Page 174 of Immune

He glances over at me. “Wait, what? Why?”

“Because the universe will hear you and give us a moldy couch full of claws and teeth,” I tell him.

Fletcher grunts from where he’s helping the pilot through the gap between two garages. “She ain’t wrong.”

“Thank you,” I mutter.

“Didn’t say I liked it.”

“Look at that. I didn’t ask.”

Kaito is walking too straight again. I notice because blood has this funny way of making itself everyone’s business when it keeps leaking out of someone who refuses to sit down and reconsider all of his life choices. His face is paler under the grime, though I didn’t think it could reach a paler complexion.Thankfully, it’s not fainting pale. Not yet, anyway. But the tightness around his mouth has sharpened into something that makes my fingers twitch toward the medical kit I don’t currently have enough time or safety to use.

And I hate that.

The twitch, that is.

Not him being wounded.

Well, no. I actually hate that, too. For practical reasons. Obviously.

We cut through the second garage and duck behind a row of storage units that sit at the back of the block. Fletcher is leading us now, but he keeps looking back before choosing which way to turn, giving me information with small jerks of his chin instead of providing instructions.

Two Vector men hold the road, there’s still a rifle on the balcony, and there’s noise behind us. Zeds are pouring out of the tower like someone kicked over and stomped all over a rotten anthill. The compound route has been thoroughly trashed, and every fact arrives stripped down and useful. I’d enjoy his new communication style more if we weren’t currently being hunted through a concrete maze by organized bastards with Omega suppressant gear and a possible blood marker attached to my body like a blinking sign reading:

Congratulations! You’re the problem, stupid.

My skin feels too hot. Not heat kind of hot, but stress kind of hot. It’s a pain kind of hot. Too many scents under too much fabric. There’s smoke in my throat. Runner blood is drying stiff on my sleeve. My old arm wound is throbbing in tandem with my pulse and my knee is aching with every step I take. Fletcher’s blood is carrying under it all. The pilot’s fever-soured sweat.

Alpha. Alpha, Alpha, Alpha.

Four of them.

Too close.

Too safe.

Too dangerous.

Too much.

I pull my bandana higher, but it does next to nothing. The air still tastes metallic and my blockers continue to sit bitterly in my system, weak and old and trying their very best like tired little soldiers armed with sporks and mops.

A Zed suddenly slams into the garage door behind us and the metal booms loudly. I flinch, though it’s not much. Just enough for Xeon to notice. Because of course he does. Apparently quiet people are not actually minding their own business like one would assume. They’re out here collecting evidence.

He doesn’t say anything, and that’s the first good thing he does.

The second is when we reach the drainage channel and the world just instantly gets worse. Ewan was right. There is open space past the garages, but it’s not the neat little escape tunnel my battered little brain had envisioned. It’s a concrete flood channel that runs behind the residential block, half-choked with weeds and old trash, cutting between the garage line and the compound’s outer district.

A narrow service bridge crosses it roughly sixty feet ahead. Between us and the bridge, three Zeds are dragging themselves through the weeds. Past the bridge, Vector shouts. Not close yet, but close enough.

Fletcher looks at the channel, then the bridge, then the barely conscious pilot between him and Kaito, who is annoyingly helping. “Bridge is exposed.”

Ewan tilts his head, listening. “Drainage channel goes under the road.”

I crouch by the edge and peer down. The channel drops maybe eight feet. Could be ten. Hard to tell through weeds and shadows. A trickle of dirty water slides along the center, shining under the weak morning light like oil trying and failing to look pretty. The slope is steep but climbable if you’re not half-dead, fevered, bleeding, or cursed by the collected bad decisions of everyone around you.

So, naturally, that is our route.