THIRTY #2
Kaito’s gaze drops to the guards’ hands.
Xeon’s face doesn’t change, which somehow manages to make him look more dangerous.
Ewan doesn’t utter a single word. And Fletcher’s voice stays completely calm as he says, “He’s been exposed to smoke, blood, Zeds, and Vector chemical masks. If you crowd him, he’ll get difficult.”
“Already there,” I warn.
Valeria looks at me without an ounce of sympathy. “Everyone gets checked.”
My throat tightens.
Everyone gets checked.
Everyone gets counted.
Everyone gets sorted.
Everyone gets put where someone else decides they belong.
I can smell the disinfectant from the building behind her. It’s sharp and clean, but under it there’s something chemical. Something medical. Old fear soaked into the walls that no amount of scrubbing and cleaning will ever remove.
Blockers.
I need blockers. Information. Exits. Not a fucking room with locked doors and strangers asking me to strip away every single layer that’s keeping me alive. That has been keeping me alive for six damned years.
The pilot chooses that very moment to groan, and his knees buckle. Xeon catches him before he hits the ground and for half a second, everyone’s attention snaps to him.
Damn. Saved by a dying man. Very beautiful. Poetic, really.
Valeria turns and shouts suddenly, “Medic!”
Two people come rushing out of the building with a stretcher between them. One is a woman with short red hair and a white armband. The other is a young man carrying a medical bag and looking like he hasn’t slept since he vacated the womb. Man, I feel that so hard.
They reach the pilot and go to work fast. Way too fast for me to even find a fault with it. The red-haired medic checks his pupils and mutters, “He needs surgery.”
“We have a surgeon?” the younger one asks.
“Find Ellis. Now,” Redhead demands.
The young medic bolts, just as Valeria turns toward Fletcher. “He goes to medical. Armed escort.”
“We go with him,” Kaito says, his voice quiet. It still manages to draw everyone’s attention.
Valeria takes one look at his side. “You go to medical, too.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I snap at the exact same time, and Kaito looks at me. I only glare back as I tell him, “Your organs are genuinely trying to make a break for freedom. Stop using internal bleeding as a fucking excuse to be in charge.”
His mouth tightens, but Fletcher makes a sound in his chest that almost sounds like a laugh. He wisely smothers it before it can actually become one, and I catch Valeria watching the exchange with interest.
I hate that.
I hate interest. Because interest always leads to questions.
“You his medic?” she asks me.
“No.”
“Oh yeah,” Ewan says at the same time.
I turn slowly toward him.
The jackwad raises both of his brows before he says, “I mean, emotionally?”
“I won’t even hesitate to launch you into a fence,” I threaten.
“There are actually a few of those about. You’ll have to specify which one, just so I can mentally prepare myself,” he tosses back, completely unfazed.
Just then, the pilot convulses on the stretcher, and the joke dies a painful death.
The medics roll him toward the building, and everything in me wants to follow after them.
Not because I care, because I barely know him.
But he knows words. O’Reilly. Doctor’s daughter.
Immune. Marker. Blood marker. NOVAC marker.
He knows too much to leave alone with strangers in clean rooms.
Valeria steps into my path before I can move. “You can see him after the medical check.”
“No.”
Her patience visibly thins. “This compound has rules.”
“Ah,” I say. “There it is.”
Fletcher murmurs my name. Not in warning, and not in an attempt to stop me. Just grounding, and I don’t even know why that seems to help. It annoys me that it even does.
Valeria’s gaze flicks between us again. “We’re not your enemy.”
“Didn’t once say you were,” I tell her.
“You’re acting like it,” she counters.
I eye her closely before delivering my next words. “I’m alive because I act like everyone is.”
For the first time since our arrival, something in her expression finally shifts. It’s not sympathy, which is good. I would have actually hated that so much more. No, what this is looks more like understanding. The kind that’s earned through ugly means no one wants to talk about.
“Then how about you stay alive by being smart,” she says. “Medical first. Food after. Quarters if you’re cleared. Debrief when you’re stable.”
Stable. Now there’s a funny little word to use. As if any one of us has been stable for longer than six whole consecutive minutes.
Ewan lowers his hands slowly when no one shoots him for daring to breathe. “Food, you say?”
Valeria looks over at him. “After clearance.”
“What kind of food are we talking?”
“Ewan,” Fletcher mutters.
“What?” the Welshman argues. “I’m merely assessing risk versus reward. Like a smart person.”
Valeria’s mouth almost moves, and I have to remind myself that she’s human. She’s dangerous. And I much prefer when people stay neatly in their respective categories.
