TWENTY-EIGHT #2
Ewan pulls one side of his headphones back and says, “Dead behind us. Humans above. Drain tilts left, then splits.”
“Left toward the compound?” Kaito asks tightly.
“Maybe,” Ewan answers. “Echo’s broken by something big. A gate, probably. Or rubble.”
The pilot groans, and Fletcher crouches. “Think he can move?”
Xeon checks him with careful, considerate hands. “Not very fast.”
Of course not. I mean, we’re a traveling collection of bad odds wearing boots. Why the hell would the universe look down on us with fondness now? She’s already throwing shit at us as it is. She’s on a roll.
Just as that thought crosses my mind, the universe takes it as a challenge and a shout rings from above. “Channel!”
Bullets hit the concrete lip overhead not even a second later, splitting chips loose.
Everyone moves then. Fletcher and Kaito haul the pilot forward, Kaito only wincing the smallest amount before pretending he’s fully functional and not bleeding small drops over the ground.
Ewan fires upward twice, not aiming to hit, just forcing heads down.
I run with them for maybe ten steps before the channel splits exactly where Ewan said it would.
Left narrows under the road.
Right drops under the garage line.
Fletcher takes one look at the left tunnel and says, “That’s the compound route.”
And then a fucking bullet sparks right next to his head, which is very quickly followed by the shriek of another canister.
My stomach drops, because that sound comes from the route we need to take, tucked so deep that we can’t see it.
And worse is the answering groans that rise instantly from the darkness beyond.
A trap.
Again.
“They blocked the obvious path,” I point out.
Kaito’s gaze cuts right. “Other way then.”
“Right goes away from the compound,” Fletcher informs us.
“It also gets us away from the blaring dinner bell,” I snap and, for once, not a single one of them argues.
So we go right.
The drainage path narrows under the garage line, low enough that Fletcher has to duck and Kaito’s shoulders almost brush both walls.
The air turns colder and wetter, my breath bouncing back at me.
The noise from the canister fades behind us the deeper we go, swallowed by the concrete and hungry dead it’s called to feast.
Then the tunnel shakes.
It doesn’t collapse. It does something worse.
A metal grate drops behind us with a crash that makes my bones rattle and my teeth clench tightly.
Fletcher swears, and Ewan spins. “That wasn’t old.”
No. It was triggered, because ahead, another grate slams down. The sound of it is so final, so heavy, that my mind spins. It’s like a cage closing, and we’re forced to stop in the dark between both.
For one breath, no one moves. Then the pilot starts coughing, wet and awful, and the tight space fills with the sour scent of fever and fear and blood and Alpha and damp and my own panic trying its best to claw its way up my throat.
No.
No, no, no.
I cannot be trapped in a tunnel.
I can’t be penned in.
I can’t be a thing behind bars again, even if I have never been behind bars. Even if the thought comes from somewhere older than my own memory stretches, somewhere body-deep and designation-heavy.
My skin goes hot then. Too hot. My heartbeat kicks frantically and my scent spikes. I feel it happen, the sweetness under smoke, the fear under blockers. It’s too much, too loud. Too me.
Every Alpha in the tunnel stills. Not dramatically. Not like monsters. Like men fighting their instincts, and that almost makes it worse.
“I’m fine,” I say immediately, but no one believes me. Rude, but understandable. I wouldn’t believe me either.
Fletcher turns his head away first, jaw clenching tightly. Kaito steps back as much as the tunnel will allow him, one hand braced on the wall and eyes lowered. Ewan mutters something in Welsh that sounds like he’s having an argument with himself.
Xeon doesn’t move toward me. Instead, he looks at the grate ahead and says, “There’s a release bar.”
My breath catches on the edge of a laugh that can’t even be considered a laugh at all. “Great. Love that. Do you also see cookies and shakes?”
“Not from here, no,” he answers.
I can only blink.
Was… was that a joke?
Tiny. Dry. Almost invisible.
The absolute absurdity finds one loose screw inside my brain and turns. I don’t calm. Not quite, anyway. But the panic does somehow slip an inch.
Xeon gestures to the left wall near the grate without stepping closer. “You can reach it. I can’t from this angle.”
I look over and, sure enough, the guy is right. A narrow gap runs next to the grate where the wall has cracked. It’s big enough for my arm. Maybe, anyway. It’s not enough for Fletcher’s. Not enough for Kaito’s. Not enough for Ewan’s or Xeon’s.
