Mari woke to velvet under her cheek.
For a second she didn't know where she was.
The air felt wrong — warm instead of cold, heavy with perfume, alcohol, sweat, and the faint metallic scent of blood that clung to her skin like a second layer. Somewhere nearby music hummed low through broken speakers, a distorted bassline looping over itself like it had forgotten how to stop.
She opened her eyes slowly.
Red light washed everything.
Burgundy couches curved around a raised stage, velvet worn thin where too many bodies had sat over too many nights. Chrome poles reflected fractured slivers of movement — bare legs, glittered shoulders, high heels abandoned beside overturned bar stools.
Women stood everywhere.
Late teens through their twenties, wrapped in bikinis, lace, fishnets, platform heels. Some held towels around themselves like armor. Others clutched drinks they weren't really drinking, eyes fixed on the darkened windows that lined the front wall.
Outside, shapes moved in the reflection.
Inside, no one spoke above a whisper.
Mari pushed herself upright.
Her body screamed in protest — bruises waking, muscles locking, the dull ache of exhaustion sinking into her bones. Memory hit her in pieces: Ethan bleeding, the alley, hands dragging them through a door.
Her head snapped up.
Ethan lay stretched across a velvet couch a few feet away, shirt cut open, chest wrapped tight in layers of gauze already stained through in places. A girl with dark curls and smudged eyeliner leaned over him, adjusting an IV line that ran from a hanging bottle hooked to a chrome pole.
"You're awake," the girl said without looking up.
Her voice was calm — practiced. Not panicked.
Mari swallowed. "Is he…?"
"Alive," the girl said. "Barely, but yeah. I'm Maya. Nursing student. Or… I was." She tightened the bandage gently, checking Ethan's pulse. "He lost a lot of blood. You got him here just in time."
Mari exhaled slowly, tension she hadn't realized she carried loosening slightly in her chest.
Around them, the club stretched wide.
Three separate bars curved along opposite walls. Two main stages rose from the center floor, each surrounded by low burgundy seating. Smaller private booths lined the edges, velvet curtains drawn halfway closed like eyelids trying not to look at the world anymore.
Every window was tinted black from the outside, mirror-dark.
From inside, Mari could see everything — flickers of firelight across the street, figures running, shadows collapsing beneath something heavier.
No one outside could see them.
A woman in a glittered bikini approached cautiously. "You good?" she asked, voice soft.
Mari nodded once.
"Owner's name is Vince," the woman said, gesturing toward a thickset man behind the bar counting bottles like they still mattered. "He's trying to keep everyone calm."
Mari stood slowly.
Her legs trembled but held.
She moved through the club, meeting people one by one — dancers with stage names she barely caught, bartenders who kept scanning the door, a handful of customers who had run inside when everything started and never left.
Some stared at her.
Others looked away.
Everyone watched Ethan when they thought she wasn't looking.
The world outside pressed against the glass like a storm.
Bodies lurched past occasionally, drawn to movement they couldn't see. One slammed into the window hard enough to make several dancers flinch.
It slid down slowly, leaving a smear.
Mari forced herself to keep walking.
Mapping the room.
Counting exits.
Learning faces.
She passed a group of girls gathered near one of the smaller stages, whispering about routes, about cars abandoned outside, about how long supplies might last.
No one laughed.
No one danced.
This wasn't a club anymore.
It was a bunker dressed in velvet.
Mari circled toward the far bar, needing distance from Ethan for a moment — needing to breathe without the sound of machines and whispered medical instructions in her ears.
That was when she heard the crying.
Soft.
Shaky.
Not meant for anyone outside the circle.
"…I thought I was dead," a girl whispered.
Mari slowed as she rounded the edge of the long bar, staying partly hidden by shadow and mirrored glass.
Three dancers clustered together.
One sat curled forward, face buried in her hands, glitter streaked across her skin like dried tears. Another rubbed her back slowly. The third hovered nearby with a towel.
"What happened?" someone asked gently.
