Page 77 of Immune

The stairwell opens into a service floor, with pipes running overhead, rusted and dripping. The passage ahead narrows, then bends toward the next building, and at the far end I see it. A maintenance door.

It’s locked. Of course it’s locked. Christ.

The girl sees it and changes direction, suddenly driving her knife into a Rot that stumbles out from an alcove. There’s no hesitation as she slams one boot into its knee, drops it, and finishes the job with a blade through the temple before the body even hits the floor.

It’s brutal.

Precise.

There ain’t no flourish or drama.

It looks like violence is a language she can speak fluently, but it seems she only likes using very short, clipped sentences.

Kaito moves beside her to take on the next Rot, cracking the pipe in his hand against bone. He’s slower than the girl, still hurt, but still effective.

Xeon lowers the pilot behind a chipped pillar and fires twice down the passage behind us. “Three coming.”

“Looters?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers quickly.

Ewan reloads his gun. “And they’ve brought plus ones. A lot of them. Dead ones, too. Very community-minded.”

A looter shouts from above before the last word is out of Ewan’s mouth. “Noise charge!”

My stomach drops suddenly, and I bark, “Down!”

Something small bounces down the stairwell seconds later. It’s not a grenade. It’s worse. Especially right now. A metal canister rigged with a battery alarm, built for one purpose andone purpose only. To make enough noise to bring the dead running.

It hits the landing and instantly starts screaming, a high-pitched, mechanical, and piercing sound. Every Rot below answers and the service floor explodes with chaos. Rots drag themselves from side halls, storage rooms, and behind maintenance cages. A fast Rot screeches from somewhere beyond the locked gate, body slamming the metal hard enough to shake rust and paint loose.

The looters don’t even need to see us at this point. They just need to make sure the dead find us.

I shoot the canister, and it sparks and dies, but the damage is done.

“Smart bastards,” I mutter.

“I’d actually love it if they were a little less smart,” Ewan quips, firing a bullet into a Rot’s skull without skipping a beat. “Way less smart would be ideal. Like, I’m talking a bent-spoon kind of smart, you know? Or decorative-pillow kind of smart.”

The girl ducks under a Rot’s grasp, slicing tendons behind its knee before ramming her knife under its jaw. Another reaches for her from behind and Kaito moves, but he’s too slow. I fire before he even gets there, and the Rot drops inches from her back.

She spins on me, blade up and eyes wild with fury. Not fear. Genuine anger, because I was behind her. Because I witnessed her not seeing something. Because it means I could have touched her, grabbed her, or even taken advantage, and it looks to me like she would have rather faced the Rot.

Christ almighty.

“Clear behind you,” I tell her.

Her chest rises once. Twice. And then she turns away without a word and keeps fighting. Seems like trust, in her world, is not getting stabbed for saving her. I guess I’ll take that.

The grate at the far end suddenly screams as the fast Rot on the other side slams into it again. Kaito pushes his shoulder against a vending machine rusted in place near the wall, gritting out, “Help me.”

Ewan gives him a look. “What? With the haunted snack coffin?”

“Move it against the grate,” Kaito instructs, talking through clenched teeth.

It’s a good call, so I command, “Do it.”

Ewan and Xeon shove the machine across the floor with a bone-rattling screech. The masked girl darts past them, keeping Rots off their backs. She doesn’t turn away from any of us for more than a single breath. Even when she’s fighting, she’ll angle herself so no one can linger in her blind spot.