I'm Angel. These are my wings.

“Sweetheart, come on, she’s just being nice,” Joel laughs.

You know better, though. Patricia is not just being nice.

She’s been very much hitting on Joel since the first day she arrived in Jackson.

Always asking him for some repairs, checking him out all the way across the Tipsy Bison or the dining hall, smiling and touching his bicep every time she speaks to him, laughing at his every joke.

It’s so obvious you’re surprised to say the least that Joel has never realized how much Patricia is into him.

He’s totally clueless even after what she’s just done.

She came over, bringing him a whiskey, leaned over the table to show off her cleavage, all flirty and coy, saying it was “to thank you for the hard work”. She barely acknowledged you, while you were sitting right in front of him, only giving you a nod and a fake smile.

Ugh, you hate Patricia.

Of course, you trust Joel with all your heart, he never gave you any reason to think badly of him.

Joel is like a faithful dog, the most reliable and loving person you’ve ever met, he would do anything to see you happy.

But damn, Patricia is really testing your patience and your ability to think straight.

Every time she’s in your peripheral vision, you feel your blood pressure rising and your hands itching with the need to slap her.

You’re generally a very calm, peaceful person and you’ve behaved like you don’t care but enough is enough. The way she always acts around Joel, being all coy and sweet, is so annoying you don't know how much longer you can remain calm.

You look at Joel sitting there without a single ounce of worry, his deep brown eyes softly staring at you, a little amused smile on his lips, and you scoff, “Yeah, of course, keep on thinking that…”

Joel takes your hand over the table and squeezes it in his huge, meaty palm, reassuring you, “Darling, you know I’m not interested, right? So why are you bothered? Forget about her, I’m with you. There’s no other person I’d rather be with.”

His thick thumb runs gently over the back of your hand, soothing you, making your heart warm.

He’s amazing, and he’s done nothing wrong.

It’s just you and your silly brain.

Gnawing jealousy doesn’t leave you, though. It keeps fogging your mind as you think of the way Patricia dares to put her hands on your man anytime she can.

“It’s just the fact that you don’t see that, I mean…she couldn’t be throwing herself at you any harder!” you whine.

“Aw, jealous bunny…” he coos, his lips softly curved into that crooked smile that always makes your knees buckle.

“I’m not jealous…” you try to say, but he chuckles, “Oh yes, you are. Which is cute…but I’m still pretty sure she’s not into me. It’s just her personality, you know. She’s like that with Tommy as well.”

“Yeah, she would love to fuck him too,” you spit out and his jaw drops.

“Baby…” he starts, but a thought suddenly runs through your mind, and you smirk, interrupting him, “Wanna bet?”

“What?” Eyebrows raised, he looks at you puzzled.

“Yeah, let’s bet. Go over there and ask her out.”

Patricia is sitting at the counter, sipping her drink, casually shooting very lustful looks at Joel, biting her lower lip.

“I would never do that!” He protests.

“You’re scared to lose, aren’t you?” You tease him, happy to have finally found a safe method to open his eyes.

“‘M not scared, it’s ridiculous. Honey, we don’t need to do that.”

He tries to put some reason back into you, but to no avail.

“Joel…” you purr with that tone of yours you know always works on him, “you’ll win something if she says no,” batting your eyelashes for good measure.

Joel immediately takes the bait, “mmm, and what will my reward be?” both arms stretched out on the table as if he couldn't stand having it between you.

The bet doesn't seem appealing to Joel but the prize on the other hand seems to interest him.

“If I’m wrong…which I’m not, by the way, I’ll give you head every night, for a month straight.”

His crooked smile makes its appearance again. “This doesn’t sound like a loss…you love to do that.”

It’s true, you love to suck him dry. Even deepthroating him.

Your boyfriend has the nicest cock you’ve ever laid your eyes on and never fails to make you hungry and needy.

You snort, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Ok, so…is free use an adequate reward for you?”

Joel stays silent for a moment, processing what you just said, before asking, “Is that what I think it is?”

You smile, nodding “Yes…whenever you want, wherever you want…as many times as you want.”

His gaze lights up at the realization, a satisfied expression spreads across his face as he replies “Now we’re talking.”

This isn’t a punishment to either of you. Only the thought of him using you whenever he pleases makes your pussy throb.

You’re almost on the verge of backtracking on your bet.

Who cares about Patricia when this hunk of a man is all yours?

You should call it a day and move on.

You don’t, though, and add,

“But if she says yes…you’re going to wear a condom tonight, sir.”

His smirk immediately disappears.

“Aw, damn…it’s not fair, you know how much I hate that.”

Oh yes, you know it very well. And you never want him to wear one, actually, you love to fuck him raw, feeling every throbbing vein rubbing against your walls, his thick shaft hitting your special spot and making you as wet as a damn lake.

You love the intimacy of it all, flesh against flesh, a beautiful merging of your bodies and souls.

You also love feeling his cum deep inside of you.

You haven't talked about it in depth yet and many years ago a doctor told you that it would be difficult for you to have one but you would love to have Joel’s child. He’s already the best uncle, Benji absolutely adores him and you know how much he loves Ellie, like she was his own daughter. He would be the best dad, for sure.

“Yes, I’m aware of that, Joel. That shouldn't worry you since you're so sure she doesn't like you,” you quip. “So what are you waiting for? Go there and win your prize.”

He reluctantly gets up, sighing, and walks over the counter where Patricia is sitting.

You can read how much he doesn’t want to do that all over his body.

His shoulders tense, his steps comically slow, he’s walking like a man sentenced to jail time.

You watch the scene from the table, sipping your drink, ready to be entertained.

Joel scratches his beard while he’s talking, like he always does when he’s nervous. Patricia giggles like a teenager with her first crush, her eyes basically devouring Joel’s lips.

Ugh, you almost walk over there to tell her to stop hitting on your man.

You see Joel blushing, head tilted to the side, big paw on his neck, you can’t hear a single word but you’re pretty sure he’s asking her out.

Patricia’s face lights up like she saw a miracle happening right before her eyes; she almost falls from her stool in surprise.

Her lips are rapidly moving; she’s 100% saying yes to him.

Joel freezes, his ears red and his lower lip trembles slightly.

He doesn't know what to say, he's completely taken aback.

Yet you warned him, you knew it would happen.

Something begins to grow inside you, something you hadn't expected. The unfounded and foolish fear that he'll accept and Patricia will take him away from you. For a moment, the image of the two of them walking through the streets of Jackson flashes before your eyes, her breasts pressed against his arm, his rapt, dreamy eyes looking at her the way he's been looking at you.

And what would you do if that happened? Why did you make this stupid bet? What if you lost Joel forever? You could have spoken to Patricia privately, told it straight to her face that Joel is yours, yours alone, told her to find someone else to swoon over. But no, first you tried to act superior, and then you got into this stupid game with the person you loved most in the world. What an idiot.

It’s irrational and unmotivated, but terror rises from the walls of your stomach, all the way to your throat, knotting there, making you want to cry.

“Please, please, please don't say yes,” the voice in your head screams like an echo.

Joel takes a step back and responds, his face serious as he speaks, his body rigid. You think you see disappointment on his face, even disapproval; you just hope you know your man as well as you think.

He comes back a couple of minutes later, which to you seemed like an eternity.

He sits back down and stares at you silently.

“Well?” Your voice is shaking more than you'd like, the smirk you were sporting earlier has completely disappeared from your face.

Joel rolls his eyes, admitting, “You were right, dammit. She said yes.”

You're stunned for a moment, unable to shake the thought that maybe he might prefer Patricia to you. After all, you have to admit she's pretty, her tits are big enough to turn heads, she has a nice ass, nice hair, beautiful eyes.

You'd imagined you'd laugh, yelling at Joel, "I told you so," with enormous satisfaction, but now you're not in the mood for joking around.

“I told her that was a stupid bet between me and you.”

You think you’re dreaming.

“What?” You utter.

“Of course! I couldn't lie. I made sure she understood that I was crazy about my woman and could never cheat on her.”

His voice raises a little when he says he’s crazy about you and your heart instantly flutters.

You feel your face on fire, relief flooding through you.

Joel is so damn serious, his eyes fixed on you, glowing with love.

“I wouldn’t want her in a million years, is that clear?”

“Yeah,” you softly reply, feeling your heart drumming behind your ribcage.

THANK GOD.

“You think we’re done with this bet? Can we forget about this?”

You nod, feeling the need to hug and kiss him growing stronger in your chest, a loving warmth that is spreading from your tummy.

You get up from your chair and sit on his lap, wrapping your arms around his neck. You no longer care about people around you, the indistinct chatter, the clinking of glasses, and even less about Patricia, who is still staring at you with a clearly disappointed expression on her face.

Joel drapes his arm around your waist, pulling you close and kissing you right there in front of everyone. He'd never done it so openly before; Joel is reserved and very protective of his private moments, he doesn’t like people gossiping about him or prying into his life. But now, he doesn’t care. His tongue gently pushes between your lips, silently begging for entrance. He grunts when your mouth opens and his tongue meets yours.

Your hand tightens on the back of his neck, while the other curls into a fist on his shirt.

Your breath runs short and your panties get wet.

All your stupid fears are so far away from you now.

You love him so much the sole idea of him getting with someone else is the most terrifying thing you could think of and as much as you know he would never do that sometimes your insecurities win and creep down on you badly. It’s a tough job to keep your self-esteem up, especially when your ex-husband left you and your mum was not exactly the most loving.

When he pulls away from you, rasping “let’s go home” you can only nod.

You can feel every person in the room looking at you, and you don’t give a fuck.

Walking home, holding Joel's hand tightly in yours, he asks you, "Do you still want me to wear a condom?"

You weren't even thinking about it anymore, honestly, and you didn't care anymore that you won the stupid bet.

“No,” you reply, a soft smile playing on your lips.

“Good,” he leans over you, whispering in your ear “Can’t wait to fuck your little pussy raw.”

Your cheeks heat up and a shiver of pleasure runs down your spine.

He’s a man of action and you know that. Joel is the type of guy who proves his love building stuff for you, fixing stuff for you, using gestures and caresses instead of words. He talks very little but you’re pretty sure he was very clear with Patricia because he never says anything he doesn’t mean when he speaks to you.

Feeling his warmth right into your palm spreading around in your whole body along with his filthy mouth is just a little too much now.

And apparently it's the same for him.

He pulls you towards the back of a house under construction, and he reaches the wall in the dim light.

You don’t resist, only squeal, "What are you doing?" but you follow him. Of course you do.

He pushes you against the wall, facing you.

"I can't wait," he whispers, his voice low, filled with desire.

"Our house is just around the corner," you object, searching for his horny eyes, lingering on his lips curved into a smirk. "Can't you wait another five minutes?"

"No. I can't," he replies firmly, his hands on the buttons of your jacket, one after the other being undone by his impatient fingers.

"They might see us..."

"No one's coming here this late."

You’re still surprised, but you don’t have to be told twice.

Joel smiles at your awkwardness as you try to shed his jacket as quickly as possible, and helps you by pulling it out of the sleeves and letting it fall on the ground. Yours follows shortly after.

“You always surprise me,” you say softly as he fiddles with your shirt.

He pulls it from your pants and rips it open, popping buttons everywhere, revealing your bra underneath.

You gasp, fresh air hitting your hot skin and making your nipples harden against the fabric.

“Jesus, honey, did you have to do that?”

“I’ll get you another one,” he replies, taking a handful of your tits.

“You’re nasty, Mr Miller,” you coo, moaning at his big paws kneading your breasts over your bra.

“Do you like me like this?”

“You bet I do, in every sense possible.”

“Good,” he growls, “all that talk about free use inspired me.”

You giggle softly. Of course, it stayed in the back of his mind all this time, and you couldn’t be more glad.

Your lips meet, and the kiss is messy, wet, and sloppy, his tongue eagerly licking everything it can while you moan and slide yours over his, tasting whisky and minty candies he likes to carry in his pocket all the time.

Your fingers reach for one of his nipples over his shirt, and you pinch it, making him growl into your mouth. A low baritone sound sends goosebumps all over your skin.

“Talking about nasty…” he breathes, detaching from you, his eyes dark and hazy.

“Mmm, couldn’t resist…” you smile softly, sliding your hands under his shirt, over his soft belly, resting on his sides.

His low grumbles ring in your ear like the most delicious sound. He pins you to the wall, caging you with his arms, his leg between yours.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Whatever you want, Mr Miller.”

“All this calling me Mr Miller is indecent, honey, you know what it’s doing to me…”

“Yeah, I know…”

His leg presses on the seam of your jeans, right where your clit is, a rush of dizziness washing over you.

“Your little pussy crying? Does she need Mr. Miller to help her?“

You moan “yes”, your voice faint and your breath labored.

“Ask nicely, hun.”

“Please, Joel… Mr Miller… please.”

“Good girl. I bet you’re dripping wet, huh? I haven't even started with you.”

“I…”

“Shhh baby… let me feel her.”

He unzips your jeans in a flash and his hand slides inside, over your panties.

His fingers caress your folds from above the fabric, slowly, until his index finger slips between them.

He's right, of course, you're soaked, your panties completely ruined. You moan at the feeling of the fabric sticking to your skin, his finger moving up and down your slit, pausing only to apply pressure to your hole. Your clit is hard, you feel it twitching and crying for attention, but he's avoiding it.

“Yeah, just like I thought… you’re drenched.”

Your voice comes out all shaking and hoarse when you beg for him to give you more.

“You know, it’s a shame your eyeliner looks so good today…” he grins. You’re a bit puzzled, not really sure what he means, until he adds “on your knees, baby.”

You cry at the loss of his fingers down your pants as he pulls away from you to give you enough room to kneel.

You do so, your legs feeling like jelly, a hand on his arm to keep you from falling, your pulse hammering into your ears. Your knees touch the ground as he undoes his jeans. He lowers them just enough to pull out his cock.

You haven’t done anything like this outside before. You willingly and happily sucked him in the privacy of your home, kneeling at any given occasion, slurping on his cock like the most delicious ice cream.

But being there, out in the wild, where anyone could potentially stepping and seeing you on your knees, his cock deep in your throat it’s a whole new experience. Dangerous, filthy… arousing to the point your head is just a mess of lust and your heart is drumming in your chest so loudly you can hear it in your ears.

His cock bobs right in front of your eyes, hard, gorgeous, veins throbbing along his length, his tip leaking out a few drops of his yummy and sticky precum.

You swoon at the sight, embarrassed to be so exposed but eager to give your man what he asked for.

“No one is gonna see you, darlin’, they’re all home or at the Tipsy” Joel reassures you, guessing your thoughts. His voice is gentle and low but also firm in a way that sends you into a rapture.

You quickly learned that Joel was more than okay with being submissive, letting you play along with your dominant side and you loved that so much. Hearing your strong, broad man begging you, his voice cracking and shaking was a delight.

But you also enjoyed him taking matters in his own hands, giving you orders and praising you when you carried them out well.

You lick his tip, his unmistakable flavor spreading on your tastebuds, making you hungry.

He grabs a fistful of your hair, his dark eyes looming over you.

His voice is a whisper, but no less commanding “it’s your cock, am I right? Not Patricia's, nor anyone else's. Suck it good, darlin’”

The smile that twists your lips is wide, ear to ear. You welcome his shaft, feeling it slide over your tongue, your hand closing around his base.

Enveloping his cock in your spit, feeling him throbbing against your palate is divine.

You always enjoyed giving head, even before meeting Joel. But the way you do it with him, the way he praises you, the way his cock reacts, his eyes glued to yours, taking in your every expression, feeling his hips buck, silently asking for more, it’s all new and exciting, it makes you all giddy and proud.

Reality is, you’ve never been so in love before with anyone else, not even your ex husband that you married only because you thought it was the right thing to do.

You took different paths long before the outbreak happened, both of you unhappy and frustrated. At least he'd been honest enough to sit down with you and talk. You were more like roommates than husband and wife. There was no passion or sex anymore, just a quiet coexistence that was becoming detrimental to both of you. In the back of your head this always felt like a failure and you thought you would never meet the right person. Maybe you were unlovable and inadequate like your dear mommy was always so ready to remind you.

You chose to be with Joel, you craved him long before he asked you out, watching him work and carry heavy planks and give out orders to other men.

You'd always loved watching people work with their hands; as a child, you'd sit for hours watching your grandfather do woodwork or build the birdbath you'd insisted on. Joel gave it a whole new meaning, though, making it dreamy and hot.

You started bringing everyone hot coffee as an excuse, then moved on to sandwiches, until you worked up the courage to talk to him. You chatted while sitting on the porch of a house he was helping build, in a mess of dust and debris you didn't care about in the slightest, happy just to talk to him. He was so gentle, you’d say a little bit shy at the beginning.

You realized he was not so used to sharing his feelings or talking about his personal life. He opened up to you a little more everyday and you were so grateful he trusted you enough to talk about Sarah. You talked about your failed marriage and the way your mum always treated you and he was so sweet, telling you didn’t deserve any of that. And finally, one day he nervously asked you out. You felt your whole being come back to life, rekindled with a new enthusiasm.

That night, after a drink at Tipsy, you'd sucked his cock for the first time. You could hear the voices of your old friends in the back of your head, yelling at you "never on a first date," but you didn't care, you'd wanted him since the first time you'd seen him. And you knew Joel wouldn't dump you like trash after getting what he wanted.

You were right. Joel never fails to treat you with respect and consideration, he’s always there when you need him, he listens to you, dotes on you and gives you lots of love. You don’t even know why you doubted him before. It’s been almost a year since you got together and you’ve never been so happy.

You start sucking him, stroking the rest with your hand, bobbing your head up and down in slow calculated motion, grazing his veins with your tongue the way he likes.

His musky scent fills your nostrils, the tip of him almost hitting the back of your throat when you lower yourself more, making yourself weep, hot tears streaming down your face, but you don’t stop. You want this, you need this, all of him inside your mouth, your spit coating his entire shape, marking him, making him yours and only yours.

“Just like that, darlin’,” he growls, his big hand clenches into a fist in your hair, a soft mischievous smile dancing on his lips.

Looking at him, his forehead beading in sweat, his face flushed and his arm tensed, prominent veins bulging on his forearm, you feel a new wave of arousal dampening your underwear, heat rushing through you like a burning fire.

You gurgle a little bit, coming up and licking at his tip like a kitten, sliding your tongue on the underside of his cock, a move that never fails to make him twitch.

“Fuck, honey, I won’t last long…”

You smile, tip brushing on your lips before taking him back in.

You suck more, hollowing your cheeks, the length of him filling your mouth just right.

When he bursts out, long streaks of sticky white cum hitting your palate, dripping down your throat you make sure to swallow every drop.

It’s lewd and filthy, wet obscene sounds rising from the back of your throat.

You stay there, licking him clean until he comes back down from his peak and his cock begins to soften in your mouth.

You don’t even know how much time has passed, everything is shrouded in darkness now, silent, your shallow breaths and the crackling of wind are the only things you hear around you.

When you stand up, your jeans are stained with grass and dirt from knee to ankle, green and brown streaks spreading across the fabric. The makeup you'd applied before leaving the house is a distant memory, smeared across your face and dripping down your cheeks. Joel doesn't stop gazing at you adoringly, whispering, "You're so pretty like this, all messed up for me," wiping a drop of his cum from your lower lip and slipping his finger into your mouth. You suck it greedily, humming sweet moans. You still feel a rush of your shared maddening desire invading your body and cloud your brain.

“‘M not done with you, baby,” Joel drawls in that southern accent that never fails to make you all needy.

“Mmm Mr Miller, what else do you have in store?” you purr, gently stroking his cheek, his beard deliciously prickling under the pad of your fingers.

“Give me a minute, and I’ll show you, darlin’”.

You wait, patiently, wrapped in his arms, right where you want to be, stealing kisses from his lips.

Until another idea comes up to you, far more clever and pleasant than the one you had before involving Patricia.

“Let me help,” you whisper, gently moving from him a little.

Joel looks confused but no less enthralled.

You look at him, lowering your jeans and ruined panties, exposing your pussy for his gaze to feast on.

Your fingers slowly approach your little button, barely touching it, attentive to Joel's reactions.

