FORTY-SIX #2
Fletcher turns his head slowly and Ewan goes completely still. Maine looks about ready to gnaw through the radio, just because everything is pissing him off now that he’s riled up and ready to burn the world down if it means he gets his sister back.
I take it from Valeria’s hand.
“Kaito,” she warns.
I press the button. “Where were you when the hatch opened, Commander?”
Static answers for a long, weighted second. Then Hale answers, clipped and cold. “Who is this?”
“You know who it is. Let’s not play silly games, because I’m all out of silly prizes,” I tell him down the crackling radio.
A pause again, this one too long.
Then he carefully says, “Kanai, this isn’t the time for insubordination.”
I ignore him, because I already know this song and dance. I know how this goes, it’s just a matter of going through the motions. “Porter said someone had to force the issue before her pack made it impossible.”
The lane goes eerily quiet. Hell, even the smoke seems to hold its breath like it needs it.
Hale says nothing, which is telling enough, and Fletcher’s face hardens into something carved from stone.
Ewan shakes his head and whispers, “Oh, you absolute tosser.”
Valeria stares at the radio like it has grown horns and claws made of razors and spikes. Mercer’s face completely drains of color, proving neither one of them knew what the hell their commander had planned to do. What their commander has done.
I press the button again and repeat lowly, “Where were you?”
Hale’s voice returns lower. “You’re emotional, son.”
That is when I know with absolute certainty.
Not because he confessed, but because he chose the language of men who think feeling things makes the truth less jagged and sharp.
My father used to do it all the time. He’d stand in a clean room after fucking it all up and then tell me my anger was proof that I couldn’t judge what he had done.
He’d cause the damage, then tell me my reaction to that damage was the problem.
He’d preach about control while leaving bruises disguised as lessons.
He considered fear respect and obedience love.
Men like that don’t need to shout, because they simply need to believe their reasons are holier than the damage. The means justify the end or some stupid shit like that.
My hand tightens around the radio until the casing cracks dangerously.
“You opened the door,” I state, the accusation thick on my tongue.
There’s yet another pause before the asshole finally says, “I made a hard call.”
Valeria inhales sharply, because there it is. Confirmation. All the proof we need.
Fletcher closes his eyes once and Maine lunges for the radio like he can strangle Hale through the small holes his voice comes from, but Ewan catches him around the chest with impressive speed.
Hale continues, voice controlled. “The compound can’t survive hoarding a resource that could change human survival. Her pack attachments were compromising access. Vector was meant to be contained.”
Vector was meant to be contained.
My vision narrows but not to red. It’s white, clean and empty. “You used her as bait.”
“I forced exposure of hostile interests before they could gather strength,” he says, fancying up the words to try and downplay the clear fact that the fucker sold her out. That he betrayed her and used her and got her taken.
“They took her,” Fletcher says darkly. He doesn’t shout, and that makes it even worse. Hell, it’s terrifying to anyone who doesn’t know him. For anyone who isn’t sharing a bond with the same woman.
No answer comes again, only static. Then Hale says, “Bring everyone to command. We will discuss retrieval under controlled conditions.”
I release the button before launching the radio against the wall hard enough that it shatters into a bunch of plastic pieces.
Controlled conditions.
The words almost make me smile. Almost, because my father was a very big fan of controlled conditions too. He loved rooms with locked doors and rules only he ever understood. Lessons no one else was allowed to interrupt.
I had learned that wanting something wasn’t the problem, but it was what you did with it.
Hale wanted survival so he sold her choice.
I look at Valeria. “Are you going to step in and stop us?”
Her mouth opens and then closes just as quickly.
Then she pulls a keyring from her belt and throws it to Fletcher with conviction.
“Old drainage access runs under the generator shed and out past the south service road. If they had the map, they’ll use the industrial estate beyond the quarry.
Half the buildings are shielded from aerial sight. We never cleared it properly.”
Fletcher catches the keys effortlessly. “Entrances?”
“Three main. More if the old storm tunnels still hold.”
“Guards?”
“If Vector has it, assume perimeter defense.”