"I ran into people outside," the crying girl said. "They were fighting. Loud. And then the dead started coming. I thought I wasn't going to make it back."
"You're here now," the taller girl murmured.
"I don't feel okay," she whispered.
"I'm gonna get you a blanket," another said, standing. "And something to wash your face."
They moved aside.
Mari took one step closer without thinking.
And then—
The crying girl looked up.
Cherry froze.
Recognition hit her like a slap.
Her face drained white.
For a heartbeat the club held its breath.
Cherry's hand lifted slowly, finger trembling as it pointed across the bar.
"That's her," she said.
The words cut through the room louder than music ever had.
Heads turned.
Conversations died.
Mari felt every eye land on her at once.
Cherry's voice shook as she said it again.
"That's her."
Silence stretched tight.
"She's the one who killed Darius."
The name hung heavy in the velvet air.
And suddenly Klassy Kat didn't feel safe anymore.
It felt like a room waiting to decide whether Mari was a survivor—
or the next problem to deal with.
The shift in the room was immediate.
It wasn't loud at first. No one rushed her. No one shouted.
They just moved.
Bodies angled away from her in slow, careful arcs. A dancer near the stage stepped backward instinctively, one hand drifting toward a broken bottle resting on a table. Another girl tightened her grip on a metal pole like it might become a weapon if she needed it to.
The bassline from the speakers looped again — hollow, off-beat — filling the silence with something wrong.
Vince stopped counting bottles.
His eyes lifted slowly toward Mari.
"Hold up," he said, voice low but carrying. "Everybody breathe."
But no one relaxed.
Maya glanced between Cherry and Mari, confusion flickering across her face. "What is she talking about?" she asked quietly.
Cherry swallowed hard, eyes never leaving Mari. "Outside. The alley. I saw it. Darius ran at her — and she didn't hesitate."
Murmurs rippled through the room.
Mari didn't step back.
Didn't raise her hands.
She just stood there, shoulders squared, breathing slow — the same way she had learned to stand when a situation tipped toward violence before anyone threw the first punch.
"He was already gone," Mari said finally.
Her voice wasn't loud.
But it cut clean through the tension.
Cherry's lips trembled. "He was my friend."
"I know," Mari replied softly. "And I'm sorry for that."
The apology landed heavy — not weak, not defensive. Just honest.
Outside, something slammed into the glass again.
Hard.
Several dancers flinched. One girl let out a sharp cry before clapping a hand over her mouth.
The dead dragged along the window, leaving streaks that caught the red light and turned it darker, almost black.
Vince stepped forward slowly, palms open. "Let's not tear each other apart in here," he said. "We got enough problems outside."
Cherry's breathing grew faster. "She didn't even look scared," she whispered. "She just… did it."
Mari held her gaze. "Because if I hesitated, he would've killed me. Or Ethan. Or someone else."
She didn't say more.
Didn't explain the sound of Darius's skull hitting pavement. Didn't talk about the way survival sometimes looked like cruelty from the outside.
The room weighed her words.
Maya straightened from Ethan's side, eyes sharp now. "You brought him in alive," she said to Cherry quietly. "If she wanted to hurt people, she wouldn't have dragged a bleeding man through those doors."
That shifted something.
A dancer near the bar nodded slightly.
Another lowered the broken bottle back onto the counter.
But the tension didn't disappear.
It settled into something colder.
Watchful.
Cherry's hand lowered slowly, but her expression didn't soften. "I just want the truth," she said.
"You got it," Mari replied.
Silence stretched again.
Outside, the moaning rose — a low, steady chorus pressing against the walls of the club like the city itself was breathing wrong.
Inside, every person in Klassy Kat felt the fragile line between survivor and threat tighten around Mari's presence.
And as whispers crept through the velvet bunker — grief, anger, fear mixing into something sharp — Mari understood the danger had changed shape.
Out there, the dead wanted flesh.
In here, the living wanted answers.
And sometimes… that was worse.