SEVENTEEN #3
“I’m not going to your compound,” I warn.
“Who said anything about a compound?” Ewan replies. I stare at him after rolling my eyes, and he lifts both of his hands. “I mean, we were all thinking it, obviously. Like, it’s kind of the big fucking elephant in the room, you know?”
“Ewan,” Fletcher warns.
“What?” he argues back. “She already knows.”
“She does know,” I snap. “Big walls. Big guns. Big rules. Big men with very small understandings of one’s personal space.”
Fletcher doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he says, “The pilot will die without proper care.”
“Sad times,” I mutter.
“Vector will keep hunting the cargo,” he tries again.
“Terribly tragic.”
“The cargo is tied to NOVAC,” he pushes once more.
I’ll be damned to the pits of hell if my teeth don’t clack together. I’ll be damned to the crust of the fucking earth if Fletcher doesn’t catch it, too. Damn him.
“And you reacted to that,” he points out.
“I react to a lot of things,” I argue. “Bad smells. Spiders. Men using the word no like it’s a personality trait.”
Ewan murmurs, “Spiders are valid.”
Fletcher ignores him, eyes boring into me. “You know something.”
I smile behind the bandana. It’s not a nice smile, either. It feels sharp enough to cut me, but I tell him, “Everyone knows something, Scar. That’s pretty much how a functioning brain works.”
“We have labs,” Xeon interjects quietly. Carefully. He’s not pushing, simply placing the words down on the ground like he’s trying to lure in a terrified stray cat, letting me decide whether or not I pick them up.
“Medical stores,” Ewan adds. “Records. People who know old-world research. Some of them are even pretty chill before noon.”
“Blockers?” I ask before I can stop myself, my stupid mouth running before my brain can vet the words.
Silence answers me again, and I’m pretty sure my entire soul flees my body. Hell, I pretty much see it vacate, walk three steps away, and face-plant the floor with a dramatic wail that echoes the noise in my head.
Fletcher’s eyes sharpen.
Xeon’s expression softens.
Ewan’s humor vanishes.
And Kaito closes his eyes for half a second.
Idiot.
Me, not him. Well, him too. But mostly me this time.
Lifting my knife higher, I instruct, “Forget I said that.”
“No,” Fletcher answers, and my shoulders lock instantly.
He catches himself quickly, to be fair. I see it. The tiny shift, the correction before the old command can fully land.
“No,” he repeats, softer this time but still very much Fletcher, which means it’s as soft as taking a brick to the face. “I won’t forget it, but I’m not going to use it.”
That… is somehow worse.
Xeon nods once. “If the compound has any, you should have access.”
I laugh. “Should is a word straight out of a fantasy book.”
“Then we make it real,” he says.
Oh.
I don’t like that. Not even a little bit.
Ewan scratches his jaw, eyes on the floor like he knows direct eye contact might actually make me bolt. “For what it’s worth, I’m actually pretty good at finding things people try to claim don’t exist. Blockers, records, ramen packets hidden by selfish bastards. That kind of thing.”
“Heroic skill set,” I blandly retort, even though my stomach pinches at the thought of eating ramen.
No. Don’t think about it. It’ll only make things worse.
“I thought so, too,” Ewan quips, sounding pleased with himself.
Kaito speaks last. “You don’t have to join them.”
My chest tightens hard enough that I almost struggle to breathe, because I catch what he’s saying instantly.
Not us. Them. He said them like he’s giving me room to separate him from the compound.
Like he’s giving me a choice whether or not I separate him from Fletcher, Xeon, and Ewan.
From walls and rules and people who might look at me and see an Omega-shaped resource.
“You don’t have to join anyone,” he continues. “You can travel near us. Use the same roads. Leave when it’s safe. Just… just don’t walk into Vector territory alone when NOVAC is involved.”
That’s manipulative. Only, it actually isn’t, which makes it the very worst kind of persuasion. It’s the reasonable kind. Bastard.
