Page 107 of Immune

“Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises,” she utters blandly.

Fletcher shifts next to the pilot, maybe readying himself to step in. Xeon stays completely still, and Ewan falls completely silent.

I take one step back, and Dakota blinks. So does my Alpha, if instincts even possess the ability to blink. Then I tell her, “I know you can move it. I’m not questioning that.”

Her grip doesn’t loosen on her knife. “Then what are you doing?”

“Offering,” I tell her simply, and she literally just stares at me as if I’ve started talking in riddles.

Honestly, maybe I have.

Offering isn’t how the old world taught Alphas to talk to Omegas. Not when hunger steps into the room. Not when the virus made the world smaller and meaner and turned biology into a law for people desperate enough to worship anything with teeth.

But Dakota doesn’t need law. She needs exits.

“If you say no,” I add, “I don’t move.”

Her throat shifts. Rain taps through a hole above the stairwell, landing between us in steady drops.

One.

Two.

Three.

“Fine,” she then says, like the word has been dragged over hot coal and gravel. “Move the stupid shelf.”

I do, slowly. No sudden steps, no brushing against her, no reaching across her body. I grab the shelf at one end and drag it aside with a metal screech that makes every one of us wince.

“The art of subtlety is still alive and well,” Ewan says quietly.

Dakota gives him a dirty look, half-hidden under the bandana. “Would you like to move the next one with your arms unattached?”

“I would, but I think we’ll be here all day if I did,” Ewan knocks back.

Fletcher lifts the pilot up again with Xeon, snapping a single command. “Up.”

Dakota goes first, because of course she does. The stairwell stinks of wet dust, old piss, and something dead under the landing. There’s no fresh movement. Not yet, anyway.

So we all climb the stairs.

By the second floor, Dakota’s limp has worsened. She hides it badly now, but only because pain is stronger than pride when the body starts making formal complaints. She grips the railing with her good hand, jaw clenched and breathing controlled through her nose. Every single step feels like a test I’m not allowed to help her pass.

Good. That’s how it should be.

Seems like her life has been full of hands reaching without permission, so I can be the person who doesn’t.

At the fourth floor, the stairs end in a narrow maintenance hallway. The roof access door is locked, but Dakota already has a pick out before Fletcher can even think to inspectit. He watches her work for all of three seconds before he says, “Good hands.”

She doesn’t bother looking up, quietly muttering, “Don’t flirt with my lock-picking skills, Scar. They’re emotionally unavailable.”

Ewan snorts, and Xeon’s mouth softens. Fletcher looks like he regrets every choice and decision that has led him to this very staircase.

The lock clicks, and Dakota pushes the door open with her shoulder.

The morning rain washes through in cold sheets and gray light. The roof is flat and covered in puddles and rusted vents. Low walls line the edges, and beyond them, a broken city spreads as far as the eye can see, soaked under a sky the same color as bruised metal. There are no dead bodies roaming close by, no Vector men visible, but I know it’s not the time to find relief in it. It’s a matter of time. Always a matter of time.

We cross the roof to a covered maintenance shed near the far side. The door is unlocked, and inside is cramped but dry enough to breathe. Old tools hang across one wall, and I spot empty paint cans, a workbench, and a stack of cracked plastic crates near the door.