Page 353 of Immune

Something cold presses at the inside of my skull.

NOVAC.

It waits there, familiar now in a way I hate. Distance. Pulse. Threat. Remove. That old rhythm tries to assemble itself in my brain, smooth and merciless, offering me the kind of survival that simply costs too much.

I don’t want that. No.

No, no, no.

Not like Davis.

Not gone.

Not blank.

Not a blade clutched in someone else’s hand.

I breathe through my teeth, chanting in my brain like a damned crazy person.

My name is Dakota.

My body is mine.

My rage is mine.

The cold doesn’t leave, but this time, it listens. That alone should terrify me, and it does. But I use it anyway, because terror and choice have the ability to sit within the same body. Apparently, so can three Alpha bonds, trauma, chemicalsuppressants, and a deeply concerning desire to punch a man with clean gloves in his stupid, wrinkled-ass face.

A siren howls from somewhere outside, and then another. Then the sound changes. Not as a warning, but more like a calling.

Ewan’s head snaps up, his cracked headphones shifting around his neck as he listens past the gunfire, past the alarms, and past all of the screaming. Then a slow, vicious smile pulls at his mouth. It’s not happy and it’s not amused. That smile right there bleeds strategy.

“What?” I rasp.

He lets go of me only long enough to snatch a radio from the dead guard’s belt. “Their sound system is connected to the fast Rot cages.”

The leader’s face changes. It’s a tiny change, very fast, but it’s enough. I grin with bloodied teeth and a crazed look in my slightly unfocused eyes. “Uh-oh.”

Ewan speaks into the radio in a passable imitation of the guard’s rough tone, putting on an accent that probably would have made me laugh before the world ended. “Containment failure, east row. All units divert.”

The radio erupts.

“What failure?”

“East row?”

“Which cage?”

Ewan looks at the control panel by the door before he says, “Dealer’s choice, I guess.”

Then he slams his elbow down onto the panel and red lights burst across the wall. Outside, something shrieks. Not human but not completely dead either. A Runner cage alarm chirps, stutters, then screams, and the compound answers.

Metal slams.

Chains rattle.

Men shout.

Then the infected start to howl like someone rang a dinner bell under the full moon.