THIRTY-ONE #3
Hale looks at him, but Fletcher doesn’t blink.
Mercer answers before the room is set on fire. “Not directly. But if someone carries modified NOVAC material, or if blood, heat response, or scent markers interact with certain compounds, it might leave a detectable trail. Especially to equipment designed for it.”
“Vector has equipment?” Valeria asks.
“They might have pieces of it,” Fletcher answers.
“And the cargo?” Hale questions.
Mercer looks at Fletcher as he says, “Whatever was on that helicopter could confirm just how much they have.”
My stomach turns again.
The pilot.
The cargo.
My father’s files.
Me, standing here with old blockers failing in a room full of people who keep saying the word marker like they’re not wrapping a damned chain around my neck one syllable at a time.
Ewan’s voice is soft beside me as he says, “Kota.”
It’s not funny this time. Hell, it’s barely even a word, just a sound. But it’s grounding, and I look at him. He nods once to the headphones, and I take them. Not because I need them, but because my hands need something that isn’t a knife.
I place them over my ears and the world dulls. It doesn't disappear, but it grows quieter. Easier to handle. My breathing sounds a little too close now, but the machines fade. The guards fade. Hale fades a little, which actually improves the room dramatically.
Ewan says something I can’t hear, but based on his expression, it’s probably something stupid on purpose.
I almost smile.
Almost.
Mercer watches me with a careful kind of stillness, as if he’s seeing the edges of something and has the good sense not to reach for it.
“You knew Dr. O’Reilly’s work,” Fletcher says.
Mercer looks at him. “Yeah.”
“You know why Vector wants it.”
“I know why plenty of people would.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“No,” Mercer says. “It’s the start of one.”
Dakota, don’t ask.
Dakota, please, don’t ask.
My mouth asks anyway. “Did he know?”
Everyone looks at me, and my blood stills in my veins. Mercer’s face softens in a way I don't like, because it’s not pity exactly. It’s grief coated in manners.
“Know what?” he asks.
“That it would turn into this,” I answer bluntly.
The dead.
The Runners.
The empty streets.
The bodies.
Mom hanging from a shower rail with white eyes and a snapping jaw.
Maine walking out of the door, never to be seen again.
Six years of hiding under his faded hat because cutting off the last thing we shared felt worse than the danger.
The room holds its breath and Mercer answers quietly. “No. Not at first.”
Not at first.
The floor tilts, because that’s not a no. That’s a door with blood seeping from under it.
I jerk back so fast my hip clips the edge of the table. My bad knee protests the movement, sharp enough to make the room tilt twice instead of just once. Every single guard tenses, and Kaito steps between me and the nearest one, his side bleeding through the fresh gauze.
Fletcher says, “Door’s behind you. Two steps. No one blocking it.”
Xeon’s voice slips under the muffled headphones, soft enough that I feel it more than I hear it. “You’re here. Not there.”
Ewan lifts one hand, palm out, and mouths, “Breathe, Tiny Terror.”
I don’t laugh, but I do breathe. Once. Ragged.
Honey and rain floods my tongue, too sweet and too much.
My skin prickles hot and tight, slick with sweat under all the layers.
The old blockers are losing ground against the panic, pain, and the deep, ugly pull low in my abdomen that I flat-out refuse to name.
Not heat. Not here, and not right now.
Mercer’s eyes sharpen, but not with hunger. With realization. Scientist eyes. Kind eyes, maybe. Still scientist eyes, though.
He looks at my bandana, my hat, and my too-big clothes. He looks at the Alphas placed around me like four points of a compass. The scent in the room, the files, my question, my life. The name O’Reilly sitting between us with a detonation device strapped to it.
His face changes. Only barely, but I see it.
He knows I know something. Worse, he knows I might be a part of the research he still doesn’t understand.
Hale sees Mercer see it, and the room tightens again. I pull the headphones down around my neck because hiding from sound won’t save me from the shitshow that’s about to come.
Mercer speaks before Hale can.
“Kota,” he says carefully, using the name I gave and not the one he might be starting to suspect. “There are details in Conrad’s research that never made it into the official archive.”
My pulse stutters.
“What details?”
He looks at Hale, then Valeria, then back to me. “That’s what I’m hoping you can help us figure out.”
I stare at him and the science wing hums around us.
My father’s name waits open on the table. The compound has walls, food, medicine, files, and people who might actually know exactly how the world ended in the first place. And now one of them is looking at me like I might be the missing page they’ve been searching for.
I grip the edge of the table until my black-painted nails bite into the metal.
Then I smile under my bandana, sharp enough to sting.