“Soup,” she finally answers.
Ewan exhales loudly. “We might be willing to negotiate.”
“We’re not negotiating soup with strangers,” I tell him.
“Speak for yourself,” the asshole counters, and I want to smack him upside the head.
A different guard approaches from the main building a second later, older and broad-shouldered with a salt-and-pepper beard. His jacket is cleaner than anyone else’s here, marked with a stitched patch over the breast pocket.
HAVEN RIDGE.
Oh, great. So the compound has a name. Of course it does. Named things always think they’re far more permanent than they actually are.
The guard stops next to Valeria and asks, “This them?”
Valeria nods. “Pilot from the crash. Four Alphas. One unidentified survivor. Possible NOVAC cargo recovered.”
The man’s eyes sharpen on the word NOVAC, then they move to me. Again. Always. Fucking A.
“Commander Hale,” he says, introducing himself.
Commander. A title with boots. Ugh, gag me.
Fletcher’s posture shifts, almost subtle enough that I miss it. A soldier recognizing a soldier, maybe? Or a man recognizing a system with teeth.
Hale studies us. “Vector followed you?”
“They tried,” Fletcher answers.
“They don’t try for nothing. Did they see where you were heading?”
“Likely.”
Hale’s jaw hardens. “Then you brought them to my wall.”
The courtyard grows quiet. Not fully, but enough that everyone feels the new charge in the air. I feel the change ripple through the people nearby. Hands pausing on crates, heads turning, guards tightening their grips on their weapons. A woman pulling a child closer by the shoulder.
There it is.
The cost.
Safety means blame has somewhere to fall.
Fletcher’s voice turns colder. “Vector was already moving through your outer district.”
“Because of your crash,” Hale comments.
“Wasn’t our crash.”
“You’re standing at my gate with the pilot.”
“You prefer we left him outside?” Fletcher pushes, voice hard.
Hale says nothing, and neither does Fletcher.
The air between them grows tense, and I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
Men and their invisible measuring tapes.
Honestly, if there weren’t so many people around actively deciding whether or not to shoot us, I’d smack Fletcher and tell him to get his shit together.
Valeria cuts in instead. “Debrief inside. Not in the courtyard.”
Hale looks at her, then back at us. “Weapons surrendered at med check.”
“No,” I say, sounding very much like a parrot.
Every gaze snaps to me.
Oops.
Wait. Actually, no. Not oops, because I’m right.
Hale’s brows lower. “No?”
“You want my knife,” I say. “You’ll have to earn that privilege.”
Ewan makes a small sound at the back of his throat. “Oh, lush. We’re doing diplomacy with knives.”
Hale looks completely unimpressed. “Weapons are stored and returned after clearance.”
“That sentence has done very little to improve my mood,” I tell him.
Fletcher shifts closer then, voice low enough for me but not private. “Information, Kota. If we refuse everything, they keep us outside or they’ll put us down. If we hand over primary weapons, we keep the hidden ones.”
Valeria hears him, and so does Hale, because Fletcher isn’t stupid enough to pretend people with guns are deaf.
Hale’s mouth flattens. “Hidden weapons are found during medical.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
Then I smile under my bandana where he can’t see it before I mutter, “Good luck.”
Ewan looks up at the sky. “I’d like it noted and written in permanent marker for the record that I admire the commitment while simultaneously fearing the consequences.”
Valeria sighs. “Primary weapons. Now. Secondary blades declared. Anything found undeclared gets you locked down.”
Locked down.
My stomach turns hard enough that it actually cramps. Fletcher’s eyes cut to me, not with an order, but a question.
Can you live with that for five minutes?
I hate that I understand it, and I hate more that the answer might be yes.
Slowly, I pull the gun from my hip. One of the guards tenses, so I hold it by two fingers and set it on the metal table they drag over. Then one knife. Not the other. Just one.
Fletcher sets down his rifle and sidearm, then declares two blades. Kaito moves like every step is flooding him with pain, surrendering weapons with controlled precision. Xeon places his knives down silently. Ewan unloads enough metal from his body that one of the guards mutters, “Jesus.”
Ewan gives him a tired smile. “I like to accessorize. Makes me feel pretty.”
No one laughs.
Pussies.
Valeria gestures to the medical building. “This way.”
We’re escorted across the courtyard and every step inside the compound feels louder than it should.
People are watching from doorways, windows, and workstations.
Not exactly hostile, but not friendly. Curious, maybe.
Afraid. Definitely suspicious. I know that look because I’ve worn it so often that I’m considering charging it rent.