“Jesus, honey, you’ll get me hard again in no time,” he whispers, almost hissing, desire coating his every word.

His eyes are fixed on you in a way that makes your skin crawl with pleasure.

Joel takes a step back to look at you better, ecstatic. You begin to draw tight circles on your clit, a temping smile dancing on your lips, your body leaning on the wall to keep you steady, your back arched, while you’re giving a little show to your man. The man you hope to have next to you for the rest of your life, the man you care about so much that you’re happy to do things you’ve never expected from yourself.

“That’s what I want…” you rasp, your breath shallowing, growing heavier with every touch, with the look that made you change your mind about love devouring every second of you.

You move lower, collecting more of your juice, returning to your clit continuing the dance of your fingers.

“Joel…” you call softly, “would you like to fill me up? Because I want it so much…”

Joel clears his throat but the words fail him. “And she wants it so much…” you coo, looking down “you don’t want to disappoint her, do you?”

Joel clenches his jaw, fidgeting on the spot, his gaze spellbound, his cock starting to get hard again.

“Jesus, the effect you have on me…” he grumbles and you giggle, tight circles on your bundle of nerves, your fingers coated in your juices.

You lower them again, prodding at your entrance. “She feels so empty…” you whisper and you know it’s enough to make Joel snap.

One of your hands goes up to one of your tits, lowering your bra, playing with your nipple.

“Show me, baby. Show me how you please yourself,” he orders.

You don't care about the still-pungent, yet dry, smell of paint, you don't even care about how hard the wood feels against your back, or how your filthy jeans are bunched around your ankles, just above your boots. Only Joel exists.

It's tingling all over you, your body burns under his gaze, desire, awareness and security that those dark, deep, delicious and lustful eyes are yours alone invading every single part of your soul.

Your middle and ring finger slide inside of you and a moan escapes your lips.

“Good girl…just like that,” he praises you.

Your thumb is still flicking your clit as you start thrusting into your little hole, whimpering against the wall, reaching for that tender spot that always makes you see stars.

It's not like when Joel does it—nothing compares to his hand cupping your sex, two of his thick fingers sliding inside you, while his thumb works on your clit—but it's still nice. Especially now that he's watching you.

He takes his cock in his hand, stroking it gently, his arm outstretched, his cheeks flushed, beaded with a sheen of sweat.

Your fingers keep filling you up, scissoring your hole, juices flowing down your palm. You moan louder and arch your back some more for him to see.

Joel is stunned, his pupils blown, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His cock is hard as a rock again, heavy in his palm as he strokes it up and down, gathering precum from his leaking tip and smearing it along his length.

He curses under his breath, a low and raspy “fuck” rumbling between his lips.

You’re a mess of lust and sweat but you’ve never felt sexier in your life.

“I’m so close…” you whine, your eyes fixed into his, drowning in that warm brown coffee.

“Cum for me, baby,” he urges

One last bucking of your hips against your hand and you come biting down on your lower lip, moans escaping from the back of your throat no matter how hard you try.

Joel walks over to you, grabs your wrist, and pulls your fingers out of you, watching your pussy flutter and quiver right in front of his eyes.

“Fuck, this is so good, look at her, all puffy and cute for me.”

You cry out incoherently like a child, your orgasm washing over you, head dizzy and weightless, your whole body shaking against the wall.

Joel leans even closer, you can feel his breath on your skin. His cock is still in his hand. As soon as you come down from your high a little, he brushes the tip of his cock against your entrance. You try to pull back, overstimulated and sensitive.

"Joel!" you moan, but his hand cups your cheek, the pad of his fingers tracing your cheekbone. "Shh, you're okay.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can, baby” he gently admonishes you, wiping a tear from your face.

He pushes against your entrance, his swollen tip stretching you much wider than your fingers.

You cry and beg, your voice cracking in your chest, but he whispers softly, "You're okay, baby, you're okay,” so gently you can do nothing other than melt. He waits for the rawness and the feeling of invasion to subside, for them to evolve into the satisfying feeling of fullness you've been craving.

You calm down, your pussy adjusting to his thickness, growing hungry again for him.

He trails kisses down your neck, his beard brushing against your skin, tickling you. He feels you slowly relax, your whole body unwinding.

“Ready?”

“Yeah…,” you whisper, almost giggling, almost surprised he was right. Joel knows you better than anyone.

He pushes in a little more, reaching about halfway, one hand gripping your hip, his gaze searching yours. A smile spreads across your lips, you're intoxicated by him, and it's a feeling so sweet you wouldn't trade it for anything.

“Fill me up to the brim, Joel,” you beg, one of your hands raking through his salt and pepper hair that you love so much, grasping the soft curls at the base of his neck.

“Whatever my darling wants…” he exhales, thrusting deep inside you. His bush brushes against your pussy as he begins to move slowly, testing how much you can handle. You moan, tugging on his hair, bucking your hips, throwing your head back against the wooden slats. He’s thick and throbbing inside you. You’ve always loved it, and maybe you love it even more now, you feel him so deeply you could say you two are the same.

He's still almost fully clothed against your practically naked body and the contrast sends you into ecstasy, the soft fabric of his shirt brushing against you, hitting your nipples and making you see stars before your eyes.

“You’re so big…,” you sigh.

“I know baby, you’re doin’ so well for me.”

He lifts your leg with his hand, thrusting faster into you hitting that gummy spot again and again as you moan so loudly, anyone could hear.

You don’t even think about that, though, so lost in your pleasure your head isn’t coherent or reasonable anymore.

“So full…” you mumble “so close…” but Joel is not done with you already, he bends to your uncovered nipple and takes it between his lips, his tongue swirling around your bud before he starts sucking on it.

He knows you love it and his mouth is more than eager to please you.

Mouth full of your tit, hands grabbing tightly on your hips, his cock drowning into you like it was made for your soaking wet pussy, he whimpers against your skin, his sticky white warm cum making a mess against your walls.

He lets go of your nipple, hiding his face in the hollow of your neck chanting “I love you’s.”

You come undone again, as soon as you feel it hitting your little hole, your lips shaping into an “o”, your eyes hazy and clouded, your whole body shaking against him and your voice stammering his and God’s name.

His chest rising and falling rapidly, he’s panting, trying to regain his breath.

You’re completely out of words, still trying to fathom the incredibly risky and yet ridiculously exciting way he just fucked you.

“My Gosh, this was fucking great,” you murmur.

He chuckles into your neck, softly biting on the tender skin right under your ear.

“Yeah, it really was, baby…enough to make you not want to have other weird bets?”

“I promise,” you say, taking his chin between two of your fingers, kissing him right on that heart shaped patch on his beard that you love and then on his swollen, delicious lips “no more stupid bets.”

“I love you more than anything, you know that, right?” Joel says, caressing your hair, holding you tightly in his arms.

“I love you, too,” you whisper, completely wrapped into his arms, the safest place you know.

Absolutely npt for the people who showed interest in this wip: @milla-frenchy , @shadowqueen2024 , @baronessvonglitter , @peepawmiller , @mcthsman , @broad-shouldrs , @joelmillerspnk , @balhoneysweetstuff

The whole Patricia situation had me cackling because Joel being genuinely THAT oblivious while reader is practically vibrating with jealousy is so painfully him 😂 but then you went and made it hurt??? Her confidence disappearing the second Patricia actually says yes and all those old insecurities immediately creeping back in… BABY. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and tell her LOOK AT THAT MAN, HE IS OBSESSED WITH YOU!!!

And then:

“I made sure she understood that I was crazy about my woman and could never cheat on her.”

MY WOMAN???? EXCUSE ME???? 😭 I had to put my phone down. And “I wouldn’t want her in a million years, is that clear?” GOD. That whole moment was so incredibly Joel—he barely needs ten words to make it perfectly clear where his heart is.

But apparently you decided emotional reassurance wasn’t enough and immediately tried to KILL ME because—

“It’s your cock, am I right? Not Patricia's, nor anyone else's. Suck it good, darlin’.”

V. V!!!!!!!!!!!! The way you brought the jealousy/possessiveness straight back into the smut??? “NOT PATRICIA’S” actually sent me into orbit 😭😭😭 petty jealous reader getting THAT reassurance from soft dom Joel is apparently one of my new favorite things in existence.

And “You’re so pretty like this, all messed up for me” ????? NEED HIM SO BADDD. That is exactly the kind of soft-dom Joel that ruins me—the filthiest mouth imaginable and then he looks at her like she hung the damn moon. 😭

Also I loved that underneath all the incredibly hot stuff, this was still so tender. Reader’s history and her fear that maybe she’s somehow not enough made the ending hit so much harder. Ending with her wrapped in his arms, “the safest place you know,” after she spent the beginning worrying someone could take him away from her??? AWWW. ❤️

Already posted:

• Lola - Javier Peña x f!reader - requested by @isabellaboo2025

(Fluff, Javi adopts a dog, meet cute.)

• Thirsty - Jackson!Joel x f!reader - requested by @aurorawritestoescape

(Smut, lactation, nipple play, friends to lovers)

• Sober - Dieter Bravo x costar!f!reader - requested by @ess-evo

(Smut, sub!Dieter, gentle dom!f!reader, coworkers to friends to lovers, sober!Dieter)

• Good Boy - sub!Javier Peña x dom!f!reader - requested by @milla-frenchy

(Smut, sub!Javi, dom!reader, sex worker!reader, handcuffing, spanking, 69, so much condescending tone)

Coming soon:

Wanna bet? - requested by @missadangel (established relationship, smut, Jackson!Joel, sub!Joel)

Something new - Joel x f!reader - requested by @604to647

Joel visiting Sarah in Italy and having a meet cute (still untitled) - requested by @isabellaboo2025

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀* index:

part one: the lie.

part two: the sin. (coming soon.)

also available on archiveofourown.

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀* extras:

moodboard.

fic tag.

You hadn't realized that you were occupying almost one third of the door's width as you poked your head in until you heard someone clearing their throat. Your heart almost leaped out of your ribs as if you got caught plagiarizing a reading journal.

Looking up, you were met with a pair of brown eyes and a dark, bushy mustache. Your gaze lingered for a few long seconds as you tried to place where you'd seen this face before, completely oblivious to the fact that your cheek was brushing against his tie, your face barely inches away from his chest.

Huh?

Oh.

Oh shit.

You immediately leaned back on your feet in realization. "Hi. Sir. Sorry. I was uh— looking for my friend." You rapped.

The man, also known as Mia's new, no-bullshit Introduction to Criminology professor, stared at you unamused as you flashed him a sheepish smile.

His jaw clenched in mild annoyance, scrutinizing your face before glancing back into the classroom. There were only two girls you didn't recognize and three boys left inside. "I think she left."

"Again?" You exclaimed, unaware of how tired he sounded.

The man in gray suit shrugged and walked off, the clacking of his heels echoing through the campus hallway.

You pouted in exasperation at Mia's audacity as your head followed the lecturer's figure that grew smaller with every step he took.

Thank you for reading! Feedbacks are appreciated :>

Gnawing jealousy doesn’t leave you, though. It keeps fogging your brain as you think of the way Patricia dares to put her hands on your man.

“It’s just…the way you don’t see that, it baffles me. I’m sorry, but she couldn’t be any cheekier,” you whine.

“Aw, jealous bunny…” he coos, his lips softly curved into that crooked smile that always makes your knees buckle.

“I’m not jealous…” you try to say, but he chuckles, “Oh yes, you are. Which is cute…but I’m still pretty sure she’s not into me. It’s just her personality, you know. She’s like that with Tommy as well.”

“Yeah, she would love to fuck him too,” you spit out, and his jaw drops.

“Baby…” he starts, but a thought suddenly runs through your mind, and you smirk, interrupting him, “Wanna bet?”

“What?” Eyebrows raised, he looks at you puzzled.

“Yeah, let’s bet. Go over there and ask her out.” Patricia is sitting at the counter, sipping her drink, casually shooting very lustful looks at Joel, biting her lower lip.

“I would never do that!” He protests.

“Aw, you’re scared to lose, aren’t you?” You tease him, happy to have finally found a safe method to open his eyes.

“‘M not scared, it’s ridiculous. Honey, we don’t need to do that.”

He tries to put some reason back into you, but to no avail.

You’re lying on your side beneath flickering fluorescent lights, one arm trapped awkwardly beneath you while the other rests beside a rusted drain cut into the floor. Your wrists are free. That surprises you first. Then the bars do. Thick iron bars stretch from floor to ceiling a few feet away, welded between old hospital pillars. A heavy padlock hangs outside the door. A cell. Your stomach drops. You force yourself upright. Pain tears through your shoulder so hard the room flashes white.

“Fuck—” Your back slams against the wall. You bite down against the scream clawing its way up your throat and press one hand over the fresh bandage wrapped around your shoulder.

Clean gauze. Too clean. Somebody treated the gunshot. Not well enough to stop the throbbing. Well enough to keep you alive. Your breathing turns sharp. 

Joel. Taxi. The hospital.

Memory slams back all at once. Clouser standing beneath the floodlights. William with a gun pressed against his head. The revolver kicking hard inside your hand. Blood bursting from the side of Clouser’s face. Then— The bullet. Your shoulder snapping backward. Joel shouting your name. Hands grabbing you. Too many hands.

You remember fighting. Of course you fought. A Wolf’s nose breaking beneath your forehead. Another choking when you drove your fingers into his throat. A medic leaning over you while someone tried cutting through your jacket. You twisting free. Your elbow connecting with a jaw. A metal tray crashing to the floor. Scissors in your hand. Someone screaming— “She’s got a weapon!”

You remember burying the scissors deep into a soldier’s thigh. Then someone caught your injured arm and pulled. Pain. Bright enough to erase the room. A needle flashing near your neck. You grabbed the medic’s wrist. Almost broke it. Another body slammed into your back. Then the sharp sting just beneath your jaw. Warmth flooding through your veins. Your legs turning useless. Clouser’s blurred face hovering above you. His voice far away. “Enough.” Then nothing.

Your hand moves automatically toward your neck. A small puncture mark sits beneath your jaw. “Son of a bitch.”

You grab the bars and drag yourself onto your feet. The room sways violently. You tighten your grip until your knuckles whiten and wait for the floor to stop moving. No windows. No clock. No way to tell how long you’ve been unconscious. “Joel?” Your voice echoes through the corridor. Nothing answers.

You pull yourself closer to the bars and look around properly. The space beyond your cell is wide and rectangular, lined with abandoned examination bays. Faded plastic curtains hang in torn strips from rusted tracks along the ceiling. Numbers remain painted above each section. 

TRIAGE ONE. TRIAGE TWO. TRIAGE THREE. 

An old emergency intake ward. The WLF must have converted it into a holding block after taking the hospital. Efficient. Close to the ambulance entrance. Close to the operating rooms. Close to the elevators leading underground. Easy to bring prisoners in without the rest of the building seeing them. Easy to decide whether they became recruits, corpses— Or experiments.

Your eyes move toward the cells across from yours. Three of them. Empty. At least they look empty. Dark stains spread across the floor of the nearest one. Old blood. The farthest contains a torn mattress, a metal bucket and deep scratches carved into the wall. Not random. Words. Most are too small to read from here. One isn’t. 

DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOU DOWNSTAIRS.

Your pulse slows. Then something scrapes beyond the double doors at the end of the ward. You straighten instantly. Pain tears through your shoulder again, but you ignore it. Footsteps approach. Two people. Maybe three. Your body goes still. Not relaxed. Ready.

The doors swing open. A woman enters first. Her light brown hair is pulled tightly away from her face, its length woven into a practical braid down her back. She is young. Probably younger than you. She wears dark WLF fatigues beneath a weather-stained military jacket, the sleeves pushed partway up her forearms. A rifle hangs across her back, while the pistol strapped to her thigh sits within easy reach. Her frame is strong without being bulky. The controlled balance of someone who trains because survival depends on it, not because she wants anyone watching. Everything about the way she moves says soldier. She stops several feet from your cell. The man beside her doesn’t. He keeps walking until he is only a few feet from the bars.

Rain-darkened hair curls loosely near his temples, a little longer around his ears. A narrow mustache shadows his upper lip, joined by faint stubble tracing his jaw. His WLF gear resembles hers—a dark shirt beneath an olive tactical vest, cargo trousers tucked into scuffed combat boots. A knife rests at one hip. A pistol at the other. His posture is looser than hers. Almost casual. But his dark eyes never stop moving. Your hands. Your injured shoulder. The lock. The narrow space between your body and the bars. You dislike him immediately. Maybe it’s the half-smile sitting too easily on his face. The expression of a man who enjoys knowing something you don’t. He looks like the kind of asshole who would smile while lying straight to your face.

The woman says nothing. Just stares. You stare back. You consider asking about Joel. The question climbs halfway up your throat. You swallow it again. No. They don’t need to know what he means to you. Not yet.

The man speaks first. “So... This is her?” His eyebrows lift as he looks you over. “This is the girl who got fourteen of our people killed in one day?”

Your jaw tightens. Fourteen. You thought it was closer to twelve. Good to know.

The man steps slightly nearer. “Thought she’d be bigger.”

You lean closer to the bars. “Open the door.”

His mouth twitches. “Yeah?”

“Then we can introduce ourselves properly.”

A short laugh escapes him. “She’s funny.”

Your eyes remain on him. “People usually laugh more before I break their teeth.”

His expression sharpens slightly. You tighten your grip on the bars. “You here to take revenge for your friends?” Your gaze moves between them. “Take a number.”

The man’s amusement disappears. “Those people had families.”

You give him a flat look. “Do I look like I give a shit?” His jaw tightens. You continue before he can answer. “Funny thing about your Wolves, though. Met two of them trying to run all the way to Santa Barbara.”

Something flashes across his face. You smile without warmth. “Real loyal family you’ve built here.”

The last trace of amusement leaves his face. He steps toward the bars. The woman speaks without looking at him. “Manny.” One word. Quiet. Enough to stop him.

He exhales through his nose and shifts back, but the anger remains visible beneath his expression.

The woman finally steps closer. You study her. There is something behind her eyes you cannot name. Pain, rage, perhaps. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with the fourteen soldiers. “How much does he mean to you?”

Every muscle in your body locks. The reaction lasts less than a second. Still long enough for her to see it. You angle your head slightly. “What?”

“Joel Miller.” She says the name as if she has said it a thousand times before. In dreams. In prayers. Between clenched teeth. Something ignites behind her eyes when she repeats it. “How much does he mean to you?”

The question itself should not frighten you. The way she asks it does. There is anticipation in her face. A terrible, almost hopeful kind of anticipation—as if she wants the answer to hurt. You keep your voice level. “Why?”

Her gaze searches yours. Whatever she finds makes the corner of her mouth twitch. “Good. When I kill him, I’ll know there’s someone left who understands what it feels like.” Your blood turns to ice. She watches the realization move across your face. “The fact that it’s you is almost poetic.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He slaughtered an entire hospital for that girl.” Her voice remains controlled, but her eyes begin to shine. “Soldiers. Nurses. People who had already surrendered.” She swallows. “An unarmed doctor.”

Salt Lake. The Fireflies. Joel carrying Ellie out beneath the gunfire. Your pulse begins pounding inside your ears. “And now he’s come all the way here for another one.”

You step closer to the bars. “Were you a Firefly?”

For a moment, she says nothing. Then— “Dr. Anderson was my dad.”

There it is. The wound beneath everything else. Her eyes glisten, but no tears fall. Not yet. Manny looks away. You stare at her. “The defenseless doctor you’re talking about was about to cut open a fourteen-year-old kid.” Her expression changes. You don’t stop. “He was about to cut me open too. For a cure none of you could prove would even work.”

“My dad knew what he was doing.”

“Your dad was going to kill us.”

“He was going to save—.”

“Joel saved us.” You cut her off. Her jaw tightens. You move so close that only rusted iron separates you. “How he did it, who he had to go through—” Your voice drops. “I don’t give a shit.”

Abby crosses the remaining distance in one violent step. Her hand shoots through the bars and fists into the front of your shirt. “Say that again, you fucking bitch.”

