Page 208 of Immune
Maine, who left.
Maine, who didn’t come back.
Maine, who became a wound so old I started mistaking it for bone.
My laugh comes out all kinds of wrong. Small, flat, and ugly. Then I shake my head and mutter, “No.”
Mercer doesn’t talk, and that makes him a very smart man.
“No,” I say, louder this time. “That’s not possible.”
Fletcher’s eyes flick to me, but not with pity. It’s understanding with a bruise lined under it.
Ewan whispers, “Kota.”
I turn on him so fast that he actually stops breathing for a whole second. “Don’t.”
He lifts both hands, one palm open while the other hovers close to the headphones. “Wasn’t going to.”
Liar. Or maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t know fucking anything.
“That could be anyone,” I say.
Mercer’s voice is careful when he agrees, “It could.”
“Loads of people have names,” I push, my mind spinning too fast.
“Yes.”
“Loads of people knew my father.”
“Not many knew enough to use that name here,” Mercer says, and my teeth clack shut. He looks down at the paper,and I hate that he looks sorry before he reads. “Male. Mid-twenties at med check. Pale blond hair. Gray eyes. Scar through left eyebrow. Proper experience with field medicine, improvised chemical filtration, and scent suppression compounds.”
My lungs hurt. Like, actually hurt.
No.
Maine had gray eyes like rain clouds, a matching set to Dad’s. He had the same ashy blond hair as mine and Dad’s, hair that never stayed tidy. That scar through his eyebrow came from the time when we tried to teach me how to swing a bat in the garage and I missed the ball, hit the shelf, and brought half of Dad’s toolbox down onto his face.
The idiot laughed while bleeding and called it character development.
No.
No, memory is a filthy liar.
Grief is worse.
The world could be filled with pale blond-haired men with scars. Probably. Statistically speaking.
I grip the table harder as I rasp, “What else?”
Mercer hesitates, and that’s bad choice number two.
“What else?” I snap.
Valeria shifts near the door. “Kota—”
I look at her and she stops. Beautiful. It means we’re all becoming trainable. Fucking love that for us all.
