FIFTY-ONE #2
Maine stands in the hall with a tray of toast, water, and a small jar of jam. For one weighted second, neither of us speaks. His eyes flick over my face, my throat, and the fresh bite at my neck. He looks away from the last part quickly, jaw tight, but he doesn’t turn into a raging ass about it.
Gold star for brother. A slightly traumatized and wildly awkward gold star, but still.
“Toast,” he says.
I stare at the tray. “Oh my god. Is that jam?”
“Stole it,” he confirms with an impressed nod.
“My hero.”
Then his mouth wobbles.
I shake my head sharply before I point at him. “Don’t cry on the jam. You’ll ruin it.”
He lets out a broken little laugh and steps inside only when I nod my approval. The room feels different with him in it. Not bad, just crowded with history.
He sets the tray on the crate beside the bed. His gaze catches on the hat resting on the pillow.
“Still got it,” he says quietly.
“It’s a weird little relic now,” I explain. “It watches over me.”
“Sounds about right.”
I pick it up and turn it in my hands. Faded fabric. Bent brim. The shape of an old instruction.
Hair hidden. Scent dead. Doors locked.
I put it on my head but not to hide. I place it there, over my loose bed hair, just because it is mine and I can. Maine sees that too and his face does something I don’t like.
“Don’t,” I warn.
He swallows. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Your face was doing a lot, actually.”
“My face has poor discipline. You know that,” he groans.
“Clearly runs in the family.”
That gets a real laugh from him.
Small.
Shaky.
Real.
By the time toast is gone and I’ve decided jam is proof humanity deserves at least one more chance, another knock hits the door. Sharper. More annoyed. Some might call it, oh I don’t know, medical, somehow.
I look at Ewan. “That knock has spooky bitch written all over it.”
He nods solemnly. “Ellis.”
Fletcher opens the door after I say, “Enter, Wall Ghoul.”
Ellis stands there with a medical bag in one hand and judgment wired through every line of her body. Mercer waits behind her with a clipboard held to his chest like a shield. Valeria stands at his side, carrying the sealed NOVAC case. Damn. Guess we’re having a whole-ass meeting then.
The whole room quiets the moment everyone catches sight of the case. I mean, there are ghosts in that case. Not see-through ones. Worse ones. Paper ones. Data ones.
Names turned into files.
Mercer looks past Fletcher to me. “May we come in?”
That stops me for half a breath, just because he asks. Because yesterday, men called me cargo and wanted to use my body as an incubation to save humanity. Because today, a doctor with bloodshot eyes and a guilty conscience waits at a door.
I glance at my pack. Then at Maine. Then back to Mercer.
I nod and say, “Come in.”
Ellis enters first, because apparently permission still has a hierarchy when one person is carrying a medical bag and a bad attitude.
She scans me, the bed, the blankets, the four Alphas, Maine, then me again.
Her mouth flattens. “I am choosing not to ask.”
“That actually works for me. Look at that personal growth,” I mutter.
“I’m calling it self-defense.”
Mercer sets the clipboard down and Valeria places the NOVAC case on the table. I stare at it while my skin tries to vacate my bones. Kaito notices but he doesn’t touch me. He only shifts until his knee rests near mine. There if I want and not if I don’t.
That is becoming a language I understand.
Valeria opens the case. Inside are drives, files, sample logs, and a stack of slim tablets with cracked screens.
“Vector kept more than cargo manifests,” she says. “They had NOVAC trial records, lists of people taken, transfer locations, failed dose reports, buyer contacts, and names connected to Haven Ridge.”
Maine’s hand tightens around the back of the chair while Fletcher goes still.
“Names connected how?” I ask.
Valeria’s eyes harden. “Some as victims. Some as suppliers. Some as buyers. Some as people who looked away.”
Oh, great. Just what every compound needs. A fucked-up betrayal buffet.
Mercer clears his throat. “There’s enough medical data here to move forward without starting from nothing. It shows what NOVAC tried, where it failed, and where the virus responded differently.”
His gaze moves to me carefully. Too careful.
“And my blood?” I ask.
Mercer does not flinch. “Potentially important.”
“Useful.”
Kaito’s voice is immediate. “Nope.”
I look at him but his expression does not change. His bond does, though. It steadies, sharp and sure.
“The information may be useful,” he says. “You’re not.”
Well damn. That goes right for a soft place in my chest and starts setting up a whole flower shop in the empty spaces between my ribcage.
“Annoying,” I mutter.
Kaito’s mouth almost moves. “Accurate.”
Mercer sits opposite me. “Dakota, I’m not going to sit here and pretend your immune response doesn’t matter. It does. But mattering is not the same thing as being available.”
