Page 153 of Immune

“Your face is doing this smug thing I don’t like,” she grumbles, still eyeing me like she wouldn’t trust me with a sneeze.

“My face is injured,” I refute.

“Only a part of it.”

Ewan sighs dreamily. “I want it on record that this is quite possibly the most romantic armed tunnel walk I think I’ve ever been on.”

“Your standards are worse than mine,” Dakota says.

“That’s a fat lie,” Ewan argues teasingly. “I’ll actually have you know that it’s called whimsical.”

Kaito’s mouth moves like he’s about to smile and Xeon definitely does, only small and quick. Idiots.

The tunnel finally turns left, and we’re blessed with no ambush, no dead, and no Vector. For once, the universe decides to keep its mouth shut.

We find a service stair at the end, heading up one level toward a staff bridge that should cut across the outer station district and get us closer to the compound approach. The stairs look like they’re going to be hell on the pilot, and that’s only assuming he stays unconscious enough not to bitch about it.

Can’t blame him even if he did. He’s barely upright at this point.

Kaito shifts to take more of his weight, and his face goes white.

“Don’t,” Dakota says. It’s just one word, but she throws it as hard as she launches knives at Rots. It’s effective, too, because Kaito stills. That’s interesting. She doesn’t look at him when she continues, “You take more weight and you’ll split your side open and ruin my hard work. You rip your side open and we end up losing time. We lose time and fever boy there dies and takes his secrets with him.”

Kaito watches her closely before he quietly asks, “That’s what you’re worried about?”

She finally looks at him. “Yes.”

Little liar.

Kaito knows it, too, but he doesn’t call her out on it. Good man.

I move toward the pilot. “I’ll take front.”

Dakota’s head snaps around, and there it is again. That bristling. The instinctive resistance.

I hold a hand up before she can go in on the grilling. “Ain’t orderin’. Stairs are narrow and I’ve got the cleanest shoulder left for the weight.”

Her gaze drops to my bandage, and she notices the way my blood has seeped through the edge. It’s not much, but it’s definitely enough. Enough to tighten her jaw as she mutters, “Cleanest is being generous.”

“Still true,” I tell her.

“You’re hurt.”

“So are you.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. I know it is, especially when her eyes sharpen. It’s not wrong because it ain’t true, either. It’s wrong because it turns into a mirror, and Dakota seems to hate mirrors unless they’re used to check doorways.

I change it up instead.

“Pilot goes up first with me and Xeon,” I suggest. “Kaito covers behind. Ewan listens at the bottom. You choose where you’re most useful.”

Her expression shifts. It’s a small movement, almost nothing at all, but it’s very clear she hears it.

Choose.

For a second, I think she might throw it back in my face just because she can. But she looks at the stairs, at the pilot, Kaito’s side, Ewan’s headphones, Xeon’s calm hands, and then my shoulder. Then she says, “Middle. If something comes from below, Ewan hears it before it reaches us. If something comes from above, you’ll be too busy hauling him to react fast enough. I’ll be able to reach either top or bottom if I’m in the middle.”

“Fair enough,” I tell her.