Page 334 of Immune

The western gate.

Zeds groan.

Gunfire tears open the smoke.

One of the men above me looks back and mutters, “We’re out of time.”

“Move her.”

I slam my heel into someone’s shin and he curses. Another tiny victory before I’m hauled into the air and onto someone’s shoulder.

The service hatch gapes open behind the generator shed, a black gaping mouth in the ground where there shouldn’t have been one. Hell, I didn’t even know it existed. They did, though. Of course they did. Because someone handed them the damned map tied with a pretty ribbon.

And that thought leads me straight to Commander fucking Hale.

The thought burns through the drug for one clear second.

Hale, who stood in that conference room and looked at my blood like a problem wearing skin.

Hale, who kept saying duty.

Hale, who missed the Purge Event and only appeared after the fallout.

Hale, who understands routes, gates, patrols, and hatches.

Hale, who thought command meant the right to decide what one woman’s body owed the world.

I don’t have proof, but I don’t need it to hate him. I don’t need it to know my instincts are screaming at me that he’s behind this shitshow.

They drag me toward the hatch but I fight. I hook my boot against the frame and hold.

One second.

Two.

A hand claws at my ankle and I kick it off. Someone punches my thigh, but I still hold.

Then, through a split in the smoke, I see Fletcher. There’s blood on his mouth, his rifle is up, and he’s coming for me like the world itself has offended him.

“Fletcher!”

His head snaps toward me, and for one brutal second, I think he’ll make it. Ewan is behind him, face twisted into something terrified and furious. Kaito cuts through bodies like the world has narrowed to everything standing between me and him.

And Xeon.

Xeon comes straight for me, fast and silent and deadly, frost and steel in every line of his body. My heart lurches toward him, but not through a bond. Through the empty place where one should be.

My hand reaches out before I can stop it.

Not for Fletcher.

Not for Ewan.

Not for Kaito.

But for the silence.

For him.