“Again,” Laney said.
Blythe shrugged, drew her arm back, and smacked me full across the face.
Reality cut out for a sec. When it resumed I was on my knees on a bare concrete floor. Two girls stood over me like executioners.
“Feel anything?” Laney said.
I shook my head.
Her mouth twitched, her expression otherwise placid. Laney rarely displayed anger openly. She’d sooner burn a house down than scream.
“This isn’t working,” Armin said. “He has to metabolize the alcohol. You can’t beat it out of him.”
Blythe massaged her palm. “I could try a few more times. It’s quite therapeutic.”
“Please.” Ellis stepped between us. “Enough.”
I was still in numb drunk mode, and feeling guilty. Which apparently meant wanting to get beat up by pretty girls. “I’m game. Do it again, Blythe.”
“You’re not supposed to enjoy this, mate.”
Laney muttered and began pacing.
Our meeting chamber lay in the lowest level of Umbra, the Oubliette. The hidden dungeon. In the farthest reach of serpentine stone corridors, in this tangle of Medusa’s hair, we made our lair. Dry ice slithered through the halls like viper tongues of vapor. Once upon a time, before Black Iris existed, this was the domain of a secret society at our alma mater. Now it was ours, for our own secret society.
When Laney wanted something, she took it. No matter what—or whom—she had to rip it bloodily from.
We all watched her pace. No one dared break the silence. A lone bare lightbulb threw her shadow at the wall, much bigger than she was. That shadow was jagged, toothy. It seemed about to bite.
“Can I stand?” I said.
Her eyes flicked to me.
“On second thought, I’m good down here.”
But Ellis gave me a hand up, and Blythe brushed my cheek, then pecked a kiss where she’d slapped me.
“Worth it,” I said.
“Is this funny?” Laney’s whisper was frighteningly soft. “Is it funny, Ren?”
“No.”
“Let me brief you on tonight’s target.”
She stopped pacing, her shadow a dark fang jabbing at us.
“He calls himself Crito.” Her voice remained soft. We all breathed softer to hear. “That should tell you something. He goes after women online. Ones who talk about the ways men hurt us, threaten us. You’d know some of these girls, Ren. He doxxes them—finds out where they work and live in the real world. Then he mobilizes his troll army.” Her fingers twitched. I imagined claws there. “He sends these girls messages. One day someone gets harassed on YouTube—typical stuff, ‘Kill all feminists,’ ‘You should be raped until you shut up,’ and so on—and then she comes home to a bouquet of flowers at her apartment door. The card inside reads, ‘We love watching you.’ That’s the message: they can get to her.”
I swallowed. I had my own trolls—you can’t be publicly trans without attracting transphobes—but by and large my haters expressed disgust, not threats. They didn’t doxx me. They just let me know how much my existence squicked them out. That was male privilege: even trans men took less abuse online than women.
“This guy is basically the leader of a domestic terrorist cell.” Laney’s eyes burned through me. “He’s a rich little white boy with enough resentment and free time to ruin the lives of girls who’ll never fuck him. Elliot Rodger is his personal hero. That guy who went on a shooting spree at UCSB and killed half a dozen people. Who wrote a misogynist manifesto saying rejections from girls made him do it. Probably the only reason Crito hasn’t shot up his college yet is because he’s having too much fun destroying girls’ sanity.”
So he targeted women who talked about toxic masculinity.
Women like my roommate.
Shit.
“Has he taken it beyond threats?” I said.
“He doesn’t have to. Threats are enough. They silence those girls.” Laney eyed us each in turn. “We’ve been letting this cancer grow in our city. We’ve let it hurt people we know. It ends tonight.”
“What do we know about him?” I said. “Where does he live, work? Who is he in real life?”
“I’ve been tracking him. Ellis is building a dossier.”
I frowned. “You’ve been tracking him? Personally?”
“I have eyes and ears in the city.”
“I’m your eyes and ears. You should have sent me, Lane.”
“I wanted to send you tonight.”
I flinched.
Blythe tossed her head, hair snapping around her shoulders in golden flames. “We know where he is, right? The rest of us can take him down. Cut off the head, and the body dies.”
“It’s not that simple,” Ellis said, eyeing her nervously. “Crito’s established a hierarchy. If he goes quiet, his minions will pick up where he left off.”
“Not if we make an example of him. What’s that phrase you Yanks love? ‘Shock and awe.’?”
“We’re not taking it that far,” Armin said. “We don’t kill.”
Laney stared at him a long moment. “Right. We don’t.”