You move faster. Your good hand clamps around her wrist. You jerk her arm hard against the bars, trap it between two lengths of iron and catch one of her fingers before she can pull free. Then you bend. A sharp crack cuts through the ward. Abby cries out. Manny lunges forward. You twist harder. “Touch him and I’ll break the rest.”

“Shit! Abs!” Manny grabs Abby by the shoulder and yanks her backward. “Stop!” Her hand tears free from your grasp. She staggers away, clutching her finger against her chest, fury blazing across her face. Manny’s pistol is halfway out of its holster. Yours would already be in his throat if there weren’t bars between you.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

All three of you turn. Clouser walks into the converted triage ward with two heavily armed Wolves behind him. A fresh bandage wraps around the side of his head, covering what remains of his ear. Blood has already begun seeping through the white material near his temple. Not enough. His gaze moves from Abby’s injured hand to Manny’s half-drawn weapon. Then to you. 

Manny slowly lets go of his pistol. “Just getting acquainted with your daughter.” He glances toward you. “Charming girl. Must run in the family.”

Clouser’s expression does not change. “I told you she isn’t here for you.”

Abby turns away from the cell, still cradling her injured hand. “Where is he?” She doesn’t need to say the name this time. You know exactly who she means.

Clouser continues walking. Neither hurried nor concerned. “I also told you that information comes at a price.”

Manny shifts beside her. “Isaac’s not coming down here.”

Clouser stops a few feet away. “That sounds like your problem.”

Abby takes a step toward him. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

The two Wolves accompanying Clouser raise their rifles slightly. Manny’s hand returns to his pistol. Nobody draws. Not yet. Clouser barely notices. “Isaac is bleeding the WLF dry over an island and a religious war he cannot win.”

“You don’t know anything about this war,” Abby snaps.

“I know your people are deserting faster than he can execute them.”

Her face hardens. Clouser gestures vaguely toward the hospital surrounding you. “I know your soldiers are dying from bites, arrows, infections and his obsession with the Scars.”

“You think that serum makes you a leader?”

The smallest smile touches his mouth. “No.” He looks toward her as if the answer should be obvious. “The fact that they cannot survive without it will.”

Your stomach twists. Apparently, while you were gone, your father had graduated from mad scientist to aspiring dictator.

Abby stares at him. “You’re experimenting on our people.”

“I’m saving them.”

“You’re killing them.”

“Temporary instability is not failure.” Clouser’s tone remains maddeningly calm. “It is data.”

Manny lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Is that what we’re calling the bodies downstairs?”

Clouser’s expression sharpens. “Careful.”

“No.” Abby steps closer. “You be careful.” Her voice rises. “You’ve got half the hospital locked down. Soldiers disappearing into quarantine. Families threatening to leave—and now you’re trying to turn Isaac’s command against him?”

“They will not leave.”

“You sound pretty fucking sure.”

“Their children require treatment.” Clouser glances toward the floor beneath you. “Treatment only I can provide.”

Abby’s face twists with disgust. “Are you fucking serious?”

“People follow Isaac because they fear him.” Clouser’s eyes move slowly between Abby and Manny. “They will follow me because they need me.”

“That cure doesn’t do shit,” Abby snaps. “Everyone knows it. The first chance they get, they’re going to put a bullet in your head.”

“This time it will work.”

Abby scoffs.

Clouser looks toward you. “It already has.”

Your stomach tightens.

“The tissue taken from her bite showed a response we have never seen before. Her blood stabilized one of the patients.” His gaze lingers on you. “You may see the results for yourselves.” A faint smile touches his mouth. Then he looks back at Abby. “She is proof that survival is possible. Isaac would reduce that proof to a weapon. Something to send through spore-filled tunnels and unleash against the Scars.”

“And you see her as what?”

Clouser answers without hesitation. “Mine.”

Revulsion crawls across your skin. You slam both hands against the bars. “I’m gonna tear your fucking throat out.”

One of the guards flinches. Clouser doesn’t. “Sweetheart.” His tone is almost indulgent. “There’s no need to get so worked up. You’ll tear your stitches.”

“Come closer and I’ll tear yours.”

Manny’s mouth almost twitches again.

Abby ignores both of you. Her eyes remain fixed on Clouser. “You bring me Joel Miller.” She glances toward your cell as she says it. Making certain you hear every word.

Clouser tilts his head. “You bring me Isaac.”

“Alive?”

“Very.”

“And Miller is mine.”

Your body hits the bars. The entire structure shakes. You grip the iron hard enough for rust to cut into your palms. Clouser turns toward the doors. “We will continue this conversation somewhere quieter.”

Abby does not move immediately. Neither do you. Your eyes remain locked through the bars. You shake them again. The metal groans beneath your hands. “Abby!”

She stops at the doors. Looks back. “You asked me how much he means to me?” Your voice drops. “Enough to make what he did in Salt Lake look like mercy.”

For one beat, Abby only stares at you. Then something in her face breaks. “You fucking—”

She surges toward the cell. Manny catches her by the arm before she reaches the bars and hauls her back. “If you put one hand on him, I swear to God I will get out of this cage.” Your voice carries through the entire ward. “I’ll tear this hospital apart room by room. And I’ll kill every motherfucker standing between me and him.”

Abby tears her arm free from Manny’s grip. Her eyes remain fixed on yours. “If you live that long.”

Then she turns and walks out.

Nearly an hour passes. At least, you think it does. You sit in the corner of the cell with your injured shoulder pressed against concrete, examining the rusted nail balanced across your knee.

You found it beneath the torn mattress and spent fifteen minutes working it loose. Not much. You have done more with less. You pull the leather belt free from your trousers and wrap one end around the nail until the spike sits upright between the folds. Ugly, but useful. Not enough to win against four armed Wolves. Enough to open a throat, take a gun and get out.

Joel is somewhere inside this hospital. Or already being taken to the woman who looked at you as though his death had been keeping her alive for years. You force the thought away. He is alive. He has to be. And Taxi— Your throat tightens. No. One problem at a time.

A metallic scrape comes from beyond the double doors. You are on your feet before they open, the belt wound around your palm and the nail hidden behind your thigh. Four soldiers enter the ward. Two remain near the cell with their rifles raised while the others approach the lock. The rifles are a performance. Clouser needs you alive, and everyone here knows it.

The taller soldier notices the hand behind your back. “Show me.”

You lean against the bars. “Open the fucking door and come take it.”

His jaw tightens. The man beside him pulls a syringe from his vest. Clear fluid. Long needle. Your stomach clenches before you can stop it. His mouth twists. “You want us to do this again?”

The sight of the needle drags fluorescent lights, leather restraints and hands pinning your arms out of memory. You lift your eyes to his. “Stick me with that and I’ll rip it out, bury it in your eye and make you choke on it.”

His smile disappears.

“Don’t sedate her. It will contaminate the neurological readings.”

The voice comes from behind the soldiers. Everything inside you stills. Ten years since you heard it without a wall, gunfire or memory distorting it.

The soldiers move apart. William stands behind them.

Yesterday, beneath the rain and hospital floodlights, you had only seen pieces of him—a bruised face, bound hands, a gun against his head. Now there is nothing between you. White threads through the hair at his temples. Lines cut deeply beside his mouth and beneath his eyes. He is thinner than you remember. Older. Tired in a way sleep could never fix.

He looks at you, and for several seconds the ward disappears. Pain shifts across his face, followed by relief and everything he cannot say in front of the soldiers.

“She’s going to behave,” he says, his voice deliberately clinical. Then his eyes soften. He says your real name quietly, as though unsure whether it still belongs to you. “Won’t you?”

The name catches beneath your ribs. Not Kat. Not the name known in Jackson. The name you were born with, tied to laboratory records and the girl you buried before reaching Wyoming.

His gaze drops toward the hand behind your back. 

Trust me. 

He does not say it, but for one irrational second his eyes remind you of Joel’s—that same steady look when the world is collapsing and he needs you to believe he has already found a way through it.

You bring your hand forward. The soldiers tense at the sight of the belt and nail, but William does not flinch. You unwrap the leather. The nail clatters onto the floor. “There,” you say. “Behaving.”

“Open the cell,” William orders.

The lock clicks. Two soldiers enter and grip you carefully, avoiding the wounded shoulder. Every instinct tells you to fight. Break a knee. Take the pistol. Use the body as cover. But Joel is still somewhere you cannot reach from behind these bars, so you let them hold you. For now.

They march you through older treatment wings until William leads you into a small examination room. Only one guard remains inside. William gestures toward the padded table. “Sit.”

You do, mostly because standing is beginning to require more effort than you want anyone to notice. William arranges gauze, forceps and two glass vials on a tray. Your eyes settle on the syringe.

When he reaches for the bandage around your forearm, you pull back. “The bite,” he says. “I need to look at it.”

“You people already took a piece.”

Something dark crosses his face. He glances toward the guard, who is staring through the observation window. “I know,” William says quietly.

You offer your arm. The stalker’s bite looks worse beneath the examination light, swollen around the badly stitched biopsy site.

William’s fingers hover near it. “You let it bite this deep?”

“It wasn’t exactly a negotiation.”

His eyes lift to yours. You look away, seeing Joel trapped beneath the stalker and the empty revolver in your hand.

William cleans the wound. Antiseptic burns through the torn skin. “Easy,” he murmurs. The familiarity of the word hurts more than the wound.

He brings the needle toward your elbow. You pull back again.

“It’s a small sample.”

A bitter laugh leaves you. “Ten years and nothing’s changed. Still the lab rat. I suppose I wasn’t one to you back then.” You meet his eyes. “I am now.”

William ties a strip of rubber around your upper arm and lowers his voice. “I told you to stay away from Seattle.”

“I didn’t come for you.”

His brow furrows.

“Where’s Joel?”

The needle enters your vein. Dark blood fills the first vial.

“I think you should be more concerned about yourself,” William says.

“I’ve spent enough time doing that.”

His expression closes.

“You’ve been with Clouser all this time. Why are you helping him?”

No answer. William replaces the vial.

“Did you know about Vickie?”

His hand stills. “Yes.”

“And you did nothing?”

William removes the needle, presses gauze against the puncture and nods once. Something inside you cracks, but there is no time to let it open.

“Help me find Joel.”

William begins rewrapping your arm.

“Please.” The word tastes desperate. “I can’t let them hurt him.”

His hands stop. “Do I look like a free man?”

Your jaw tightens.

“What makes a smuggler so important?” he asks.

You swallow. “He’s my family. The kind I never had. The kind I didn’t know how to have until I met him.” Your throat tightens. “He’s the reason I know what it feels like to have somewhere to go back to. I can’t lose him.”

Something changes behind William’s eyes. He draws your sleeve over the bandage and stands. “Come with me.”

The guard remains behind as William takes you through a side door, down two flights of stairs and toward a security door marked B2.

“Where are we going?”

William enters a code and glances toward the camera. “Keep walking.”

The level beyond looks nothing like the hospital upstairs. White coats move between sealed rooms while carts pass carrying blood bags and numbered containers. Everyone acknowledges William with a nod or a quiet, “Doctor.” Respect, or fear disguised as it.

The farther you walk, the more the corridor resembles the laboratories of your childhood. Glass observation rooms. Heavy doors. Numbers instead of names. Only larger. More organised. Worse.

Behind the first window, a man lies strapped to an inclined bed, dark fungal veins stretching along his jaw. The next room contains a grey-skinned woman held upright by restraints. Cordyceps blooms beneath one eye; the other follows you as you pass. Conscious. Another room holds two beds. One body is covered. The other receives blood through three separate lines.

Your steps slow. “What is this? What the fuck did he do?”

The corridor opens into a wider ward. Children lie behind glass with their wrists secured to bed rails. A pregnant woman lies strapped to a table in the next chamber, blackened veins spreading across her bare stomach. A monitor records two heartbeats. One slow. One frantic.

She turns toward you. There is no pleading left in her eyes, only the recognition of one prisoner seeing another.

“You’re experimenting on pregnant women?” The words tear out of you. “And fucking children?”

William turns. A cart passes behind him carrying blood bags labelled with the numbers on the doors.

“What are you doing with their blood?”

“Trying to reproduce what happened to you.”

Your gaze snaps toward him.

“When we learned Marlene had found another immune girl, we were on the other side of the country.”

“Ellie.”

“Clouser never stopped looking for you. News of another immune person led us toward Salt Lake. Anderson and Clouser knew one another before the outbreak. According to Clouser, Anderson was an incompetent man stumbling toward the right answer for the wrong reasons.”

“Sounds like him.”

“When Clouser learned the Fireflies had both immune subjects, he was afraid.”

“Because someone else was going to cut me open?”

“That too. But Clouser never believed the cure was simply a growth inside the brain. The Cordyceps and the host work together. Destroying the brain destroys the system producing the immune response.”

Your stomach tightens.

“Ellie’s infection convinces new Cordyceps that she is already colonised,” William continues. “Her immunity hides.” His eyes drop to your bandaged arm. “Yours fights back.”

The corridor seems to narrow around you.

“When we reached Salt Lake, Anderson was dead,” he says. “The Fireflies were scattered. The hospital was full of bodies. Marlene among them.”

“Joel,” you murmur. “I escaped while he was getting Ellie out. We didn’t know each other then. I ended up in Jackson, and that is where we met. Was Ethan the reason you sent me there?”

William nods. “His father was a good man. I believed you would be safe with the people he trusted.”

“Why didn’t you follow?”

William’s attention shifts toward the next room. A small boy lies beneath a white blanket, no older than ten. Dark veins branch beneath the skin of his arms.

“The hospital was attacked after you escaped. FEDRA learned we had worked with the Fireflies. Three years in a prison camp followed by five more running. Eventually Clouser found Isaac.”

“And the WLF saved you?”

“They took us in. Doctors were useful.” William looks through the glass. “For a while, I thought we had found a future.”

“Vickie?”

“The WLF found her unit after you destroyed the others. She had been bitten.”

“He tested the serum on her,” you say. “Then used her to find me.”

“Yes.” William’s voice begins to fracture. “I never told them you were in Jackson. If I went to you, they would have followed. But that is not the whole truth. I chose to stay. I had a family here. Friends. A home.”

The boy’s arm trembles weakly beneath the blanket. You look between them. “He’s your—” The word refuses to come. “When was he bitten?”

William turns toward you. “No one down here was bitten.”

Your stomach drops. The children. The pregnant woman. The numbered rooms. “They infected them.”

“Clouser needed subjects at different stages, ages and immune responses.”

You look through the glass at the boy. William’s jaw locks as he watches his son’s fingers twitch.

“Do you know the most important thing the last ten years taught me?” he asks. “Never waste mercy on a man who does not deserve it. Given enough time, mercy becomes permission.” His hand presses against the window. “I spared Clouser. I convinced myself some part of him could change.” William’s reflection trembles in the glass. “Then he infected my son.” The words settle heavily between you. “He used Daniel to keep me beside him. Every dose of serum came with a condition. Every improvement bought another month of obedience. I told myself I was staying for him.”

When he turns back, something harder has entered his face. “But it is over now. Daniel has passed the stage the current serum can reverse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I have known for weeks.”

“William—”

“Clouser should have died the night you escaped.” The words come low and vicious. “I had my hands around his throat. I could have ended it. But I couldn’t. I was a coward who still believed men could change, still believed in humanity.” He looks across the ward. “Everyone here is paying for that mercy.”

You watch him turn away from the glass. “Why did you bring me down here? You could’ve told me upstairs.”

“No,” he says. “I couldn’t.”

Only then do you notice the nurse watching William instead of the cameras. When your eyes meet hers, she turns one monitor away from the corridor. A doctor leaving a numbered room gives William a small nod. Farther down, an armed guard deliberately blocks a security lens.

The people moving through this ward are not all Clouser’s.

William looks toward the children behind the glass. “You said the smuggler was your family.”

“Joel.”

His eyes return to yours. “Joel,” he repeats, the name unfamiliar in his mouth. “This is where families like mine come to die. Every hour Clouser remains in control, another person becomes a number on a door.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Clouser trusts no one else with you. He will oversee your procedure himself and bring his research team, his guards and every record that matters into one secured room.”

Understanding begins to form. “You’re using me to draw him out.”

“I’m asking you to keep him there.”

“While I’m strapped to a table.”

“You won’t be unconscious.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It is supposed to keep you alive.” William lowers his voice. “When the power goes out, his people will be cut off. Mine will take the corridors. You keep Clouser inside until we reach you.”

“And then?”

The security door opens before William can answer. A young technician hurries into the corridor, clutching a folder against his chest. “Dr. Devane. Subject One-Six-One.”

Something in William’s face changes. “What about him?”

“Post-infusion response markers are rising. The fungal regression has accelerated, neural activity is stabilising and his inflammatory markers have fallen almost thirty percent.”

William takes the folder. “How long?”

“Twenty-three minutes.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“We ran the bloods twice.”

“What did you give him?”

The technician hesitates. His gaze flicks toward you. “The sample collected upstairs.”

Your blood.

You look through the glass at Daniel. His fingers move faintly against the sheet. Not a tremor. Something deliberate.

“What’s happening?” you ask.

“Ah.” Clouser enters with two Wolves behind him, his steps slow and unhurried. Every muscle inside you locks. “There you are.” He looks past you to the technician. “And the news has already travelled. Efficient as ever.”

William turns toward him. “Is it true?”

Clouser’s smile gives nothing away. “See for yourself.”

“The results were confirmed twice,” the technician says. “Fungal activity has decreased. Neural response is stabilising, and the inflammatory markers are continuing to fall.”

William’s eyes move to Daniel. “How quickly?”

“The first measurable change appeared less than six minutes after the infusion.”

William goes still. Even you understand enough to know that should not be possible. Six minutes is barely enough time to produce a measurable systemic change, let alone force an infection that far gone into retreat.

“The sample taken from her produced an immediate systemic response,” the technician continues. “We have never recorded anything like it.”

William scans the results. His face remains controlled, but the paper bends beneath his fingers. “One response proves nothing.”

“No,” Clouser agrees. “But it proves considerably more than we knew yesterday.”

Then he turns toward you. “In that case, the operation is cancelled.”

For one disorienting second, you think you misheard him. Even William looks up. “What?”

Clouser smiles. “I’ve decided not to open your skull.”

Relief tries to rise inside you. Something in his expression kills it before it can. “Your blood has become considerably more interesting.”

“You’re postponing the operation?”

“I’m replacing it.”

William’s expression remains controlled, but you see the effort it costs him. His plan depended on an operating theatre—Clouser, his guards, his research team and every record that mattered sealed inside one room when the lights went out. Now there will be no theatre. No gathered team. No trap.

“What are you proposing?” William asks.

“Serial blood collection. Bone marrow. Tissue from the bite and the previous biopsy site.” Clouser looks at you as though discussing equipment. “Then controlled exposure while we monitor the immune response.”

Your stomach turns. “You’re going to infect me again.”

“You cannot technically be infected.”

“Then put it in your own fucking veins.”

Clouser ignores you. “If these results are reproducible, Daniel may finally have a chance.”

William’s eyes move toward his son. Only for a second. But you see it. So does Clouser.

The technician shifts uneasily. “Should I prepare another infusion?”

William does not answer. That silence is enough.

Clouser turns toward the Wolves. “Take her upstairs. Procedure Room Seven.”

William’s gaze snaps back to him. “She is injured.”

“That is not our priority.”

The soldiers seize your arms and drag you toward the door. You search William’s face for the plan, for some indication that the lights will still go out. He meets your eyes and gives nothing away. Perhaps because Clouser is watching. Perhaps because he no longer knows.

You twist against the soldiers, but pain tears through your wounded shoulder and your arm buckles. William takes one step after you.

Clouser moves between you. “Stay with your son, Doctor.”

William stops. The words are not a suggestion.

As the security door opens, you look back at him. He is still holding the folder, still staring after you while Daniel’s monitor marks its steady rhythm behind the glass.

For the first time since William opened your cell, you understand that whatever happens next will not follow his plan.

The soldiers pull you through the door.

It closes between you.

The soldiers struggle with you all the way upstairs. You drag your heels through doorways and twist whenever their grip shifts, forcing them to readjust every few steps. The wound in your shoulder burns with each movement, but the pain keeps you sharp.

