Page 222 of Immune

I don’t even care.

The man’s hand snags onto my jacket, not grabbing to hurt, only reacting. My body doesn’t know the difference anymore, though. My knife is already in my hand, and I twist harder under his arm and slam my knee into the side of his thigh hard enough that his leg buckles.

Pain explodes through my own bad knee in retaliation. Rude and unnecessary if you ask me. Incredibly on brand for the shitshow of a day I’m having.

The guy recovers far too quickly. Even hurt, even bleeding, and even with his face gray under the harsh lights, he turns with the kind of instinct I know all too well. It’s not clean training, and it’s definitely not soldier-pretty. It’s an ugly kind of survival. Street survival. The kind that’s only learned when hesitation costs skin, blood, or bone.

His elbow sails toward my shoulder, but I duck.

His hand reaches for my wrist, and I let him take it, using his grip against him. I step forward instead of back, and the movement surprises him.

Good.

Surprise is a gift that I accept with both hands and several emotionally unstable problems.

I jam my elbow into his ribs and he makes a broken kind of sound, his grip loosening, and I wrench my wrist free right before hooking my foot behind his ankle. He goes down like a ton of bricks, landing hard. But not because he’s weak. It’s because he's hurt. Because he’s tired. Because I’m smaller, faster, angrier, and currently powered by six years of unresolved grief and whatever unholy chemical soup concoction my body has decided to cook fear into.

He hits the floor with enough force to force the medics into scattering back.

I drop with him, one knee to his chest, knife to his throat, and everything comes to a startling stop. Not slowly, but instantly. The room goes completely still around us, all white light, red alarm pulsing, and held breaths.

My blade rests under the guy’s jaw, close enough that one wrong swallow would brush against steel. He doesn’t move, which is the smartest thing he’s done up to this point. Finally, someone in this place has developed survival instincts.

His breath scrapes under me, rough and wet at the edges. Blood is darkening one side of his shirt, spreading under myknee, warm enough that it’s seeping through the fabric. His hands hover near the floor, palms half-open, not fighting now. Not yet.

With his face turned away from me, most of his face is shadowed, aided by the damp strands of pale hair and a smear of blood across his cheek. He smells like antiseptic, rainwater, sweat, blood, and something else my brain refuses to touch with a ten-foot barge pole.

Something green.

Something impossible.

Something buried under six years of dirt and grime.

“Don’t,” someone says from behind me.

Fletcher, maybe.

Hale, maybe.

Hell, could be the entire world for all the attention I’m paying.

I press the knife that little bit closer, and the man goes completely still.

“Kota,” Mercer says carefully, tone soft as if he’s speaking to a cornered animal who might lash out at any second. “Look at him.”

No.

Absolutely not.

Because looking is exactly how things become real, and I don’t need real. Real is overrated. Real is bodies in bathrooms and empty doorways and promises that rot long before they come home. Real can go fuck itself.

“He moved first,” I say.

My voice comes out all wrong. It doesn’t sound like me. It’s too calm, too far away.

A medic close to the table speaks with the furious bravery of someone who clearly wants to die today. “He was trying to stop you from getting between him and the bag.”

“That was a terrible decision,” I mutter.