room. I’m about to call out to him, but my voice dies in my throat.
“Wow.” I stare around at the room, never having seen anything like it.
Wall-to-wall monitors glow everywhere, flickering with images, what looks like a video game on one, a movie on another. The screen in the middle has a map displayed on it. One monitor off to the side looks in on what I recognize as the back of the clubhouse, as seen from the tree Spider tied me to.
“Holy cow.”
Soda cans, beer bottles, crumpled bags of chips and a half empty pizza box litter the tables that sit below the monitors. A half-eaten bag of popcorn sits on one of a dozen keyboards.
I open my mouth to call for Rat as I hear a toilet flush off to my left, but I stop dead, staring at the monitor above the keyboard with the popcorn bag on it.
The blood drains out of my face, and my stomach drops horribly.
The monitor is looking right into Spider’s room, but where the room should be empty, instead the screen’s displaying a couple on his bed, a woman laying with her legs wrapped around a man’s waist, her arms around his neck. There’s a look of unmistakable ecstasy on her face.
Even though I can’t see his face, I know it’s Spider. And the woman staring up at the ceiling, right at a camera that must be pointing into the room unseen, is wearing my face.
The door to a bathroom opens, but I only half hear it. The tray drops from my shaking hands, the beer bottle shattering, booze splashing coldly over my ankles.
Rat runs into the room. “Fuck,” I hear him mutter, and he races to the keyboard. “Oh, man, Emma, I—no, come back—aw, fuck me.”
I flee the room.
20
Obeying the Monster
Ignoring Rat shouts for me to come back, I storm from the control room and down the hall. Behind me, the music that had filled the room cuts off, and I hear him cursing.
My brain seems to have gone numb. Like one of Monica’s movies that’s stuck in some sort of feedback loop, it keeps playing the same image—Spider and me, naked on his bed, him taking me viciously, displayed on that screen in full view.
I feel as if I’ve ended up in one of those pornographic films the guys watch. I feel exposed and violated, and suddenly I’m back in the Colony, imprisoned in a place where I have no rights, all my sense of privacy stripped away.
Disgust and anger with Rat seethe inside me, and I march toward the barroom, wanting only to be alone, wishing I could flee from this wretched clubhouse right now, get as far from these men as I can. I cover my mouth, holding in a sob.
He was watching us. Rat, the seemingly unassuming, laid back man who seemed so nice, was watching us.
He was watching us have sex.
My stomach roils sickeningly.
How long had the camera been in the room? Was Rat watching me every night? Had he seen me while I was on the Bluetooth with Spider, getting myself off?
Lord, I want to throw up.
I march into the barroom, almost colliding with Dee. She grabs my shoulders, steadying me.
“Emma? What’s wrong?”
I shake my head and pull myself away, half running down the hall to Spider’s room. Reaching his door, I hear Dee’s hurried footsteps and her calling me. “Emma, what—Rat, what the fuck did you do?” she snaps. He must have followed after me and run into her in the hall.
He replies, sounding winded, but my ears are ringing too loudly to take in his words. I shove my way into the room and slam the door, locking it so that Dee can’t follow.
Breathing hard, I scan the ceiling, but I don’t see anything that looks like a camera, or any part of the ceiling where it could be hiding. Except it has to be there somewhere. On the screen, I’d been looking right up at it.
I cover my mouth again, shaking, holding back sobs.
Climbing on the bed, I scan the ceiling again, three feet above me, but I still don’t see anything other than the light fixture, a domed shaped, opaque one that’s fixed to the ceiling.
Wait. There’s a faint hum coming from it.
I climb off the bed on weakened knees and hurry to the light switch, flicking it on.
“Spider, hang on a minute.” Rat’s voice, down the hall, coming from near the barroom.
“I just got back, Rat, whatever it is, it’ll