Pretty Much Dead Already, page 12
I step out from the poncho rack, rejoining the current of bodies flowing past. For a second, I see the scarred man from last night, posted near the admin building, talking to a pair of unfamiliar Betas. He glances my way, and I feel the temperature drop ten degrees.
I don’t linger. I walk, purposeful, to the gardens—Cass’s domain—hoping he’s around, but the plot is empty except for the crows.
As I turn back, I catch the faintest shadow moving along the edge of the tent. Not a guard. Not a nurse.
Watching.
Waiting.
I head to the medical wing, pulse hammering, and drop off the box of saline I’d been told to deliver before officially being off duty for the night.
Dr. Mare is in, hunched over a microscope, hands stained with iodine. He looks up, startled, but recovers instantly.
“Ms. Vale,” he says, nodding. “Everything alright?”
I want to tell him everything, but the words won’t organize. “Just a delivery,” I say, voice thin.
He studies me, eyes sharp behind the glasses. “You’re flushed,” he notes. “Any fever?”
I shake my head.
He gestures me closer, then lowers his voice. “If you need to talk,” he says, “my door’s always open.”
For a moment, I almost take him up on it. But I remember Rhett’s warning. “Thank you,” I manage, then back out.
The hallways feel tighter now. Every face a potential enemy. Every laugh a potential code.
My feet carry me to the quad, wanting to be in a public space, around me people sit around bon fires and burning barrels. The chill of the night making people huddle closer then socially acceptable. I don’t see him at first. He’s in the shadows, hunched by the edge of the supply tent, a silhouette with a crooked stance and a gaze like frostbite. Scar down his cheek. Hands in his pockets. Watching me, not moving, not blinking.
He smiles, just a little. Not a threat. Not a warning.
A promise.
Chapter Eleven: Shadows in the Safe Haven
Rhett
It’s one fifteen AM in the northern med ward, the hour when all but the insomniacs and the newly dead have finally lost their voices. The corridor is a crawlspace of after-hours fluorescence, tiles the color of mouthwash underfoot, every thirty feet a blood pressure monitor abandoned like a land mine by some overworked nurse. I move fast, but not so fast I leave a wake. At this hour, you can smell every mistake.
Tonight, the Fort is a beehive with a shivering queen. Word of the looming insurrection is a live wire, and even if most are sleeping, the rest are waiting for the first gunshot to tell them which way to run. I know the numbers—how many on shift, who’s watching the gates, how long it takes to muster five guards in full gear if I pull the right alarm. But that’s not what matters now. This is a knife fight under a blackout curtain. We’re already inside the perimeter.
I pass a pair of orderlies on rounds: one old, one young, both with the look of men who drink too much coffee and never enough water. I catch their attention with a tap of my thumb to the radio at my shoulder—a code for “tense up, listen up, get ready to move.” They both give me the nod, faces tight as shrink wrap. Wordless is best, at this hour.
It’s only a dozen paces to the break room, but I stretch it to fifteen, ears dialed to every creak of the floorboards, every cough from behind closed doors. The break room’s glass pane is fogged from the inside. I see Jace and Michael, the only two med staff with nerves good enough for graveyard. They’re talking over a mug, sharing a laugh, and for a split second I wish I could let them keep it.
But I slide the door open, and the room goes flat. Jace sets down the mug so careful it doesn’t clink. Michael, taller and built like a swimmer, straightens in his seat, face blank as paper.
“Boss,” he says, and means it.
I close the door behind me. “No one else come in?” I ask.
Michael shakes his head. Jace just shrugs, already reading me for the next move.
I hook a chair with my boot and sit, knees wide, hands folded so they don’t tremble. “We have a problem,” I say.
Jace meets my eyes first. “How bad?”
I give it to them straight. “Worst case: we have a mutiny by first call. Best case: they’re just talking big, but the wrong people are listening.”
Michael’s face doesn’t move, but his fists tighten. “Who’s ‘they’?”
I tick off the names on my hand. “Scarface from supply, two of the perimeter Betas, maybe one of ours—someone put a hole in the lock to Armory B last night.” I take a breath. “Someone’s pushing it. Hard.”