Clouser follows without hurrying. By the time they force you into Procedure Room Seven, his breathing has not changed.

The room is smaller than an operating theatre. A narrow bed stands beneath an adjustable lamp, surrounded by monitors, steel trays and collection equipment. Clear tubing hangs beside sealed syringes and rows of empty vials.

Two scans glow on the screen across the room.

You recognise the first immediately. Ten years have passed, but you spent too much of your childhood beneath machines not to know your own brain. A pale, branching mass curls through the left side.

The old scan.

The second is recent. What once resembled thin roots has become a dense white web, spreading through tissue that had been clear ten years ago.

For a moment, you stop fighting.

Clouser notices. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

You tear your eyes from the screen. He has removed his coat and is fastening a surgical gown around his neck while an assistant prepares the instruments beside him.

“What happened to it?”

Clouser pulls on a glove. “It matured. Every bite you survived, every concentration of spores you inhaled, exposed it to a new variation of the organism. Each time, your body adapted. The growth expanded, refined its response—and yet it never converted you.” The second glove snaps around his wrist. “And you object when I call you a miracle.”

You say nothing. Your attention drifts back to the pale network branching through tissue that should have belonged only to you.

“I no longer resent you for running that night,” Clouser continues. “Had I operated then, the organism may have been too immature. We might have removed it before the process became stable—or discovered nothing we could reproduce.” He studies the screen with something dangerously close to admiration. “But now we know your blood actively suppresses fungal replication. Something circulating through your system forces Cordyceps into regression.” His gaze settles on you. “Ten years ago, I had a theory. Now I have proof.”

The soldiers force you toward the bed. You plant your feet.

“Secure her properly,” Clouser says. “She has a history of damaging valuable equipment.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

One soldier locks an arm around your waist while the other grabs your wrist. You drive an elbow into the first man’s ribs, but the second catches your injured arm.

Pain breaks your balance.

They force you onto the mattress. One pins your shoulder while the other pulls a restraint across your waist.

The assistant lifts a syringe.

“No.”

He glances toward the instruments. One needle is narrow and familiar. Another is thick enough to reach bone. “The marrow collection will be extremely painful.”

“Sedation would alter the immune response,” Clouser says. “I need it unfiltered.”

The assistant hesitates but nods. The soldier reaches for your left wrist. You let the arm go slack, and he mistakes it for exhaustion.

The instant his grip loosens, you twist beneath him and drive your shoulder into his chest. He crashes against the bed. You seize the assistant by his coat, drag him between you and the raised rifles and tear the pistol from the soldier’s holster.

“Fuck!”

“Gun!”

“Drop it!”

The assistant chokes as you press the barrel beneath his jaw. Rifles snap toward you from both sides. “Tell me where Joel is.”

Clouser’s head turns sharply. “You will not leave this room.”

“I didn’t ask to leave.”

“Miller is beyond your reach.”

“Where is he?”

Clouser looks at the trembling assistant, then back at you. “You believe his life matters to me?”

The man goes rigid.

No fear. No hesitation. Nothing.

You cannot trade a life Clouser already considers disposable. You shove the assistant aside. Before the soldiers can fire, you reverse the pistol and press the muzzle against your own temple.

Clouser’s expression changes. The amusement vanishes. His shoulders stiffen beneath the surgical gown, his eyes fixed on the barrel. You would swear he would show less fear with the gun against his own head.

One soldier starts forward.

Clouser throws up a gloved hand. “Don’t. Lower the rifles. Now.”

The weapons descend.

“You need me so bad, right?”

Clouser takes one slow step forward. “Do not do anything irrational.”

A breathless laugh escapes you. “Irrational?”

“Killing yourself will not improve your position.”

“It’ll ruin yours.”

Your finger settles against the trigger.

Clouser stops.

Behind you, ten years of growth glows across the screen. His research. His cure. His miracle.

“You need my blood,” you say. “The tissue, the neural response, the organism inside my skull. You need all of it intact.”

“You do not understand what you are threatening.”

“I grew up in your fucking laboratories.” Your thumb finds the safety. The metallic click fills the room. “I know exactly where I’m aiming.”

His hands rise slightly. “You kill yourself, and Miller still dies.”

“Then keeping him alive is the only way you keep me alive.”

“You will gain nothing from this.”

Clouser steps forward again. You begin to squeeze the trigger. He stops. “One bullet through here and your miracle ends up on the wall.”

His jaw tightens. “What do you want?”

For the first time, he is asking.

“Where is Joel?”

His eyes move toward the nearest soldier. “Transport Three,” the man says. “East service road. They left twenty minutes ago.”

Already in a vehicle. Already beyond your reach. Maybe being taken to Isaac. Maybe to the woman who had looked at Joel as though she had been waiting years to kill him.

“Tell them to stop.”

Clouser studies you. “That vehicle is operating under direct orders.”

“Then give it new ones.”

“You cannot reach him from here.”

“I don’t need to. Get me a radio. Stop the truck and put Joel on the other end.”

Clouser looks at your finger, then at the scan. Finally, he turns toward the soldier.

“Contact Transport Three.”

The man pulls the radio from his vest. “Transport Three, this is Medical Control. Respond.”

Static crackles.

“Transport Three.”

“Stop the vehicle.”

A pause. “Say again?”

Clouser takes the radio. “This is Clouser. Halt immediately and secure the road.”

“Doctor, we have standing orders to deliver the prisoner. We’re less than ten minutes from the handoff.”

“There will be no handoff.”

“We take transfer orders from Isaac’s command.”

Clouser’s gaze remains fixed on you. “The immune subject has a loaded weapon against the growth in her brain. If she fires, every possibility of reproducing the immune response ends with her.”

The room goes silent enough for you to hear the hum from the screen behind you.

Clouser’s voice hardens. “Stop the vehicle.”

“Understood.”

Brakes hiss through the radio. “Dismount,” Clouser orders. “Cut Miller loose and leave him the truck.”

“Doc—”

You keep your eyes on him. “His equipment.”

“Return his belongings,” Clouser says. “Leave him one rifle, his sidearm and a handheld radio. Then move away from the vehicle.”

The man on the other end mutters something you cannot hear.

Clouser’s voice drops. “Do it.”

Metal doors slam through the speaker. Clouser passes the radio back to the soldier, who approaches you carefully. “Hold it where I can speak.”

The soldier stops beyond your reach and raises the radio toward your mouth.

For a moment, there is only static.

Then a distant voice says, “Prisoner’s out.”

Your heart strikes hard against your ribs.

“Put him on.”

-JOEL-

The truck stops hard enough to throw Joel against the metal wall. He lifts his head, blinking through the blood dried along his temple. His wrists are bound behind him, his legs nearly numb beneath his weight. Outside, boots strike wet asphalt and voices rise in sudden argument. Joel shifts in the dark, searching for anything he can use. The rear doors open before he finds it, and grey daylight floods the compartment. Three Wolves stand in the road. Their rifles are ready, but none is pointed at him. That worries him more.

One climbs inside and cuts the restraints around his wrists. Joel works the feeling back into his fingers while the soldier drops his pack beside him. His revolver rests on top.

“Get out.”

Joel remains seated. “The hell’s goin’ on?”

The soldier does not answer. He holds out a radio. “Take it.” Joel looks from the device to the men outside. One of them places a rifle inside the cab before retreating several yards from the truck. It feels like a trap. But if they wanted him dead, they have had twenty minutes to do it. Joel takes the radio.

“Talk.”

Static crackles. Then your voice reaches him.

“Joel?”

His entire body locks.

“Kat?”

He hears a single breath leave you through the speaker.

“Where are you?” he demands. “You still in that hospital?”

“Listen to me.”

“What did they do to you?”

His eyes lift to the Wolves. The nearest man looks away.

“They touch you?”

“Take the truck.”

“What?”

“Drive north. Get past their checkpoints and away from the hospital.”

“I ain’t leavin’ you there.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Like hell I am. Tell me where you are.”

“You can’t get to me.”

“Watch me.”

“Joel…” Your grip tightens around the pistol pressed to your temple. The soldier holding the radio keeps his arm extended toward your mouth, careful not to move within reach. Clouser stands across from you, both gloved hands raised, his attention fixed on your finger against the trigger.

“If you give a damn about me,” you say, “you’ll get in that fucking truck and go.”

Joel’s face hardens.

“Don’t you dare—”

“I’m getting out.”

The lie comes too quickly. Joel hears it.

“How?”

“William has people inside.”

“That ain’t an answer.”

“It’s all I can give you.”

“You’re lyin’.”

You close your eyes for half a second. “I need you to trust me.”

“Darlin’—“

“When you’re clear, call this channel again.”

“And then what?”

“Sing me the song you wrote for me.”

Joel stares at the radio.

“What?”

“The song. Nobody else knows it. If I hear it, I’ll know you’re alone. I’ll know they didn’t force you to say you were safe.”

Faintly, behind your voice, he hears someone breathing. Then Clouser speaks.

“Time is passing.”

Joel’s blood turns cold. “That him?”

You do not answer. “Get in the truck. If I don’t hear from you in ten minutes—” You raise your voice, no longer speaking only to him. “—I pull the trigger and put everything inside my skull across the fucking wall.”

Silence falls across the road. Joel stares at the radio, his jaw clenched hard enough to ache.

“You reckless—” He drags a hand over his face. “Goddammit, Kat.”

One of the Wolves gestures toward the cab. “You heard her.” Joel holsters the revolver, grabs the rifle and climbs behind the wheel. The channel cuts. Joel starts the engine. The Wolves retreat as the truck surges forward. He watches them in the mirror until the rain swallows them, then drives north through streets broken by roots, wreckage and abandoned cars.

He knows what you expect him to do. Keep going. He also knows he never will.

The last WLF checkpoint appears ahead. Its guards raise the barrier reluctantly and watch him pass. Joel drives until the hospital disappears behind ruined buildings and no headlights follow him.

Eight minutes.

He pulls beneath the remains of an overpass and kills the engine. Rain spills through cracks in the concrete as he climbs out with the rifle and checks the road, the rooftops and the tree line. Nothing moves. He grabs the radio.

“Kat?” Static answers. “Kat, I’m clear. You hear me?”

Several seconds pass before your voice returns.

“Sing.”

Joel leans against the truck.

“Are you hurt?”

“Sing the song.”

“Fuck—Tell me you’re all right.”

“Joel.” Your voice is thinner now. “Sing the fucking song.”

He closes his eyes. For a moment, there is only rain ticking against the roof of the truck. Then he sings.

“After all these years runnin’ round,

Flyin’ high and fallin’ down…”

His voice is rough without the guitar beneath it, worn down by blood, fear and the distance between you. But it is him. Only him.

Your eyes burn. A tear slips toward your jaw, but you do not wipe it away. You cannot move the hand holding the gun, and you refuse to let Clouser see the other one tremble.

“Well, the time has come at last,

To rest my heart and ease my past…”

Joel’s voice catches on the final word. He swallows and forces himself to continue.

“I’m gonna leave these blues behind,

For some other fool to find…”

Clouser watches you from across the room. The pistol remains pressed to your temple, but the pressure has begun to ease. His eyes flick toward the nearest soldier.

Joel looks down the empty road as he sings.

“He won’t care and I don’t mind…”

An engine growls somewhere beyond the overpass. Joel straightens. Headlights appear through the trees, moving quickly toward him. He shoulders the rifle but keeps the radio close.

“Hide me, babe…”

Your eyes close. His voice trembles.

“Hide me, babe.”

The final words fade into static. For one suspended moment, neither of you speaks. Then Joel presses the radio closer.

“You stay alive,” he says. “I’m comin’ for you.”

“Joel—”

“You hear me? You stay—”

You lower the pistol. Only an inch.

Clouser’s eyes snap toward the nearest soldier. The blow strikes your wrist before you see it coming. The pistol flies from your hand and skids beneath the steel cabinet. Another soldier drives you back against the bed as the radio is torn away from your mouth.

“Kat?”

Static tears through Joel’s speaker.

“Kat! Fuck!”

Static tears through Joel’s speaker.

The approaching vehicle stops across the road. Doors open, and armed figures spill into the rain.

Joel barely looks at them.

He shoves the radio against his belt and turns for the truck. If the road south is blocked, he will drive through them. Around them. Over them. Whatever it takes to get back to the hospital.

His hand closes around the driver’s door. A gunshot cracks through the rain. The bullet punches through the metal inches from his fingers, throwing sparks across the side of the truck. Joel jerks back and raises the rifle in the same movement.

A young woman steps out from behind the headlights, her hair pulled tightly away from a face hollowed by exhaustion. A pistol hangs steady in her outstretched hand, smoke curling faintly from the barrel.

“Joel Miller!” 

Joel settles the rifle over her chest. She stares at him as though she has spent years imagining this exact moment. “I’m Abby.”

Joel gives her a brief, impatient look. “That supposed to mean somethin’?”

A man emerges near the other headlight, moving toward Joel’s right with a rifle raised. Abby glances toward him. Manny keeps his sights on Joel. “It’s him.”

Joel sees what they are doing. Abby holds his attention while Manny moves wide enough to catch him from the side. Their truck blocks the road south.

Back to the hospital.

Back to you.

“Looks like you know me, congrats,” Joel says. “I don’t know either of you. Move the truck.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this.”

Joel’s eyes flick toward the silent radio at his belt. “Then say whatever you came to say.”

Abby stops several yards away. “Where was the last place you saw the Fireflies?”

The question settles differently. Joel looks at her properly now. “Salt Lake.”

“Saint Mary’s Hospital.” Her grip tightens around the pistol. “Do you know how many people you killed that day?”

Joel says nothing. He has thought about that hospital during the year since he left it. The corridors. Marlene in the garage. The bodies he stepped over with Ellie unconscious in his arms.

Sometimes, in the quietest part of the night, he has wondered whether there had been another way.

He has never regretted the one he chose.

“The doctor,” Abby continues. “You shot him in the head.” Joel remembers the man raising the scalpel after being warned to step aside. The body falling beside the operating table. “He was my dad!”

Joel’s attention drifts past her toward the road. Clouser may already have taken the gun from you. You could be strapped back onto that bed, another needle in your arm, your blood filling his tubes while you lie there unable to fight.

The last thing Joel heard was your voice disappearing into static.

He cannot stand here answering for a dead man. “If you came for an apology, you ain’t gettin’ one.”

Abby raises her pistol. Manny’s rifle follows. “Put the gun down,” she says.

Joel’s voice cuts through hers. “You want me, fine. But you’re standin’ in my way.” 

“What’s the hurry?” Abby asks. “Another hospital to tear apart?” Joel’s expression changes. She sees it. “The other immune girl,” Abby says. “That’s where you’re going.”

“If I have to.”

“She threatened to kill herself for you.” Something bitter twists at the corner of Abby’s mouth. “Clouser’s probably got her back on the table already.”

Joel settles the rifle directly over her chest. “Last warning.”

Manny takes another step sideways. Joel shifts the barrel toward him without looking away from Abby.

“Don’t.”

Manny stops. “You think you can take both of us, you stupid old man?”

Abby does not flinch. “You don’t get to walk away from me. I’ve carried you for a year.” Her voice begins to shake. “You don’t get a quick death.”

Joel glances once toward the hospital road, then back at her. “You talk too damn much.”

He fires.

The bullet destroys the headlight beside Abby. Glass bursts across the road as she dives behind the truck. Manny opens fire.

Joel drops behind the transport vehicle. Rounds tear through the rear doors and hammer against the frame. He lands on his injured side, rolls and drags his pack from the open cab.

The radio crackles at his belt. “Kat?”

A bullet shatters the mirror above his head. Joel ducks as fragments scatter across his shoulders.

Manny moves along the far side of the road while Abby keeps Joel pinned behind the engine block. They know how to work together.

Joel checks the rifle.

Half a magazine.

Enough.

He fires beneath the truck, forcing Manny back, then punches a second round through the panel beside Abby. Before either of them can recover, he moves.

Joel comes around the hood and drives the rifle stock across Manny’s mouth. Manny answers by slamming his weapon into Joel’s ribs. Pain folds through Joel’s side.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” Manny spits through the blood.

Joel answers with his forehead. Bone cracks.

Manny staggers back, cursing in Spanish. Abby strikes Joel from behind and drives him into the truck hard enough to tear the rifle from his hands.

Her fist catches him beneath the jaw. Joel answers with an elbow that snaps her head sideways. Abby comes back immediately.

He catches her gun hand and smashes it against the side of the truck.

Once.

Twice.

The pistol drops.

“You took everything from me!”

Joel shoves her away. Abby drives her knee into his stomach and throws him onto the road. The radio tears loose from his belt and skids across the asphalt.

She kicks it beyond his reach, plants her boot against his chest and draws a knife.

Every second he spends here belongs to Clouser. Joel’s fingers search blindly among the shattered headlight glass.

“Somethin’ happens to her because you kept me here,” he says, “we’ll see who joins your daddy first.”

His hand closes around a jagged piece of glass. He drives it into her thigh.

Abby screams and recoils. Joel catches her ankle and tears her feet from beneath her.

Manny raises his rifle. “Abby!”

A high-powered shot cracks across the road. Manny’s head jerks sideways. For a fraction of a second, he remains standing. Then he collapses beside the truck, blood spraying across Abby’s face.

She stares at him. “Manny?”

Another shot tears into the road beside her.

Sniper.

Joel knows the report of that rifle. He looks toward the fractured walkway overlooking the road.

“Tommy?”

Tommy stands behind a broken concrete barrier, rifle braced against his shoulder.

“Get the hell off my brother!”

Abby looks from Manny’s body to Joel. Whatever control remained in her disappears.

She launches herself at him.

They hit the ground together. Her hands close around Joel’s throat, thumbs driving beneath his jaw.

“You killed him!”

Joel grips one wrist, but the other tightens. Darkness creeps into the edges of his vision. “Had enough of you,” he forces out.

Tommy fires, but Abby and Joel roll against the truck before he can find a clean angle. The round buries itself in the metal beside them. “Goddammit, Joel!”

Abby tears the knife from her belt. Joel catches her wrist with both hands, the blade trembling inches above his throat.

“You should’ve died in that hospital!”

She forces it lower. The edge slices across Joel’s side.

Then a boot drives into Abby’s ribs.

Tommy steps between them and brings the stock of his rifle across her face.

“Stay down!”

Abby spits blood and tackles him into the truck. Joel forces himself upright and catches her from behind before she can drive the knife into Tommy’s stomach.

She fights them without any concern for what breaks—clawing at Joel, kicking blindly at Tommy, reaching desperately toward Manny’s body.

“You fucking murderer!” she screams. “You shot him and walked away!”

Joel forces her to the ground and traps one arm beneath his knee. Tommy pins the other against the road. Still, Abby strains beneath them, Manny’s blood smeared across her face.

“You took him from me.”

Joel draws his revolver and aims between her eyes.

For the first time, Abby stops fighting. Her chest rises and falls beneath them as she looks directly into the barrel.

“Do it.”

Joel’s finger settles against the trigger.

“Come on,” she says, louder now. “Kill me like you killed my father.”

Joel says nothing.

“Look at me!” Abby bucks beneath them, her voice breaking into a scream. “Look at me and fucking do it!”

Joel looks down at her. For one brief second, he does not see the knife that opened his side or the woman who came here to torture him. He sees grief left too long without anywhere to go. A child who built everything she became around the moment someone took her father away.

His finger remains still.

Abby sees it. “What?” she spits. “You could do it to him, but not me?”

“Shut the fuck—” Tommy tightens his hold.

“Come on, you fucking coward! Do it!”

Joel still does not fire.

Not in that single second.

Something vicious twists across Abby’s face.

“Fine.”

Her free hand tears loose and disappears beneath Manny’s body. Her fingers close around his pistol.

“I’ll do it myself.”

She swings the weapon toward Joel.

Tommy fires.

The shot tears through Abby’s back. Her body jerks beneath Joel, and Manny’s pistol discharges into the road, the bullet passing close enough for him to feel it cut the air beside his face.

Abby tries to raise the weapon again. Her arm trembles, refusing to obey. The pistol slips from her fingers and lands beside Manny’s hand.

