there was a malfunction. So long as the loops kept playing, they can’t accuse me of interference.

I bring up the corridor cameras. The interface is cold blue and white, every angle of the facility mapped in perfect clarity. I toggle the last active frame before I shut them down using the “Halloween 2026 Crown Complete” function.

My own security system recorded everything. Privileges of owning this home. I freeze the feed. Samuel, eyes wild, robe half-off his shoulder, blood at his lip. I see myself next to him, collar torn, the mark of his teeth already visible at the side of my neck.

I watch the loop three times before I act.

It’s not shame. It’s raw need. Saving the recording, I save it to my external hard drive before working to erase it from House Brooks archives.

With a few keystrokes, I cue a bank of still images from the night before. I find footage of an empty corridor, timestamped to overlap the window of absence. I create a motion track, overlaying minor randomization so any nosy pattern hunters won’t flag it as a dupe. I run a simulation, then let the loop play in real time, a ghost corridor with nothing but air and artificial light.

Satisfied, I move to the next step.

Restoring the feeds is easy. I power the system, reset all sensors, and execute a cold boot. The cameras flicker to life, their small mechanical clicks almost lost beneath the hum of the ventilation. The world is again visible, every inch of it documented and recorded.

I watch myself in the reflection on the primary monitor. My face is composed, but my eyes betray the chemical spike. My jaw is set, and there’s a sheen of sweat at my brow. I wipe it off, as if that might erase the evidence from my memory.

Samuel leans against the wall, arms crossed. His robe has fallen open completely. His cock hangs, half-hard, smeared with my cum. He scratches at his ribs, then drags his palm down his thigh.

For a moment, I imagine what the staff would see if I left the cameras live: the two of us, alone, both marked and barely dressed, both too proud to hide the damage. A mutual confession, played out in body fluids and bruises.

I turn back to the console, log the patch, and set a secondary override to wipe the audit trail after the next system refresh. It’s an old trick, one I learned from a predecessor. I see his signature in the code, a tiny flourish that means nothing to anyone but me. I wonder, briefly, if anyone will notice my own. I hope they do.

At the bottom of the audit panel, I add a single line: SYSTEM FUNCTIONAL—NO ANOMALY DETECTED.

My hands rest on the desk. The room is still, except for the slow, uneven breathing behind me.

I say, “You should go clean up.”

Samuel snorts, a sound of raw contempt or maybe amusement. He doesn’t move.

I look back at him. The way he stands is different now. Not defiant, not exactly, but set in a way that refuses apology. He’s spent, but there’s a focus to his eyes that wasn’t there before.

He says, “Why bother? You’re just going to make a mess on me again.”

I bite off a smile. “Humor is a defense mechanism.”