Page 311 of Immune

FORTY-THREE

DAKOTA

The conference room door closes behind me, and I immediately hate the hallway for still existing. Because it fucking shouldn’t. I mean, after sitting in a room like that, the world should have the decency to at least pause or something. Hold time still. Maybe collapse a little if it’s feeling generous. Maybe let the stupid, annoying fluorescent lights flicker dramatically so everyone knows something shitty just crawled right under my skin and burrowed into my bones all comfy and at home.

Instead, Haven Ridge has the nerve to keep moving. Boots continue to scrape against concrete. Radios crackle with static. Someone down the hall curses at a jammed supply cart.

Life just straight up goes about its business with a typical lack of manners as if my brain isn’t aching and my world isn’t currently tilting on its axis.

What. The. Fuck.

I, however, just stand here with Mercer’s words still stuck to me like very stubborn sticky tape. The kind that’s made of superglue.

Immune.

Stabilizing.

Blood.

Cure.

Potential.

And you know what the worst part is? It’s that none of those words are even gross on their own. I can’t even call them ugly. Because hope isn’t ugly. A cure certainly isn’t ugly. Seeing a future that isn’t so bleak as the one we were facing before isn’t ugly. But if you put them in the wrong mouth, I know they’llsuddenly sound like locks sliding into place in a door I won’t be able to reopen.

Ewan still stands on my right, close enough that his smoke and clove bond keeps tickling against my ribs. Kaito stands to my left, silent and hurting, the fresh pull of his bite sitting low in my chest. Maine’s walking ahead of us like he is looking for a reason to swing at someone. Or kick a desk over all dramatically and shit. Xeon is currently drifting at the rear, quiet as ever, his attention very much like a blade that has been laid flat against the air.

And Fletcher? That guy still stands behind me. He’s not crowding or touching. Just there in all of his cedar and leather glory. A warm wall I haven’t even asked to lean against. Yet.

“Medical,” Ellis says from somewhere beside Kaito. “Now. All of you. I swear to God, if one more person bleeds on my floor and then tries to do this stupid emotionally processing shit instead of sitting down, I will start tranquilizing people based on height. You can emotionally process your shit then.”

“That feels strangely targeted,” Ewan mutters, eyeing the little redhead like she just told him he’s turning blue and round.

“It is targeted. There’s nothing strange about it.”

“I’m wounded.”

“You’re dramatic.”

He gasps with, what do you know, a dramatic slap of his hand against his chest. “I’m Welsh, actually.”

“That’s the same thing,” Ellis grouches.

Under different circumstances, I probably would have laughed at that. Or done something close enough to a laugh that it would count. Maybe a puff of air out of my nose or something. But right now, all I can manage is a stare at the opposite wall while I do my very best to ignore the way my skin feels borrowed. Like I’m just looking after it for the time being, until whatever lives inside me is ready to wear it like some fancy fur coat.

Fletcher moves closer. It’s not by much, just enough that his scent breaks through the haunted room still living in my head. Then he says, “You need air.”

It’s not a question, but it certainly isn’t an order either. That’s a little fact I hold carefully in both hands, scared it might shatter if I move it wrong.

I turn my head toward him and ask, “I do?”

His stormy blue eyes settle on mine, the scar on his cheek pulling slightly when his jaw tightens. “Yeah, darlin’. You do.”

That word again. Darlin’. Scar and his stupid Southern mouth. It should probably annoy me more than it really does. I just don’t have it in me to keep pretending right now.

I glance toward Maine. He’s currently arguing with Hale by the conference room door, finger pointed at the stone of a man and jaw tight. Kaito is currently being herded by Ellis toward medical like he’s a sheep who escaped the pen. Ewan keeps watching me like every step I take away from him costs him something. And Xeon meets my eyes only once, then looks toward the side hall very deliberately.

The message is clear. There’s an opening right there. A way out. And it doesn’t even surprise me that he sees it. Of course he sees it. Fletcher does too, but he doesn’t take it for me. He simply waits.