I study him closely. He looks tired. So tired. And so human. Not forgiven, exactly, but certainly trying hard enough to earn it. I can work with trying. Trying doesn’t make me want to stab things.
“I’ll help,” I say, and Maine makes a sound like the words physically hit him.
I glance at him. “Oh, come on, man. Don’t start breathing like a haunted kettle. I only said I’d help. Not donate myself to science with a bow on my head.”
Ewan lifts one finger. “I want it on record that I would object to the bow. Doesn’t suit the brand.”
“My brand is knives and poor decisions. Why can’t I add a bow and make it pretty?”
“It’s just not the vibe, is it?”
Maine exhales then, not quite calm but closer, as if Ewan and I bickering is enough for him to realize I’m not still teetering on the precipice of insanity or death.
I turn back to Mercer. “I have terms, as you’re probably anticipating.”
Mercer nods, gathering his clipboard and pen. “Name them.”
“My consent is required every single time. Not blanket consent. Not once and then you keep poking me forever. Every sample. Every test. Every use of my information. You ask.”
Mercer writes. “Agreed.”
“No samples while I’m asleep, sedated, in heat, badly injured, or too out of it to understand what I’m saying.”
Ellis nods once. Sharp. “Good.”
I glance at her. “Was… was that approval?”
“I don’t do approval. I’m mostly scorn and irritation.”
“That was definitely approval,” I argue, raising an eyebrow at her.
“I will poison your toast.”
“At least you’re honest about it,” I shrug.
Mercer keeps writing.
“If I want my pack present, they’re present,” I say. “You can make them wear gloves or stand behind a line or whatever medical nonsense makes you feel crisp and pure on the inside. But they leave only if I say so.”
“Agreed.”
“No secret labels. No codes. No pretending I’m just Sample O or Immune Subject One because my name makes people uncomfortable.”
Mercer looks up. “Dakota O’Reilly. Full name. Full record. Full consent attached.”
My chest does the stupid too-full thing again and I nod.
“No outside transfers without my permission,” I continue. “No sending my blood, my files, my test results, or anything with my name on it to another compound, old NOVAC contacts, mystery councils, or anyone who thinks ethics is a decorative cushion. Whatever research we do here stays here.”
Valeria says, “I’ll have that written into the new research charter.”
I blink. “We have a research charter?”
“We will,” she promises with a whole lot of conviction that surprises me.
“Check me out, building trauma paperwork,” I mutter, shaking my head.
“You’re rewriting the rules,” Fletcher says quietly.
I look back at him. His blue eyes are steady. Proud, maybe. I literally have to look away before that can hurt nicely.
“No Omega testing without protection and choice,” I continue before I end up having a breakdown I’ve been fighting off since I was sixteen and defenseless and alone.
“No locked rooms. No forced heat triggers. No suppressants slipped into food. No using fear as consent. No bites without permission. No treating Omegas like they owe the world their bodies because everyone else is scared.”
The room goes quiet at that. Even Ewan doesn’t joke. Mercer’s pen stops. Then he says, “No repeating NOVAC’s original sins in the name of fixing them.”
I breathe out. “That. That’s exactly it.”
Valeria’s face is grim. “Done.”
Maine moves then. Not toward the door but toward me. The moment he’s close enough, he crouches in front of my chair like I might run if he stands too tall. “Kota.”
My name sounds broken in his mouth. I hate that. But I also kind of love that. Stupid sibling feelings. Whoever invented them honestly deserves a very strongly worded letter accompanied with a bite that would leave a mean scar.
“I don’t like it,” he says.
“I know.”
“I want to say no.”
“I know that too.”
His eyes shine. “I don’t get to.”
“No,” I whisper. “You don’t.”
He nods, but it costs him. And as much as it pains me to admit, that matters too. It matters a lot.
“I can stand outside,” he says. “For tests. If you don’t want me inside.”
My fingers tighten around my shirt that smells strongly of smoke and clove. “You’d do that?”
“I’ll do whatever you ask.”
My lips twitch. “That’s a dangerous promise to make.”
“I mean it,” he says so sternly that I have no choice but to believe him. I can hear it in every letter of his words and it’s new enough that it aches.
“I might want you there,” I relent, voice small and horrible and annoying. “Sometimes.”
His breath catches.
“And sometimes I might not.”
He nods again. Faster. “Okay. I can do sometimes, kid.”
Oh, that nickname. It sucker punches me harder than anything physical could have, punching a hole in my chest so wide that I feel a draft. It’s been six years since I heard it, and it hurts worse now than it did when I heard it last all those years ago.
“And sometimes I might be mad at you for leaving, even while I’m glad you’re here.”
His face crumples before he catches it.