FORTY-EIGHT #3
He howls loudly and Kaito moves in the same breath, striking the back of his head with the hilt of his blade. The leader collapses unconscious.
Alive.
Ruined.
Really annoying.
A very satisfying combination.
My hand shakes around the knife and I stare down at it. At the blood that seems to be everywhere. At my own fingers gripping the hilt of the blade tightly. At the black polish cracked and chipped on my nails. Skin torn, knuckles bruised, and veins popping along the back of my hand.
Mine. Still mine.
The cold inside me settles. It’s not gone, simply settles into a quiet lull at the back of my head, waiting and watching but not driving. Not wearing my skin like a fancy coat.
I exhale slowly just as the outer wall blows. The whole room shudders with the force of it, and dust rains from the ceiling, coating everything close by in a thin sprinkle of white.
Fletcher grabs my waist and pulls me back from falling debris. “Time to go.”
“No shit, Scar.”
His grin flashes, savage and relieved. “There she is.”
Ewan’s voice crackles through a stolen radio a second later. “All Vector units, containment breach in medical. Repeat, containment breach in medical.”
Maine stares at him. “Why would you tell them where we are?”
Ewan looks up. “Because we’re not going to be here.”
From the hall comes the thunder of feet.
Guards.
Then another sound. A faster sound that comes with wet snarls and high-pitched screams.
Runners.
Ewan tosses the radio onto the leader’s chest, still broadcasting.
“Oh,” I wheeze, nodding with approval. “That’s mean. I like it. I like it a lot.”
“That’s today’s episode of Survival in the Apocalypse, love.”
I look at him and his face softens for half a breath. Then he looks away, like the word slipped out when fear split him open like a coconut. And honestly, I don’t have the energy to unpack that right now. I’ll file it in my brain for later and then I’ll read through it all. If we survive, that is.
Kaito crouches in front of me. “Can you move?”
“I can complain while being dragged,” I tell him, not entirely sure my legs will carry me farther than two steps. Three max.
“That’s… useful,” he says carefully.
“I thought so, too. I’m considerate like that.”
Xeon steps in before anyone else can lift me. He does not touch me at first, but he asks with his eyes. Not out loud, but not because he can’t. Because noise is everywhere and he knows I will understand the pause.
So I don’t use words either. Instead, I hold my arms out to him and his own slide under me. He’s careful and secure and safe. A bond doesn’t flare between us, and instinct doesn’t try to claim anything, it’s literally just a choice. His choice to carry me and my choice to let him.
The empty place in my chest doesn’t close, but it definitely stops feeling so hollow and, for now, that can be enough. It has to be enough.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, though his jaw tightens when my breath catches.
Maine moves in close on one side, Fletcher on the other, Kaito ahead, Ewan behind us with the radio, limping slightly but smiling like a lunatic who has just discovered arson as the most diabolical form of a love language.
The hallway beyond is chaos. Cages are hanging open and Zeds are dragging their broken bodies and snapped chains through blood.
A Runner tears into a Vector guard near the stairwell while two more guards fire wildly and hit nothing useful.
The weapon they built has turned around and opened its mouth, biting into the ones that created it.
Good. Let it eat. Because there’s nothing more poetic than justice served in claws, blood, and agony.
We move through the smoke and red light as the camp collapses around us. There’s nothing clean or safe about it, and we’re definitely not leaving like heroes walking all dramatically out of a story told to kids at bedtime. Oh, no. That would be too cheesy and weird.
Instead, we stagger. We bleed. We duck under gunfire and step over bodies and leave the leader alive behind us with his own radio acting like a siren that will call all the dead and hungry things home.
At the exit, I force my eyes open. The night air hits my face, cold and filthy and real.
Above us, the sky is black and barely littered with stars.
They’re hidden behind dark clouds that make the world seem that much bleaker, but there’s also a beauty in it now.
Because Vector is burning to the ground behind us.
I might be drugged, bruised, bleeding, half-carried by an Alpha I can’t feel in my chest, and surrounded by three bonds that are still trying to pull me back into one piece.
But my name is Dakota O’Reilly.
I am not cargo.
I’m not a cure.
I’m not a womb.
I’m not an asset.
I’m not a miracle.
I’m not a weapon.
I’m not theirs.
I turn my head against Xeon’s shoulder and watch the camp eat itself alive, chin tucked against his shoulder. This time, when the cold thing inside me goes quiet, I don’t wonder if that means I’m becoming a monster. Because I know exactly what I am.
I’m alive.
I’m mine.
And I’m still fucking here.