She stares up at Joel, fury fighting against the shock in her eyes. Her mouth moves, but only a wet breath escapes. “Damn you…” Then she goes still.

Joel keeps the revolver trained between her eyes for several seconds. Finally, he lowers it and pushes himself away.

Tommy looks from Abby to Manny. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Joel retrieves his rifle and looks at Abby once. There is no satisfaction in his face. No relief. Only time lost. “How the hell did you find me?”

“Followed the Wolves after they moved you from the hospital.”

“That ain’t what I asked.” Joel’s eyes narrow. “Why are you even in Seattle?”

“Ellie wouldn’t let it go. Kept saying something was wrong—that you wouldn’t stay quiet this long unless you were dead or in trouble.”

“The kid was right.”

“Usually is. Annoying as hell, but right.”

Joel studies his brother. “You left your boy and came all the way out here?”

“He’s with his mama. Safest place he could be.”

“Maria know you’re here?”

Tommy looks down while gathering ammunition from Manny’s rifle. His silence is answer enough.

“You’re a damn idiot.”

“Says the man I just pulled out from under two Fireflies.” Tommy catches Joel by the shoulder. “Hold still. You’re bleeding.”

“So are you.”

“Mine ain’t pouring out.”

“Tommy.”

Something in Joel’s voice strips the humour from his brother’s face. “They have her.”

Tommy looks toward the hospital beyond the ruined streets.

“In there?”

“Clouser’s got her. Last I heard, she had a gun against her own head.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“She did it for me.” Joel looks down at the silent radio. “Made them let me go. Then the line went dead.”

Tommy studies his face. “You two are dangerously fuckin’ alike.”

“She’s worse.”

Joel reaches for the driver’s door, but pain locks through his side. Tommy takes the keys from his hand. “I’m driving.”

“I can drive.”

“You can bleed and shoot. Pick two.” Joel glares at him. Tommy opens the passenger door. “Get in before your stubborn ass falls over.”

Joel climbs inside with the rifle across his knees. Tommy starts the engine while Joel picks up the radio. Static answers. He changes the frequency. Nothing. His hand tightens around the device.

Tommy glances toward him. “She’s strong, Joel.”

The radio erupts in a burst of overlapping voices.

“—all available units return to the hospital.”

Gunfire rattles through the channel.

“Medical personnel are armed. We’ve lost the east wing. Lower containment access has been compromised!”

Another voice breaks through the static.

“Reinforcements to the laboratory entrance!”

“Fall back! Fall—”

A burst of automatic fire drowns out the rest.

Joel’s head snaps toward Tommy. “We need to find her before the whole damn place comes down.”

Tommy slams the vehicle into gear.

“Then let’s go get her.”

The fighting draws them toward the rear of the hospital. Joel and Tommy move through the narrow lane behind the loading docks, keeping close to the concrete wall while gunfire tears through the floors above them. Emergency lights pulse behind shattered windows. Somewhere inside, men shout conflicting orders over the alarms. Tommy reaches the service entrance first. He tries the handle, finds it locked and steps aside. Joel fires once into the mechanism.

“Subtle,” Tommy mutters.

“Ain’t got time for subtle.” They slip inside. The service corridor smells of bleach, smoke and hot electrical wiring. Bodies lie beneath the emergency lights—Wolves, doctors, people in blood-soaked scrubs. Joel barely looks at them.

“Lower level should connect to the east wing,” Tommy says. Joel is already moving. They descend through a concrete stairwell while the battle continues above them. The gunfire becomes muffled underground, replaced by the pounding of boots and the mechanical groan of failing ventilation. The door at the bottom bursts open.

Two armed men rush into the corridor, firing behind them. A third figure follows between them, still wearing a bloodstained surgical gown beneath his coat. In one hand he carries an insulated case marked with a faded biohazard symbol. William and several armed members of his staff appear at the opposite end of the corridor. Gunfire erupts. One of Clouser’s guards goes down immediately. The second dives behind a medical cart and returns fire while Clouser turns toward the service exit. Then he sees Joel. For the first time, surprise breaks through his composure. Joel recognises the voice before the face.

“Tommy—that’s him!” Tommy fires at the remaining guard, forcing him behind cover. “Go!” Joel charges. Clouser tries to turn, but Joel reaches him before he takes two steps. He strikes him across the mouth and drives him into the wall. The insulated case flies from Clouser’s hand, hits the floor and springs open. Rows of glass vials rattle inside fitted foam. Some contain dark, fibrous material. Others hold clear or pale amber fluid packed between melting cold packs. Clouser looks toward the case. Joel hits him again. Clouser drops to one knee. Joel catches him by the front of the gown, hauls him upright and slams him against the wall. “Where is she?”

Clouser coughs, blood running over his lower lip. Joel shakes him hard enough to strike his skull against the tile. “Where the fuck is she?” 

Clouser looks into his face and smiles. “You’re late.”

Something in Joel breaks. His fist catches Clouser beneath the cheekbone. Once. Then again. Clouser folds toward the floor, but Joel keeps hold of him. “Joel!” Tommy’s warning cuts through the corridor. William and three members of his staff have reached them. Their weapons are raised. Tommy stands between the two groups, rifle trained on William while William’s people aim back at him.

“Everybody hold,” William orders. No one lowers a weapon. William’s eyes move past Tommy and settle on Joel. His expression changes.

“You’re Joel.” Joel knows that face. Charcoal smudged across old pages. A man drawn from memory again and again, sometimes with glasses, sometimes without. A name written beneath one unfinished portrait in your careful handwriting.

 William.

Joel releases Clouser and steps toward him. “Where is she?”

“Procedure Room Seven.”

“Tell me she’s all right.”

“She is alive.”

“That ain’t what I asked.” 

Clouser laughs weakly from the floor, wipes blood from his mouth. “Listen to him, Joel. He knows what you’re about to find.”

 Joel starts forward. William holds him back.

“You still need me,” Clouser says. William releases Joel and turns. Clouser looks toward the open case. “The serum is there. Daniel can still be stabilised. The others too, if you stop this now.”

“Yeah?” William reaches into his coat. “I got something for you, you piece of shit,” A sealed syringe appears in his hand. Dark fungal material drifts through cloudy fluid. Clouser’s face drains of colour.

Joel looks between them. “What’s that?”

“A concentrated strain engineered to invade neural tissue quickly,” William says. His eyes remain on Clouser. “His strain.”  

“Cordyceps,” Tommy mutters.

William gives a grim nod. “Modified to spread faster and cross into neural tissue more efficiently than anything found outside this building.”

Clouser begins backing away. “You cannot do this.” 

William kneels in front of him.

“Daniel is alive because of me,” Clouser says.

“Daniel is infected because of you.”

“I gave you proof! Her blood is working. Everything we did brought us here.” William catches him by the jaw and forces his head to the side. Clouser’s composure shatters. “William, listen to me. We can still finish this. We can save him. We can save all of them.” William drives the needle in. Clouser screams. He claws at William’s wrist, but Joel plants a boot against his chest and holds him to the floor while William forces the dark suspension into his bloodstream. Clouser convulses beneath them. The syringe empties. William withdraws the needle. “Death would be mercy.” 

Clouser clamps both hands over the puncture. “The serum. I need it now!” William rises. Clouser scrambles after him on his knees. “William!”  William looks toward two of his men. “Take him downstairs.” They seize Clouser beneath the arms. He fights immediately.

“No! Not the lower ward.”

“Put him in isolation with the subjects he abandoned.” Clouser digs his heels against the floor as they drag him toward the reinforced stairwell.

“You still need me! You don’t understand the protocol!” William closes the insulated case.

“I understand enough.” The stairwell door closes over Clouser’s screams. Tommy watches it shut. “Hell of a way to test his own work.” Joel does not respond. He catches William by the coat.

“Kat…Why’d he say I was late?” 

William hesitates. “She’s sedated.” 

Joel’s grip tightens. “She’s what?”

“We found her restrained in the procedure room. Clouser had begun serial blood collection and was preparing a marrow extraction. Her shoulder had reopened, and she was fighting hard enough to worsen the bleeding.”

“What did you give her?”

“A controlled sedative. She is breathing on her own.”

“Take me to her. Now.”

 William looks toward the people lining the corridor. “Lower your weapons,” he tells them. “It’s over.” Slowly, rifles descend. The last bursts of gunfire above them fade into isolated shots. William takes the case and leads them upstairs. They move through the remains of the revolt. Bodies lie between overturned carts and broken glass. Some wear WLF armour. Others wear lab coats or scrubs darkened with blood. A doctor steps into William’s path. “What about the treatment?”

“Secure the laboratory. Put the samples in cold storage.”

“There isn’t enough,” the doctor says. “Not for the entire ward.” William’s pace falters. Only once. 

Joel notices. “How much did you take from her?”  William does not answer. Joel grabs his shoulder and turns him. “How much?”

“I stopped the marrow procedure and treated the injury.”

“But you kept takin’ her blood.” 

William meets his eyes. “Yes.”

Joel nearly strikes him. Tommy steps close enough to intervene, but William turns and continues toward the east wing. Joel follows because you are ahead of him. Because every second spent hitting William is another second before he sees you. 

The third-floor corridor is quieter than the rest of the hospital. Emergency lights stain the walls red. William stops outside a reinforced door. Joel reaches past him and throws it open. Then he stops. His mind rejects what his eyes show him. For one fractured second, the room refuses to make sense. There is only white light, hanging tubes and the slow pulse of machines. Then the shapes become you.

You lie beneath the adjustable lamp, so still that the bed appears to have been arranged around a body rather than a living person. Your shirt has been cut open across the shoulder and chest. Adhesive electrodes cover your skin, thin wires trailing from them into monitors. Another set disappears beneath your hair near your temple. One arm is extended on a narrow support. A dark line leaves the vein inside your elbow and travels through a collection chamber before descending into a nearly full blood bag. Drops fall into it one at a time. Slow. Steady. Your other arm carries an intravenous line feeding clear fluid back into you. Fresh bandages cover your shoulder and the place near your hip where someone had prepared the marrow site. Bruises circle your wrists. Your lips have lost their colour. Three filled collection bags hang beside the bed. 

You look dead.

Joel’s body understands the sight before his mind does. Every muscle locks. His breath catches beneath his ribs and refuses to rise. The white walls blur as an older terror takes their place. A small body heavy in his arms. Blood soaking through his shirt and running hot between his fingers. Sarah looking up at him without understanding why he cannot make the pain stop. 

No. No, baby girl. Look at me. Stay with me. 

Then Ellie beneath the lights in Salt Lake City. Unconscious on another hospital bed, her skin cold beneath his hands when he lifted her from the operating table. And now you. Still beneath the same merciless white light. 

Too late. 

The thought tears through him. He failed you. His chest clamps shut. His heart strikes once, violently, then stumbles into a frantic rhythm. Joel tries to move toward the bed, but his legs no longer seem connected to him.

“Joel?” Tommy’s voice reaches him through water. Joel presses a hand against his chest, trying to force air into lungs that will not open. Tommy catches his arm.

“Joel. Hey—look at me.” 

Joel cannot.

“She’s breathing,” Tommy says. “You hear me? She’s breathing.” The words are the only thing keeping the room from becoming another grave. Tommy points toward the monitor. “Look.” A green line moves across the screen. A pulse. Joel stares at it. Then the line rises again. 

You are alive.

He forces one foot forward. Then the other. By the time he reaches the bed, his entire body is shaking. Joel touches your face. Your skin is cool beneath his palm. Not cold. Not cold. His fingers slide to the side of your neck, searching desperately for the beat beneath your skin. He does not trust the monitor. He does not trust William or the machines or anyone standing in that room. He trusts only what he can feel. There. Weak but steady. The breath that leaves him sounds almost like a sob. 

Come on, darlin’. 

The words form inside him, but his throat has closed around them. Your eyelids do not move. Joel brushes his thumb beneath your eye and follows the bruising along your cheek. His gaze moves down to the tape, the wires, the line disappearing into your arm. He watches your blood travel through the tubing. Another dark drop falls into the collection bag. Something hot runs down his face. He does not realise he is crying until it reaches his jaw. Joel reaches for the line. William catches his wrist.

“Don’t.” Joel turns toward him. His eyes are wet, but the grief inside them has sharpened into something lethal.

“Take it out.”

“The collection is almost complete.”

Joel draws his revolver and drives the barrel beneath William’s chin.

“I said take it out.” 

Tommy moves beside him, one hand closing around Joel’s shoulder. William slowly raises both hands. “If you pull the catheter without clamping it, you could rupture the vein.”

“Then clamp it.”

“We need the final volume.” 

Joel’s voice breaks as it rises. “Stop taking her fucking blood!” The assistants beside the monitors freeze.

“Listen to me,” William says.

“NO!”

“Joel—”

“You’re William, ain’t you?” The question catches him. Joel presses the barrel harder beneath his jaw. “She drew your face. Wrote your name under it.” William says nothing. “She called herself Kat in. Your daughter’s name.” Joel’s voice trembles with rage. “She wanted you to be the closest thing she ever had to a father. This how you treated her?”

“This is not about her.”

Joel surges forward, forcing William back against the wall. “Everything in this fucking room is about her!”

William looks toward the revolver. “Taking her away will not change what is happening inside her. There may be very little anyone can do for her now.”

Joel pulls back the hammer. “What the—?”

“Joel,” Tommy says quietly. Joel does not look away from William. Tommy studies the filled blood bags and the scans glowing on the wall.

“Hear him out,” he says. “Then we take her.” Joel glances at his brother. For a moment, they are boys again, exchanging an entire decision without speaking. Tommy’s face tells him everything he needs to know. The explanation will not change what happens next. William sees it too.

“Three minutes,” Joel says. “Waste one and you’re done.”

 William turns carefully toward the screen. Two images of your brain glow beside each other. One old. One recent. “The first scan was taken ten years ago. The second was taken today.” Joel sees the pale branching mass inside your skull. In the newer image, it has spread far beyond its original boundaries.

“That’s the infection?”

“It is Cordyceps, but it does not behave like a conventional infection.” William points toward the older scan. “Her exposure began before she was born. Her mother was bitten late in pregnancy, and a damaged form of the organism reached her while her immune system was still developing.” Tommy studies the image. “So her body thought it belonged there.”

“Not exactly. It learned to tolerate one altered colony while recognising later strains as foreign. The original growth established itself in her brain without taking control. Every bite and every concentration of spores introduced a competing strain, forcing the colony to adapt.”

“And it grew,” Joel says.

“Yes.” William points toward the newer scan.

“It produces compounds that prevent new Cordyceps from replicating. Her blood carries part of that response. We infused a small sample into Daniel.” His voice catches.

“My son.” William draws a breath. “His fever fell. The infection began to recede within minutes.” Tommy looks toward the filled bags. “And you think it can cure the others.”

“It can stabilise them. If we isolate what is active in her blood, we may be able to reproduce it without taking more from her.” 

Joel keeps the revolver raised. “At what cost?”

“The thing protecting her is also destroying her!”

Joel’s face empties. “What are you sayin’?”

“The organism maintains control by expanding. Every new exposure causes more growth, inflammation and pressure on the surrounding tissue. I cannot tell you when the balance will fail. It may take years. It may happen sooner if she suffers another bite or prolonged spore exposure.”

“No.” Joel says it quietly.

“I wish I were wrong.”

Joel forces the barrel harder beneath William’s chin. “So you figure she’s dyin’ anyway.”

“That is not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you’re sayin’.”

“I am saying her blood can save people now. Sixteen patients are dying downstairs. Children. Parents.” William’s voice fractures. “My son.” Joel looks toward the nearly full collection bag. “Look, I love her too,” William says. Joel’s eyes snap toward him. William does not retreat. “I remember the day she was born. I watched her take her first breath. I was there when the first scans showed us what had happened inside her. I remember the first time she asked me to call her Kat instead of her own name. I knew whose name she had chosen. I knew what she was asking me to be, even if neither of us could say it aloud.” His gaze moves toward your face. “I brought her books. I sat beside her through the fevers. Every time Clouser looked at her and saw an answer, I tried to make sure someone still saw a child.” His eyes shine. “When she escaped, part of me was terrified for her. Another part was relieved she had gotten away from us.” For the first time, shame breaks through his composure.

“I would not choose this if there were another way. What we collected may stabilise three or four people. The final volume may be enough to begin producing a treatment that does not require her.” He looks toward the blood bags.

“If we stop now, people who could have lived will die.”

Joel looks at you. The wires. The bruises. The blood leaving your body one drop at a time. Then he looks at Tommy. No words pass between them, but the answer moves easily through the silence. Tommy’s jaw sets. His rifle shifts toward the assistants beside the monitors. Joel turns back to William.

“Don’t care.”

William stares at him. “What?”

“I don’t care about your patients. Don’t care about your cure. Don’t care what happens to this whole goddamn world. If she’s got years, they’re hers. If she’s got a week, that’s hers too.” His voice grows quieter. “You don’t get to spend what’s left of her life like it belongs to everybody else.”

“People will die.”

“People always die.” Joel’s eyes return to William. “She ain’t dyin’ for them.” 

William’s expression fills with grief. Joel does not lower the gun.

“I know what you did in Salt Lake,” William says quietly. “You’re really going to do it again?”

Joel’s eyes sharpen, he does not blink. “Unhook her.”

“You heard him. Clamp the line.” William remains still. Joel’s finger settles against the trigger.z

William holds Joel’s gaze for another second. Then he gives one of the assistants a small nod. The woman moves toward the bed with both hands visible. Tommy follows her with the barrel of his rifle.“Slow,” he warns. She closes the clamp above the catheter and peels the tape from your arm. Her fingers tremble badly enough that the adhesive slips twice.

“Keep pressure above the vein,” William says. The catheter slides free. A thin line of blood wells from the puncture before the assistant presses gauze against it and wraps your arm. Tommy gestures toward the remaining wires.

“All of it.”

She disconnects the monitor leads one by one. The green line vanishes from the screen. An alarm changes to a single continuous tone that drives through Joel’s skull. Your chest still rises. That is all he watches. Tommy keeps the others covered while Joel holsters his revolver and pulls off his jacket. 

Only then does he see what they have done to the rest of you. Your trousers have been removed for the marrow procedure. A hospital sheet lies twisted beneath one leg, leaving bruised skin and the bandaged site near your hip exposed beneath the surgical light. Joel’s face hardens. He lays his jacket over you carefully, covering you from your chest to below your knees. He draws the sides together and tucks the heavy fabric beneath you so it cannot fall open when he lifts you. His hand pauses against your cheek. Still cool. Still breathing. 

All of sudden, William moves. 

The sound of the pistol clearing his coat is almost nothing. Tommy turns, but William already has the weapon aimed at Joel’s back. Joel becomes still beside the bed. William holds the gun in both hands, tears shining in his eyes. “I cannot allow you to carry her out of this room.”

Tommy swings his rifle toward him. “Put it down.” 

William does not look at him. “Sixteen people are dying downstairs. Her blood is the first real chance we have ever had. If you take her now, everything we sacrificed becomes meaningless.” 

Joel slowly turns.

William’s pistol trembles. 

Joel fires first.

The bullet enters the centre of William’s forehead. His pistol discharges into the ceiling as his body strikes the wall and folds to the floor beneath the glowing scans. For half a second, no one in the room breathes. The assistants recoil and scream.

One reaches toward the alarm panel. 

Another dives for William’s fallen pistol. 

Tommy fires.

The first assistant falls against the monitor. The second collapses before his fingers reach the gun. The remaining two freeze against the wall. Outside, voices erupt.

“That came from Procedure Seven!”

“Security to the east wing!”

Boots thunder toward the room. Joel turns to Tommy.

“Tommy. Help me.” 

Tommy sees what has settled into his brother’s face. Not rage anymore. Something quieter. Something far worse. He has seen that darkness before—after Sarah, during the years when survival meant doing things neither of them ever named afterward. He also knows Joel cannot carry another hospital out alone. Tommy crosses to the door and tears the privacy curtain from its track. Joel bends over you. He slides one arm beneath your knees and the other behind your shoulders. 

