FORTY-EIGHT
DAKOTA
Gunfire turns the entire room into a nightmare with a heartbeat and a pulse.
It cracks against metal, shatters glass, tears chunks from cabinets, and sends white plastic containers scattering across the floor like spooked little ghosts.
For a second, I’m still wrapped in Ewan’s arms with one wrist free, one arm screaming at me, both ankles strapped down, and enough drugs in my system to make me question if gravity is merely a construct.
Or a theory. Maybe even a myth. Either way, it feels personally invested in humbling me enough that I’m sure it’s waiting on my downfall.
Then Fletcher’s voice cuts through the chaos. “Down!”
Ewan drops with me, but not fully or carelessly. He folds his body over mine and twists so the bullets rain down on the stupid medical chair, the wall, and the tray next to us. Not him, and not me, not if he can help it.
His headphones knock against my shoulder when we move, one side cracked, the black padding smeared with blood and dust. Of course he still has them. The world could split clean in half and Ewan Wells would probably still find a way to keep those stupid things around his neck.
A syringe bursts against the floor and clear liquid splatters across my boot.
“Oh. That’s nice,” I rasp, eyeing the liquid. “Floor drugs. Very health-and-safety-coded.”
“Don’t lick ’em,” Ewan says, voice tight against my ear.
I sigh, the sound coming out a little rattled. “You’re no fun.”
His laugh is one sharp breath against my head, terrified and relieved and furious. There and gone so fast it leaves behind a small ache that can join the rest of my pain. Then he’s moving again, fingers finding the release panel at my ankle. “Hold still.”
“I was actually thinking of doing the cha-cha through all the bullets,” I wheeze, rolling my eyes. Well, I think I roll them. I can’t really tell.
“How about we do that after?” he strains, a second before the ankle cuff snaps open.
Pain hits when my leg drops, my still-wounded knee and fresh restraint-burn blending together to make the nastiest cocktail known to man.
My knee spasms and my stomach rolls. The room tips hard left, then right, then remembers I’m actually the one who’s drugged to her tits before having the audacity to keep spinning anyway.
Across the room, Fletcher fires twice.
Both shots hit where they should.
One guard goes down with a hole in his throat, and another drops behind the metal cabinet, rifle clattering from his hand.
Fletcher doesn’t waste movement. He’s all broad shoulders and strength, blood on his mouth and blue eyes cold enough to freeze hell over twice before demanding it go another round.
Next to him, Xeon moves like silence has been sharpened into a person. There isn’t a bond there that pulls him to me, no thread to tell him where I hurt, and no biological compass dragging him through the room. And still, he finds every single threat that dares to turn my way.
A guard swings his weapon toward Ewan and Xeon is there before the barrel collides. He snaps the man’s arm, snatches the gun from his hands, and drives his blade under the ribs without uttering a word.
My chest aches, but not from the drugs. Not from the restraints. But from him. From the awful, beautiful fact that he came for me anyway.
Kaito reaches for the older man before I fully understand the leader is trying to slip out through the back door. One second, the man in clean gloves is moving. The next, Kaito is in front of him, dark eyes empty of everything except a single decision.
The leader freezes.
Smart.
Kaito doesn’t touch him yet.
Even smarter.
“I think you should stay,” Kaito says calmly. Quietly. Almost politely. Definitely deadly.
The last ankle cuff pops open and my legs are suddenly free.
My body immediately tries to slide off the chair like it has somewhere better to be.
Literally, it slides like a haunted sausage sailing down a waterslide, and Ewan catches me under the arms before I turn into a puddle of Omega on the floor. “Easy there, Tiny Terror.”
“I am beauty, I am grace, I am Miss United States,” I mutter under my breath, feeling as beautiful and graceful as a Zed standing in an algae-filled pond.
“You almost melted onto the floor,” Ewan points out, having heard my little grumble.
“Yeah. Gracefully.”
“I’d argue that it looked more like a crime scene, if you want me to be honest,” he sighs, his humor flaring brighter in the bond now than it was before.
I scoff. “Crime scenes can be graceful. Have you seen the chalk outlines they draw on the floors?”
“If you say so,” he snickers, right before he hauls me upright.
Good God above, I wish he hadn’t, because the entire world whites out around the edges. It’s like a flashbang of pain, and everything around me disappears for a really annoying second.
The bonds flare. Ewan’s smoke and clove crashes through me, not scent exactly.
Not with the chemicals still swallowing the air around us.
It’s more of a feeling. His fear, his hands, his heartbeat slamming against my back rapidly.
