TWENTY-THREE
EWAN
The first thing I hear after Dakota finally puts one side of my headphones over her ear is Kaito trying his very best not to shout her name.
He fails.
Not loudly, mind. The man has some survival instincts left under all that brooding devotion and blood loss, but the sound still carries through the staff locker hallway with enough panic in it to make Dakota’s entire body grow as tight as a harp string.
“Dakota.”
It comes from somewhere beyond the wall ahead of us, muffled by concrete and too close to ignore. Too close to be useful, too.
Dakota practically tears the headphones off instantly.
I lift a hand not even a second later. “Okay, so before you go running heroically into a concrete wall, just give me about half a second.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You get three quarters.”
“Oh. Very generous, thanks,” I mutter, right before I turn my head and listen.
The hallway we’re in runs parallel to the main service passage.
The voices are on the other side of the block wall, traveling through vents and old staff access points.
Kaito again, but lower this time. Fletcher, sharper.
Xeon saying something calm enough that it actually sounds kind of threatening.
And, under all of that, there’s the sound of the pilot’s breathing.
Wet. Wrong. And somehow, defying all the odds that are stacked against him, still alive. That’s just beautiful. Also horrifying. Very useful, though.
“This way,” I whisper, but Dakota is moving before I even finish my sentence. Of course she is.
We follow the locker hallway past dented metal doors, old staff notices, and a row of uniforms hanging in plastic bags like ghosts that have dress codes.
Every step we take echoes too much, but that’s to be expected.
The whole place has been built to make tiny sounds into big ones, which is bloody awful for the nerves but great for me.
Finally, my incredibly niche skill set is getting its moment in the limelight. I’ve never been more proud.
The corridor bends through a staff washroom with cracked mirrors and sinks stained orange with rust. Dakota barely glances at her reflection as she passes, but I do.
Not because I’m vain. Well, okay, not only because I’m vain.
I check behind us in the mirror, catching the hallway we left and the dark gap of the locker room door.
Nothing moving. Nothing fast. Just old pipes complaining and distant Rots making those disturbing wet little noises from below.
“Clear,” I whisper.
Dakota doesn’t respond, moving like pain is a personal insult to her and everything she believes in.
Her bad knee catches every third step, and she keeps her injured arm tucked close.
Bandana up, cap low, knife ready, and my headphones still hanging around her neck because she’s apparently forgotten they’re still even there.
Or she knows and she’s simply refusing to acknowledge it.
Both are likely, honestly.
We move through a tiny break room with overturned chairs, a microwave that looks like it died furiously, and a vending machine slumped halfway off the wall. Beyond that, a maintenance arch hides behind a fallen shelving unit and some really heroic mold.
Kaito calls her name again, closer this time, and Dakota’s hand tightens on her knife.
I point toward the arch. “Through there.”
“You sure?” she checks.
I pause only briefly before telling her, “Uh, yeah, mostly.”
Her eyes cut toward me.
“Fine,” I whisper. “Mostly with a heap load of enthusiasm.”
“That’s not better, Ewan,” she complains, and something about my name coming out of her mouth damn near short-circuits my brain.
Thankfully, I’m quick on my toes, recovering quickly enough to counter, “That completely depends on how you value confidence.”
“It’s on the lower portion of the scale,” she tells me.
“Oof. Ouch. I’m wounded,” I sigh.
With a roll of her eyes I’m starting to find kind of endearing, she moves through the arch anyway.
The door at the far end sticks, because apparently every door left standing after the world turned to shit has decided to develop a dramatic personality.
Dakota gets one shoulder against it, but her injured arm flares.
I hear it in the small hitch of her breath, see it in the way her body tenses.
I open my mouth.
Dakota looks at me.
I close it promptly.
See? Look at that. Learning. Growth. Personal evolution. Someone call a scientist, I think we just had a goddamn breakthrough.
Instead of speaking my mind, I wedge my pipe under the frame and lever the door. The lock gives with a dull snap, and Dakota pushes through like she did all the work. I allow it, because I’m a generous bastard and kind of like the idea of keeping all of my teeth intact.
The door opens into the main west service passage, and Fletcher’s rifle comes up the very second we appear. Dakota lifts her knife. And me? Well, I lift both of my hands in surrender, because I’m a very firm believer that organs should remain internal. In fact, I fully support that notion.
