TWENTY-FIVE
FLETCHER
Dakota walks like she’s daring her wounded knee to make itself useful and kill her.
It’s a damned irritating thing to watch, and not because she’s slow. She ain’t. Even hurt, exhausted, and running on whatever scraps of stubbornness she’s keeping stored under that hat and oversized jacket, she’s moving better than half the trained soldiers I’ve known.
She’s good, and that’s a part of the problem.
People who are bad at surviving listen when you tell them what keeps them alive. They might panic, argue, freeze, or do something colossally stupid, but eventually fear will take over and they follow the person with the plan.
Dakota doesn’t do that.
Fear doesn’t make her follow blindly. It makes her sharper. Wilder. More likely to turn a warning into a fight because something in her hears control where I mean caution.
I adjust the strap of my rifle and feel the pull across my shoulder before I remember why it even hurts. Pain slices hot under the bandage, but I make sure to keep my face completely unmoving.
Across the loading passage, Dakota’s eyes flick over to me. It’s only once, and it happens quickly enough that I could convince myself I’m seeing things, and then she looks away just as quickly.
She saw. Of course she saw. The woman misses nothing except her own need to sit the hell down.
The old loading access lets us out into a lower maintenance road under the station district, wide enough for service carts and narrow trucks.
The ceiling dips in places, cracked concrete reinforced by rusted beams still holding strong after all these years.
Long-dead fluorescent lights are hanging above us like lit bones, and on one side, pipework runs along the wall in thick, black lines.
On the other side, metal doors lead into storage cages, staff rooms, electrical closets, and probably every single bad idea the apocalypse has left waiting in the dark.
Ewan walks at the rear, one of his headphones pushed back so he can listen to his surroundings.
He hasn’t said all that much since the supply room, which means he’s either focused or he’s readying himself to become a problem later.
Both options are more than possible, and with Ewan, it’s probably both.
Xeon helps the pilot move next to Kaito. The pilot’s feet drag worse than before and his fever continues to climb. Every hour we’re not at the compound is an hour closer he gets to dying with the answers still trapped in his skull.
Kaito is walking like blood loss is only a rumor he doesn’t want to believe in or dignify.
That’s also pretty irritating.
The whole of them are irritating.
Dakota most of all.
She’s a few steps ahead, to my left, but not because I put her there. It’s because that’s where she put herself. Close enough to hear, but far enough to bolt if she needs to. And I know better than to tell her to close the gap.
I know. But it doesn’t stop the words from relentlessly pressing against my teeth with the urge to break free. Words like stay tight, don’t drift, watch the right door, let me clear it first.
All useful, all efficient, and all likely to make her dig her stubborn heels in just to prove that she can.
I can still feel that fast Rot’s weight barrel into me. Can still smell its breath, rot and old blood just a few inches away from my face. Can still feel the bite of claws across my shoulder and the shelf slamming harshly into my back. Can still see Dakota half a second too slow.
Half a second.
That’s all.
A small amount of time until it’s someone's throat. Until it’s someone’s life on the line.
I’ve made choices faster than that my entire life. Since the age of sixteen, when the military got its hands on me and turned instinct into procedure. Threat appears? Identify it. Route blocks? Reroute. Civilian in path? Remove. Asset compromised? Protect it.
Clean lines and simple logic.
Except Dakota isn’t an asset, and she sure as hell ain’t a civilian. And when I moved, it wasn’t because she was a part of the mission. The truth sits weird right under my ribs, and I don’t have room for it.
So I keep walking.
Dakota’s voice suddenly cuts through the passage. “You’re thinking loud enough that I can hear you from here.”
Ewan makes a pleased little sound behind us. “Yeah, that’s something he does a lot.”
“Eyes rear,” I say.
“Still here, mate,” he replies. “Stunning view, really. Damp concrete, everyone’s emotional problems, Kaito pretending he’s not bleeding his life away. Proper sightseeing.”
Kaito doesn’t bother to look back, muttering, “I’m not bleeding.”
Dakota snorts and it’s then that Kaito turns his head slightly toward her. It’s not enough to trip over anything that might be in his way, and it’s not enough to stop watching the route. It’s just… enough.
She looks away first, but I clock it. Don’t really know what to do with it, so I shove it into a file with everything else I can’t deal with right now.
