Page 330 of Immune

Before her pack made it impossible.

I already know who it was. I already fucking know.

Damn it, there’s no time. No time to sort through that kind of betrayal. No time for the fact that someone inside Haven Ridge didn’t only open the door, but they fucking pointed right at me and said, “That’s what you’re after, come and get it.”

I rise from behind the crates and fire twice. The first bullet catches a Vector soldier in the chest. The second hits another in the neck and he drops like a sack of shit, hands flying up to the blood now pumping through his fingers.

I don’t even feel bad. I don’t feel anything other than the brutal mathematics of survival.

How many bullets? Three left.

How many men? Too many.

How many exits? One hatch behind me and one service lane ahead. One wall of smoke and Zeds between me and the people shouting for me.

Between you and me, these numbers aren’t looking too hot. They’re actually looking really fucking bad. Very, very bad.

Something small rolls across the ground a half second later.

A canister.

Eyes widening, I kick it right back before it even stops moving, sending it sailing away from me. It detonates under a Vector soldier’s boots, bursting into a dense cloud of yellow-gray gas. He jerks away from it, coughing and hacking up his lungs, but the others don’t. Of course they don’t, because their masks are sealed tight. Their goggles aren’t fogging like I’d expect. Their bodies move like they’ve been practicing this exact extraction a hundred times before like some fucked-up apocalypse dance recital.

Extraction.

That word slams into me with all the force of a gorilla on steroids, because that’s exactly what this is. It’s not an attack or a breach. It’s a full-on extraction that has been planned down to the fine detail. They’re not here to take over Haven Ridge. They’re not here to steal food or weapons or medicine or territory.

They’re here for me.

A Zed crashes into the smoke to my left, guided in by the gunfire and that really horrible screaming lure somewhere past the fence. Its rotting body hits one of the masked men from the side, jaw snapping and hands grabbing. The soldier doesn’t even panic. He simply drives a short spoke into its temple and shoves the corpse away without even really looking at it fully.

Efficient.

Practiced.

Bored.

My skin crawls as if a thousand ants have wriggled under my flesh. These people have fought Zeds before. They’ve taken Omegas through Zeds before. And it couldn’t be any clearer than it is now.

My stomach churns and the next weapon they lift isn’t pointed at my head. It’s pointed directly at my chest.

A dart gun.

Fuck.

I fire first and the bullet shoots into his hand. He curses in pain, the gun clattering to the ground. The sound carries over to me despite the chaos, beating the thundering of my heartbeat in my ears. I lunge for it, because if they want to drug me that badly, then I’ll absolutely want to know how the hell they manage it. My fingers brush the barrel before another shock round catches my bad arm.

Motherfuckers.

Pain detonates with the brightest flare of white-hot agony. It’s all-consuming, locking my body down so tight that my teeth clench together so tight it makes my gums ache. The pistol slips from my hand and, for one horrible second, I’m right back in the hallway with Davis. Not because of the electricity, but because of the way my body goes cold under it. Because of that terrible moment where my skin stopped feeling like skin, my thoughts sharpened into weapons, and something inside me reached for the wheel and swerved left.

Distance.

Pulse.

Weapon.

No.