Jace glances at the mug. His hands are steady, but the mug is shaking. “Leadership know?”
I almost laugh. “Do they ever?”
Michael leans forward. “What’s the play?”
I look at the clock. “First, we loop in Cass. If he’s got a wrench or a blade to throw, I want it on our side.”
Michael gives a low grunt. “You want to bring in the greaseball?”
“Greaseball’s saved my ass twice, and he’s got ears everywhere,” I shoot back.
He nods, grinning despite himself.
I sweep the break room with my eyes, making sure nothing is off. “We walk casual. No weapons. If anyone’s watching, they’re looking for a reason. Let’s not give them one.”
Jace stands, stretches. “Garage?”
I nod. “Garage. Bay 3.”
We exit as a unit, moving like we’re heading for a night smoke or a round of poker. Nobody stops us. The orderlies from before are gone, and their station is empty except for the slow, wet snore of a patient drifting in from the recovery wing. The air tastes like old metal and burnt toast.
Down the hallway, we pass supply lockers, each one tagged and numbered. I scan for anything out of place—an open door, a missing clipboard, footprints where there shouldn’t be. Nothing. Someone’s cleaned up.
We keep going, past the blackout windows and down the ramp to sublevel two, where the garage connects to the rest of the Fort’s intestines. Here, the lighting is half-broken, a grid of angry yellow alternating with total dark.
Jace keeps glancing back. “You think we’re being followed?”
“I think we always are,” I say. It’s not a joke.
By the time we hit the garage, the night’s gone colder and the stars have been eaten by the sodium glare of the perimeter lamps. Cass’s kingdom is the size of a two-car funeral, packed with more combustibles than a C4 demonstration. The bus sits in the center, roof torn off like a can of sardines, its guts strung with wires and chunks of plastic dash. Cass is shoulder-deep in the tangle, wristwatch glinting in the oily light. When he hears us, he extricates himself, gives a nod, and wipes his hands on a towel that leaves his fingers dirtier than before.
“You look like men about to request a favor,” he says, voice bouncing off the hood of the bus.
I gesture toward the back office. “Let’s do it inside.”
He arches one eyebrow—half challenge, half curiosity—but shrugs and leads the way, ducking under a row of air filters and past a box of shattered fan blades. The office is a metal box with a table and two actual chairs, the rest milk crates. One overhead bulb, held together with tape, swings on its cord.
We pack in and Cass locks the door behind us.
I empty my pockets onto the table: the pilfered supply manifests, the “order” for the Armory B transfer, a torn scrap of a hand-written map. The words are scrawled in different inks, and you can tell by the pressure in the loops who wrote in anger and who in fear.
Cass flops into a chair, lets out a deep sigh, and leans back, arms loose over the rest. “What’s the play?”
I thumb the documents toward him. “Someone’s staging for a coup. Maybe worse. These showed up in Beta supply this afternoon, and our man in med pulled the rest from intake.”
Cass scans the papers, eyes flickering, lips silent but counting. Jace stands beside me, staring at the table, but his mind’s already a block ahead. “You know who’s fronting it?”
“Guy named Viktor,” I say. “Not one of ours. Ex-mil, probably ex-PMC. Has backers on every shift. They’re running up the chain with stories about security failures, wasted rations, weak leadership.” The list could go on and on.
Cass whistles, slow. “You want to play defense or offense?” I give him a ‘are you fucking dumb’ look making him roll his eyes. “So, who’s the canary? Who spilled the tea?”
I hesitate, then say it. “Vale.” It’s the first time I’ve said her name in front of the whole group.
Cass smiles, wolf-quick. “Should’ve guessed. That girl’s got more spine than you.”
I don’t let it rattle me. “It’s not just her. They’re planning to use the confusion as cover to take out anyone who’s flagged as non-compliant. That means med, admin, and the whole Omega ward. Anyone on the ‘useless’ list.”
Jace’s eyes go cold as he glares at the papers on the table. “I’ve seen the list.” His voice is flat, but you can hear the rage leaking through. “It’s not short.”