Mine.
My breathing is still coming in and out too quickly, and my skin still feels all kinds of wrong, but the panic now has somewhere to go.
It’s a job. A problem. I can handle those, because problems are far better than feelings.
Problems have locks and wires, hinges and bars, and weak points.
Feelings just sit in your chest and rearrange everything without asking permission.
I crouch beside the gate, and Xeon crouches too. He’s on the other side of the tunnel, leaving the middle space open between us. For me.
“You don’t have to keep watching me like I’m made of glass,” I mutter.
“I’m watching the mechanism.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Yes,” he says bluntly, and it shocks a breath out of me. He looks at me then, only briefly, to explain, “I’m also watching you, but not because you’re fragile.”
My fingers pause on the grate. “Then why?”
His voice stays quiet and calm when he replies. “Because you go somewhere very far away when there isn’t an exit.”
The tunnel seems to shrink around that particular sentence, but not because he’s wrong. Because he’s right in a certain way I don’t want anyone to be.
I swallow hard. The noise canister continues to scream shrilly somewhere behind us, muffled only by the distance and concrete.
The dead answer it, and Vector shouts overhead.
The others keep watch, giving us their backs as much as they can in a space that’s much too narrow to offer a whole lot of privacy.
Xeon’s gaze lowers again, giving me the mercy of not being stared at after saying something a little too accurate. There’s no pity, though. No soft little face full of “oh, poor Dakota.” Just a fact, placed on the ground between us gently enough that I can skip over it if I so desire.
I reach through the gap and pain laces down my torn arm when the concrete scrapes the bandage. My fingers brush metal, but it’s not enough. I stretch farther. Still not close enough.
Frustration burns behind my eyes, my body growing taut with irritation.
“Move your elbow a little lower,” Xeon instructs. “Then twist your wrist.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I strain.
“I know.”
There it is again. No argument, not taking over. Just opening the door a little wider and waiting to see if I choose it.
I lower my elbow and twist my wrist. My fingers hook the release bar then, because of course they do.
Annoying man.
I yank, but nothing happens. I grit my teeth and pull harder, ignoring the pain in my arm. The mechanism groans, but it continues to hold, just as stubborn as Kaito.
“Again,” Fletcher says from behind me.
My shoulders tense, but Xeon speaks before I can snap at the scarred Alpha. “Breathe first.”
His voice remains soft. For me. It’s not a command, it’s an offering, and I hate that my body listens.
I inhale through my nose slowly, ignoring the stink and the blockers. I breathe in despite the fact that breathing feels like I’m inviting the world in. But then I pull and, what do you know, the fucking bar releases.
The grate lifts three inches. Then six. Then enough for Ewan to get his shoulder under it and shove.
Fletcher joins him despite the wound on his shoulder.
Kaito also helps, even though he absolutely should not be helping right now, and I only decide not to yell because there is currently a grate between us and not dying.
Small mercies and all that.
We spill out under the far side of the garages into an old maintenance courtyard tucked behind a row of stores.
High walls surround it, topped with rusted fencing and old warning signs.
Above us, a fire escape crawls up the side of the building toward a flat roof that overlooks the compound barricades.
The direct road is still cut off, but the roofline might actually work.
Fletcher scans the courtyard. “Up.”
I look at the fire escape. Of course. More climbing.
Yay me. My knee officially sends a strongly worded complaint to management, and I can’t even ignore it this time.
It’s a very creative complaint, filled with curse words and very direct and disrespectful things aimed at management’s mother.
And honestly? Valid. My knee is lucky I don’t take it personally.
“That’s just great,” I mutter. “If anyone sees an elevator, I intend to marry it, so paws off.”
Ewan snorts. “Hell yeah. I’ll even officiate the wedding.”
Kaito looks like he’s about to say something about going first, but he doesn’t. Instead, Xeon steps toward the ladder, tests the lowest rung, then looks back. “It’ll hold.”
That’s all. Not hurry. Not I will help you. Pure information and nothing more.
I climb.
The fire escape rattles under our weight, but it holds.
The higher we get, the more the city seems to open up under us.
Ruined streets. Broken towers. Smoke crawling from the apartment block.
Zeds flooding the wrong route because Vector rang the dinner bell and simply waited for the world to answer.
The compound sits beyond the next row of roofs, close enough that I can actually see the outer barricade.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough that it still isn’t even safe.