Chapter 18: Fabric of Shame
The polished marble of the Titan Company lobby reflected the harsh glow of the company logo like cold fire. Karn pushed through the revolving doors at 7:05 PM, the familiar scent of ozone and cleaning products washing over him. He’d stayed late finalizing a presentation, the usual post-work buzz replaced by the quiet hum of night shift cleaners. He was pulling his phone out, ready to call Pete, maybe suggest grabbing a late bite, when a huddled shape near the building's exterior caught his eye.
He stopped dead.
Curled against the sleek glass wall, lit by the garish entrance lights, was Pete. Not walking out, not waiting. Sitting on the bitingly cold concrete, knees drawn up tight to his chest, forehead pressed hard against them. His shoulders heaved with silent, desperate sobs that shook his whole frame. The sight alone was a punch to Karn’s gut. But it was the state of him that froze Karn’s blood.
Pete's clothes were destroyed. Utterly shredded. His once-standard-issue button-down shirt hung in tattered strips, like it had been savaged. Only a few ragged patches clung to his shoulders and one side of his torso, leaving his chest completely bare. The sharp night air had already pebbled his skin, nipples standing out hard and dark against the pale expanse. His belly, vulnerable and exposed, clenched with each ragged inhale. Below, his jeans were gone. Vanished. Only thin, shockingly translucent white briefs remained. The cheap fabric, stressed and damp from… something… left nothing hidden. Every contour, every curve beneath the strained cotton, was starkly visible under the unforgiving floodlights.
"Pete?" Karn’s voice cracked. He closed the distance in three strides, the cold radiating from the concrete hitting him even before he knelt. He placed a hesitant hand on Pete’s trembling shoulder, feeling the chill of his skin through the remnants of fabric. "Jesus, Pete. What happened? Who did this?"
Pete flinched violently at the touch, his head snapping up. His face was a wreck – eyes red-raw and swollen, cheeks tear-streaked and grimy, lip split. He stared at Karn, but there was no recognition, only a raw, animal panic. He tried to shrink further into himself, pulling his knees tighter, a low, wounded sound escaping him.
Karn jerked his hand back as if burned, the raw terror in Pete's eyes cutting deeper than the freezing concrete. "Pete, it's me," he urged, voice low and urgent, dropping into a crouch to lessen his height. "Just me. Karn." He scanned the torn shirt remnants, the obscenely thin briefs, the bruises blooming on Pete's ribs. Fury, cold and sharp, sliced through his initial shock.
Pete’s unfocused gaze finally snapped onto Karn’s face. Recognition flickered, then drowned instantly in a fresh torrent of tears. His body convulsed with silent, wrenching sobs that made his bare shoulders hitch violently. He buried his face back against his knees, the tattered fabric shreds trembling. The sheer depth of his collapse was terrifying.
"Hey... hey, shh," Karn murmured, instinctively shrugging off his own tailored wool coat despite the evening chill. He draped it carefully over Pete’s hunched shoulders, the heavy fabric enveloping the ruined shirt and shielding some of the exposed skin. His knuckles brushed Pete’s icy bicep. "Can you stand? Get you inside? Away from here?"
Pete flinched at the contact but didn’t pull away. He shook his head violently against his knees, a muffled whimper escaping. "C-can't," he choked out, the word barely audible, raw and scraped. "Everyone... saw... inside too. Saw me... like this... Anya... she..." He trailed off, another shudder wracking him. The coat slipped slightly, revealing a strip of his vulnerable back.
Karn’s jaw tightened. Anya Rostova. Her name alone was a cold stone in his gut. He gently tugged the coat back up, his mind racing. The lobby lights felt suddenly accusatory, the polished marble floor reflecting Pete’s shattered form like a grotesque mirror. "Forget Anya for a second," he said, his voice firmer now, cutting through Pete’s anguish. "Tell me who did this. The clothes. Who tore you up like this?" He gestured at the ragged strips clinging to Pete’s skin beneath the coat. "Was it Derek? Liam?"
Pete lifted his head again, tears carving clean paths through the grime on his cheeks. He looked utterly lost. "T-them... Derek... Liam," he stammered, his voice thick with tears and shame. "After... after the meeting." A fresh wave of misery washed over his face. "The... the meeting room... Karn... you don't know..." His breath hitched, the memory visibly crushing him. "My friends... Jason... Ball... Sarah... Boom... all of them!"
He sucked in a ragged breath, the words tumbling out in a desperate, broken rush. "They made me crawl... naked... Karn, I was naked... in front of everyone... people I grew up with... Jason, he... he..." Pete squeezed his eyes shut, unable to say it, his whole body trembling violently under the coat. "They touched me... made me... finished me... on the table... while everyone watched... laughed..." He gagged, choking on the memory.
Karn felt sick. The detached brutality of it, the calculated humiliation using Pete's own history... He kept his hand steady on Pete’s shoulder, a point of contact in the freefall. "And then? The clothes?" he pressed quietly, needing the full picture.
Pete nodded jerkily, tears dripping onto Karn's expensive coat. "Derek and Liam... afterwards... they... they gave back my clothes. My jeans... my shirt." A bitter, broken sound escaped him, almost a laugh. "Then Derek just... grabbed the shirt... ripped it... kept ripping it... laughing... 'Need to stay dedicated, Riverton'... 'Show your commitment'..." He plucked weakly at a frayed edge of fabric poking from under the coat. "Made me put these... these things on." He gestured weakly towards the translucent briefs visible beneath the coat’s hem. "Kicked me out... told me to crawl back to Titan like the resource I am... report to Anya." His voice dropped to a shattered whisper. "So I did. I reported. Told her... everything."