Dakota slows at the next junction where we come to three routes. The left slopes down into darkness, water pooled over the floor. Straight runs under a line of flickering emergency lamps toward a locked vehicle gate. And right narrows into a hallway that’s been marked as OPERATIONS ACCESS.
I open my mouth and start to say, “We go right.”
Only, I stop myself, and Dakota’s head shifts like she heard the breath I took before I was about to give the order. She heard the words forming before I was about to let them loose, so I clamp down on the words and scan again.
The right hallway is narrower, but it’s dry.
Less room to maneuver if Rots come through.
The straight route has a gate, maybe locked, maybe forced.
And left is all water and shitty footing, which would be bad for the pilot and worse for Kaito.
Worse again for Dakota’s knee, even though she would prefer to eat glass than admit it.
“Right is dry,” I say instead. “Narrow. Good for limiting numbers but bad if we need to turn fast. Straight might have a vehicle exit if the gate opens. Left is flooded.”
Dakota looks at me with no short amount of suspicion. Like I’ve just placed a chocolate bar under a box with a stick tied to a string.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she answers, narrow eyes still on me.
“Looks like something,” I say.
“Your tone changed,” she says then.
From behind us, Ewan chimes in with his usual commentary. “Character development. In this economy? Diabolical.”
“Ewan,” Xeon says softly.
“My bad,” he mutters. “Just so proud of the little nugget.”
I ignore him because murder would take too much energy and we’re tight with our schedule right now.
Dakota studies the three routes, then points with her knife. “We go right. If it turns bad, we back out before the first bend. No heroic bullshit.”
That was my choice, too, but it doesn’t matter. It mattered that she got to make it.
“Works,” I say with a single nod.
She narrows her eyes again. “That it? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I repeat.
“You’re not going to argue?” she pushes, deep in her suspicion.
“No.”
She pauses then, eyeing me like she just met an alien. “Are you dying?”
“Not today, darlin’,” I drawl shortly.
Her eyes narrow that much further as the word drops between us with a heavy weight. It’s like a spark coming off a stone, so I’m not surprised when she mutters, “Don’t call me that.”
“Noted,” I assure her, even though it ain’t. Not fully. It should be, but who’s keeping track?
I move before my mouth can get me into real trouble. Pain lances through my shoulder when I shift my rifle higher, and Dakota catches that too. Her gaze hits the bandage under my torn shirt, then it scurries away like the sight insulted her.
Still angry, then.
That’s good, because anger has legs. Anger moves.
Whatever she felt when I said she didn’t get to be the only one keeping people alive, that stopped her dead cold.
I don’t know what kind of nerve I hit, but I don’t need to know yet.
I just know the look on her face still hasn’t left me.
It’s like I spoke through a locked door.
Like something on the other side answered.
The right hallway smells drier than the one we just left. Like dust, old plastic, metal, and not as much rot. Ewan taps two fingers against his thigh behind me. A quiet signal.
Sound ahead.
I raise a hand. Not a stop order, but a warning, yet Dakota freezes anyway with her knife already raised. I can’t help but consider that progress. That, or she just doesn’t like dying.
Ewan tilts his head, listening. Then he whispers, “Loose panel. Maybe rats. Maybe the ghosts of Apocalypse present.”
Dakota murmurs, “I actually hate that those aren’t equally unlikely.”
The sound comes again at that moment, a faint tick before a skitter behind the wall. Not a fast Rot, because it’s too small. Rats, probably.
I lower my hand and say, “Sound’s in the wall. No contact ahead.”
Dakota glances at me again.
There it is. That look. Annoyed because the information is useful and not shaped as a leash.
She steps forward, muttering, “Try not to celebrate.”
“Wasn’t plannin’ to,” I assure her.
“Your face is doing this smug thing I don’t like,” she grumbles, still eyeing me like she wouldn’t trust me with a sneeze.
“My face is injured,” I refute.
“Only a part of it.”
Ewan sighs dreamily. “I want it on record that this is quite possibly the most romantic armed tunnel walk I think I’ve ever been on.”
“Your standards are worse than mine,” Dakota says.
“That’s a fat lie,” Ewan argues teasingly. “I’ll actually have you know that it’s called whimsical.”
Kaito’s mouth moves like he’s about to smile and Xeon definitely does, only small and quick. Idiots.
The tunnel finally turns left, and we’re blessed with no ambush, no dead, and no Vector. For once, the universe decides to keep its mouth shut.