Page 47 of Immune

“I’ll have a word with it again. Looks like the first time didn’t have much of an impact,” he says, trying and failing to wipe away his smile.

I give him a look he can’t really make out from behind the bandana and demand, “Maybe try using harsher words or something.”

The smile remains in his eyes even as his mouth gradually settles, my words having the opposite effect, and I hate it. I fucking despise it, and not because it’s ugly. It’s not. Not even close. It’s because, for one single moment, I actually forget to be scared of it. I forget he’s an Alpha, forget he could pose the biggest threat to my life, and forget that this man has found me twice and learned my name without my say-so.

Pond Zed groans to his reflection again, distracting me with his half-swallowed moss- and weed-covered body, his head turning slightly toward us thanks to our voices. The brief moment of normalcy quickly folds in on itself, as small and fragile as a wet noodle. Carefully, I take two steps back, gesturing for Kaito to follow my lead without looking at him.

He does, because of course he does.

There are old picnic tables near the path, strangled by more moss and weeds. One has something carved into the wood. The lettering is a little swollen from the rain, and I only catch the middle of it as we pass by.

LOVE YOU FOREVER.

I tear my gaze away before my brain can start conjuring memories I’d rather leave buried and forgotten. After all, forever doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. Forever is something people would say when the world still let them believe long stretches of time were a possibility. When people actually made plans that stretched past dinner. When someone could write the word love into a picnic table and assume it would still be there the summer after, still catching the sunlight, still holding hands,still holding on to whatever naive, soft, and stupid thing that made them carve the word into the table in the first place.

The table is still here, but something tells me the people who wrote on it aren’t. I suppose, in one way, their love will last forever so long as the table continues to win.

I shake my head, realizing my thoughts are turning stupid. A usual sign that I’m growing overtired, which is less than ideal.

Adjusting my backpack strap, the damaged one digging awkwardly into my shoulder blade in a way that makes my injured arm ache, I continue toward the entrance gate. The supplies from the clinic bump against my side with every step I take, along with the suppressants, trashed blockers, suture threads, tape, and iodine. It’s not enough to justify everything we just went through, but it’s a little more than I had yesterday.

Just as I’m wallowing in my annoyance for everything that’s happened today, a mechanical roar rips through the sky, distant but audible enough that everything in me freezes. I catch movement from the Pond Zed as it lifts its head toward the sky, just as a bird explodes from the tree in a flurry of feathers and screeches, wings beating hard against the damp morning air.

The sound grows louder, cutting through the clouds in rough, uneven bursts that make me frown. Because that’s a sound I haven’t heard in six years, but I recognize it instantly.

A helicopter.

Kaito looks up at the very same time I do, just in time to watch a dark shape chop across the sky above the apartment blocks. It flies low enough that the windows shudder as it passes, the surviving windows shattering and raining glass shards everywhere. It’s flying all kinds of wrong, too low and far too unsteady, with smoke billowing from the tail in dark, ragged ribbons that choke the sky.

One side dips, then corrects itself, only to dip again. It’s damaged, that much is clear. Desperate, barely clinging to life. My heartbeat batters the caverns of my ribcage real fucking hard, and I can’t help but watch it like I’m seeing a new species of life form as it flies overhead.

I watch as the helicopter staggers over the rooftops, blades slicing through the air, engine sputtering so violently that it sounds like the sky itself is choking on the smoke coming from the tail end. And for a single, impossible second, I actually forget about the Zeds. I forget about the pain in my knee, Kaito standing only two steps behind me, and every single rule I’ve built my existence around.

Because a helicopter means people.

People mean danger. It means grubby hands, and small cages, and Alphas with way too much interest in things they claim are owed to them.

However, a helicopter could mean supplies. It could mean medicine, weapons, maps, radio gear, flares, antibiotics. Hell, I’d take fresh batteries if they had them. They could even have blockers.

That last thought stabs right through my chest and tears out the blade without finesse, because blockers change everything. Literally everything. Even ruined or half-used ones are valuable enough to risk lives. I’d even take ones in packs that are dated so old that it feels like the universe is mocking me. Because as it stands right now, my stash is running too thin for me to be comfortable with, and my body keeps shouting from the rooftops every single time a drop of fear enters my bloodstream. My heat is literally simmering under my skin, a building storm waiting for the perfect opportunity to ruin my goddamn life.

I’ve survived six years by making myself small and quiet, hard to notice, hard to scent, and hard to want. But my bodydoesn’t give a single shit about strategy anymore. It has its own calendar, its own rules, and I’m just here for the ride. And with every packless heat I’m forced to endure, I lose a little bit of myself every time. Every dose of blockers I swallow buys me time, only for the bastard things to steal it back later with interest. The old tablets sometimes make me shaky, and sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t touch the sides, and sometimes they drag my body kicking and screaming through silence while leaving the rest of me gritting my teeth and praying to a God I don’t believe in for it to stop.

But if that helicopter has even one decent medical kit, even one sealed pack or radio that could tell me where to go, it’s absolutely worth considering.

But worth considering is not the same as worth dying for. And, unfortunately, I’ve made a very long and terrible career out of not knowing the difference until I’m already balls-deep in the problem.

A flash suddenly splits from the roof of the nearest apartment block, right before the sound of gunfire slots itself into my brain. Not just one shot, but several, and I can do nothing but gape as the helicopter jerks unnaturally.

Kaito curses under his breath just as the engine hollers, right before it suddenly drops out of the sky. Not straight down, either. Worse. The machine tilts sideways, tail spinning, blades clipping the corner of an apartment roof with a shrill screech of metal so loud it seems to split the morning open. Glass explodes from the upper floors right before the helicopter disappears behind the apartments.

It’s only a second later that the crash hits, and the ground shudders under my feet mere seconds before the thick cloud of dark smoke billows into the air beyond the buildings. And then, for a moment, the entire park grows eerily silent. Hell, even thePond Zed seems to pause, like it’s offended by the way his crisis has been interrupted.

It doesn’t last long, of course, because a split second later, every dead thing nearby suddenly turns toward the sound. My stomach sinks in an instant, and the words slip out of my mouth in a whisper before I can stop them. “No. Shit, no.”

Kaito looks down at me and very quietly asks, “No? No what?”

But I’m already moving, muttering to myself as I run as silently as a bum knee will allow. “Absolutely not. Terrible idea. Stupid, suicidal, ten out of ten the worst decision ever. Godawful survival instincts.”