Your head rolls weakly toward him as he lifts you from the bed. “Easy,” he whispers, though you cannot hear him. “I got you, baby. I got you.” He gathers you tightly against his chest. Your face settles against his neck. Your hair brushes his mouth, carrying the faintest trace of rain and smoke beneath the antiseptic. Joel closes his eyes for one brief second.

There you are. Still breathing. Faintly. Barely.

But you are breathing.

And if keeping that breath inside you meant killing every last person left in this world, Joel would do it without hesitation.

Gunfire erupts beyond the curtain. He shifts you higher, keeping the jacket wrapped firmly around your body. His revolver rests beneath your bent knees, secured between his forearm and your weight. The curtain jerks aside. Tommy appears through the smoke, blood freckling one side of his face. “Come on.” 

Joel follows. Two guards lie in the corridor. One still moves, fingers dragging toward his rifle. Tommy fires once without slowing.

“Left side’s clear. Stairwell ain’t.” Shouts echo from both ends of the hall.

“They’ve got the girl!”

“They’re taking her!”

“Do not shoot the subject! She has to stay alive!” Joel’s arms tighten around you. Subject. Tommy glances over his shoulder and sees the change in his brother’s face.

“Keep behind me.” They move. Tommy leads with his rifle raised. Joel stays close, keeping your head tucked beneath his chin. A soldier steps from a side room and aims at Tommy. He sees you in Joel’s arms, and the barrel wavers.

“Put her down!” Tommy shoots him through the chest. More boots pound ahead. “Down!” Tommy shouts. 

Joel drops to one knee and curls himself over you. Gunfire tears through the corridor. Bullets punch into the wall above his head, showering his back with plaster. Tommy fires over him in controlled bursts until his rifle clicks empty.

“Shit.” He ducks behind an overturned cart and reaches for another magazine. A soldier advances through the smoke. Joel lowers you carefully behind the cart, keeping one hand beneath your head until it rests against his folded jacket. He draws the revolver and fires twice. The first round catches the soldier in the shoulder. The second takes him beneath the eye. Joel is back beside you before the body reaches the floor. Tommy slams in a fresh magazine.

“Got her?” 

Joel gathers you into his arms again. “Move.” 

They reach the intersection leading toward the stairwell. A group waits beyond it—Wolves in body armour, hospital security and two doctors holding pistols with hands that shake too badly to aim properly. Behind them stand nurses and frightened civilians who have emerged from the patient wards. A woman grips a photograph against her chest. A man beside her is crying. One of the doctors sees the jacket wrapped around you.

“You can’t take her.” 

Tommy keeps his rifle level. “Get outta the way.”

“My wife is downstairs,” the doctor says. “William said her blood was working.” Joel does not stop. The doctor raises his weapon. “She can save them.”

Joel’s face does not change. “She ain’t savin’ anybody.”

He fires before the doctor can pull the trigger. The bullet catches him in the chest and throws him backward into the people behind him. Joel steps over the spreading blood without looking down, holding you tighter against him as he keeps moving.

Someone behind the doctor shouts, “Shoot them!” The corridor erupts. People scream and scatter into the patient rooms. Tommy fires toward the armed men while Joel turns sideways, placing his body between you and the bullets.

“Stay down!” Tommy shouts. 

Joel lowers you behind the reception counter, one hand protecting the back of your skull. He rises over the edge and fires until the weapons across the corridor fall silent. He checks you immediately. Your breathing remains shallow but even. “I’m gettin’ you outta here, darlin’.” A bullet tears through the counter. Tommy grabs the back of Joel’s shirt and pulls him lower.

“Gotta move.” 

Joel’s cylinder is nearly empty. Tommy points toward a dead Wolf beside a gurney. “Take his.” Joel drags the rifle toward him, checks the chamber and strips two magazines from the man’s vest.

“Now!” Tommy shouts. Joel lifts you again, and they run bent low through the smoke. A nurse presses herself against the wall as they pass. She stares at your limp hand hanging beyond the edge of Joel’s jacket.

“Please,” she whispers. Joel hears her. He does not look back. The stairwell doors are twenty feet ahead when another squad pours from the adjoining corridor. Tommy fires first. The lead soldier drops. The others spread behind pillars and return fire in short, disciplined bursts. Joel and Tommy retreat behind a concrete support.

“We’re pinned,” Tommy says. Joel looks down at you. A smear of blood has appeared along the bandage at your arm. The darkness in his eyes deepens. Tommy recognises it.

“No. You hold her. I got this.” He searches the vest of a dead Wolf and finds a smoke grenade. He pulls the pin and throws it. Thick white smoke pours into the corridor.

“Can’t see them!”

“Watch your fire! The girl’s with them!” 

Tommy steps into the haze. His rifle flashes in the white smoke. One body falls. Then another. Joel follows the sound of his brother’s shots, holding you tightly enough to feel each shallow breath against his chest. A shape emerges only a few feet away. A soldier sees Joel and raises his weapon. Then he sees you. He hesitates. Joel does not. The rifle bucks once against his shoulder, and the soldier disappears into the haze.

“Joel!” Tommy calls. “This way!” A hand catches the back of Joel’s shirt. He turns and drives the rifle stock into a guard’s face, kicks his knee sideways and fires before the man can reach his pistol. The recoil tears through Joel’s wounded side. His vision darkens. He nearly drops to one knee. Tommy catches his arm. “Stay with me.”

 Joel adjusts you against his chest. “’M fine.”

“Keep movin’.”

They enter the stairwell and start down. Gunfire follows them through the door, rounds striking the concrete wall. At the next landing, two guards rush up from below. Tommy shoots one, but his magazine empties before he reaches the second. Joel lowers himself onto the step, braces you against his thighs and fires from beneath your knees. The guard tumbles backward down the stairs. Tommy takes the fallen man’s carbine. By the time they reach the ground floor, a mechanical voice is ordering all personnel to evacuate. Smoke leaks through the ventilation system. The lobby is full of armed men. A barricade of overturned desks and medical carts blocks the main exit. Beyond it, hospital security and surviving Wolves wait with rifles trained on the stairwell.

“Put the immune subject down and surrender!” Joel steps behind the concrete wall. Tommy looks across the lobby. “Too many.”

 Joel studies the emergency exit map beside them. “Loading dock’s west. Hall’s exposed.”

“Got another idea?” 

Tommy searches the pouches on the fallen guard’s vest and finds a fragmentation grenade. “Yeah.”

 Joel sees it. “Do it.” 

Tommy pulls the pin. “When it goes, stay on me.” Joel looks down at your face. Then nods. Tommy throws the grenade over the barricade.

“Grenade!” 

The explosion tears through the far side of the lobby. Glass bursts inward, followed by smoke, dust and falling debris. Tommy moves before the echoes fade.

“Go!” 

He runs low across the lobby, firing into the shapes rising behind the barricade. Joel follows directly behind him with you in his arms. A soldier aims from behind the reception desk. Tommy shoots him. Another appears beside the elevator. Joel shifts you against his left side, draws the revolver and fires across your covered legs. The man falls against the closing doors. Joel secures both arms around you again without breaking stride.

“West hall!” 

Tommy shouts. The loading corridor stretches ahead beneath flickering red lights. The service door at the far end stands partly open, cold daylight cutting through the smoke. Three guards move to block it. Tommy fires until the carbine clicks empty. Two fall. The third dives behind a supply cart. Joel lowers you behind a concrete pillar, his hand cradling the back of your head.

“Stay here.” 

He knows you cannot answer. Still, the words leave him like a promise. Joel rounds the pillar with the captured rifle. The guard fires first, the round grazing Joel’s upper arm. Joel barely reacts. He walks through the pain and fires until the guard stops moving. Tommy reaches the door and waves him forward.

“Clear!” 

Joel drops the rifle and returns to you. He gathers you back into his arms, drawing your face beneath his chin.

“Got ya.” He carries you through the service exit. Rain strikes his face. The loading yard is scattered with abandoned vehicles, bodies and discarded weapons. Gunfire continues behind them as more security teams pour toward the west wing. Tommy points toward an armoured utility vehicle near the gate.

“There!” 

They run. Joel’s wounded side tears wider with every step. Blood warms the inside of his shirt. His vision pulses black, clearing only when he looks down and sees your face. Tommy reaches the driver’s side and shoots out the damaged lock. He climbs inside and leans across to open the rear door.

“Get her in!”

Joel climbs into the back without releasing you. He sits sideways across the seat and pulls you into his lap, one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back. Your head rests over his heart. Tommy starts the engine. Rounds strike the rear of the vehicle.

“Hold on!” 

He slams it into gear and drives through the loading-yard barrier. The metal gate folds beneath the front bumper as gunfire follows them onto the road. Tommy accelerates toward the southern edge of Seattle. Behind them, smoke pours from the shattered windows of the hospital. Flames flicker in one of the upper corridors, half hidden beneath the rain. Joel does not look back. He adjusts the jacket around your legs and pulls you closer until there is no space between your body and his. His hand remains against the side of your neck, feeling every pulse beneath his fingers.

Weak. Steady. Still there.

“Don’t you dare leave me, baby,” he whispers into your hair, his voice cracking despite the warning in it. “Y’hear me? Y’stay with me.” 

Tommy watches them through the rear-view mirror.

Joel’s face is streaked with blood and tears. You lie motionless against him, wrapped in his jacket, one bare foot visible beneath the dark fabric. His brother holds you with the same desperate strength Tommy remembers from another night, another ruined city, another person bleeding in Joel’s arms. Only this time, they had gotten to you before it was too late. 

They had pulled you from that cursed hospital bed. Carried you through the gunfire. Gotten you out alive. F

or now, that was enough. 

Neither brother speaks of the scans or the pale growth spreading through your brain. Whether you have years left or weeks—whether the thing inside you will eventually take you from them—belongs to another day. Until they are beyond Seattle’s borders, only one truth matters. They saved you. Tommy faces the road. The hospital shrinks behind them, leaving smoke, shattered glass and bodies in their wake.

He presses harder on the accelerator and drives toward the gates of Seattle.

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He would totally crawl on the ground at your feet asking so pathetically to be spanked and tied to the bed so you can do whatever you want to him. He would moan so pretty for you at every spank, finally clear minded and free from his burden and stress that comes from his job, his brain soothing and melting and only filled with you and how much he needs to be yours entirely, his cock painfully hard and leaking at the thought of you allowing him inside your pussy, hips rutting desperately on the sheets in search of friction, mouth agape, wrists fighting the restrains you put him into, legs shaking, crying and begging for more while you’re keeping him on the edge cause he needs to earn his release, calling you ma’am, babbling so hard but always thanking you for whatever you decide to give him cause he learned manners and he’s such a good boy. And when you tell him that he did so well for you and he’s such a good puppy who deserves a prize and allow him to turn around on the bed he looks at you with the cutest teary eyes, soft smile plastered on his face. You tell him he can fondle your nipples and he does the best job, so attentive and careful with his teeth but also hungry and desperate to suck and swirl his tongue on your hard buds, his whole mouth filled with your tit cause he cannot have enough off you and your perfect breasts. He’s so hard it’s actually painful but he doesn’t care because he just needs for you to be satisfied and he melts more at every praise and when you finally give him your pussy and start bouncing on his cock at your own pace he’s just mesmerized and he thinks he’s in heaven, your pussy so good he feels drunk in no time. He calls your name like a prayer holding back his orgasm no matter how good you’re swallowing his shaft inside you until you say he’s allowed to cum. When he finally does he’s so pent up he creams your cunt so much, big spurts coating your inner walls until his balls are dry and spent and his cum leaks out of your pretty hole and all he can think about is you and how beautiful you are while you come on his cock and nothing else. He’s sweaty on your bed just wishing he could touch you and make you cum again on his tongue while he cleans you up from the mess he made inside of you.

You’re lying on your side beneath flickering fluorescent lights, one arm trapped awkwardly beneath you while the other rests beside a rusted drain cut into the floor. Your wrists are free. That surprises you first. Then the bars do. Thick iron bars stretch from floor to ceiling a few feet away, welded between old hospital pillars. A heavy padlock hangs outside the door. A cell. Your stomach drops. You force yourself upright. Pain tears through your shoulder so hard the room flashes white.

“Fuck—” Your back slams against the wall. You bite down against the scream clawing its way up your throat and press one hand over the fresh bandage wrapped around your shoulder.

Clean gauze. Too clean. Somebody treated the gunshot. Not well enough to stop the throbbing. Well enough to keep you alive. Your breathing turns sharp. 

Joel. Taxi. The hospital.

Memory slams back all at once. Clouser standing beneath the floodlights. William with a gun pressed against his head. The revolver kicking hard inside your hand. Blood bursting from the side of Clouser’s face. Then— The bullet. Your shoulder snapping backward. Joel shouting your name. Hands grabbing you. Too many hands.

You remember fighting. Of course you fought. A Wolf’s nose breaking beneath your forehead. Another choking when you drove your fingers into his throat. A medic leaning over you while someone tried cutting through your jacket. You twisting free. Your elbow connecting with a jaw. A metal tray crashing to the floor. Scissors in your hand. Someone screaming— “She’s got a weapon!”

You remember burying the scissors deep into a soldier’s thigh. Then someone caught your injured arm and pulled. Pain. Bright enough to erase the room. A needle flashing near your neck. You grabbed the medic’s wrist. Almost broke it. Another body slammed into your back. Then the sharp sting just beneath your jaw. Warmth flooding through your veins. Your legs turning useless. Clouser’s blurred face hovering above you. His voice far away. “Enough.” Then nothing.

Your hand moves automatically toward your neck. A small puncture mark sits beneath your jaw. “Son of a bitch.”

You grab the bars and drag yourself onto your feet. The room sways violently. You tighten your grip until your knuckles whiten and wait for the floor to stop moving. No windows. No clock. No way to tell how long you’ve been unconscious. “Joel?” Your voice echoes through the corridor. Nothing answers.

You pull yourself closer to the bars and look around properly. The space beyond your cell is wide and rectangular, lined with abandoned examination bays. Faded plastic curtains hang in torn strips from rusted tracks along the ceiling. Numbers remain painted above each section. 

TRIAGE ONE. TRIAGE TWO. TRIAGE THREE. 

An old emergency intake ward. The WLF must have converted it into a holding block after taking the hospital. Efficient. Close to the ambulance entrance. Close to the operating rooms. Close to the elevators leading underground. Easy to bring prisoners in without the rest of the building seeing them. Easy to decide whether they became recruits, corpses— Or experiments.

Your eyes move toward the cells across from yours. Three of them. Empty. At least they look empty. Dark stains spread across the floor of the nearest one. Old blood. The farthest contains a torn mattress, a metal bucket and deep scratches carved into the wall. Not random. Words. Most are too small to read from here. One isn’t. 

DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOU DOWNSTAIRS.

Your pulse slows. Then something scrapes beyond the double doors at the end of the ward. You straighten instantly. Pain tears through your shoulder again, but you ignore it. Footsteps approach. Two people. Maybe three. Your body goes still. Not relaxed. Ready.

The doors swing open. A woman enters first. Her light brown hair is pulled tightly away from her face, its length woven into a practical braid down her back. She is young. Probably younger than you. She wears dark WLF fatigues beneath a weather-stained military jacket, the sleeves pushed partway up her forearms. A rifle hangs across her back, while the pistol strapped to her thigh sits within easy reach. Her frame is strong without being bulky. The controlled balance of someone who trains because survival depends on it, not because she wants anyone watching. Everything about the way she moves says soldier. She stops several feet from your cell. The man beside her doesn’t. He keeps walking until he is only a few feet from the bars.

Rain-darkened hair curls loosely near his temples, a little longer around his ears. A narrow mustache shadows his upper lip, joined by faint stubble tracing his jaw. His WLF gear resembles hers—a dark shirt beneath an olive tactical vest, cargo trousers tucked into scuffed combat boots. A knife rests at one hip. A pistol at the other. His posture is looser than hers. Almost casual. But his dark eyes never stop moving. Your hands. Your injured shoulder. The lock. The narrow space between your body and the bars. You dislike him immediately. Maybe it’s the half-smile sitting too easily on his face. The expression of a man who enjoys knowing something you don’t. He looks like the kind of asshole who would smile while lying straight to your face.

The woman says nothing. Just stares. You stare back. You consider asking about Joel. The question climbs halfway up your throat. You swallow it again. No. They don’t need to know what he means to you. Not yet.

The man speaks first. “So... This is her?” His eyebrows lift as he looks you over. “This is the girl who got fourteen of our people killed in one day?”

Your jaw tightens. Fourteen. You thought it was closer to twelve. Good to know.

The man steps slightly nearer. “Thought she’d be bigger.”

You lean closer to the bars. “Open the door.”

His mouth twitches. “Yeah?”

“Then we can introduce ourselves properly.”

A short laugh escapes him. “She’s funny.”

Your eyes remain on him. “People usually laugh more before I break their teeth.”

His expression sharpens slightly. You tighten your grip on the bars. “You here to take revenge for your friends?” Your gaze moves between them. “Take a number.”

The man’s amusement disappears. “Those people had families.”

You give him a flat look. “Do I look like I give a shit?” His jaw tightens. You continue before he can answer. “Funny thing about your Wolves, though. Met two of them trying to run all the way to Santa Barbara.”

Something flashes across his face. You smile without warmth. “Real loyal family you’ve built here.”

The last trace of amusement leaves his face. He steps toward the bars. The woman speaks without looking at him. “Manny.” One word. Quiet. Enough to stop him.

He exhales through his nose and shifts back, but the anger remains visible beneath his expression.

The woman finally steps closer. You study her. There is something behind her eyes you cannot name. Pain, rage, perhaps. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with the fourteen soldiers. “How much does he mean to you?”

Every muscle in your body locks. The reaction lasts less than a second. Still long enough for her to see it. You angle your head slightly. “What?”

“Joel Miller.” She says the name as if she has said it a thousand times before. In dreams. In prayers. Between clenched teeth. Something ignites behind her eyes when she repeats it. “How much does he mean to you?”

The question itself should not frighten you. The way she asks it does. There is anticipation in her face. A terrible, almost hopeful kind of anticipation—as if she wants the answer to hurt. You keep your voice level. “Why?”

Her gaze searches yours. Whatever she finds makes the corner of her mouth twitch. “Good. When I kill him, I’ll know there’s someone left who understands what it feels like.” Your blood turns to ice. She watches the realization move across your face. “The fact that it’s you is almost poetic.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He slaughtered an entire hospital for that girl.” Her voice remains controlled, but her eyes begin to shine. “Soldiers. Nurses. People who had already surrendered.” She swallows. “An unarmed doctor.”

Salt Lake. The Fireflies. Joel carrying Ellie out beneath the gunfire. Your pulse begins pounding inside your ears. “And now he’s come all the way here for another one.”

You step closer to the bars. “Were you a Firefly?”

For a moment, she says nothing. Then— “Dr. Anderson was my dad.”

There it is. The wound beneath everything else. Her eyes glisten, but no tears fall. Not yet. Manny looks away. You stare at her. “The defenseless doctor you’re talking about was about to cut open a fourteen-year-old kid.” Her expression changes. You don’t stop. “He was about to cut me open too. For a cure none of you could prove would even work.”

“My dad knew what he was doing.”

“Your dad was going to kill us.”

“He was going to save—.”

“Joel saved us.” You cut her off. Her jaw tightens. You move so close that only rusted iron separates you. “How he did it, who he had to go through—” Your voice drops. “I don’t give a shit.”

Abby crosses the remaining distance in one violent step. Her hand shoots through the bars and fists into the front of your shirt. “Say that again, you fucking bitch.”

You move faster. Your good hand clamps around her wrist. You jerk her arm hard against the bars, trap it between two lengths of iron and catch one of her fingers before she can pull free. Then you bend. A sharp crack cuts through the ward. Abby cries out. Manny lunges forward. You twist harder. “Touch him and I’ll break the rest.”

“Shit! Abs!” Manny grabs Abby by the shoulder and yanks her backward. “Stop!” Her hand tears free from your grasp. She staggers away, clutching her finger against her chest, fury blazing across her face. Manny’s pistol is halfway out of its holster. Yours would already be in his throat if there weren’t bars between you.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

All three of you turn. Clouser walks into the converted triage ward with two heavily armed Wolves behind him. A fresh bandage wraps around the side of his head, covering what remains of his ear. Blood has already begun seeping through the white material near his temple. Not enough. His gaze moves from Abby’s injured hand to Manny’s half-drawn weapon. Then to you. 