Michael grabs a pen and starts circling names on the manifest. “Most of these guys—” he says, “—they did time in the quarantine camps. They’re not afraid of a little blood. I can get word to them via night round check in’s, no one would question it.”
Cass leans in, shadows etching the lines on his face. “What do you want from me?”
I stare at him, steady. “I want you to run a counter-sabotage. Lock the service tunnels. Cut the generator relay at the west block, make it look like an accident. If they can’t coordinate, they can’t move.”
He considers, then nods. “I can do that. But it’ll set off alarms everywhere. You ready for that?”
“I’m ready,” I say. And I am.
Michael glances at the clock. “We have three hours?”
“Two, if they jump the gun,” Jace says.
We sit around the table, passing the documents, each of us taking a piece of the story and chewing it like gristle. I see how the plan plays out—first confusion, then a quick strike, then chaos. The infected outside the fence are nothing compared to the ones already inside.
Jace stands, fidgeting with a lighter. “I’ll get Vale to the admin safe room. If they breach, she’ll have a way out.”
I nod. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
He almost smiles. “Wasn’t planning to.”
Michael pushes his chair back, heavy. “If you need me on the doors, say when.”
I clap his shoulder. “I’ll call you in when it counts.”
Cass packs up the papers, slips the map into his jacket. “Let’s get to work.”
We file out, single file, each man to his task. I watch Cass vanish into the garage maze, Michael melt into the service corridor, and Jace jog off toward the upper dorms. For a second, I’m alone in the empty hall, the buzz of the generator the only thing left.
I take a breath, close my eyes, and let the future spool out in my head. There will be shouting, blood, maybe fire. Maybe in the end, none of it will matter. But right now, we’re all that stands between order and the wolves at the gate and the sheep who let them in.
I make my way up the stairwell, each step a promise I mean to keep. I thumb the radio, click it to private, and say into the dark:
“Be ready.”
There’s a pause, then three clicks in reply.
The Fort is about to crack open, but for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel afraid.
This is what I was built for.
Chapter Twelve: Bonds Under Fire
Lira
Ialways take the long way back. I claim it’s for exercise, but really, I just like the illusion of movement—the idea that every circuit of Fort Hope’s cinderblock hallways burns a little more of the old world off my skin. The omega ward is at the ass-end of the converted science building, past the second floor’s defunct chemistry lab and a row of offices that now serve as storage for whatever the quartermaster couldn’t bring himself to throw away. Most nights, the halls are alive with the clatter and drag of insomnia: the restless Betas on “escort” duty, the Omegas pretending not to notice, the midnight black market in cafeteria coffee and black-market nicotine patches. Even now, when everyone’s supposed to be locked down for the night, there’s usually at least one or two insomniacs orbiting the dorms, trading ration bars for gossip and the right to forget for a few minutes what happens if the perimeter goes soft.
But tonight the hallway is empty. Not just empty—vacuumed of everything but my own heartbeat and the hum of the overhead fluorescents. The silence is so complete I can hear the echo of my own shoes, a faint rubber squeak and the brush of synthetic fibers on cheap linoleum. I slow, then stop, the hairs on my arms rising even though the temperature never changes. I casually slip my hands into my pockets.
This is wrong, I think. It’s not a thought as much as a pressure in the base of my skull, an evolutionary tap on the shoulder. My left hand curls unconsciously around the pill bottle Jace gave me, the small plastic rattle comforting in a way that’s almost embarrassing.
I pick up the pace. Two turns, a left, and then the ward should be ahead—except as I make the last corner, three men step out of the shadowed intersecting hallway.
They’re in Fort Hope uniforms, but none of them look familiar. That’s not unusual, not really—guards swap shifts, Betas come and go—but there’s something off about their posture. It’s the way they spread to block the entire width of the corridor, the way the leader plants his boots and lets the other two hang back just a fraction, waiting for his cue. The leader is huge—a Beta, by his scent and the way his shoulders eat the sleeves of his jacket. His head is shaved, exposing a scalp webbed with the pale scars of old acne. His eyes, when they lock on mine, are flat and cold, as if nothing human ever made it that far in.