Kaito’s bond follows, controlled and precise, wrapping around the furious parts of me before they can burst right out of me.
Fletcher seems to anchor them both, steady and solid. Like a shield instead of a cage.
Something cold presses at the inside of my skull.
NOVAC.
It waits there, familiar now in a way I hate. Distance. Pulse. Threat. Remove. That old rhythm tries to assemble itself in my brain, smooth and merciless, offering me the kind of survival that simply costs too much.
I don’t want that. No.
No, no, no.
Not like Davis.
Not gone.
Not blank.
Not a blade clutched in someone else’s hand.
I breathe through my teeth, chanting in my brain like a damned crazy person.
My name is Dakota.
My body is mine.
My rage is mine.
The cold doesn’t leave, but this time, it listens.
That alone should terrify me, and it does.
But I use it anyway, because terror and choice have the ability to sit within the same body.
Apparently, so can three Alpha bonds, trauma, chemical suppressants, and a deeply concerning desire to punch a man with clean gloves in his stupid, wrinkled-ass face.
A siren howls from somewhere outside, and then another. Then the sound changes. Not as a warning, but more like a calling.
Ewan’s head snaps up, his cracked headphones shifting around his neck as he listens past the gunfire, past the alarms, and past all of the screaming. Then a slow, vicious smile pulls at his mouth. It’s not happy and it’s not amused. That smile right there bleeds strategy.
“What?” I rasp.
He lets go of me only long enough to snatch a radio from the dead guard’s belt. “Their sound system is connected to the fast Rot cages.”
The leader’s face changes. It’s a tiny change, very fast, but it’s enough. I grin with bloodied teeth and a crazed look in my slightly unfocused eyes. “Uh-oh.”
Ewan speaks into the radio in a passable imitation of the guard’s rough tone, putting on an accent that probably would have made me laugh before the world ended. “Containment failure, east row. All units divert.”
The radio erupts.
“What failure?”
“East row?”
“Which cage?”
Ewan looks at the control panel by the door before he says, “Dealer’s choice, I guess.”
Then he slams his elbow down onto the panel and red lights burst across the wall. Outside, something shrieks. Not human but not completely dead either. A Runner cage alarm chirps, stutters, then screams, and the compound answers.
Metal slams.
Chains rattle.
Men shout.
Then the infected start to howl like someone rang a dinner bell under the full moon.
Fletcher glances at Ewan. “Don’t tell me you just opened the cages?”
“I didn’t open the cages,” Ewan says monotone.
Then a Runner crashes into the outer hall so hard the wall actually shakes.
Ewan winces. “I opened some of the cages.”
Fletcher’s mouth twitches once. “Good enough.”
“Damn. That’s some high praise coming from you, mate,” Ewan snorts.
“Don’t get used to it.”
Another guard appears in the doorway, panic plastered over his face and rifle raised too high.
Maine hits him from the side with the butt of his shotgun rather than using shots.
The crack of bone echoes through the room, and the man drops like a freshly felled tree.
Maine stands over him, shaking so hard his rage seems to vibrate through the floor.
Then he turns to me and his face shatters. “Kota.”
I want to go to him. Hell, I even try, but my knee folds.
Fletcher catches me before I hit the deck. “Careful, darlin’.”
“I hate that word,” I mutter.
“Liar.”
“I hate being easy.”
“Now that I believe.”
His arm holds me upright, strong and careful. He smells like blood, and gunpowder, and smoke under the chemical haze. His jaw is tight enough to crack stone, but he loosens it to ask, “You with us?”
I grip his forearm tightly, trying to help with my weight. “Define with.”
“Still stubborn?”
“Oh, yeah,” I answer instantly. “Still rocking the stubbornness.”
“Then you’re with us,” he says.
Kaito’s bond brushes mine with a question instead of a command. Can you stand? I don’t even know if the thought is actually his or mine or some weird little bond thing we’ll have to unpack later over a coffee and emotional damage.
I answer by reaching for the dead guard’s fallen knife.
Kaito sees it, because of course he does, and kicks it toward me. It skids across the floor and stops against my boot. I look at him and he looks back without a lecture. There’s no “don’t, Kota” or “you’re too hurt.” Just trust, dark and steady.
I bend and the movement almost sends me straight into another dimension. I do manage to wrap my fingers around the knife, though, so that’s something. Only, the knife feels all kinds of wrong. Probably because it doesn’t belong to me. However, it’s still sharp, and that’s good enough for me.
The leader moves again while everyone’s distracted. Clean Gloves lunges, but not for the door.
For me.