He looked up at Karn, his eyes pools of utter desolation. "She just... nodded. Said 'Acknowledged, Riverton. Dismissed.' Like I told her the damn weather." A long, shuddering sigh escaped him. "And then... I came out here... and I just... broke. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think." His voice cracked completely. "They don't see me, Karn. Jason, Ball... Sarah... Boom... none of them. They looked at me like... like something on display. Something to use. Not Pete. Not their friend." He wiped his nose messily on the back of his hand. "I’m just... the naked thing that obeys. That’s all I am now. To everyone."
He slumped back against the cold glass, the fight draining out of him, leaving only hollow exhaustion. "What do I do?" The question was barely a breath, lost in the city's distant hum. "Where... where even is Pete anymore? They erased him. Right in front of me." He stared past Karn, into the brightly lit, indifferent lobby where his identity had just been officially voided. "Just... gone."
Karn knelt there, the cold seeping through his trousers, Pete’s broken words echoing in the silence between them. The image of Pete's friends, people he knew, participating in that degradation... Anya's cold dismissal... The carefully maintained fiction of Pete being different, under Karn's protection, lay in ruins as shredded as the shirt. His gaze fell on Pete’s hand, clenched white-knuckled around a wad of torn fabric at his chest – a pathetic shield. Karn remembered his own words weeks ago, cheerful encouragement in the Titan canteen: ‘Stick with it, Pete. Play their game. It’ll pay off. Show them your dedication.’ The hypocrisy of it choked him. He’d helped pave this road with his naive advice. The weight of his own unintended complicity settled on him, heavy and suffocating, as Pete’s quiet, ruined weeping filled the space where answers should have been.
The weight of his own unintended complicity settled on Karn, heavy and suffocating, as Pete’s quiet, ruined weeping filled the space where answers should have been. That fragile, broken sound cut deeper than any scream. Karn couldn’t leave him here, crumpled against the cold glass like discarded trash, wearing only Karn’s coat over ravaged clothes and sheer humiliation. Seeing Jason’s pitying toe, Ball’s harsh squeeze, Anya’s dismissive nod play out in Pete’s shattered expression ignited a cold, focused fury. He wouldn’t abandon him to the indifferent city night.
"Alright," Karn said, his voice stripped of its usual easy charm, leaving only steel. He slid his arms under Pete’s trembling shoulders and knees, ignoring the flinch. "Up we get." Pete offered no real resistance, too hollowed out, letting Karn lift him as if he weighed nothing. The sheer briefs and tattered shirt remnants beneath the coat felt disturbingly flimsy against Karn’s forearms. "You're not staying here."
"No... Karn... s-sir... don't," Pete stammered weakly, a fresh tremor running through him. "I c-can't... go back... inside..." He buried his face against Karn’s shoulder, breathing fast and shallow.
"You're not going back inside," Karn stated flatly, already striding towards the sleek black sedan parked illegally at the curb, its engine purring softly. "You're coming with me. To my place. Tonight." He hitched Pete higher, aware of the faint, lingering scent of shame and exertion clinging to him. "No arguments. Not an option."
He opened the passenger door, the warm interior light spilling out. Karn gently deposited Pete onto the plush leather seat. Pete instinctively curled in on himself, pulling Karn's coat tighter like a shield, his eyes wide and glazed, staring blankly at the dashboard. "Karn... please," he whispered, voice raw. "I... I shouldn't... impose..."
Karn crouched, meeting Pete’s shattered gaze. "Look at me," he commanded, his tone leaving no room for refusal. Pete’s red-rimmed eyes flickered up, filled with a bottomless exhaustion. "This isn’t a favor you’re imposing, okay? Consider it an order if that makes it easier for you right now. Purple Tag to Red Tag. You will get warm. You will change into something decent. You will stay put where it’s safe. Understood?"
The ingrained response snapped through Pete’s daze like a reflex. He slid gracelessly off the seat onto the cold pavement, bowing low until his forehead brushed the polished toe of Karn’s expensive shoe. "Thank you, sir," he whispered, the words automatic, devoid of inflection. "I obey."
A muscle jumped in Karn’s jaw. Seeing that instinctive, degrading obeisance, triggered by his own words, felt like acid in his veins. "Get in," he said, his voice grating. He helped Pete back into the seat, securing the seatbelt over the bulky coat. Pete sat rigidly, staring straight ahead, silent tears tracking down his cheeks again. Karn shut the door with deliberate calm.
Rounding the car, Karn slid into the driver’s seat, the powerful engine vibrating through the wheel. He pulled away from the curb, the bright Titan logo shrinking in the rearview mirror. As the city lights blurred past the windows, Karn tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He glanced at Pete’s ghostly profile, a silent statue of misery wrapped in his coat. Quietly, venomously, the words escaped Karn’s lips, low and dangerous. "Jason… Ball… Anya… Derek… Liam… Every single one of them fucking broke you." He stared straight ahead at the gleaming, indifferent city. "They will pay. I swear it. All of them."
He drove deeper into the night, the silence in the luxurious car thick with unspoken horrors and a vow forged in cold rage. The sleek lines of Karn's downtown penthouse tower rose ahead, a glass fortress promising temporary shelter and the terrifying intimacy of confronting what the Titan machine had truly wrought.