Manny slowly lets go of his pistol. “Just getting acquainted with your daughter.” He glances toward you. “Charming girl. Must run in the family.”

Clouser’s expression does not change. “I told you she isn’t here for you.”

Abby turns away from the cell, still cradling her injured hand. “Where is he?” She doesn’t need to say the name this time. You know exactly who she means.

Clouser continues walking. Neither hurried nor concerned. “I also told you that information comes at a price.”

Manny shifts beside her. “Isaac’s not coming down here.”

Clouser stops a few feet away. “That sounds like your problem.”

Abby takes a step toward him. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

The two Wolves accompanying Clouser raise their rifles slightly. Manny’s hand returns to his pistol. Nobody draws. Not yet. Clouser barely notices. “Isaac is bleeding the WLF dry over an island and a religious war he cannot win.”

“You don’t know anything about this war,” Abby snaps.

“I know your people are deserting faster than he can execute them.”

Her face hardens. Clouser gestures vaguely toward the hospital surrounding you. “I know your soldiers are dying from bites, arrows, infections and his obsession with the Scars.”

“You think that serum makes you a leader?”

The smallest smile touches his mouth. “No.” He looks toward her as if the answer should be obvious. “The fact that they cannot survive without it will.”

Your stomach twists. Apparently, while you were gone, your father had graduated from mad scientist to aspiring dictator.

Abby stares at him. “You’re experimenting on our people.”

“I’m saving them.”

“You’re killing them.”

“Temporary instability is not failure.” Clouser’s tone remains maddeningly calm. “It is data.”

Manny lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Is that what we’re calling the bodies downstairs?”

Clouser’s expression sharpens. “Careful.”

“No.” Abby steps closer. “You be careful.” Her voice rises. “You’ve got half the hospital locked down. Soldiers disappearing into quarantine. Families threatening to leave—and now you’re trying to turn Isaac’s command against him?”

“They will not leave.”

“You sound pretty fucking sure.”

“Their children require treatment.” Clouser glances toward the floor beneath you. “Treatment only I can provide.”

Abby’s face twists with disgust. “Are you fucking serious?”

“People follow Isaac because they fear him.” Clouser’s eyes move slowly between Abby and Manny. “They will follow me because they need me.”

“That cure doesn’t do shit,” Abby snaps. “Everyone knows it. The first chance they get, they’re going to put a bullet in your head.”

“This time it will work.”

Abby scoffs.

Clouser looks toward you. “It already has.”

Your stomach tightens.

“The tissue taken from her bite showed a response we have never seen before. Her blood stabilized one of the patients.” His gaze lingers on you. “You may see the results for yourselves.” A faint smile touches his mouth. Then he looks back at Abby. “She is proof that survival is possible. Isaac would reduce that proof to a weapon. Something to send through spore-filled tunnels and unleash against the Scars.”

“And you see her as what?”

Clouser answers without hesitation. “Mine.”

Revulsion crawls across your skin. You slam both hands against the bars. “I’m gonna tear your fucking throat out.”

One of the guards flinches. Clouser doesn’t. “Sweetheart.” His tone is almost indulgent. “There’s no need to get so worked up. You’ll tear your stitches.”

“Come closer and I’ll tear yours.”

Manny’s mouth almost twitches again.

Abby ignores both of you. Her eyes remain fixed on Clouser. “You bring me Joel Miller.” She glances toward your cell as she says it. Making certain you hear every word.

Clouser tilts his head. “You bring me Isaac.”

“Alive?”

“Very.”

“And Miller is mine.”

Your body hits the bars. The entire structure shakes. You grip the iron hard enough for rust to cut into your palms. Clouser turns toward the doors. “We will continue this conversation somewhere quieter.”

Abby does not move immediately. Neither do you. Your eyes remain locked through the bars. You shake them again. The metal groans beneath your hands. “Abby!”

She stops at the doors. Looks back. “You asked me how much he means to me?” Your voice drops. “Enough to make what he did in Salt Lake look like mercy.”

For one beat, Abby only stares at you. Then something in her face breaks. “You fucking—”

She surges toward the cell. Manny catches her by the arm before she reaches the bars and hauls her back. “If you put one hand on him, I swear to God I will get out of this cage.” Your voice carries through the entire ward. “I’ll tear this hospital apart room by room. And I’ll kill every motherfucker standing between me and him.”

Abby tears her arm free from Manny’s grip. Her eyes remain fixed on yours. “If you live that long.”

Then she turns and walks out.

Nearly an hour passes. At least, you think it does. You sit in the corner of the cell with your injured shoulder pressed against concrete, examining the rusted nail balanced across your knee.

You found it beneath the torn mattress and spent fifteen minutes working it loose. Not much. You have done more with less. You pull the leather belt free from your trousers and wrap one end around the nail until the spike sits upright between the folds. Ugly, but useful. Not enough to win against four armed Wolves. Enough to open a throat, take a gun and get out.

Joel is somewhere inside this hospital. Or already being taken to the woman who looked at you as though his death had been keeping her alive for years. You force the thought away. He is alive. He has to be. And Taxi— Your throat tightens. No. One problem at a time.

A metallic scrape comes from beyond the double doors. You are on your feet before they open, the belt wound around your palm and the nail hidden behind your thigh. Four soldiers enter the ward. Two remain near the cell with their rifles raised while the others approach the lock. The rifles are a performance. Clouser needs you alive, and everyone here knows it.

The taller soldier notices the hand behind your back. “Show me.”

You lean against the bars. “Open the fucking door and come take it.”

His jaw tightens. The man beside him pulls a syringe from his vest. Clear fluid. Long needle. Your stomach clenches before you can stop it. His mouth twists. “You want us to do this again?”

The sight of the needle drags fluorescent lights, leather restraints and hands pinning your arms out of memory. You lift your eyes to his. “Stick me with that and I’ll rip it out, bury it in your eye and make you choke on it.”

His smile disappears.

“Don’t sedate her. It will contaminate the neurological readings.”

The voice comes from behind the soldiers. Everything inside you stills. Ten years since you heard it without a wall, gunfire or memory distorting it.

The soldiers move apart. William stands behind them.

Yesterday, beneath the rain and hospital floodlights, you had only seen pieces of him—a bruised face, bound hands, a gun against his head. Now there is nothing between you. White threads through the hair at his temples. Lines cut deeply beside his mouth and beneath his eyes. He is thinner than you remember. Older. Tired in a way sleep could never fix.

He looks at you, and for several seconds the ward disappears. Pain shifts across his face, followed by relief and everything he cannot say in front of the soldiers.

“She’s going to behave,” he says, his voice deliberately clinical. Then his eyes soften. He says your real name quietly, as though unsure whether it still belongs to you. “Won’t you?”

The name catches beneath your ribs. Not Kat. Not the name known in Jackson. The name you were born with, tied to laboratory records and the girl you buried before reaching Wyoming.

His gaze drops toward the hand behind your back. 

Trust me. 

He does not say it, but for one irrational second his eyes remind you of Joel’s—that same steady look when the world is collapsing and he needs you to believe he has already found a way through it.

You bring your hand forward. The soldiers tense at the sight of the belt and nail, but William does not flinch. You unwrap the leather. The nail clatters onto the floor. “There,” you say. “Behaving.”

“Open the cell,” William orders.

The lock clicks. Two soldiers enter and grip you carefully, avoiding the wounded shoulder. Every instinct tells you to fight. Break a knee. Take the pistol. Use the body as cover. But Joel is still somewhere you cannot reach from behind these bars, so you let them hold you. For now.

They march you through older treatment wings until William leads you into a small examination room. Only one guard remains inside. William gestures toward the padded table. “Sit.”

You do, mostly because standing is beginning to require more effort than you want anyone to notice. William arranges gauze, forceps and two glass vials on a tray. Your eyes settle on the syringe.

When he reaches for the bandage around your forearm, you pull back. “The bite,” he says. “I need to look at it.”

“You people already took a piece.”

Something dark crosses his face. He glances toward the guard, who is staring through the observation window. “I know,” William says quietly.

You offer your arm. The stalker’s bite looks worse beneath the examination light, swollen around the badly stitched biopsy site.

William’s fingers hover near it. “You let it bite this deep?”

“It wasn’t exactly a negotiation.”

His eyes lift to yours. You look away, seeing Joel trapped beneath the stalker and the empty revolver in your hand.

William cleans the wound. Antiseptic burns through the torn skin. “Easy,” he murmurs. The familiarity of the word hurts more than the wound.

He brings the needle toward your elbow. You pull back again.

“It’s a small sample.”

A bitter laugh leaves you. “Ten years and nothing’s changed. Still the lab rat. I suppose I wasn’t one to you back then.” You meet his eyes. “I am now.”

William ties a strip of rubber around your upper arm and lowers his voice. “I told you to stay away from Seattle.”

“I didn’t come for you.”

His brow furrows.

“Where’s Joel?”

The needle enters your vein. Dark blood fills the first vial.

“I think you should be more concerned about yourself,” William says.

“I’ve spent enough time doing that.”

His expression closes.

“You’ve been with Clouser all this time. Why are you helping him?”

No answer. William replaces the vial.

“Did you know about Vickie?”

His hand stills. “Yes.”

“And you did nothing?”

William removes the needle, presses gauze against the puncture and nods once. Something inside you cracks, but there is no time to let it open.

“Help me find Joel.”

William begins rewrapping your arm.

“Please.” The word tastes desperate. “I can’t let them hurt him.”

His hands stop. “Do I look like a free man?”

Your jaw tightens.

“What makes a smuggler so important?” he asks.

You swallow. “He’s my family. The kind I never had. The kind I didn’t know how to have until I met him.” Your throat tightens. “He’s the reason I know what it feels like to have somewhere to go back to. I can’t lose him.”

Something changes behind William’s eyes. He draws your sleeve over the bandage and stands. “Come with me.”

The guard remains behind as William takes you through a side door, down two flights of stairs and toward a security door marked B2.

“Where are we going?”

William enters a code and glances toward the camera. “Keep walking.”

The level beyond looks nothing like the hospital upstairs. White coats move between sealed rooms while carts pass carrying blood bags and numbered containers. Everyone acknowledges William with a nod or a quiet, “Doctor.” Respect, or fear disguised as it.

The farther you walk, the more the corridor resembles the laboratories of your childhood. Glass observation rooms. Heavy doors. Numbers instead of names. Only larger. More organised. Worse.

Behind the first window, a man lies strapped to an inclined bed, dark fungal veins stretching along his jaw. The next room contains a grey-skinned woman held upright by restraints. Cordyceps blooms beneath one eye; the other follows you as you pass. Conscious. Another room holds two beds. One body is covered. The other receives blood through three separate lines.

Your steps slow. “What is this? What the fuck did he do?”

The corridor opens into a wider ward. Children lie behind glass with their wrists secured to bed rails. A pregnant woman lies strapped to a table in the next chamber, blackened veins spreading across her bare stomach. A monitor records two heartbeats. One slow. One frantic.

She turns toward you. There is no pleading left in her eyes, only the recognition of one prisoner seeing another.

“You’re experimenting on pregnant women?” The words tear out of you. “And fucking children?”

William turns. A cart passes behind him carrying blood bags labelled with the numbers on the doors.

“What are you doing with their blood?”

“Trying to reproduce what happened to you.”

Your gaze snaps toward him.

“When we learned Marlene had found another immune girl, we were on the other side of the country.”

“Ellie.”

“Clouser never stopped looking for you. News of another immune person led us toward Salt Lake. Anderson and Clouser knew one another before the outbreak. According to Clouser, Anderson was an incompetent man stumbling toward the right answer for the wrong reasons.”

“Sounds like him.”

“When Clouser learned the Fireflies had both immune subjects, he was afraid.”

“Because someone else was going to cut me open?”

“That too. But Clouser never believed the cure was simply a growth inside the brain. The Cordyceps and the host work together. Destroying the brain destroys the system producing the immune response.”

Your stomach tightens.

“Ellie’s infection convinces new Cordyceps that she is already colonised,” William continues. “Her immunity hides.” His eyes drop to your bandaged arm. “Yours fights back.”

The corridor seems to narrow around you.

“When we reached Salt Lake, Anderson was dead,” he says. “The Fireflies were scattered. The hospital was full of bodies. Marlene among them.”

“Joel,” you murmur. “I escaped while he was getting Ellie out. We didn’t know each other then. I ended up in Jackson, and that is where we met. Was Ethan the reason you sent me there?”

William nods. “His father was a good man. I believed you would be safe with the people he trusted.”

“Why didn’t you follow?”

William’s attention shifts toward the next room. A small boy lies beneath a white blanket, no older than ten. Dark veins branch beneath the skin of his arms.

“The hospital was attacked after you escaped. FEDRA learned we had worked with the Fireflies. Three years in a prison camp followed by five more running. Eventually Clouser found Isaac.”

“And the WLF saved you?”

“They took us in. Doctors were useful.” William looks through the glass. “For a while, I thought we had found a future.”

“Vickie?”

“The WLF found her unit after you destroyed the others. She had been bitten.”

“He tested the serum on her,” you say. “Then used her to find me.”

“Yes.” William’s voice begins to fracture. “I never told them you were in Jackson. If I went to you, they would have followed. But that is not the whole truth. I chose to stay. I had a family here. Friends. A home.”

The boy’s arm trembles weakly beneath the blanket. You look between them. “He’s your—” The word refuses to come. “When was he bitten?”

William turns toward you. “No one down here was bitten.”

Your stomach drops. The children. The pregnant woman. The numbered rooms. “They infected them.”

“Clouser needed subjects at different stages, ages and immune responses.”

You look through the glass at the boy. William’s jaw locks as he watches his son’s fingers twitch.

“Do you know the most important thing the last ten years taught me?” he asks. “Never waste mercy on a man who does not deserve it. Given enough time, mercy becomes permission.” His hand presses against the window. “I spared Clouser. I convinced myself some part of him could change.” William’s reflection trembles in the glass. “Then he infected my son.” The words settle heavily between you. “He used Daniel to keep me beside him. Every dose of serum came with a condition. Every improvement bought another month of obedience. I told myself I was staying for him.”

When he turns back, something harder has entered his face. “But it is over now. Daniel has passed the stage the current serum can reverse.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I have known for weeks.”

“William—”

“Clouser should have died the night you escaped.” The words come low and vicious. “I had my hands around his throat. I could have ended it. But I couldn’t. I was a coward who still believed men could change, still believed in humanity.” He looks across the ward. “Everyone here is paying for that mercy.”

You watch him turn away from the glass. “Why did you bring me down here? You could’ve told me upstairs.”

“No,” he says. “I couldn’t.”

Only then do you notice the nurse watching William instead of the cameras. When your eyes meet hers, she turns one monitor away from the corridor. A doctor leaving a numbered room gives William a small nod. Farther down, an armed guard deliberately blocks a security lens.

The people moving through this ward are not all Clouser’s.

William looks toward the children behind the glass. “You said the smuggler was your family.”

“Joel.”

His eyes return to yours. “Joel,” he repeats, the name unfamiliar in his mouth. “This is where families like mine come to die. Every hour Clouser remains in control, another person becomes a number on a door.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Clouser trusts no one else with you. He will oversee your procedure himself and bring his research team, his guards and every record that matters into one secured room.”

Understanding begins to form. “You’re using me to draw him out.”

“I’m asking you to keep him there.”

“While I’m strapped to a table.”

“You won’t be unconscious.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It is supposed to keep you alive.” William lowers his voice. “When the power goes out, his people will be cut off. Mine will take the corridors. You keep Clouser inside until we reach you.”

“And then?”

The security door opens before William can answer. A young technician hurries into the corridor, clutching a folder against his chest. “Dr. Devane. Subject One-Six-One.”

Something in William’s face changes. “What about him?”

“Post-infusion response markers are rising. The fungal regression has accelerated, neural activity is stabilising and his inflammatory markers have fallen almost thirty percent.”

William takes the folder. “How long?”

“Twenty-three minutes.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“We ran the bloods twice.”

“What did you give him?”

The technician hesitates. His gaze flicks toward you. “The sample collected upstairs.”

Your blood.

You look through the glass at Daniel. His fingers move faintly against the sheet. Not a tremor. Something deliberate.

“What’s happening?” you ask.

“Ah.” Clouser enters with two Wolves behind him, his steps slow and unhurried. Every muscle inside you locks. “There you are.” He looks past you to the technician. “And the news has already travelled. Efficient as ever.”

William turns toward him. “Is it true?”

Clouser’s smile gives nothing away. “See for yourself.”

“The results were confirmed twice,” the technician says. “Fungal activity has decreased. Neural response is stabilising, and the inflammatory markers are continuing to fall.”

William’s eyes move to Daniel. “How quickly?”

“The first measurable change appeared less than six minutes after the infusion.”

William goes still. Even you understand enough to know that should not be possible. Six minutes is barely enough time to produce a measurable systemic change, let alone force an infection that far gone into retreat.

“The sample taken from her produced an immediate systemic response,” the technician continues. “We have never recorded anything like it.”

William scans the results. His face remains controlled, but the paper bends beneath his fingers. “One response proves nothing.”

“No,” Clouser agrees. “But it proves considerably more than we knew yesterday.”

Then he turns toward you. “In that case, the operation is cancelled.”

For one disorienting second, you think you misheard him. Even William looks up. “What?”

Clouser smiles. “I’ve decided not to open your skull.”

Relief tries to rise inside you. Something in his expression kills it before it can. “Your blood has become considerably more interesting.”

“You’re postponing the operation?”

“I’m replacing it.”

William’s expression remains controlled, but you see the effort it costs him. His plan depended on an operating theatre—Clouser, his guards, his research team and every record that mattered sealed inside one room when the lights went out. Now there will be no theatre. No gathered team. No trap.

“What are you proposing?” William asks.

“Serial blood collection. Bone marrow. Tissue from the bite and the previous biopsy site.” Clouser looks at you as though discussing equipment. “Then controlled exposure while we monitor the immune response.”

Your stomach turns. “You’re going to infect me again.”

“You cannot technically be infected.”

“Then put it in your own fucking veins.”

Clouser ignores you. “If these results are reproducible, Daniel may finally have a chance.”

William’s eyes move toward his son. Only for a second. But you see it. So does Clouser.

The technician shifts uneasily. “Should I prepare another infusion?”

William does not answer. That silence is enough.

Clouser turns toward the Wolves. “Take her upstairs. Procedure Room Seven.”

William’s gaze snaps back to him. “She is injured.”

“That is not our priority.”

The soldiers seize your arms and drag you toward the door. You search William’s face for the plan, for some indication that the lights will still go out. He meets your eyes and gives nothing away. Perhaps because Clouser is watching. Perhaps because he no longer knows.

You twist against the soldiers, but pain tears through your wounded shoulder and your arm buckles. William takes one step after you.

Clouser moves between you. “Stay with your son, Doctor.”

William stops. The words are not a suggestion.

As the security door opens, you look back at him. He is still holding the folder, still staring after you while Daniel’s monitor marks its steady rhythm behind the glass.

For the first time since William opened your cell, you understand that whatever happens next will not follow his plan.

The soldiers pull you through the door.

It closes between you.

The soldiers struggle with you all the way upstairs. You drag your heels through doorways and twist whenever their grip shifts, forcing them to readjust every few steps. The wound in your shoulder burns with each movement, but the pain keeps you sharp.

Clouser follows without hurrying. By the time they force you into Procedure Room Seven, his breathing has not changed.

The room is smaller than an operating theatre. A narrow bed stands beneath an adjustable lamp, surrounded by monitors, steel trays and collection equipment. Clear tubing hangs beside sealed syringes and rows of empty vials.

Two scans glow on the screen across the room.

You recognise the first immediately. Ten years have passed, but you spent too much of your childhood beneath machines not to know your own brain. A pale, branching mass curls through the left side.

The old scan.

The second is recent. What once resembled thin roots has become a dense white web, spreading through tissue that had been clear ten years ago.

For a moment, you stop fighting.

