Page 94 of Immune

Ewan blinks. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s how names usually work.”

“Yours does now,” I mutter, pointing my knife at him.

He nods once and pulls a face. “Yep. Valid.”

Xeon’s voice is soft when he says, “We don’t have to use it.”

That draws my gaze to him, the honesty tugging my eyes to him like a magnet. He means it. The idiot actually means it, and something in my throat moves dangerously, so I crush it under sarcasm where it belongs. “That’s very generous. I’ll alert the town’s bellman.”

“Sad news. There’s no town bellman,” Ewan says. “Budget cuts.”

I hate that my mouth almost twitches at that. It doesn’t, but the almost is enough to piss me off.

Fletcher doesn’t say anything about my name. Nothing about Kaito knowing it. And nothing about what I might or might not be. His restraint is actually irritating enough that I want to peel paint with my teeth.

“I’m not going to your compound,” I warn.

“Who said anything about a compound?” Ewan replies. I stare at him after rolling my eyes, and he lifts both of his hands. “I mean, we were all thinking it, obviously. Like, it’s kind of the big fucking elephant in the room, you know?”

“Ewan,” Fletcher warns.

“What?” he argues back. “She already knows.”

“She does know,” I snap. “Big walls. Big guns. Big rules. Big men with very small understandings of one’s personal space.”

Fletcher doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he says, “The pilot will die without proper care.”

“Sad times,” I mutter.

“Vector will keep hunting the cargo,” he tries again.

“Terribly tragic.”

“The cargo is tied to NOVAC,” he pushes once more.

I’ll be damned to the pits of hell if my teeth don’t clack together. I’ll be damned to the crust of the fucking earth if Fletcher doesn’t catch it, too. Damn him.

“And you reacted to that,” he points out.

“I react to a lot of things,” I argue. “Bad smells. Spiders. Men using the word no like it’s a personality trait.”

Ewan murmurs, “Spiders are valid.”

Fletcher ignores him, eyes boring into me. “You know something.”

I smile behind the bandana. It’s not a nice smile, either. It feels sharp enough to cut me, but I tell him, “Everyone knows something, Scar. That’s pretty much how a functioning brain works.”

“We have labs,” Xeon interjects quietly. Carefully. He’s not pushing, simply placing the words down on the ground like he’s trying to lure in a terrified stray cat, letting me decide whether or not I pick them up.

“Medical stores,” Ewan adds. “Records. People who know old-world research. Some of them are even pretty chill before noon.”

“Blockers?” I ask before I can stop myself, my stupid mouth running before my brain can vet the words.

Silence answers me again, and I’m pretty sure my entire soul flees my body. Hell, I pretty much see it vacate, walk three steps away, and face-plant the floor with a dramatic wail that echoes the noise in my head.

Fletcher’s eyes sharpen.

Xeon’s expression softens.