“Evening,” He says. The word doesn’t even try for warmth.
I stop, weighing my options. I can smell the cleaning fluid from the janitor’s closet behind me, a trace of bleach and ammonia. There are no alarms, no guards within shouting distance. I run the numbers and come up short.
The big one steps forward, arms loose at his sides. “You’re the one who’s been talking,” He says. “Viktor wants a word.”
The name cracks through me. Viktor—the name I heard in the mess hall, the one whose men were planning to cull the “useless” from Fort Hope. I’ve made a mistake, I think, and then my brain shifts into a different gear entirely.
“Sorry,” I say, backing up half a step. “I think you’ve got the wrong person—”
He moves so fast I barely register it: a hand like a shovel slamming into my shoulder, pinning me against the cinderblock wall with enough force to pop my jaw. I open my mouth to scream but his palm is already clamped across it, the fingers digging into my cheek hard enough to draw tears from the corner of my eye.
I feel the prickle of stubble on his wrist. The other two close in, blocking any shot at running. The smaller one, a wiry guy with a nervous tic at the corner of his mouth, fishes a strip of zip ties from his pocket and waves it like a trophy.
I try to shake my head, but the Beta’s hand is like iron. My hands go up on instinct—defensive, surrendering—and then, without warning, I bite down, hard, on the meat between his thumb and forefinger.
He howls, yanking his hand away, and for a split second I can breathe again. I slam my left elbow into his ribs—there’s no give, but it makes him grunt—and at the same time, I kick out at the nearest other, catching his knee sideways. He swears and stumbles.
The leader recovers quickly. His face is twisted, saliva and blood mixing at the edge of his mouth. “You little—” He starts, but I cut him off with a headbutt, right into the bridge of his nose. Stars explode behind my eyelids and I think I might puke, but he drops back, cursing, and the two others close in.
The zip-tie guy grabs my left arm and jerks it behind me. The pain is instant, white-hot, shooting up to my shoulder. I try to twist away but the third, the big silent one, has already seized my right wrist. They’re going to hog-tie me. I know what happens to Omegas who get caught alone, especially in the new world’s version of a coup.
“Help!” I manage, my voice shredded from the pressure on my windpipe. “Help—!”
The Beta clamps his hand over my mouth again, but not before my scream ricochets off the walls.
He leans in, his breath reeking of sour protein powder and rot. “Shut up,” He spits, and for the first time I see the tremor in his jaw. He’s not just a thug—he’s scared. That should be a comfort, but all it means is that whatever they’re about to do, they know they’re on a clock.
Behind me, the world tilts. There’s a thud, the sound of meat on concrete, and the grip on my right wrist suddenly goes slack. I spin, half-collapsing onto the floor, and see the third man face-down on the tile, arms splayed. His feet are twitching, as if he’s trying to swim out of his own body.
The zip-tie guy still has my left wrist, but he’s not prepared for the sudden shift in momentum. I wrench my arm sideways, popping the weakest finger, and twist in time to see Jace—actual, real, utterly out-of-place Jace—burst from the side hallway.
His eyes are wild, full of the kind of animal panic I thought only lived in nightmares or maybe my mother’s stories about the old, old world. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t hesitate. He just launches himself at the Beta, who is caught halfway between punching me out and finishing the zip tie job.
Jace’s shoulder connects with the Beta’s solar plexus, a perfect rugby tackle that would have gotten him expelled from etiquette school. The Beta grunts and slams back into the wall, winded, and Jace doesn’t give him a second to recover. He knees the man in the gut, then again, and when the Beta sags, Jace wraps his arms around his neck and pulls him to the floor, squeezing tight with a force that seems impossible for someone built like a guidance counselor.
The zip-tie guy tries to break and run, but I lunge after him, catching his ankle. He trips, sprawls, and I get a knee in his ribs. He gags, and I crawl on top of him, not even thinking—just moving. My hands find his hair, yank his head up, and I bring his face down, hard, onto the floor. It makes a sickening sound, but I don’t stop. I do it again, and again, until his hands go limp and the blood begins to pool.
