SIXTEEN #2
It’s a lie. A pretty fat one, too. Because I do care.
I care about the looters with red-covered lights.
I care about the yellow-scarf bastard who took the helicopter pack.
I care about the word Vector. I care, because the looters were organized, and organized people with weapons don’t just exist in little pockets of the apocalypse.
They belong to something. To someone. And someone with enough power to shoot birds out of the sky is someone I should be running very far away from.
So, obviously, my brain has decided to stand here and argue with four Alphas instead.
Character growth is as much of a disease as the infection that turned most of the world into rotting corpses with appetites for flesh, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.
I take a step back and Kaito moves. Not toward me, but sideways, putting himself between me and the darker stretch of the tunnel ahead. He’s not close enough to touch or grab, only close enough that if something comes around the corner, it’ll grab him first.
My entire body hates that. My Omega is sitting on the other side of that very distinct line. That unreliable bitch lifts her head like someone just lit a candle in a dark window.
Kaito’s scent reaches me the next second, the burning wood and worn flannel now familiar in a way that scrapes away at my insides.
Not safe. I refuse to call it that. Safe is a lie people use when they want to fall asleep when there’s danger nearby.
But his scent is becoming something my body recognizes despite my repeated formal objections.
It’s like a tether. That’s what it feels like. A rope tied somewhere under my ribs, annoying and warm and impossible to cut without feeling it tug.
Absolutely not.
“Move,” I tell him.
Kaito shakes his head slowly. Apologetically. Infuriatingly. Then quietly tells me, “You can run after sunrise. I won’t stop you.”
The hand around my knife tightens.
“But you really won’t survive the streets tonight,” he continues. “Not hurt. Not with your blockers failing. And not with those men out there.”
Every word that falls from his mouth feels like a rock thrown at glass. I shake my head and tell him, “You don’t know my limits.”
“No,” he agrees easily. “But I know everything out there is awake now. I know those men are hunting anything and everything connected to that helicopter. I know the dead are following their noses. And I know you haven’t slept properly, you’re limping pretty bad, your hand is bleeding, your arm is injured, and you’re still trying to pretend like none of it seems to matter. ”
I stare at him.
Everyone, very tragically, remains alive.
Blandly, I ask, “Are you done?”
Kaito’s mouth softens into something that’s almost a smile but not quite. “For now.”
That phrase lands between us like a stupid echo from a roof I wish I could forget. For now. I hate him. I hate that he remembers the shapes of promises when they’re pretending to be something else. Damn it all to hell in a fucking handbasket.
Fletcher makes a low sound before finally agreeing with Kaito. “He’s right.”
“No one asked the wall for an opinion, thanks,” I snap, eyes cutting to him sharply.
I catch Ewan’s lips twitch from my peripheral before he says, “Apparently, this wall has some pretty strong feelings on the matter.”
Fletcher doesn’t look away from me despite the clown cracking jokes, focusing on me as he says, “Street’s nothing but a kill box tonight.”
And there it is. Fletcher really does feel like a wall.
Not a warm one, and certainly not a comforting one.
More like a barricade. A reinforced door.
A slab of stone dropped between the world and whatever the fuck he’s decided belongs on the other side of it.
I can practically feel his cedar and leather scent under the smoke and blood, hitting harder than Kaito’s.
Heavier, too. It doesn't pull at me like a tether the way Kaito’s does.
It warns me. It blocks. And it makes me want to check the exits twice.
And the traitorous little shit that my Omega is notices. Despite my efforts to tell her we don’t like walls because they can very quickly become cages, she tells me some walls keep teeth and claws out. So I tell her to shut the fuck up and lock her away in the recess of my mind.
Xeon chooses then to stand, moving away from the pilot slowly and carefully. He doesn’t step toward me, doesn’t even angle his body as if he might. He simply stands with his hands visible and his voice soft enough not to press against every bruise inside me.
“No one here wants to trap you,” he eventually says, voice soft and cautious.
I laugh, because I genuinely can’t help it. The sound just floods out of me. “That sounds exactly like something someone who wanted to trap me would say.”
His face doesn't change at all, not with offense or frustration. Just an impossible calm that I almost envy.
“You’re right,” he agrees, and I do nothing but blink at him.
Rude. I was gearing up to be angry with him, not to be agreed with.
I can practically feel myself deflate a little.
