THIRTY-TWO #3
A hand appears close to the edge of the table, not touching, just there. Xeon. His voice is quiet as he instructs softly, “Look at the floor.”
I don’t want to.
I do.
White tile. Scuff close to my boot. Blood drying on Kaito’s sleeve in my peripheral vision. Fletcher by the door. Ewan’s headphones still wrapped around my neck. Kaito between me and the room.
“Breathe once,” Xeon says.
“No.”
“Then stand once.”
That almost gets me. A laugh crawls up my throat and dies halfway.
I am standing. Barely. But yes. Once. I can do once.
I pull my hand away from the photo. My fingers are trembling, so I curl them into a fist, and Mercer sees it. He looks away quickly, and that’s the fourth reason. Maybe.
“Blackwater relay,” I say carefully.
Hale’s face hardens. “You’re not going after him.”
There it is, folks. The stupidest sentence in any room, always spoken by the man most convinced he owns it. That he owns the windows. That he owns the fucking door.
I turn toward him slowly. My scent still floods the room, but I stop bothering to pull it back. Let them choke on honey and rain. Let them finally learn what a storm smells like before it starts shattering windows.
“Seems like you misunderstood me.”
Hale’s mouth tightens. “Did I?”
My nod is slow. “I didn’t fucking ask.”
Valeria says my name, and there’s something under it this time. Something like a warning. Maybe even sympathy. And I hate both.
Hale steps closer. “You leave this compound without clearance and you risk leading Vector straight to an active field team, assuming there is still a team to even find.”
My vision flashes white, and Fletcher moves. Not forward, and not toward me. It’s half a step, close enough to remind me there’s a floor under my feet and a knife under my clothes and people behind me who will follow if I fall or run or burn the entire fucking world down.
I don’t thank him, but I don’t tell him to stop.
“Then give me clearance,” I damn near growl.
“No.”
Bad choice number four has entered the chat.
Mercer sighs, a small and very English sound. Very aware that the room has just stepped onto thin ice wearing steel boots. “Kota, if Maine is alive, running straight at Blackwater without understanding what he was doing could get him killed.”
If.
My jaw locks before I grit, “Finish that sentence again and I’ll force-feed you the folder.”
Ewan whispers, “I like it. Healthy communication. What every budding relationship needs.”
I don’t look over at him, but my mouth twitches anyway. Traitorous mouth.
Mercer’s eyes spark like he notices.
Good.
Let him.
I’m not dead yet.
“I’m not telling you not to find him,” Mercer explains now that he doesn’t feel like he’s at risk.
Hale turns. “Doctor.”
Hale is very ignored.
“I’m saying we need to work out what he found before he went dark.
” Mercer taps the page under the photo. “Because Maine wasn’t just running samples.
He was looking for private O’Reilly notes no one here has ever seen.
If those notes even exist, and if Vector knows he was looking for them, it could mean Maine might be the only person outside this room who knows where they are. ”
Maine.
Not your brother.
Careful again. So careful that it hurts.
My brother.
Not the hat, and not the ghost, and not the wound.
My brother.
Alive enough to be classified.
Alive enough to be dangerous.
Alive enough to be missing.
I look down at the photo again. The image is grainy and awful and beautiful. A knife made of paper.
“Copy it,” I demand.
Hale counters, “Absolutely not.”
I take the page out of the folder and every guard shifts again. Valeria makes a strangled sound that might actually be the last thread of her patience snapping and twisting into a noose.
Mercer doesn’t even bother to try and stop me.
I fold the page once and slide it inside my jacket, only for Hale to point out with a lowered voice, “That is classified material.”
I look at him. “No. That’s my family.”
The room goes utterly still there, and for once, no one corrects me.
Smart.
Stepping back from the table, I test my knee before I put my full weight on it. Pain explodes in the joint but I swallow it. Pain is simple. Pain doesn’t ask me to hope, which is the problem. Hope is a cracked door in a burning building. Hope tells you to run back inside.
Kaito turns his head slightly, watching me from the corner of his eye. His mouth makes the shape of my name, too quiet for anyone else to catch.
Dakota.
Not Kota.
Dakota. A truth he doesn’t use carelessly. A truth spoken low enough that it only belongs to us.
I meet his gaze. There isn’t a single command in it. No don’t. No wait. Only the calm and steady restraint of an Alpha who knows wanting is not surrender and protection isn’t ownership.
Fletcher says then, “We need a route.”
We.
My throat tightens.
Ewan lifts his hands toward the headphones still around my neck, and I remove them and offer them back to him as he says, “And weapons. Unless we’re going to insult Vector to death, which, personally, I’m more than willing to try. I just think the success rate on that plan might be a little shaky.”
Xeon says, “We’ll need information.”
I look at all of them one by one.
Kaito by the rifle.
Fletcher by the door.
Xeon next to the table.
Ewan with humor on his lips and worry in his eyes.
The pack I didn’t ask for.
The pack I haven’t named.
The pack that keeps standing where I need them without once making me beg.
I hate them, but I don’t tell them to leave. Progress, maybe?
Hale watches the exchange like a man now realizing his problem has multiplied by four Alphas and one extremely unreasonable and stubborn survivor he hasn’t officially identified yet.
Good.
Math can hurt.
Mercer’s gaze remains solely on me, sharp now. Not cruel or hungry, but awake. Because he understands something Hale doesn’t. Maybe something not even I want to understand.
“You knew about the private notes,” he says, phrasing it without asking a question.
I go still.
Fuck.
I shouldn’t have reacted. I shouldn’t have even breathed. I shouldn’t have let Maine’s name drag every secret in me to the surface.
Mercer’s eyes narrow slightly then, squinted by the glasses he places back on his face. “You know something the archive doesn’t.”
Hale turns toward me again and Valeria’s expression shutters. The guards grip their weapons and the room waits with bated breath.
I touch the folded piece of paper inside my jacket, feeling the blurred shape of Maine’s face through the fabric and paper. Then I smile under my bandana. A cold, sharp smile, reckless enough to feel honest. “Maybe.”
Mercer’s voice lowers. “Kota.”
I step toward the door, and Fletcher shifts with me. Kaito follows, and so does Xeon. Ewan too, obviously, because the man hasn’t ever met a terrible decision he couldn’t accessorize.
Hale commands, “You are not leaving this wing.”
I don’t stop walking, muttering over my shoulder. “Then lock the doors. See how well that goes for everyone.”
Valeria’s hand moves toward her radio, but Mercer stops her with a word. “Wait.”
I pause, but not because he tells me to. But because his voice changes. Not with a command, and not with a warning, but with an offer. He looks from me to the folded page hidden inside my jacket, then to the file, and then to the corridor beyond this room.
“If you’re finding Maine,” he starts, “you’ll need more than just your anger.”
My hand tightens, because he’s right.
He holds my gaze as he adds, “And I need to know what Conrad hid.”
For a small moment, the room is nothing but bargains and deals and offers. Ugly ones, but necessary ones. The kind the world keeps making when it finally runs out of mercy.
I look at the door, then at Mercer. Then at Hale, whose mouth is already forming yet another no. I’m pretty sure it’s the only word the asshole is completely sure of at this rate.
“Maine is alive,” I say, lifting my chin. My voice doesn’t shake, and that feels like a very important detail. “I’m finding him with your permission or without it.”
No one moves.
No one breathes.
Then somewhere beyond the glass, deep in the science wing, an alarm starts pulsing red across the walls.