“Friendly,” I whisper as if it wasn’t already obvious.
Fletcher lowers his rifle by one inch, and then mutters, “You’re late.”
Dakota looks at him with the sparkling exterior of a serial killer. “Sorry. We decided to extend our trip and took the scenic route through hell.”
“You wouldn't believe me, but it’s a really busy place,” I add. “Fucking awful for parking.”
No one laughs, and I smile awkwardly.
Tough room.
Kaito is next to the pilot, pale under the red emergency light, one hand pressed tight to his side. Relief washes over his face before he can hide it, and Dakota is very quick to catch it.
She looks away immediately, muttering, “Don’t do that.”
Kaito’s eyebrows pinch together. “Do what?”
“Look so relieved. It’s weird,” she tells him.
“Okay,” he replies. Which, clearly, is a big fat lie, because the man still looks about three seconds away from personally thanking every god he probably doesn’t believe in.
I’m only distracted by Dakota as she shoves my headphones against my chest as she passes me. “Take these.”
I take them. She doesn’t look at me, and that’s fine, because she used them and that’s the most important part.
Not that I’ll say all of that out loud. After six years, I’ve kinda grown fond of living, you know?
It would be a shame to waste all those years surviving only to tell the Tiny Terror something she didn’t like and catch a cold case of death for it.
As a group, we move on, but we don’t go far.
We can’t. The tunnels ahead are alive with sound.
Boots above us. Rots somewhere under us.
Water rushing through broken pipes. Vector sweeping the station level in annoying, organized patterns that make Fletcher’s face grow colder every time I tell him what I hear.
Three sets of boots pass overhead.
Then four.
Then silence.
Then the same pattern again.
“They’re circling,” I tell him quietly.
Fletcher’s jaw tightens. “Search pattern.”
“Lush. Hate that shit,” I mutter quietly.
The pilot chooses that very moment to cough blood onto his own chin, and I close my eyes. Incredibly inconvenient timing.
Xeon drops next to him, fingers pressed to his throat, calm face going still in a way I’ve learned not to trust. “He needs to stop moving.”
“He needs a compound clinic,” Fletcher reminds him, as though that’s not exactly where we’ve been trying to go all this time.
“He’ll need a body bag if we keep dragging him farther right now, mate,” I add.
Dakota looks at the pilot. “If he dies, he gets loud.”
I blink at the pint-sized psycho and blurt, “That’s what you’re worried about?”
She shrugs emotionlessly. “Dead things draw dead things.”
Fletcher points at a narrow door set into the wall next to an old security panel. “There. Temporary point.”
Temporary point. Love that. Military dudes love making cupboards sound official.
Because that’s what this little security office is.
It’s literally just a cupboard. Concrete walls, dead monitors, one bolted desk.
There are two cracked chairs, a filing cabinet that smells like musty paper and sadness, and a narrow little window that looks out into the tunnel.
Which, might I add, is proper helpful if you enjoy the occasional watching of darkness as it sits there being all smug and shit.
The door locks from the inside, though, so small mercies and all that. I mean, for the apocalypse, this shit is basically a luxury suite at a five-star hotel.
We get the pilot inside, Fletcher and Xeon settling him on a sheet of thermal plastic next to the desk. Kaito takes up a position near the door, blade seated across his lap, and one hand still pressed to his side like stubbornness has medicinal properties.
It doesn’t, but what the hell do I know?
Dakota claims the far corner. Obviously. Not the chair, or the desk. Not anywhere normal people would sit if normal people still even existed and weren’t mostly groaning around train stations with unhinged jaws and cloudy eyes.
She tucks herself into the corner with one knee up, the other stretched out stiffly, and her knife loose in one hand.
She’s still wearing her cap low and her bandana high on her face, and her shoulders look too tight to be comfortable, but her breathing is controlled.
Too controlled. Her hands are shaking, but she curls one into her sleeve as if that makes it unnoticeable.
It doesn’t, because I notice. I also don’t mention it, because despite everything that would lead someone to think otherwise, I’m not actually stupid.
After all, Dakota doesn’t just accept comfort.
She will, however, accept things, and that’s a completely different thing.
Comfort needs eye contact and feelings and someone saying things like “are you alright?” which is actually a famously terrible question to ask someone when we’re balls-deep in an apocalypse. The best anyone can hope for is being alive, mostly attached, and not currently being eaten through a door.