TWENTY-SEVEN #3
Kaito shoves it off with one hand and grabs the doorframe with the other, face going white as his wound tears. Blood spills dark through the cloth at his side, and I stare at him. He only stares back, right before he pants through rough breaths. “Don’t.”
“I haven’t said anything,” I argue.
“You were going to.”
“I was about to say thank you,” I mutter, a little breathless myself.
He doesn't believe me, which is fair. It’s smart.
Behind him, Fletcher slams his shoulder into the walkway door and forces it open.
“Out!” he barks. Then, as if it physically pains him, he corrects himself. “Walkway’s clear. Move if you’re moving.”
I shouldn’t notice it, but I do, and it annoys me.
We spill out onto the covered walkway just as the hallway behind us becomes a smorgasbord of teeth, gunfire, and shouting men. The walkway runs over the collapsed row of stores below, enclosed in cracked glass and rusted metal. It also shakes under our combined weight.
Behind us, Vector men reach the corridor. They’re not shooting like any ordinary looter does. They’re communicating.
“Runner down.”
“Target moving west.”
“Pilot visual.”
Target.
My stomach drops, because he doesn’t say package. Or man. But target. Which target is that? The pilot? Kaito? Hell, is it me?
My scent is still too sharp, curling under my skin and bleeding through pain, fear, and failing blockers. One of the Vector men turns his head in the corridor behind us, nostrils flaring even through his mask.
No.
No, no, no.
Scent-masking chemical hisses from a canister tossed into the hallway, filling it with a gray vapor that smells bitter and metallic. It should hide us, but it also hides them. And under it, I catch something else.
Sweetness.
But not mine.
Faint. Old. Wrong.
Omega suppressant.
My blood turns even colder and I whisper, “They have Omega gear.”
Kaito hears me, and so does Fletcher. His eyes snap to mine, and he understands enough to go very, very still. Because this means it’s not just the pilot they’re after. Not just cargo. It’s something bigger.
The walkway behind us trembles as bullets hit the metal frame. Glass bursts above us, raining shards around us. Ewan ducks with a sharp curse, and Xeon shields the pilot with his body. Fletcher fires back through the broken glass, cool and controlled.
Kaito grabs my sleeve.
Not skin.
Sleeve.
“Move,” he commands, and this time, I do.
At the far end, the walkway drops into another residential tower. We take the first available exit, down a short maintenance stair, and through a laundry room that stinks of mildew and old detergent. Zeds slam into the door behind us, and someone screams from the hallway above.
Vector, maybe? I hope it fucking hurts.
We burst through a side exit into a narrow alley between the tower and a row of garages. Morning light hits me in the face with the sting of a slap, and I have to blink rapidly just to see clearly.
The compound outer district is closer now, but the direct road is crawling with movement, and not just with Zeds. Vector has cut across the route. Three figures on the lower road, two more near the garages, and one on a balcony with a fucking rifle.
Organized.
Really persistent.
Too close.
The compound is right there beyond the barricaded stretch, and somehow it’s farther away than it was before.
Fletcher drags the pilot behind a store and Xeon crouches beside them, checking the pilot’s breathing. Ewan listens at the tower, then the road, face tight enough that I know nothing good is coming.
Kaito leans against the wall a second too long, his blood dripping onto the cracked tarmac.
Drip.
Drip.
I hate that sound. I hate that I can hear it over everything else.
Fletcher’s voice stays low as he says, “Main route’s compromised.”
“Fuck me, man. No shit,” I say, because apparently my mouth has all the survival instincts of a moth when it catches the eye of a lamp. Even when the rest of me is panicking, my mouth still knows how to run full sprint into shit it shouldn’t.
He looks toward the compound. “We need another way in.”
Ewan swallows harshly. “Could cut through the garages. Maybe the old drainage system past them? Sounds open.”
“Sounds?” I ask.
“Echoes all wrong. Means there’s space,” he explains.
Kaito pushes off the wall. “They’re driving us.”
Everyone goes quiet at that, so I look at the road. The Vector figures don’t rush, they hold positions. They’re blocking routes, pressuring without closing. They’re literally herding, like they know where we need to go. Like they want us tired and predictable.
The pilot’s eyes flutter open for half a second, and his lips move.
Fletcher drops beside him and requests, “Say it again.”
It takes a second before the pilot rasps something too broken to be understood. Then clearer, barely more than a breath, he says, “Not… cargo.”
My skin prickles, and his eyes roll toward me. Or, maybe toward all of us. I can’t actually tell.
“Marker,” he whispers.
Fletcher goes still. “Tracking marker?”
The pilot’s eyelashes flutter as he breathes, “Blood marker. NOVAC marker. They can follow… reaction.”
Then he passes out again after delivering a single ominous warning or threat. I can’t tell which it is, and neither can the others.
Silence drops between us, heavy and ugly.
Marker.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ewan asks.
No one answers, because no one knows. Except, maybe I do. Maybe my father’s name is still knocking faintly from inside a locked room. Maybe O’R was never just about the pilot’s cargo. Maybe Vector isn’t only tracking what he carried. Maybe they’re tracking what reacted.
Blood.
Scent.
NOVAC.
Me.
I shove that thought down so hard it should break, but it doesn’t. Fletcher looks at me, not ordering or accusing, simply seeing too much.
“We move through the garages,” he says, only to catch himself. “Best cover from here. Bad corners. Tight space. Your call if you see a better option.”
My call.
Man, I hate him a little for that, because I hate that it works more.
I wipe Runner blood from my knife onto my torn sleeve and look toward the garages.
It’s tight, dark, and horrible, but it’s better than being herded into the open.
So, with a single nod, I say, “Garages. But we don’t follow the obvious channel.
They want us predictable, so it’s our turn to become the most irritating assholes they’ve met. ”
Ewan exhales slowly, nodding like he’s readying himself. “Oh yeah. It’s my time to shine.”
Despite absolutely everything, my mouth actually twitches under my bandana.
Then another noise canister starts screaming from somewhere in the tower, and every Zed nearby answers. We run before the first body spills into the alley.
Behind us, Vector’s trap collapses into pure chaos.
Ahead of us, the compound waits behind a route that doesn’t even exist.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, the word marker keeps scraping around inside my skull like a key looking for the wrong damned lock.