Xeon steps away from the hatch and crouches near the ground. He touches two fingers to a dark smear on the concrete, drawing his hand up to peer at it. I already know it’s blood, and something dark inside me acknowledges that it’s Dakota’s.
My bond reacts so violently I have to lock my knees and clench my jaw so tight that my teeth ache.
Xeon lifts his fingers to his nose and his eyes close as he focuses. When they open again, whatever softness grief might have left in him is gone. There’s nothing soft and quiet about him anymore. “She marked the edge.”
I look quickly and, sure enough, it’s there. Close to the hatch frame, three thin scratches cut through grime and old rust. Not at all random.
Dakota.
Even drugged, hauled over a shoulder and dragged away, she left marks on the world that has done its very best to make her journey as difficult as it could possibly make it. I’m really starting to understand why she hates the universe so much.
Maine sees it and breaks a little. Only a little. Enough that Ewan’s grip on him turns from impressive restraint to much-needed support.
Fletcher kneels beside the marks and his voice is rough when he mutters, “That’s our girl.”
Ours.
Not owned.
Chosen.
This time, none of us bother to correct it. Because deep down, secretly and without the intention of telling Dakota, she really is ours. Ours to look after, to follow wherever she wants to take us, to make sure she feels safe, and to support whatever choices she makes so she doesn’t feel trapped.
We leave three minutes later without a word of permission.
In its place, we take weapons. Valeria is generous enough to load us with ammunition, tunnel routes, and two guards who look more loyal to her than Hale.
Mercer gives us filters, stimulant shots, and a small black case of antidotes he admits may only partially counter what Vector used.
“Don’t give her anything until you know what’s in her system,” he warns.
Ewan takes the case. His hands shake once before he stills them. “And if she’s not breathing?”
Mercer’s face tightens. “Then make her breathe until I can.”
No one speaks after that.
We enter the drainage route through a maintenance shaft behind the generator shed. The tunnel smells like rust, wet concrete, rot, and the aftermath of chemical warfare. My bond pulls through it in thin, violent draws.
Fletcher maps as we move, marking each turn with chalk from Mercer’s kit, and Ewan listens with his headphones in place.
Without his usual humor, he becomes sharper than anyone would ever expect.
Every guard movement above us, every soft faint of an engine shift, every scrape through the tunnel, he catches it.
Maine walks behind him with a shotgun in both hands.
You can see the grief in him trying to override everything else, even sense, but he keeps pushing it back.
It’s in the way his shoulders straighten when they start curling in on themselves, or the way his face will crumple before a frown appears and stays.
I stay with the bond, tracking it through the tunnel very much like I tracked Dakota after she disappeared from the school. After she vanished from that little house where she patched me up. This seems to be our thing, so I focus on that instead of the anger I can feel pulsing under my skin.
Xeon stays with the signs.
A smear of blood on a pipe edge, black polish scraped against concrete, a torn thread from Dakota’s shirt. One dead Vector soldier shoved into an alcove with his throat cut badly, messily, but effectively.
Even drugged, she fought them. Especially drugged, she gave them hell.
Xeon crouches beside the body. “She had a blade here.”
Fletcher’s mouth tightens. “How do you know?”
“The angle.” Xeon points. “Short reach. Upward. She was lower than him.”
Maine exhales shakily. “That’s Kota.”
The tunnel opens near the south service road under a collapsed drainage channel.
And past it, night stretches across the sky in a blanket of darkness.
The industrial estate sits half a mile past the quarry, all broken warehouses, rusted fencing, and old loading bays.
Most of the compound avoids it because the dead gather in low ground.
Vector chose it because of course they did. No one with the right amount of common sense would attack a fortress head-on when they can build one out of rubble and ruins.
We reach the outer fence just before midnight, and that’s where we see the first cage.
Not for people, though. Well, not quite.
A Biter snaps against welded bars, jaw broken, arms chained back through the wire so it can’t claw itself free.
A speaker hangs above it, quiet for now.
A lure system, from the looks of things.
Fletcher studies the layout from behind a burned-out delivery truck. “They use the infected as perimeter defense.”
Ewan’s voice is flat. “That’s fucking vile.”
Maine looks at the chained Biter and grimaces. “That was a person.”