TWENTY-FOUR #2
Behind us, Xeon lowers the pilot onto a crate, one hand steadying his shoulder. Kaito guards the door we came through, his posture far too rigid and tense. Ewan stands near the shelving, eyes half-closed as he listens past the groaning Zeds.
“More than two,” he informs.
Fletcher’s voice drops. “How many?”
“Five. Maybe six. Slow, though,” Ewan answers.
The hidden service door bangs, and dust falls from around the frame.
“Exit?” Fletcher presses.
I shove the last of the supplies into my bag and look around before muttering, “Back the way we came.”
Ewan’s head snaps left before he shakes his head. “Nope. Company that way too.”
Kaito’s blade raises higher while Fletcher curses under his breath.
I scan the room faster. Shelves. Dead batteries. Crates. Ceiling too low. No vents big enough. The hidden door with Zeds behind it. Our entry tunnel with something approaching. Another shutter at the far right side, half-covered by hanging plastic strips.
“There,” I point out. “Loading access.”
Fletcher looks over and asks, “Can you open it?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it,” he orders.
My teeth grit, but then I do it, even if the lack of please or can-yous have pissed me off something chronic. I know it’s not the time. I really do know that. But knowing something and feeling it are two different kinds of animals, and mine are currently biting one another.
I move anyway, because dying in a supply room in a maintenance tunnel would just be embarrassing, even for me.
The shutter crank is rusted, jammed halfway into the wall. I grab it and pull. Nothing.
“Of course,” I hiss, just as the service door buckles.
Zeds push through in a tangle of arms and teeth, one falling to its knees just as the door gives way.
Fletcher fires once, and the sound slams through the room with a sharp brutality.
The first Zed drops. Xeon fires next, quieter and cleaner.
Kaito slams his blade into one that gets too close to the pilot and grimaces so hard I feel it from across the room.
Ewan grabs a metal tray and hurls it sideways. It clatters over the floor, drawing two of the Zeds toward the noise.
“See? I’m useful,” he announces.
“Yeah, congratulations,” I snap, hauling on the crank.
It moves half an inch. Amazing. Just great. Fucking incredible. A miracle small enough that I want to slap it into next month.
Fletcher backs toward me, firing again. “Status?”
“Winning emotionally,” I grind through clenched teeth.
“Dakota.”
“Jammed,” I answer truthfully. He reaches past me for the crank, and I jerk away. “Don’t.”
His eyes flash. “Move.”
“No,” I snap.
“Move,” he repeats.
“I said no,” I throw back at him, fury and something else bleeding into my words that I don’t want to analyze.
Just then, another Zed lurches closer. Fletcher shoots it in the face without looking away from me, blood spattering all over the floor. Then he points out, “Your arm is injured.”
“So is your personality,” I snap back.
He doesn’t bite. Instead, he says, “The crank needs force.”
“And I need men to stop thinking force solves everything,” I argue.
His mouth tightens for a brief moment, but then he says, “Right now, it does.”
The moment the words leave his mouth, the whole room shudders. Not from the Zeds. And not from above. A fast skitter rattles through the service duct overhead.
Ewan turns white as a sheet. “Fast Rot.”
The words hit me like ice water just as the plastic strips next to the loading shutter tremble.
The Runner bursts through the side hallway behind them, tearing through hanging plastic with a shrill screech that sets every nerve in my body on fire.
It moves too fast to track properly, limbs too long and mouth split. Eyes cloudy, empty, and starving.
And it guns straight for the pilot. Wait, no. For the movement near him.
Xeon.
Kaito.
The blood.
Everything seems to happen all at once. Fletcher turns, Kaito tries to step in and almost folds over his wounded side, Xeon moves for the pilot, and Ewan shouts something.
But the Runner changes direction at the last second.
Toward me.
Good.
Bad.
Fine.
I’m already in its path, so I lift my knife, shifting my weight despite the shooting pain coming from my battered knee.
The Runner launches itself at me, all speed and gnashing teeth, and I know before it even reaches me that I’m half a second too slow.
It’s not much, but it’s certainly enough in this scenario.
Before the Runner reaches me, a body slams harshly into my side.
It’s hard enough that I slam into the shelving, my breath leaving my lungs with a forceful punch, as Fletcher takes the Runner’s full impact.
His rifle clatters away from him just as the Runner’s claws slash across his shoulder and upper chest, tearing through fabric and flesh.
