Page 335 of Immune

Zeds pour through the breach between us, a wave of bodies and rotting hands and snapping jaws. There are too many of them. Too many.

The men holding me yank hard and my boot slips.

No.

No, no, no.

Suddenly, concrete scrapes across my back as they drag me down through the hatch. My bad arm hits the edge hard enough to turn my vision white. I claw at the frame, nails splitting, black polish cracking over blood.

For one breath, I catch the lip of the hatch.

I hold.

I fucking hold, because I have survived six years alone, because Maine told me to keep my hair hidden and my scent dead and the doors locked, because my body belongs to me, because I didn’t let Davis take me, because I didn’t let NOVAC turn me into a number, and because I will not let Vector turn me into inventory.

A gloved hand stamps down on my fingers and pain bursts through the joints hot and bright. My grip loosens and the hatch slams down above me right before darkness swallows the smoke. The world becomes nothing more than concrete, boots, chemical stink, and the brutal drag of my body down a narrow tunnel.

The bonds stretch.

Ewan screams through his until it feels like smoke shredding my lungs apart.

Kaito’s bond goes sharp enough to cut.

Fletcher’s pulls so hard I feel the essence of him trying to stand between me and the dark even from too far away.

Three bonds. Three voices without words.

Three hands reaching through a wall they can’t break through fast enough.

And under it all, the quiet place splits even wider.

No frost.

No steel.

No thread to follow.

Only silence where Xeon should be.

And that hurts so much worse.

The drug drags me under inch by inch. I try to fight it. I try so fucking hard. I fight until my body stops obeying properly, until my head lolls, and until the tunnel lights smudge into one long ugly streak.

The last thing I hear is not the man telling them to hurry.

It’s not the Zeds above.

It’s not the hatch sealing me underground like some fucked-up tomb I can’t crawl out from.

It’s one of my bonded Alphas roaring my name through the bond so violently that I feel it in the depths of my soul.

Then another.

Then another.

Three bonds screaming, and one silence answering.

And then Vector takes me into the dark.