Page 211 of Immune

Mercer’s eyes remain on mine as he says, “You wanted answers. This is how we get one.”

I flip the page and the words blur. I force them still, reading over them with an urgency I can feel all the way down to my bones.

FIELD UNIT M-7

Last check-in: twelve days prior.

Route: East corridor/Red Line tunnels/Blackwater relay.

Objective: recover dormant NOVAC stabilizer components and locate surviving O’Reilly private notes.

Team Lead: M. O’Reilly.

My heart literally tries to exit my body through my throat, choking me with emotion I don’t want to feel.

M. O’Reilly.

It’s not proof, yet it’s proof enough. Enough to ruin me.

Under the name is a grainy printed photo clipped to the paper. The quality is shitty. Black and white. A man half-turned away from the camera, face partially obscured by a hood and scarf.

Pale hair.

Sharp jaw.

Scar through the left eyebrow.

Older. Thinner. Alive.

My hand touches the photo before I can stop it, and the paper wrinkles under my fingertips.

Maine.

The roof disappears all over again.

Suddenly, I’m twelve years old and the shithead is stealing the last cookie from the plate, holding it over my head like his height gives him the moral victory.

I’m sixteen and he’s painting my nails black on the bathroom floor while Mom cries in the bedroom and Dad doesn’t come back home until dawn.

I’m twenty-two and I’ve carried his hat through six years of dead streets because grief needed a shape and I chose fabric over bones.

I’m here, and he’s there. Somewhere. Maybe.

Maybe is the cruelest word ever to be written in the dictionary.

A hand appears close to the edge of the table, not touching, just there. Xeon. His voice is quiet as he instructs softly, “Look at the floor.”

I don’t want to.

I do.

White tile. Scuff close to my boot. Blood drying on Kaito’s sleeve in my peripheral vision. Fletcher by the door. Ewan’s headphones still wrapped around my neck. Kaito between me and the room.

“Breathe once,” Xeon says.

“No.”

“Then stand once.”