TWENTY-TWO #3
Ewan looks at the body, then he peers up at me before muttering, “You know, some people simply scream in these situations.”
“Those people are pussies,” I counter without putting much thought into it.
His lips twitch but he doesn’t smile, simply nods and agrees, “Oh, absolutely. Amateurs, if you ask me.”
The Zeds are still coming from behind, slower than the Runner, but their groans spill through the tunnel like dirty water.
We retrieve my knife, because there’s no way in hell I’m leaving another blade behind unless the universe pries it from my rigor mortis-riddled, cold, and violently annoyed fingers. Then we keep moving forward.
The tunnel finally opens into a staff locker corridor, faded signs pointing toward WEST LOADING and CAR PARK ACCESS. Somewhere beyond the walls, I hear voices.
Fletcher, maybe? Kaito, definitely, because he says my name like he’s trying his best not to tear the whole building apart with his bare hands.
A normal person might find that kind of touching.
I’m not normal.
Also, he’s fucking injured and should be saving his energy on something more important. Something like, oh, I don’t know, not bleeding?
I open my mouth to call back, only… nothing comes out. Because my body catches up with everything all at once.
The Runner.
The lock.
The tunnel.
The heat. The scent. The fact that Ewan saw all of it.
My hands start shaking properly then. Big, ugly, violent tremors that run through each finger.
I turn toward the nearest row of lockers and pretend to inspect a faded notice about staff parking permits from six years ago. Very important reading material, but I don’t see a word of it, because my breathing is coming too fast. I slow it, but it speeds up again.
I hate fear after danger. During danger, that fear has its uses. It sharpens things, maps exits, and moves feet. But after? After, fear is just the body being a dramatic bitch because it missed its cue.
Ewan stops several feet away. Not beside me or behind me, but away.
Good.
Bad?
I don’t even know anymore.
“You can go,” I tell him, my voice a little strained even to my own ears.
“I could, yeah,” he responds.
“Then do that,” I command, the bite losing its effect with the way my voice shakes a little. Fuck my life. Fuck it all to hell in a handbasket.
“I could also just… not,” he mutters nonchalantly.
I close my eyes. “Ewan.”
“Dakota,” he counters, matching my energy, though his is far more effective than mine.
“I’m fine.”
“Right,” he says. “But I was going to tell you there’s dust on your hat.”
My hand flies to the brim before my brain fully forms the thought to do so, my fingers touching it before I can stop myself. Ewan’s expression changes, only barely, but it’s enough to tell me he notices. He knows the hat matters, but he doesn’t know why. No one does.
Good.
“It’s fine,” he says quietly. “It’s still there.”
My hand remains on the brim, and for half a second, the world flashes backward. A kitchen. Black nail polish. A laugh I haven’t heard in six years. Fingers knocking the cap onto my head and telling me it swallowed my face whole.
Then the memory is gone, and I’m still standing in a corridor with dead things behind me and an Alpha in front of me who is seeing way too much.
I lower my hand, muttering, “Don’t.”
Ewan nods only once. “All right.”
No question. No pushing. He simply slides down the wall opposite me, careful and slow, leaving the corridor between us like it’s a neutral country.
Then he pulls his headphones from around his neck and I stare at them before grumbling, “If you even consider putting those on me, I’m going to break your fingers one at a time. ”
“Gotcha,” he says, before he sets them on the floor between us and nudges them halfway across the Switzerland of corridors between us. “It’s for the ghost.”
I frown. “What ghost?”
“The one that keeps accepting things you don’t want,” he answers, proving that he’s been seeing too much for much longer than I would have liked.
I should throw them at him, but my hands are shaking too hard to make it really satisfying.
Instead, I watch as Ewan removes a small device from his pocket.
It’s old, scratched, and held together with tape and a mountain of faith.
He plugs the headphones in, taps the screen, and after a weighted second, a song crackles faintly through them.
Old music. Soft and not loud enough to hide the danger, but enough to give the world edges that aren’t sharp enough to cut.
I stare at the headphones like they’re a new trap.
“They’re clean,” Ewan promises. “Well, mostly, anyway.”
“That’s reassuring,” I murmur.
“I maintain a high standard for the word mostly,” he tells me, nodding slowly.
I eye the headphones and mutter, “I don’t want them.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t say you did.”
The music keeps playing faintly from them. It’s a woman’s voice, warm and distant, singing like there are still cars driving on roads and lights still on in houses and people dancing badly in kitchens.
My throat tightens, because it’s something gentle to focus on. Something soft. Something impossibly safe. And that thought hurts enough that I almost violently shove it away. I come close, but instead, I sit. Not because of him, but because my knee hurts and standing is stupid.
The headphones are close enough to reach for, but I don’t. Not at first.
Ewan leans his head against the wall and peers down the hallway, giving me his profile instead of his attention. Then he says, “Very rude, by the way.”
I blink. “What?”
“You and that Runner,” he explains. “I was having a pretty decent kind of day before the little murder sprint through the tunnel.”
A frown forms on my face. “You realize you were in an apocalypse service tunnel, right?”
“I never said the word decent wasn’t relative,” he points out.
“Your standards are actually haunting, you know that?” I ask seriously.
He shrugs. “What can I say? They’ve adapted over the years.”
Against all reason, my mouth twitches. It’s barely a twitch, really. A small, traitorous movement that moves my bandana slightly. But Ewan sees it. Of course he sees it.
He looks away immediately, which is the only reason I let him live.
I pick up the headphones, just to inspect them. Obviously. Then, because the corridor is echoing and my hands are still shaking like leaves in a thunderstorm and the music is old enough to actually hurt, I put one side over my ear. Not both. Never both, because I’m not completely reckless.
The song suddenly fills half of my world while the other remains sharp and vigilant.
Ewan doesn’t smile. He doesn’t thank me for accepting them.
And he doesn’t turn it into a victory of some sort.
He only sits across from me, smoke and clove softened under dust and blood, one knee bent, eyes on the corridor, and listening for what I can’t hear through the music he gave me.
I don’t thank him, either.
But I also don’t move away.