Page 123 of Immune

Before any more words pass between them, we run.

The stairwell is narrow, concrete, and lit by the pulsing red emergency glow. Fletcher carries the pilot as best as he can, dragging most of the man’s weight with grim efficiency. Kaito moves beside him, a knife in hand he must have pulled from somewhere on his body, guarding the front rather than carrying. Every step is costing him, but he doesn’t once slow down.

Ewan takes the rear, firing once when one of the Vector men tries to follow. Dakota ends up beside me because the stairwell is tight, and because her knee nearly gives out on the first run. She catches herself on the railing, and I make sure not to touch her. Instead, I move close enough that if she falls she’ll hit my shoulder before the stairs.

She notices.

“Don’t,” she breathes.

“I’m not doing anything,” I tell her quietly.

“You’re hovering.”

“I’m adjacent.”

“Now is not the time to be cute with vocabulary,” she grits through her teeth.

“I’m not trying to be cute,” I tell her seriously.

“That’s worse,” she snaps.

A smile almost sneaks onto my face, but I press it down. She wouldn’t appreciate it at all.

Behind us, the alarm continues its ear-ringing scream. Below, the dead answer, dragging themselves up from the lower platforms. The stairwell fills with echoes of boots, rain, Rots, and distant shouting.

At the next landing, Dakota pauses for too long. It’s only a second. Her breath catches, her free hand going to her chest, fingers curling against the strap of her pack. Her scent flares again, sweet under the fear, under the fever, and under the chemical bitterness of blockers losing their fight against her biology.

I look away from her throat. From her trembling hand, and from everything she would hate me for seeing.

“There’s a maintenance room on this level,” I say.

Her eyes cut to mine. “How do you know?”

“Sign,” I tell her, nodding toward the faded lettering on the wall. She looks, and then scowls, because I’m telling the truth. “We can redirect through it. Avoid the next flight.”

“Or get trapped,” she counters.

“Yes,” I agree.

“At least you’re admitting that part,” she murmurs.

I shrug. “I try not to lie when the truth is already obvious.”

She studies me for half a breath. “That sounds exhausting.”

“Sometimes,” I tell her honestly.

Fletcher looks back from the stairs above and barks, “Decision.”

Dakota glances down the stairwell just as a Rot appears from two flights below, head jerking toward the alarm and cloudy eyes rolling aimlessly. Another slams into the railing behind it. And then another.

“Maintenance room,” she says.

And so we move.

The room is small, but it has another door at the far end. For once, we’ve been granted a stroke of luck that hasn’t been molded into a joke.

Fletcher hauls the pilot through. Kaito guards the doorway until Dakota and I are inside, and Ewan shuts the door behind us, wedging a fallen mop handle under it.