That is, until he continues. “But that’s the problem with fear.
Even the truth sounds like a lie when it’s coming from the wrong mouth. ”
Something in my chest stills. I hate that sentence. I hate it so much that I’d stab it. If only sentences contained organs. That's a design flaw if I ever saw one.
Xeon looks at me like he can see the place where those words have torn through and has enough decency not to point at the wound. His scent slips through the stale air, quieter than the others, ice and steel under the sharp edge of Alpha.
Cold, clean, and controlled.
It should make me want to take a step back, but it doesn’t. There’s something in the way he stands there, hands visible and voice painfully soft, that feels almost warm. Not his scent, but him. The way he doesn’t demand anything from me, the way he leaves the space between us untouched.
No.
Nope.
Absolutely fucking not.
I don’t need that. Warmth makes people lazy. Lazy gets them bitten, caught, collared, traded, or mourned by someone stupid enough to give a shit. And yet, my body eases by half a breath. I immediately tighten everything back up, because apparently I’m now at war with my own stupid muscles.
Ewan watches the whole thing way too closely, which sucks because I actually briefly forgot he even had eyes.
His brows are pinched, but when he catches me noticing, he lifts both hands slightly and promises, “Not gonna say anything all profound and deep and shit. That would be wildly off-brand for me, and I have an image to uphold.”
“Thank fuck,” I mutter.
“Right? I know my strengths. It’s a good quality to have,” he rambles, and I glare at him.
He leans back against the wall, offering me space without making a big deal of it, and that’s exactly what I don’t like about the guy.
He makes a whole lot of noise with his mouth, but not with his body.
He fills the air with sheer stupidity so the silence doesn’t bury its claws into you, and for some offensive and horrible reason, the space around him feels less like a trap and more like somewhere sound goes to soften the edges.
Like a quiet room after being surrounded by noise all day.
How does that even work? How can someone who never shuts the fuck up feel like a quiet room?
This is actually stupid.
I’m stupid.
Biology is a clown driving a car much too small for its body, red nose and wacky hair included.
“It’s biology,” I whisper, and all four of them turn to look at me.
Oh. Shit. Apparently I said that out loud.
Kaito’s eyes narrow a little, but not in anger. More like concern, which is kind of worse, because concern is just pity wearing a fancy coat.
My knife lifts a little. “Don’t.”
He nods once. “Okay.”
That’s it. Nothing more. No questions, or pressing, or Alpha demands crawling through his voice. Just… okay. Like he heard the boundary and decided it was a corporeal thing he won’t cross. Not can’t. Won’t.
My fingers flex around Maine’s hat inside my jacket, and I hate that my hand is shaking. I hate that all of them see it. And I hate that no one even mentions it.
The pilot groans from the floor and everyone’s attention shifts. For the first time in what feels like three years, I inhale. Xeon drops beside him in an instant, checking the bandage pressed to his side. “He’s crashing.”
“Twice in one day. Damn,” Ewan mutters under his breath.
Fletcher acts like he didn’t talk, asking, “Can we move him?”
“Not far,” Xeon answers.
“We don’t need far. We just need somewhere secure and defensible,” Scar tells him.
I scoff. “Incredible. And here I was thinking we should find somewhere indefensible and maybe decorate the walls with our own intestines. You know, just for shits and giggles.”
Ewan points a finger at me. “That’s actually almost exactly what I was thinking.”
“Don’t try to bond with me over sarcasm,” I grouch, giving him a dirty look.
It’s his turn to scoff, though his sounds more teasing than mine. “I wouldn’t even dream of disrespecting the sanctity of sarcasm like that.”
Another slam rocks the blocked door behind us, drawing everyone’s attention just in time to watch the pipe bend. It’s not much, but it’s enough.
Fletcher looks down the length of the passage before snapping a command like a whip against concrete. “We move. Now.”
“Where?” Kaito asks.
I glare at him like a sane person. “Why are you asking them? I’m the one with the deeply unsettling relationship with architecture, remember?”
“Didn’t forget,” he promises quietly.
My throat tries to do something weird, something soft, and I strangle it until it suffocates and dies a swift and painless death.
I turn toward the bend and tell them, “There’s an access hatch ahead.
It might lead to a basement storage under the next building.
It could lead to a flooded utility pit. Hell, maybe it leads to a religious experience none of us asked for. ”