Page 275 of Immune

Ewan’s eyes meet mine. There’s no trust in his face now. No easy joke waiting on the tip of his tongue. Whatever joke he might have tried to conjure dies before it can even form. Because he feels it too. The wrongness. The careful structure of a trap pretending to be an order.

And we’re about to walk into it anyway, because the only thing worse than a trap you can see is the trap waiting for you after you refuse the first one.

We step into the hallway together.

The air outside is colder than Ewan’s room, harsher against my skin. The compound feels brighter out here. Too bright. Cameras sit black-eyed and blinking in the corners. Doors sit closed, but not all the way. A crack here, a shadow there, the entire place acting like it’s not listening to every sound.

I keep my shoulder close to Ewan while the man walks ahead of us like he’s expecting obedience from people he has never bothered to know.

“Medical is the other way,” Ewan decides to point out as if we weren’t already aware this shit is just a lie wearing a trench coat.

The man doesn’t stop. “Temporary checkpoint.”

My hand tightens around my knife, but Ewan’s doesn't move. The bond burns hotter, though, when he asks, “Temporary where? Narnia?”

No answer.

Not even a bad one that we could have mocked.

The hallway stretches ahead of us, all tiles that morph into concrete and old light and the sour smell of recycled air. We pass one junction, and then another, and my skin prickles with every step.

“Stop,” I say.

The man does.

Too quickly.

Behind us, a door opens. I don’t turn right away, because I already know. The air changes when a trap stops pretending, finally flinging the trench coat away like a ridiculous villain with too much dramatic flair.

Two men step out behind us, both with shock batons low at their sides.

Not guards.

Not official.

Not strangers either. Because I saw those fuckers standing behind Davis only yesterday, guarding the hallway like dogs waiting to be praised by their master.

My pulse slows.

Funny how that happens. Fear doesn't always make me shake. Sometimes fear gets very, very polite.

Ewan exhales only once through his nose before he murmurs, “Yeah. Thought so.”

The bond flashes bright with alarm, and that’s before Davis steps out from the shadow of a half-open supply room. Of course he does, because every villain needs a theatrical entrance, right?

His smile arrives first, then the rest of him follows after. “Morning, Little Omega.”

My stomach drops.

Ewan doesn’t move in front of me and, if I’m being totally honest with myself, I love him a little for that. I hate that I even have the room to know it, but it sits under my ribs without any regard for my sanity. He stays beside me, shoulder close, hand loose, and ready. Not blocking my choices, and not turning me into something to be hidden behind his body.

“Davis,” I say blandly. “I’d say this is a surprise, but your dramatic timing has all the subtlety of a corpse in a bathtub.”

His smile thins.

One of the men next to him raises his baton and the one in front does the same.

Not guns. Shock batons. Close-range weapons. Control weapons. Tools for bodies they want to keep alive.