Page 209 of Immune

Mercer turns the page. “He’s listed as a field consultant attached to cure-response work. Primarily outside sample recovery, unstable marker tracking, and counter-Vector supply routes.”

Cure response.

Marker tracking.

Counter-Vector.

Maine is alive.

Maine is dead.

Maine is alive.

Maine is something else.

All three possibilities are clawing relentlessly through me all at once.

“Where?” I ask.

Hale finally chimes in, telling me, “That information is restricted.”

And would you look at that. That’s bad choice number three.

The room temperature changes. Or maybe it’s just me. My scent splits loose, wild honey and rain flashing sharp through disinfectant. Not soft and certainly not sweet. It’s storm and hive and every bitten-down scream I’ve swallowed for the past six years.

A guard inhales and Xeon moves. Not fast or threatening, just closer, frost and steel slipping between me and the room’s sudden attention. Clean. Sharp. A blade held flat rather than pointed.

Fletcher steps toward the door, not blocking my exit but claiming the path I’ve already mapped out in my head. Kaito remains between me and the rifle. Ewan points at the headphones around my neck again, but this time his other hand hovers near his own empty belt like he momentarily forgets they took his weapons and his body hasn’t fully accepted that insult.

Hale notices all of it.

Good.

He should.

“You don’t want to keep that information from me,” I say, my voice quiet and filled with a deadly warning. I like it better that way, because quiet means the knives are awake and freshly sharpened.

Hale’s stare hardens. “I have an entire compound to protect.”

“And I have one person.”

The words land like bone hitting metal.

One person.

Not brother, not family, not the sole reason I survived long enough to become the person I am today.

The Alphas around me grow still, but not because they didn’t know Maine mattered. But maybe because now they might understand they were looking at the wrong part of the wounds I’ve failed to hide from them.

Maine isn’t a memory. He’s the foundation. He’s everything I built after him that sits all crooked and wonky because the ground disappeared and never returned.

To his credit, Mercer tries, “Commander.”

“No,” Hale snaps. “Field-team locations remain classified. If Vector has tracking equipment, if this marker is active, if we’re right about who this is, then sending them running blind puts every external unit at risk.”

If we’re right about who this is.

I smile under the bandana and it feels horrible on my face. “Who do you think I am?”