Page 308 of Immune

Hale’s eyes sharpen from where he’s sitting. “Are you saying she can control the infection?”

“No,” Mercer answers immediately. “What I am saying is that I suspect her body might be preventing possible progression. More than that, it might actually be altering whatever viral component is present into a stable state.”

“Which means cure research,” Hale is quick to note.

And there it is, folks. Hope dressed in steel boots and stepping on my fucking throat.

Maine stands so fast his chair slams into the wall behind him. With an Alpha snarl I’ve only seen a handful of times growing up, he growls, “Absolutely fucking not.”

Fletcher reaches for the back of his shirt, but Maine doesn’t sit back down.

“No one is cutting pieces off my sister just because you heard the word cure and lost your fucking minds. No one is touching her,” he warns harshly.

“No one said that,” Valeria says cautiously.

“Not yet, you didn’t. Not fucking yet,” Maine snaps back, and the woman flinches back at the venom in his voice.

Hale’s gaze hardens. “If her blood can help stop people turning—”

“She has a name,” Ewan interrupts the commander, his voice low and missing the usual joking hue to it. Welsh edges now roughened by pain and anger.

Hale looks over at him.

Ewan doesn’t even blink. “Start using it.”

My chest tightens. Ewan’s bond is hot enough to burn, and Kaito’s is worse. His isn’t hot or loud. It’s just one dark, steady thought without words.

Say the word, and we leave.

I don’t say it, but not because I don’t want to. Because if I run now, they’ll chase the idea of me that much harder. I already know how this shit works. NOVAC has already taught me that without ever once meeting me. People fear what they don’t understand, but they always use what they think they do.

I look over at Mercer. “Say the rest.”

He exhales.

“You’re not simply surviving whatever NOVAC put into motion,” he says quietly. “I strongly believe your body might be stabilizing it.”

For a weighted moment, no one speaks. Mercer’s words land all kinds of wrong in my brain, but not because they don’t make sense and not because I don’t understand them. I do. I understand enough.

The thing in me might not be gone. It might be sitting there, quiet until it’s not.

I curl my hand under the table, and Ewan feels it through the bond. His fear hits bright and quick, but he holds himself still. Kaito’s comes a little slower, a dark pressure building under my ribs. Not pushing, just bracing.

Mercer continues, a little more carefully now. “Your father’s notes suggested he was searching for exactly this. Not sterilizing immunity. Stabilization. A way to keep the virus present but non-progressive. If your body is doing that naturally, or because of something done before you were even born, then yes, your blood could be important.”

“Blood?” Maine asks.

Ellis points a gloved finger at him. “Simmer down. No one is taking anything from anyone without explicit consent. So sit the hell down before I sedate the room in alphabetical order.”

Maine sits, just barely.

I stare at Mercer. “Am I contagious?”

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“Can I turn?”

“I… don’t know.”