Page 184 of Immune

Sometimes it’s loyalty.

Sometimes it’s leaving your weapon at the gate.

Sometimes it’s your body, your silence, your designation, or your future.

My gaze slips to Dakota again. She’s still working the hatch, brows pinched from under her hat, all her focus narrowed down to the lock. She looks too small against the compound wall in the distance. Not weak. Never that. Just small enough that men like the ones who build rules might look at her and think they know what to do with her.

My grip tightens around my rifle, and I force myself to ease it. That right there is the danger. Not the instinct, but the shape it wants to take. I can’t turn my fear for her into another set of bars she’ll want to be free of.

The hatch pops at that second, and Dakota lifts her head, eyes bright with a victory she instantly buries under annoyance. “Unlocked.”

Ewan raises his hand like an eager puppy. “Can I just say, I never doubted you once.”

“I feel like you were emotionally doubting me,” she counters flatly.

“Oh, yeah, that’s constantly,” Ewan chimes, his eyes lit with amusement. Something I’m seeing a whole lot more of these days, especially when he’s sparring with the Omega who didn’t want anyone to know she’s an Omega.

Kaito opens the hatch carefully, and a stale breath of air wafts at us from below. Not dead. Not fresh either. Just old building, dust, damp, and metallic.

Dakota leans close, listening, and so do I. Nothing moves from below, but that doesn’t mean nothing is waiting.

“It drops into an access room,” she informs. “Maybe eight feet.”

I look at the pilot. Eight feet might as well be eighty with this guy.

“There’s a ladder,” Kaito says then, shining a flashlight through the gap. “Half-broken, but better than nothing.”

“Of course it is,” Dakota mutters. “Anything fully useful would upset the theme the universe has set out for us.”

“We can lower him,” I suggest. “One at a time. Quiet.”

Dakota glances at me. “That your polite way of telling me not to jump first?”

I meet her stare. “No. That’s me saying lowering the pilot first keeps us from spending ten minutes arguing while Vector catches up.”

She eyes me closely, studying me in a way only she somehow manages. Then she huffs. “God, you’re so annoying when you’re being reasonable.”

“We went over this. Been told I’m charmin’.”

“By who?” she snorts. “Hostages?”

Ewan coughs into his fist, and I almost break with a smile. Almost.

We lower the pilot first with strips of torn cable and old rope Ewan finds close to the vent. He groans but stays quiet enough. Xeon goes down after him. Then Kaito, moving stiffly. Ewan follows.

Dakota waits at the hatch with me and, for one breath, we’re the only two left on the roof. Wind drags smoke across the distance. Below, the compound gate opens just wide enough for two armed guards to step out and drag a body away from the perimeter.

Not a Rot body, either.

A human.

Alive or recent enough that it still bleeds.

Dakota sees it and her entire body grows still. The guards haul the body behind a stack of concrete barriers. One looks around before the gate shuts again.

“Did you see that?” she asks.

“Yeah.”