Page 219 of Immune

Mercer’s face drains of all color.

Not just a little, but all at once. Every single drop of color is gone so quickly that it looks as if someone has cut a string inside him. And Dakota sees it. Of course she does.

“What?” she asks.

Mercer doesn’t answer, and that’s definitely a shitty choice on his part.

Dakota’s head turns slowly and she repeats, “What?”

Inside the room, the crowd shifts. For one brief, imperfect second, I see a bloodied sleeve. A shoulder under torn fabric. A hand gripping tightly to the edge of a metal table hard enough that the knuckles grow white. Pale hair bowed forward, matted with blood and rainwater.

Then the medics close in again, blocking the view.

Not enough for recognition, but enough for punishment.

Dakota’s fingers curl close to her thigh, close enough to her knife I know she’s still hiding. Fletcher shifts half a step closer to her left, but not to stop her. More like he’s moved so he can be there when she moves.

Xeon’s expression empties in that creepily calm way of his. Ewan’s humor disappears from the room like a candle that’s been freshly pinched between wet fingers. Valeria’s hand tightens around her radio, and Hale looks at all of us like it’s finally dawned on him that this is no longer a situation.

It’s a fucking fuse.

The voice inside the room rises again, and this time I manage to catch the words.

“Don’t touch the bag.”

The words come out haggard and ragged, scraped raw by either pain or exhaustion or maybe even both.

Mercer closes his eyes for half a second then, and when he reopens them, he looks at least five years older.

Hale turns on him. “Doctor?”

Mercer swallows once, then says, “That’s him.”

The words are quiet. They don’t even need volume to ruin the entire mood of the hallway.

Dakota’s body goes utterly, terrifyingly calm. There’s no scent spike this time. No verbal threat. No smart-ass remark loaded and ready. Just a pure, undeterred calm.

I’ve seen that calm before, always in the seconds just before she launches a knife with a mean throw.

Hale reaches for the keypad next to the door. “No one goes in until he’s sedated.”

Dakota turns her head slowly then. So slowly. Scarily slowly.

I’ve actually watched Biters with more survival instincts in their rotting bodies than Hale shows in that very moment, and I can’t tell if he’s stupid, brave, or that confident. Either way, he makes a mistake.

“If you put him under before I see his face,” she says, voice so steady and level that it scrapes, “I’ll open every single locked door in this wing and let the consequences pick a side.”

Valeria swears under her breath.

Mercer says, “Commander.”

“No,” Hale snaps. “If that is Maine O’Reilly, then he’s injured, unstable, and carrying recovered NOVAC componentsfrom a compromised field route. No one touches him until we know exactly what he came back with.”

That’s the first time Hale says his full name.

Maine O’Reilly.

Not M-7.