Fletcher grunts, low and furious, driving one forearm up under its jaw before its mouth can reach his throat.
For one devastating second, I see teeth inches away from his face, and something inside me grows very quiet. Then very sharp.
I throw my knife and it sinks into the Runner’s temple, but it’s not deep enough.
Fletcher twists, taking the weight of the creature, using his whole body like a wedge as he barks, “Move!”
Absolutely fucking not.
I yank a second blade from my belt, grab the Runner by the back of its ruined shirt, and drive the knife up from under the base of its skull with every ounce of rage that fills my body.
The Runner jerks only once before it collapses over Fletcher like the world’s worst blanket. I kick it off him hard. Maybe with a little too much force, although there’s no such thing in my world. Especially when Fletcher is bleeding.
Breathing.
Alive.
My ears ring.
Across the room, Xeon and Kaito finish the last two Zeds close to the broken service door. Ewan shoves a crate up against the gap and swears in a stream of Welsh that sounds kind of musical and bone-deeply insulting.
The room falls into the kind of silence that only ever happens after violence.
Wet breathing.
Dripping blood.
The pilot’s faint groan.
My own pulse trying to split open my skull.
Fletcher pushes himself upright, one of his hands clamping tightly to his shoulder. Blood spills through his fingers, and I stare at it, a hot white wave of fury shredding through me. “What the actual fuck was that?”
Fletcher looks up at me. “A fast Rot.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” I snap.
“That’s usually Ewan’s expertise,” he says, voice rough with pain.
“Oi,” Ewan objects from across the room. “You’re not wrong, but rude much?”
To be honest, I barely hear him, because I’m already crouching in front of Fletcher. My hands hover because I don’t know whether I want to check the wound over or slap the stupid out of him. Both. Both is good.
“You shoved me,” I grit out.
“I moved you with excessive force,” he corrects, keeping a tight grip on the whole smart-ass routine I don’t appreciate.
“You put yourself between me and a Runner,” I point out, as if he needs his idiocy painted as a picture for him.
He nods once, then winces. “Sure looks that way.”
“Are you insane or fucking stupid?” I blurt harshly.
His eyes lift to mine with a calmness I don’t understand. It’s too calm, and it honestly makes me want to scream. Then the bastard explains, “You were in its path.”
“I had it,” I argue.
He's very quick to refute that argument. “No. You didn’t.”
The words fall between us, landing badly. Really badly. So much so that my anger flashes its teeth and snarls. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“You were half a second behind,” he tells me, pointing out my error.
My breath catches, because he’s right. Because I know he’s right. And because I hate him for being right and bleeding about it.
“You should have let me handle it,” I snap, unable to control the fury that’s practically pouring out of me.
Fletcher eyes me for a split second before telling me, “If I had, you’d be the one bleeding right now.”
“I bleed all the time,” I damn near shout, frustrated and angry and scared.
“That’s not a valid argument,” he counters.
I scoff humorlessly. “It is if you’re not an annoying bastard.”
He exhales once through his nose, slow and measured, before he finally says, “You’re furious because I helped.”
“I’m furious because you made a stupid choice,” I correct, like that distinction matters.
“I made a necessary one,” he says, still much too calm. Too collected. Too controlled.
“You got hurt,” I say.
“So do you.”
“That’s different.”
His eyes sharpen then, and he’s very quick to ask, “Why?”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Because it is different.
Because I’m used to my own blood. Because my pain belongs to me.
I understand the rules of it. I know what to do with it.
I can press cloth to it, wrap it, stitch it, ignore it, and move on.
But someone else bleeding for me? That’s a language I don’t speak anymore.
A language I refuse to even think about anymore.
Not since Maine walked out the door. Not since Mom went quiet.
And not since every person I’ve loved became memories and ghosts, a wound, or a promise that didn’t come back.
Fletcher watches me like he sees the thought take shape and decides not to name it. Smart man. Infuriating man.
“You don’t get to be the only one who keeps people alive,” he says quietly.
And the room falls utterly quiet. Even Ewan shuts his mouth, which is actually alarming enough to count as a natural disaster.
I stare at Fletcher as the words do something ugly to my chest.
No. Not ugly. Worse.
Soft.
They reach for a place I keep locked so tightly I’ve actually forgotten the shape of the key. Hell, I don’t even know if I have the key anymore.
You don’t get to be the only one who keeps people alive.
I hate it.
I hate him.
I hate that my throat tightens.