Page 323 of Immune

My head lifts before the first siren blares. Kaito moves at the same time. Xeon turns toward the north hallway, and Ewan’s smile completely disappears. Dakota turns to stone where she stands.

The alarm screeches across Haven Ridge a second later, one long blast. Then another. Then three short bursts that turn everybody in the garage from annoyed to armed.

Outer defense breach.

“Everybody down!” Valeria’s voice cracks over the radio. “West wall compromised. Repeat, west wall compromised. Multiple Dead redirected toward the outer defenses. Smoke on north access. Visibility low.”

Redirected.

Dakota’s eyes find mine across the garage. She heard it, too.

Kaito is already moving toward her. Ewan pushes off the truck and I cross the bay in three long strides, but Dakota doesn’t wait for any of us to form a wall around her. She steps toward the open doors. Of course she fucking does.

“Dakota,” I call, and she looks over her shoulder.

I swallow back the first words that rise.

Stay back. Let us handle it. Get behind me.

All those easy, useless things that won’t do me a damned bit of good. The bond in my chest burns with them, but I don’t say them out loud.

Instead, I ask, “Where do you want us, Darlin’?”

For half a second, with sirens howling and radios crackling around us, her face changes. Not soft, exactly, but something very close to it. Soft’s cousin. Twice removed.

“Right next to me,” she answers, knife already in hand.

My chest locks. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ewan appears on her right, gun in hand and headphones hanging around his neck now. “I’ll be honest, I was kind ofhoping for heroically in front, but next to is also very lush. Very romantic and shit.”

“Don’t make me regret bonding you first,” she sighs, no bite in it but a sternness that isn’t coming from annoyance toward the Welshman. More that she’s zoned in on her surroundings and doesn’t have the energy left to properly spar with him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ewan chimes, right before he replaces the headphone over his ear without the music playing.

Kaito reaches her left and says, “Medical will be targeted.”

Dakota’s jaw tightens. “Because of the blood.”

“Because of you,” Xeon corrects from the doorway. His voice is quiet, but it still splits through the garage loud enough that we hear him.

Dakota cuts her eyes to him and, for one second, the missing thing between them strains so hard I can almost feel the shape of it through her. Almost.

Then Valeria’s voice crackles through the radio again. “Smoke charges near medical. Chemical masks are down. South corridor blocked. Dead in the outer yard. Non-combatants to shelter two.”

Too much. Too spread. Too many places all at once. Haven Ridge doesn’t feel like a compound under attack right now. It feels like a pocket being turned inside out.

Dakota’s expression goes cold. Not scared, but calculating.

“Noise west,” she says. “Zeds north. Smoke near medical. Chemicals near Omega housing.”

“That doesn’t sound random,” Ewan points out, jaw tightening.

“It’s not,” she says. “It’s designed.”

I look past the garage doors. The evening has turned red under the flashing emergency lights. Smoke billows low around the medical wing, thick and pale. Figures are running between buildings, some armed and some rattled with panic. Gunfire cracks near the west wall while the groans of Rots start building behind it, drawn by some sharp, shrill mechanical whine rising and falling in the distance.

A lure.