Page 213 of Immune

Maine.

Not your brother.

Careful again. So careful that it hurts.

My brother.

Not the hat, and not the ghost, and not the wound.

My brother.

Alive enough to be classified.

Alive enough to be dangerous.

Alive enough to be missing.

I look down at the photo again. The image is grainy and awful and beautiful. A knife made of paper.

“Copy it,” I demand.

Hale counters, “Absolutely not.”

I take the page out of the folder and every guard shifts again. Valeria makes a strangled sound that might actually be the last thread of her patience snapping and twisting into a noose.

Mercer doesn’t even bother to try and stop me.

I fold the page once and slide it inside my jacket, only for Hale to point out with a lowered voice, “That is classified material.”

I look at him. “No. That’s my family.”

The room goes utterly still there, and for once, no one corrects me.

Smart.

Stepping back from the table, I test my knee before I put my full weight on it. Pain explodes in the joint but I swallow it. Pain is simple. Pain doesn’t ask me to hope, which is the problem. Hope is a cracked door in a burning building. Hope tells you to run back inside.

Kaito turns his head slightly, watching me from the corner of his eye. His mouth makes the shape of my name, too quiet for anyone else to catch.

Dakota.

Not Kota.

Dakota. A truth he doesn’t use carelessly. A truth spoken low enough that it only belongs to us.

I meet his gaze. There isn’t a single command in it. No don’t. No wait. Only the calm and steady restraint of an Alpha who knows wanting is not surrender and protection isn’t ownership.

Fletcher says then, “We need a route.”

We.

My throat tightens.

Ewan lifts his hands toward the headphones still around my neck, and I remove them and offer them back to him as he says, “And weapons. Unless we’re going to insult Vector to death, which, personally, I’m more than willing to try. I just think the success rate on that plan might be a little shaky.”

Xeon says, “We’ll need information.”

I look at all of them one by one.