Page 191 of Immune

The young medic bolts, just as Valeria turns toward Fletcher. “He goes to medical. Armed escort.”

“We go with him,” Kaito says, his voice quiet. It still manages to draw everyone’s attention.

Valeria takes one look at his side. “You go to medical, too.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I snap at the exact same time, and Kaito looks at me. I only glare back as I tell him, “Your organs are genuinely trying to make a break for freedom. Stop using internal bleeding as a fucking excuse to be in charge.”

His mouth tightens, but Fletcher makes a sound in his chest that almost sounds like a laugh. He wisely smothers it before it can actually become one, and I catch Valeria watching the exchange with interest.

I hate that.

I hate interest. Because interest always leads to questions.

“You his medic?” she asks me.

“No.”

“Oh yeah,” Ewan says at the same time.

I turn slowly toward him.

The jackwad raises both of his brows before he says, “I mean, emotionally?”

“I won’t even hesitate to launch you into a fence,” I threaten.

“There are actually a few of those about. You’ll have to specify which one, just so I can mentally prepare myself,” he tosses back, completely unfazed.

Just then, the pilot convulses on the stretcher, and the joke dies a painful death. The medics roll him toward the building, and everything in me wants to follow after them. Not because I care, because I barely know him. But he knows words. O’Reilly. Doctor’s daughter. Immune. Marker. Blood marker. NOVAC marker. He knows too much to leave alone with strangers in clean rooms.

Valeria steps into my path before I can move. “You can see him after the medical check.”

“No.”

Her patience visibly thins. “This compound has rules.”

“Ah,” I say. “There it is.”

Fletcher murmurs my name. Not in warning, and not in an attempt to stop me. Just grounding, and I don’t even know why that seems to help. It annoys me that it even does.

Valeria’s gaze flicks between us again. “We’re not your enemy.”

“Didn’t once say you were,” I tell her.

“You’re acting like it,” she counters.

I eye her closely before delivering my next words. “I’m alive because I act like everyone is.”

For the first time since our arrival, something in her expression finally shifts. It’s not sympathy, which is good. I would have actually hated that so much more. No, what this is looks more like understanding. The kind that’s earned through ugly means no one wants to talk about.

“Then how about you stay alive by being smart,” she says. “Medical first. Food after. Quarters if you’re cleared. Debrief when you’re stable.”

Stable. Now there’s a funny little word to use. As if any one of us has been stable for longer than six whole consecutive minutes.

Ewan lowers his hands slowly when no one shoots him for daring to breathe. “Food, you say?”

Valeria looks over at him. “After clearance.”