TWENTY-FIVE #2
We find a service stair at the end, heading up one level toward a staff bridge that should cut across the outer station district and get us closer to the compound approach.
The stairs look like they’re going to be hell on the pilot, and that’s only assuming he stays unconscious enough not to bitch about it.
Can’t blame him even if he did. He’s barely upright at this point.
Kaito shifts to take more of his weight, and his face goes white.
“Don’t,” Dakota says. It’s just one word, but she throws it as hard as she launches knives at Rots.
It’s effective, too, because Kaito stills.
That’s interesting. She doesn’t look at him when she continues, “You take more weight and you’ll split your side open and ruin my hard work.
You rip your side open and we end up losing time.
We lose time and fever boy there dies and takes his secrets with him. ”
Kaito watches her closely before he quietly asks, “That’s what you’re worried about?”
She finally looks at him. “Yes.”
Little liar.
Kaito knows it, too, but he doesn’t call her out on it. Good man.
I move toward the pilot. “I’ll take front.”
Dakota’s head snaps around, and there it is again. That bristling. The instinctive resistance.
I hold a hand up before she can go in on the grilling. “Ain’t orderin’. Stairs are narrow and I’ve got the cleanest shoulder left for the weight.”
Her gaze drops to my bandage, and she notices the way my blood has seeped through the edge. It’s not much, but it’s definitely enough. Enough to tighten her jaw as she mutters, “Cleanest is being generous.”
“Still true,” I tell her.
“You’re hurt.”
“So are you.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. I know it is, especially when her eyes sharpen. It’s not wrong because it ain’t true, either. It’s wrong because it turns into a mirror, and Dakota seems to hate mirrors unless they’re used to check doorways.
I change it up instead.
“Pilot goes up first with me and Xeon,” I suggest. “Kaito covers behind. Ewan listens at the bottom. You choose where you’re most useful.”
Her expression shifts. It’s a small movement, almost nothing at all, but it’s very clear she hears it.
Choose.
For a second, I think she might throw it back in my face just because she can.
But she looks at the stairs, at the pilot, Kaito’s side, Ewan’s headphones, Xeon’s calm hands, and then my shoulder.
Then she says, “Middle. If something comes from below, Ewan hears it before it reaches us. If something comes from above, you’ll be too busy hauling him to react fast enough.
I’ll be able to reach either top or bottom if I’m in the middle. ”
“Fair enough,” I tell her.
She blinks at me, because it looks like she was expecting an argument out of me. Hell, maybe I expected it, too.
She steps into the middle of the formation with suspicion practically pouring off her in waves.
It’s almost funny, but it’s also really not.
Because the more I watch her, the more obvious it gets.
It ain’t defiance just for shits and giggles.
She’s not trying to be a pain in the ass just for pride or ego.
It’s genuine survival. Every order sounds like a hand around the back of her neck.
Every command asks her body to remember someone who thought her choices were only optional.
I don’t know the faces. Don’t know the faces. Don’t need them to understand their shapes. I’ve seen men use command to protect. I’ve seen men use command to own. From the outside, sometimes they don’t look all that different. And that’s often worse than the wound itself.
We take the stairs slowly. Too slow. The pilot’s foot stumbles on the fifth step, and Xeon catches him before his knee meets concrete. I take more of the weight, and pain lances all the way up to my shoulder, white-hot and bitchy enough to hurt.
Dakota looks up.
“Don’t,” I say before I think better of it.
Her face goes completely blank. Damn it.
I breathe once before trying again, my voice tight when I tell her, “Information. Pulled it but didn’t tear.”
She stares at me, and then her eyes narrow. “You’re telling me before I even ask?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” she prods.
“Because you were about to ask badly,” I explain, and Ewan makes a stupid strangled sound from below.
Dakota’s gaze roams over my face with a truckload of suspicion, irritation, and something else. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“That’s worse, then. ’Cause you were gonna worry anyway, just quietly,” I tell her.
Her mouth opens. And then it closes. Then she mutters, “Keep walking.”
It’s not an order, not really. It’s more of a retreat, and I’ll take it.
At the top of the stairs, we hit a staff bridge running over an old road.
The windows are covered in filth, most cracked but thankfully not shattered.
Through them, early morning presses gray against the city.
I can see the compound’s outer district in the distance, not the walls yet, but there are signs of cleared streets and barricades.
Old vehicles angled deliberately. Watch posts hidden far better than most.
We’re close.
Closer than we’ve been, but not close enough.
We pause behind a row of overturned filing cabinets while Ewan listens.
The pilot sinks down with a wheeze, and Xeon checks his pulse.
Kaito leans against the wall, eyes closed and side still bleeding faintly again.
Dakota stands near the window with her knife lowered, looking out at the expanse of gray.
From what I’m able to see, her profile is all hard lines under the brim of her cap. Small, dangerous, and exhausted. Not mine to command, and that thought hits simply this time. Cleanly. Not mine.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to step in front of every threat that looks at her, though.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to put my body between hers and the next fast Rot, the next Alpha, or the next person who says the word Omega like it means “available.” But I know that if I turn protection into a wall she can’t get around, I can’t say I’m much better than what she’s been running from.
Because protection without a choice is just a cage with better intentions. And I know good intentions don’t mean shit to someone trapped inside ’em.