Page 218 of Immune

The sight of them makes Mercer grow eerily still, but not because he’s surprised. Because he’s afraid he’s not surprised at all.

Hale steps closer behind us, radio still in hand. “Report.”

One of the guards inside turns toward the speaker mounted next to the door. His face is pale under a streak of dirt, eyes flicking between Hale and whatever is happening just past our limited view.

“Four came through the wet gate,” he says, voice distorted slightly through the crackly speaker. “Two walking wounded. One critical. And one combative.”

I already know which three are the first, but the last makes me frown.

Dakota’s fingers twitch, just once, but Mercer sees it and so do I.

“Combative how?” Valeria pushes.

The guard glances back over his shoulder just as a crash sounds from somewhere inside the room, quickly followed by a medic snapping, “Hold him still before he tears something open again.”

The guard winces. “Half-conscious and still tried to take Ellis apart when they touched his bag.”

Ewan breathes out very softly. “Well, now, doesn’t that sound familiar?”

Dakota doesn’t blink, though. She’s gone so still that it feels like the entire hallway is forced to rearrange itself around her lack of movement.

Mercer leans toward the speaker and asks, “M-7?”

The guard nods once. “Looks like the tags match M-7.”

The words drop at our feet and stay there.

M-7.

Not just a file anymore. Not just a line typed onto paper. Not only a nasty little collection of letters and numbers tucked inside a folder.

A unit.

A team.

Blood on tile. Bodies behind glass. Survivors dragged back from wherever hell tore the last twelve days out of them.

I watch as Dakota absorbs that.

There’s no gasp. No trembling lip. No dramatic collapse into grief. Nothing easy enough for comfort. Her shoulders only draw in slightly, the brim of her hat hiding her eyes from the side. The movement is so small it might mean nothing at all to anyone else. To me, it looks like her body is trying to fold around something too big to fit under her ribs.

Hale’s jaw tightens. “Names.”

The guard hesitates, and that hesitation is an answer in and of itself. I instantly hate him for giving it, because Dakota’s scent changes in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Wild honey and rain, locked down so hard that it turns almost metallic at the edges. Fear crushed into discipline. Hope strangled before it can even make a sound.

Checking the clipboard in his hand, the guard eventually says, “Cody Porter. Nico Kinney. Azalea Castro.”

Then he stops.

Dakota presses one hand to the glass, but not softly. Not like she’s reaching for someone. But more like she’s holding herself from forcing herself through it.

“And?” Hale demands.

Before the guard can answer, the room behind him explodes into even worse chaos. A metal tray clatters onto the floor with a jarring violence. Someone curses and a medicstumbles backward into view, one hand lifted in a warning or surrender. Another guard lunges at something just outside the narrow angle of the window and misses.

Dakota’s hand drops from the glass, and the hallway seems to tighten around us.

Inside the room, a voice snaps something too rough and broken for the speaker to catch properly, the words coming out in a crackle of noise I can’t decipher. It’s definitely male, though, and hoarse with pain. Furious enough to sound almost steady.