Page 65 of Immune

The pilot coughs.

I point at the bastard. “See. He agrees with me.”

Fletcher mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “Christ Almighty.” Very Southern. Very cute. I knew he liked me.

On the fourth floor, we find a flat with a reinforced door and a hallway clear enough to hold us for a little while. Fletch checks the locks, the hinges, and the sightlines while Xeon listens at the door. I listen to everything behind us, hearing nothing in the stairwell or below other than the distant groan of Rots. Above us, there’s very faint movement outside, on the balcony.

Ah. Our shadow is still with us, then.

I should be annoyed. To be honest, I am. But I’m also pretty impressed. It makes for a deeply inconvenient combination that I don’t really know what to do with.

Fletch forces the flat door open with a crowbar from his pack. The sound is loud but brief, and we all file in the moment it’s clear. Inside, the flat has already been stripped of everything valuable, but not destroyed. The living room faces the courtyard, there’s a kitchen to the left, two bedrooms and a bathroom. Windows are intact enough to actually matter, and there’s fire escape access through the largest bedroom.

Defensible.

Temporary.

We manage to get the pilot onto the living room floor, and Xeon kneels next to him straightaway. He checks his pulse, pupils, and wounds while Fletcher closes the door and wedges it with a chair before dragging a bookshelf across for added weight.

I go to the window, not because I’m avoiding the medical drama. More because I’m useful at the window. Also because I very much am avoiding the medical drama. Fuck that noise. No thank you.

The courtyard below is a landscaping mess of weeds, concrete, and wandering Rots. Smoke continues to stain the sky beyond the rooftops, so I scan the opposite building, the balconies, and the roofline. There’s nothing… for about three seconds. Then I see it. A shift of a curtain on the fifth floor across the way. A small movement. Very careful.

“There you are,” I whisper to myself, low enough to go unnoticed by the others.

I don’t point like I want to. Not yet. Instead, I step back from the window and remove the cap from my jacket. It’s actually older than I realized, faded to almost gray in some places. The seams have been worn soft and the brim is bent from years of use. There’s dirt ground into the fabric and a darkerstain along the one side that might be old blood or mud. I dunno, it’s kind of hard to tell. The back strap has been fixed with black thread, small uneven stitches done by someone who refused to throw it away.

Oh yeah. This isn't just a hat. I mean, obviously.

That thought makes my throat feel a little tight in a way I don’t particularly appreciate. I toss jokes at most things because if I don’t, they start growing claws and teeth. Fear. Grief. Silence. Dead bodies in hallways. Living bodies becoming dead ones on floors. But this stupid old hat is grasped in my hand, damp and battered to within an inch of its life, and I can practically feel the shape of someone else’s grief in it.

And that isn’t sitting right with me.

“Ewan,” Fletcher calls, and I look over at him. His gaze drops to the hat and then he says, “Window.”

I know what he means without the words necessary. Put it where they can see it. Make them come closer. Bait. You know, that thing we’re pretending not to call it.

Xeon’s head lifts suddenly from the pilot. “No.”

Fletcher looks at him blankly. “We need answers.”

“We don’t need to become another thing they have to survive,” X counters softly, shaking his head.

“They’re already following us,” Fletcher reminds him.

“For that.” Xeon nods at the hat. “Not for us. If they hadn’t lost that and if Ewan hadn’t picked it up, they would have been nothing more than a whisper in the wind by now.”

I stare down at the hat, only to be interrupted by the pilot groaning right before dragging a breath through his teeth. His lips move, but no words come out. Fletcher’s patience visibly thins, and he grumbles, “Unknown Omega, unknown Alpha, unknown shooter, unknown aircraft. That’s too many unknowns for my liking.”

“Oh, good,” I say. “For a second there I thought we were running low on unknowns. Phew.”

Fletcher ignores me, which is becoming a pattern I’m starting to take personally. He looks at Xeon and explains, “If they know something, we need to hear it.”

“If we scare them, they’ll vanish,” Xeon counters, his voice level and calm.

“Already vanished once,” Fletch points out.

“And followed us back,” Xeon volleys.