I stare at the door for a long moment, my mind diving deep into the recess it should stay away from.
Maine left to find blockers, food, and meds.
Dad died because of NOVAC. Mom died because grief and NOVAC turned her bond into a monster.
I’ve spent six years hiding from everything that word created.
And now a dying pilot has the audacity to drag it into this room on a dry and bloody tongue.
I can’t leave it alone, and I know it before I’ve even made a decision. Which means the decision has already happened, and I’m just standing here watching my pride throw a tiny, pathetic funeral for itself.
“Fine,” I say.
Ewan exhales loudly.
“Don’t,” I snap, pointing at him with a menacing stab. “Don’t make a sound like that was a relief. I will literally become unbearable.”
“Become?” he blurts before he can stop himself, his eyes widening straight after the word is out of his mouth.
Fletcher slowly turns his head toward him.
Xeon closes his eyes.
Kaito looks up at the ceiling.
Ewan presses his lips together and nods slowly. “Yeah, I get it. That one was on me.”
“No shit,” I mutter, right before I pull Maine’s hat from under my jacket and shove it on my head, all without removing my hood. I tug the brim low and inform all four Alphas, “I’m not going with you.”
No one speaks.
Good.
“I’m heading in the same direction for reasons that are entirely my own, motivated by personal investigation, possible blocker acquisition, and my very reasonable desire not to let a bunch of organized dickheads with a fucking launcher get their grubby hands on NOVAC samples.”
Ewan opens his mouth.
I point at him.
Ewan shuts his mouth.
“I’m not joining your compound. I’m not joining your group. And you can bet your asses that I am not participating in whatever emotional survival boy band situation you’ve got happening here,” I conclude.
Kaito’s mouth twitches.
Fletcher looks pained.
Xeon’s eyes warm in that quiet way I don’t trust.
Ewan whispers, “But we’d need a name, though.”
I stare at him and he clears his throat with a nod.
“Too soon. Got it,” he mutters.
Fletcher picks up his rifle. “We move in five.”
“No,” I say bluntly. He pauses, and I smile sweetly under the bandana. “We move in three. Zeds will drift east after heavy noise if the wind carries sound that way. Your five-minute plan is how we’ll find ourselves sharing a hallway with something overenthusiastic that likes to bite.”
Fletcher studies me for a long moment before he finally nods. “Three.”
I blink.
Well, that was concerningly easy. Kind of disturbing, actually.
“Stop agreeing with me,” I grouch, frowning at him.
“Make worse points and I will,” he counters.
I narrow my eyes on the scarred Alpha just as a grin slowly appears on Ewan’s face, like a sunrise over a landfill. “Oh, that’s nice. I like him better when he does that.”
“I don’t,” I say.
Kaito pushes away from the wall, pain flashing over his face before he can smother it. Unfortunately, I see it. “You reopen those stitches and I’m sitting back and letting them unionize without interference.”
His gaze finds mine. “I’ll be careful.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I volley, and his mouth softens again.
Before he can say anything, the pilot groans again when Xeon and Fletcher haul him off the floor, lifting him carefully between them.
Ewan checks the vent one final time, then the door.
Kaito waits near me, still not too close but still not blocking anything.
Just… there. Like a tether I haven’t cut. Yet. Haven’t cut yet.
The utility room door opens with a low, metallic sigh. Beyond it, the passage lies in gray morning light, damp and narrow and full of the stale breath of a city that flat-out refuses to die cleanly. Somewhere in the distance, a Zed groans. Another answers, and then another.
The district is awake.
Vector is out there.
NOVAC is out there, too.
And maybe, buried somewhere under cargo, blood, old research, and every bad decision the world has ever made, there is something that belongs to my father. Maybe something that explains my mother. Maybe something that points to Maine.
I step into the passage before any of the Alphas can, because I’m not following them.
Absolutely not.
I’m simply heading in the same direction.
Temporarily.