34. Infiltration Strategies for the Injured, Sick, and Stupidly in Love
Chapter thirty-four
Infiltration Strategies for the Injured, Sick, and Stupidly in Love
Riot
They abandoned the cars five miles out, tucked behind the collapsed shell of a gas station where kudzu ate everything but the pumps.
Sage killed her engine first, already out and checking sightlines before Riot finished processing what stopping meant.
His hands didn’t want to release the steering wheel.
His hands didn’t want to do much of anything, actually, except shake with a fine tremor that had started somewhere around mile three and was now running through him like current through bad wiring.
Post-episode crash. Adrenal depletion, muscle fatigue, probable dehydration. Should have eaten something. Should have done a lot of things.
“We walk from here,” Sage said through the driver’s side window, her voice pitched low out of habit even though the nearest living thing was a turkey vulture circling a quarter mile up. “We need vehicles for the return trip, it’s better to leave them.”
Riot knew she was right. He also knew that standing up was going to be a problem.
Cass was already out of the passenger side, moving like his arm existed purely to remind him that pain was a thing.
After getting his arm back into place (and Cass’s cry of pain nearly triggering another episode), Sage fashioned a sling from her spare shirt that looked almost professional in the late afternoon light.
The kit she had with her was meant for field medicine, not permanent fixes, so the bandages on Cass’s hands, hip, and feet were hastily slapped on.
From your hands. Some of those are from your hands.
He shoved the thought down, felt it land on the pile of things he was not going to think about right now, and opened the door.
Standing went about as well as expected.
The world tilted sideways, righted itself with a lurch, and then settled into a gentle rotation that made him think his inner ear and his legs were no longer on speaking terms. The twelve stitches across his ribs pulled when he straightened—Sage’s work, neat and functional, the kind of stitching that said I learned this on people who couldn’t lie still.
The wound underneath pulsed with his heartbeat like a dull, red metronome.
“You look terrible,” Sage observed.
“I look like a Berserker who just walked through the Static Zone,” Riot replied. “Which is convenient, since that’s exactly what I am.”
“You look like a Berserker who’s about to fall down.”
“That too.”
Cass appeared at his side—not touching, because they’d agreed on no visible intimacy within potential surveillance range, but close enough that Riot could feel the warmth of him like a banked fire.
Close enough that the bite mark at the base of Riot’s neck hummed.
His chest tightened, like a clenched fist sitting behind his sternum with a worry that didn’t quite feel like his own.
The five miles took two hours.
It should have taken one, but Riot’s body decided that forward momentum was a privilege, not a right, and kept renegotiating the terms. His vision went gray around the edges at mile two.
By mile three, Sage quietly repositioned herself on his left side while Cass walked on his right, so that if he listed in either direction, someone would nudge him upright before he hit the ground.
He was a former super-soldier being shepherded by a five-foot-eight Omega in a sling and a five-foot-two Null with moss-green hair and the expression of someone trying very hard not to say I told you so.
This is fine, Riot thought. This is completely fine. I have torn apart several men with my hands, driven through hostile territory, I have twelve stitches and no painkillers, and I am now being walked to church like a toddler who got into the communion wine. Absolutely fine.
Cass made a small, worried sound beside him when his foot caught on a chunk of buckled asphalt.
“I’m fine,” Riot said.
“You’re listing,” Sage said.
“I’m leaning.”
“You’re leaning at approximately fifteen degrees. That’s listing.”
“I didn’t realize you carried a protractor.”
“I carry a rifle. I know angles.”
The landscape changed around mile four. Subtly at first—the road surface smoother beneath their feet, the undergrowth trimmed back from the shoulders.
Then less subtly: planted trees in deliberate intervals, their canopies shaped to create dappled light patterns on the path and maintained stone borders.
A wooden sign with gold lettering that read YOU ARE ENTERING A ZONE OF HARMONIOUS INTENTION beside a small, tasteful arrow pointing forward.
A warm ache and longing pulsed through Riot until his throat went tight and his eyes stung, like the feeling of being homesick for a place he’d never been.
“It’s beautiful,” Riot managed, and meant it, and hated that he meant it.
The maintained zone around Springfield Gardens was a sort of strategic beauty that made him feel like he was being welcomed rather than funneled, more invitation rather than chute.
Flowering bushes appeared in color-coordinated clusters, and the air itself changed—cleaner, sweeter, scrubbed of the grit and diesel and blood-iron of the Static Zone until it carried nothing at all.
No pheromones. No sweat. No trace of the men he’d torn apart just hours ago except for the scent of blood on himself and Cass.
The absence hit Riot like a wall. After endless days of hypervigilance, tracking Cass’s state through pheromonal shifts, using Sage’s scentless void as a grounding anchor—the sudden neutrality was like going deaf and his sinuses ached with the nothingness of it.
The welcome center gates appeared through the trees like something out of a storybook with soaring white arches that drew the eye upward toward the sky, water features murmuring their calming frequencies, flowering trees positioned so all around was just white and gold and green.
It was clean lines and organic curves. The kind of architecture that whispered you deserve this while quietly noting his dimensions for the holding cell.
Two guards flanked the entrance in white robes, standing unnervingly still with gold pins on their collars, which Riot suspected were discreet communication devices designed to look more devotional than military, which meant they were very military indeed.
Cass straightened beside him, drew a breath, and became someone else.
Not someone different—that was the wrong word.
He became the version of himself that lived here for twenty-four years.
The sling and the bruises and the bare feet became evidence of a harrowing journey rather than a fight for freedom.
Even his voice changed, becoming softer, almost younger, completely lacking the confident cadence Riot had heard him use over and over approaching strangers in the fucking Neutral Zone.
“Brothers,” Cass said. “May your path ascend.”
The guard on the left had a young, earnest face like he still believed in things and he went wide-eyed. “Brother Cassiopeia? You’re alive?”
“I have been so blessed,” Cass said gently.
“Berserkers attacked us on the road. These seekers barely survived.” He gestured to Riot and Sage with his good arm, a graceful motion that managed to encompass their injuries, their exhaustion, and their desperate need for Elysian salvation in a single sweep.
“This man protected me through the worst of it. He needs medical attention.”
“A seeker?” The guard’s voice held equal parts reverence and alarm. “Brother Cassiopeia, is he—”
“He’s been living too long in the shadow of his own violence,” Cass said, and the practiced phrase sounded completely different in his mouth here—not rehearsed but confessional, as if he were sharing a truth too important for plain language. “I believe we can help him.”
“And the woman?” the second guard asked, eyeing Sage, whose expression sat between spiritually curious and mildly constipated.
“A Null who witnessed his transformation,” Cass said. “She seeks what we have to offer.”
The guards exchanged a look—a Berserker seeker and a Null convert, delivered by a blood covered missionary in borrowed clothes.
“Brother Cassiopeia, this is—we need to…” the second guard’s gaze dropped to Cass’s chest and his eyes widened. “You have—?”
Cass turned his back to them, his face falling a bit as he seemed to realize what they were pointing out.
Riot wanted to grab him and hold him close and tell the idiots in the white robes that there was nothing wrong with the scars on Cass, but he was also just a precariously balanced sack of potatoes on two legs at this point and liable to tip over if he moved too fast.
“Infirmary first,” Cass said, looking at the ground. “The seeker is injured. The convert should be taken to the Sisters’ Sanctuary for orientation while we—”
Riot stopped hearing words.
It happened like someone turned the volume knob to zero.
One moment Cass was speaking and the next, the world was made of cotton and static.
His vision narrowed to a bright point surrounded by gray.
The five-mile walk, the blood loss, the twelve stitches, the adrenal crash, the post-episode depletion, the days of sustained hypervigilance—all of it presented its invoice simultaneously, and the total was more than his body could cover.
No, he thought clearly. Not here. Not now. Not in front of —
The ground came up to meet him like the old friend it was. He had time to think Cass is going to panic and feel a spike of alarm behind his sternum so sharp and bright it almost had a taste before the world went dark and everything stopped being his problem.
He came back in pieces.
Sounds came first: the low murmur of voices. Then sensation: something soft beneath him. Scentless air moved across his skin, processed and purified until it was biologically useless.
Then pain, arriving fashionably late but making up for it with enthusiasm.
Where is Cass?