Clouser notices. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

You tear your eyes from the screen. He has removed his coat and is fastening a surgical gown around his neck while an assistant prepares the instruments beside him.

“What happened to it?”

Clouser pulls on a glove. “It matured. Every bite you survived, every concentration of spores you inhaled, exposed it to a new variation of the organism. Each time, your body adapted. The growth expanded, refined its response—and yet it never converted you.” The second glove snaps around his wrist. “And you object when I call you a miracle.”

You say nothing. Your attention drifts back to the pale network branching through tissue that should have belonged only to you.

“I no longer resent you for running that night,” Clouser continues. “Had I operated then, the organism may have been too immature. We might have removed it before the process became stable—or discovered nothing we could reproduce.” He studies the screen with something dangerously close to admiration. “But now we know your blood actively suppresses fungal replication. Something circulating through your system forces Cordyceps into regression.” His gaze settles on you. “Ten years ago, I had a theory. Now I have proof.”

The soldiers force you toward the bed. You plant your feet.

“Secure her properly,” Clouser says. “She has a history of damaging valuable equipment.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

One soldier locks an arm around your waist while the other grabs your wrist. You drive an elbow into the first man’s ribs, but the second catches your injured arm.

Pain breaks your balance.

They force you onto the mattress. One pins your shoulder while the other pulls a restraint across your waist.

The assistant lifts a syringe.

“No.”

He glances toward the instruments. One needle is narrow and familiar. Another is thick enough to reach bone. “The marrow collection will be extremely painful.”

“Sedation would alter the immune response,” Clouser says. “I need it unfiltered.”

The assistant hesitates but nods. The soldier reaches for your left wrist. You let the arm go slack, and he mistakes it for exhaustion.

The instant his grip loosens, you twist beneath him and drive your shoulder into his chest. He crashes against the bed. You seize the assistant by his coat, drag him between you and the raised rifles and tear the pistol from the soldier’s holster.

“Fuck!”

“Gun!”

“Drop it!”

The assistant chokes as you press the barrel beneath his jaw. Rifles snap toward you from both sides. “Tell me where Joel is.”

Clouser’s head turns sharply. “You will not leave this room.”

“I didn’t ask to leave.”

“Miller is beyond your reach.”

“Where is he?”

Clouser looks at the trembling assistant, then back at you. “You believe his life matters to me?”

The man goes rigid.

No fear. No hesitation. Nothing.

You cannot trade a life Clouser already considers disposable. You shove the assistant aside. Before the soldiers can fire, you reverse the pistol and press the muzzle against your own temple.

Clouser’s expression changes. The amusement vanishes. His shoulders stiffen beneath the surgical gown, his eyes fixed on the barrel. You would swear he would show less fear with the gun against his own head.

One soldier starts forward.

Clouser throws up a gloved hand. “Don’t. Lower the rifles. Now.”

The weapons descend.

“You need me so bad, right?”

Clouser takes one slow step forward. “Do not do anything irrational.”

A breathless laugh escapes you. “Irrational?”

“Killing yourself will not improve your position.”

“It’ll ruin yours.”

Your finger settles against the trigger.

Clouser stops.

Behind you, ten years of growth glows across the screen. His research. His cure. His miracle.

“You need my blood,” you say. “The tissue, the neural response, the organism inside my skull. You need all of it intact.”

“You do not understand what you are threatening.”

“I grew up in your fucking laboratories.” Your thumb finds the safety. The metallic click fills the room. “I know exactly where I’m aiming.”

His hands rise slightly. “You kill yourself, and Miller still dies.”

“Then keeping him alive is the only way you keep me alive.”

“You will gain nothing from this.”

Clouser steps forward again. You begin to squeeze the trigger. He stops. “One bullet through here and your miracle ends up on the wall.”

His jaw tightens. “What do you want?”

For the first time, he is asking.

“Where is Joel?”

His eyes move toward the nearest soldier. “Transport Three,” the man says. “East service road. They left twenty minutes ago.”

Already in a vehicle. Already beyond your reach. Maybe being taken to Isaac. Maybe to the woman who had looked at Joel as though she had been waiting years to kill him.

“Tell them to stop.”

Clouser studies you. “That vehicle is operating under direct orders.”

“Then give it new ones.”

“You cannot reach him from here.”

“I don’t need to. Get me a radio. Stop the truck and put Joel on the other end.”

Clouser looks at your finger, then at the scan. Finally, he turns toward the soldier.

“Contact Transport Three.”

The man pulls the radio from his vest. “Transport Three, this is Medical Control. Respond.”

Static crackles.

“Transport Three.”

“Stop the vehicle.”

A pause. “Say again?”

Clouser takes the radio. “This is Clouser. Halt immediately and secure the road.”

“Doctor, we have standing orders to deliver the prisoner. We’re less than ten minutes from the handoff.”

“There will be no handoff.”

“We take transfer orders from Isaac’s command.”

Clouser’s gaze remains fixed on you. “The immune subject has a loaded weapon against the growth in her brain. If she fires, every possibility of reproducing the immune response ends with her.”

The room goes silent enough for you to hear the hum from the screen behind you.

Clouser’s voice hardens. “Stop the vehicle.”

“Understood.”

Brakes hiss through the radio. “Dismount,” Clouser orders. “Cut Miller loose and leave him the truck.”

“Doc—”

You keep your eyes on him. “His equipment.”

“Return his belongings,” Clouser says. “Leave him one rifle, his sidearm and a handheld radio. Then move away from the vehicle.”

The man on the other end mutters something you cannot hear.

Clouser’s voice drops. “Do it.”

Metal doors slam through the speaker. Clouser passes the radio back to the soldier, who approaches you carefully. “Hold it where I can speak.”

The soldier stops beyond your reach and raises the radio toward your mouth.

For a moment, there is only static.

Then a distant voice says, “Prisoner’s out.”

Your heart strikes hard against your ribs.

“Put him on.”

-JOEL-

The truck stops hard enough to throw Joel against the metal wall. He lifts his head, blinking through the blood dried along his temple. His wrists are bound behind him, his legs nearly numb beneath his weight. Outside, boots strike wet asphalt and voices rise in sudden argument. Joel shifts in the dark, searching for anything he can use. The rear doors open before he finds it, and grey daylight floods the compartment. Three Wolves stand in the road. Their rifles are ready, but none is pointed at him. That worries him more.

One climbs inside and cuts the restraints around his wrists. Joel works the feeling back into his fingers while the soldier drops his pack beside him. His revolver rests on top.

“Get out.”

Joel remains seated. “The hell’s goin’ on?”

The soldier does not answer. He holds out a radio. “Take it.” Joel looks from the device to the men outside. One of them places a rifle inside the cab before retreating several yards from the truck. It feels like a trap. But if they wanted him dead, they have had twenty minutes to do it. Joel takes the radio.

“Talk.”

Static crackles. Then your voice reaches him.

“Joel?”

His entire body locks.

“Kat?”

He hears a single breath leave you through the speaker.

“Where are you?” he demands. “You still in that hospital?”

“Listen to me.”

“What did they do to you?”

His eyes lift to the Wolves. The nearest man looks away.

“They touch you?”

“Take the truck.”

“What?”

“Drive north. Get past their checkpoints and away from the hospital.”

“I ain’t leavin’ you there.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Like hell I am. Tell me where you are.”

“You can’t get to me.”

“Watch me.”

“Joel…” Your grip tightens around the pistol pressed to your temple. The soldier holding the radio keeps his arm extended toward your mouth, careful not to move within reach. Clouser stands across from you, both gloved hands raised, his attention fixed on your finger against the trigger.

“If you give a damn about me,” you say, “you’ll get in that fucking truck and go.”

Joel’s face hardens.

“Don’t you dare—”

“I’m getting out.”

The lie comes too quickly. Joel hears it.

“How?”

“William has people inside.”

“That ain’t an answer.”

“It’s all I can give you.”

“You’re lyin’.”

You close your eyes for half a second. “I need you to trust me.”

“Darlin’—“

“When you’re clear, call this channel again.”

“And then what?”

“Sing me the song you wrote for me.”

Joel stares at the radio.

“What?”

“The song. Nobody else knows it. If I hear it, I’ll know you’re alone. I’ll know they didn’t force you to say you were safe.”

Faintly, behind your voice, he hears someone breathing. Then Clouser speaks.

“Time is passing.”

Joel’s blood turns cold. “That him?”

You do not answer. “Get in the truck. If I don’t hear from you in ten minutes—” You raise your voice, no longer speaking only to him. “—I pull the trigger and put everything inside my skull across the fucking wall.”

Silence falls across the road. Joel stares at the radio, his jaw clenched hard enough to ache.

“You reckless—” He drags a hand over his face. “Goddammit, Kat.”

One of the Wolves gestures toward the cab. “You heard her.” Joel holsters the revolver, grabs the rifle and climbs behind the wheel. The channel cuts. Joel starts the engine. The Wolves retreat as the truck surges forward. He watches them in the mirror until the rain swallows them, then drives north through streets broken by roots, wreckage and abandoned cars.

He knows what you expect him to do. Keep going. He also knows he never will.

The last WLF checkpoint appears ahead. Its guards raise the barrier reluctantly and watch him pass. Joel drives until the hospital disappears behind ruined buildings and no headlights follow him.

Eight minutes.

He pulls beneath the remains of an overpass and kills the engine. Rain spills through cracks in the concrete as he climbs out with the rifle and checks the road, the rooftops and the tree line. Nothing moves. He grabs the radio.

“Kat?” Static answers. “Kat, I’m clear. You hear me?”

Several seconds pass before your voice returns.

“Sing.”

Joel leans against the truck.

“Are you hurt?”

“Sing the song.”

“Fuck—Tell me you’re all right.”

“Joel.” Your voice is thinner now. “Sing the fucking song.”

He closes his eyes. For a moment, there is only rain ticking against the roof of the truck. Then he sings.

“After all these years runnin’ round,

Flyin’ high and fallin’ down…”

His voice is rough without the guitar beneath it, worn down by blood, fear and the distance between you. But it is him. Only him.

Your eyes burn. A tear slips toward your jaw, but you do not wipe it away. You cannot move the hand holding the gun, and you refuse to let Clouser see the other one tremble.

“Well, the time has come at last,

To rest my heart and ease my past…”

Joel’s voice catches on the final word. He swallows and forces himself to continue.

“I’m gonna leave these blues behind,

For some other fool to find…”

Clouser watches you from across the room. The pistol remains pressed to your temple, but the pressure has begun to ease. His eyes flick toward the nearest soldier.

Joel looks down the empty road as he sings.

“He won’t care and I don’t mind…”

An engine growls somewhere beyond the overpass. Joel straightens. Headlights appear through the trees, moving quickly toward him. He shoulders the rifle but keeps the radio close.

“Hide me, babe…”

Your eyes close. His voice trembles.

“Hide me, babe.”

The final words fade into static. For one suspended moment, neither of you speaks. Then Joel presses the radio closer.

“You stay alive,” he says. “I’m comin’ for you.”

“Joel—”

“You hear me? You stay—”

You lower the pistol. Only an inch.

Clouser’s eyes snap toward the nearest soldier. The blow strikes your wrist before you see it coming. The pistol flies from your hand and skids beneath the steel cabinet. Another soldier drives you back against the bed as the radio is torn away from your mouth.

“Kat?”

Static tears through Joel’s speaker.

“Kat! Fuck!”

Static tears through Joel’s speaker.

The approaching vehicle stops across the road. Doors open, and armed figures spill into the rain.

Joel barely looks at them.

He shoves the radio against his belt and turns for the truck. If the road south is blocked, he will drive through them. Around them. Over them. Whatever it takes to get back to the hospital.

His hand closes around the driver’s door. A gunshot cracks through the rain. The bullet punches through the metal inches from his fingers, throwing sparks across the side of the truck. Joel jerks back and raises the rifle in the same movement.

A young woman steps out from behind the headlights, her hair pulled tightly away from a face hollowed by exhaustion. A pistol hangs steady in her outstretched hand, smoke curling faintly from the barrel.

“Joel Miller!” 

Joel settles the rifle over her chest. She stares at him as though she has spent years imagining this exact moment. “I’m Abby.”

Joel gives her a brief, impatient look. “That supposed to mean somethin’?”

A man emerges near the other headlight, moving toward Joel’s right with a rifle raised. Abby glances toward him. Manny keeps his sights on Joel. “It’s him.”

Joel sees what they are doing. Abby holds his attention while Manny moves wide enough to catch him from the side. Their truck blocks the road south.

Back to the hospital.

Back to you.

“Looks like you know me, congrats,” Joel says. “I don’t know either of you. Move the truck.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this.”

Joel’s eyes flick toward the silent radio at his belt. “Then say whatever you came to say.”

Abby stops several yards away. “Where was the last place you saw the Fireflies?”

The question settles differently. Joel looks at her properly now. “Salt Lake.”

“Saint Mary’s Hospital.” Her grip tightens around the pistol. “Do you know how many people you killed that day?”

Joel says nothing. He has thought about that hospital during the year since he left it. The corridors. Marlene in the garage. The bodies he stepped over with Ellie unconscious in his arms.

Sometimes, in the quietest part of the night, he has wondered whether there had been another way.

He has never regretted the one he chose.

“The doctor,” Abby continues. “You shot him in the head.” Joel remembers the man raising the scalpel after being warned to step aside. The body falling beside the operating table. “He was my dad!”

Joel’s attention drifts past her toward the road. Clouser may already have taken the gun from you. You could be strapped back onto that bed, another needle in your arm, your blood filling his tubes while you lie there unable to fight.

The last thing Joel heard was your voice disappearing into static.

He cannot stand here answering for a dead man. “If you came for an apology, you ain’t gettin’ one.”

Abby raises her pistol. Manny’s rifle follows. “Put the gun down,” she says.

Joel’s voice cuts through hers. “You want me, fine. But you’re standin’ in my way.” 

“What’s the hurry?” Abby asks. “Another hospital to tear apart?” Joel’s expression changes. She sees it. “The other immune girl,” Abby says. “That’s where you’re going.”

“If I have to.”

“She threatened to kill herself for you.” Something bitter twists at the corner of Abby’s mouth. “Clouser’s probably got her back on the table already.”

Joel settles the rifle directly over her chest. “Last warning.”

Manny takes another step sideways. Joel shifts the barrel toward him without looking away from Abby.

“Don’t.”

Manny stops. “You think you can take both of us, you stupid old man?”

Abby does not flinch. “You don’t get to walk away from me. I’ve carried you for a year.” Her voice begins to shake. “You don’t get a quick death.”

Joel glances once toward the hospital road, then back at her. “You talk too damn much.”

He fires.

The bullet destroys the headlight beside Abby. Glass bursts across the road as she dives behind the truck. Manny opens fire.

Joel drops behind the transport vehicle. Rounds tear through the rear doors and hammer against the frame. He lands on his injured side, rolls and drags his pack from the open cab.

The radio crackles at his belt. “Kat?”

A bullet shatters the mirror above his head. Joel ducks as fragments scatter across his shoulders.

Manny moves along the far side of the road while Abby keeps Joel pinned behind the engine block. They know how to work together.

Joel checks the rifle.

Half a magazine.

Enough.

He fires beneath the truck, forcing Manny back, then punches a second round through the panel beside Abby. Before either of them can recover, he moves.

Joel comes around the hood and drives the rifle stock across Manny’s mouth. Manny answers by slamming his weapon into Joel’s ribs. Pain folds through Joel’s side.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” Manny spits through the blood.

Joel answers with his forehead. Bone cracks.

Manny staggers back, cursing in Spanish. Abby strikes Joel from behind and drives him into the truck hard enough to tear the rifle from his hands.

Her fist catches him beneath the jaw. Joel answers with an elbow that snaps her head sideways. Abby comes back immediately.

He catches her gun hand and smashes it against the side of the truck.

Once.

Twice.

The pistol drops.

“You took everything from me!”

Joel shoves her away. Abby drives her knee into his stomach and throws him onto the road. The radio tears loose from his belt and skids across the asphalt.

She kicks it beyond his reach, plants her boot against his chest and draws a knife.

Every second he spends here belongs to Clouser. Joel’s fingers search blindly among the shattered headlight glass.

“Somethin’ happens to her because you kept me here,” he says, “we’ll see who joins your daddy first.”

His hand closes around a jagged piece of glass. He drives it into her thigh.

Abby screams and recoils. Joel catches her ankle and tears her feet from beneath her.

Manny raises his rifle. “Abby!”

A high-powered shot cracks across the road. Manny’s head jerks sideways. For a fraction of a second, he remains standing. Then he collapses beside the truck, blood spraying across Abby’s face.

She stares at him. “Manny?”

Another shot tears into the road beside her.

Sniper.

Joel knows the report of that rifle. He looks toward the fractured walkway overlooking the road.

“Tommy?”

Tommy stands behind a broken concrete barrier, rifle braced against his shoulder.

“Get the hell off my brother!”

Abby looks from Manny’s body to Joel. Whatever control remained in her disappears.

She launches herself at him.

They hit the ground together. Her hands close around Joel’s throat, thumbs driving beneath his jaw.

“You killed him!”

Joel grips one wrist, but the other tightens. Darkness creeps into the edges of his vision. “Had enough of you,” he forces out.

Tommy fires, but Abby and Joel roll against the truck before he can find a clean angle. The round buries itself in the metal beside them. “Goddammit, Joel!”

Abby tears the knife from her belt. Joel catches her wrist with both hands, the blade trembling inches above his throat.

“You should’ve died in that hospital!”

She forces it lower. The edge slices across Joel’s side.

Then a boot drives into Abby’s ribs.

Tommy steps between them and brings the stock of his rifle across her face.

“Stay down!”

Abby spits blood and tackles him into the truck. Joel forces himself upright and catches her from behind before she can drive the knife into Tommy’s stomach.

She fights them without any concern for what breaks—clawing at Joel, kicking blindly at Tommy, reaching desperately toward Manny’s body.

“You fucking murderer!” she screams. “You shot him and walked away!”

Joel forces her to the ground and traps one arm beneath his knee. Tommy pins the other against the road. Still, Abby strains beneath them, Manny’s blood smeared across her face.

“You took him from me.”

Joel draws his revolver and aims between her eyes.

For the first time, Abby stops fighting. Her chest rises and falls beneath them as she looks directly into the barrel.

“Do it.”

Joel’s finger settles against the trigger.

“Come on,” she says, louder now. “Kill me like you killed my father.”

Joel says nothing.

“Look at me!” Abby bucks beneath them, her voice breaking into a scream. “Look at me and fucking do it!”

Joel looks down at her. For one brief second, he does not see the knife that opened his side or the woman who came here to torture him. He sees grief left too long without anywhere to go. A child who built everything she became around the moment someone took her father away.

His finger remains still.

Abby sees it. “What?” she spits. “You could do it to him, but not me?”

“Shut the fuck—” Tommy tightens his hold.

“Come on, you fucking coward! Do it!”

Joel still does not fire.

Not in that single second.

Something vicious twists across Abby’s face.

“Fine.”

Her free hand tears loose and disappears beneath Manny’s body. Her fingers close around his pistol.

“I’ll do it myself.”

She swings the weapon toward Joel.

Tommy fires.

The shot tears through Abby’s back. Her body jerks beneath Joel, and Manny’s pistol discharges into the road, the bullet passing close enough for him to feel it cut the air beside his face.

Abby tries to raise the weapon again. Her arm trembles, refusing to obey. The pistol slips from her fingers and lands beside Manny’s hand.

She stares up at Joel, fury fighting against the shock in her eyes. Her mouth moves, but only a wet breath escapes. “Damn you…” Then she goes still.

Joel keeps the revolver trained between her eyes for several seconds. Finally, he lowers it and pushes himself away.

Tommy looks from Abby to Manny. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Joel retrieves his rifle and looks at Abby once. There is no satisfaction in his face. No relief. Only time lost. “How the hell did you find me?”

“Followed the Wolves after they moved you from the hospital.”

“That ain’t what I asked.” Joel’s eyes narrow. “Why are you even in Seattle?”

“Ellie wouldn’t let it go. Kept saying something was wrong—that you wouldn’t stay quiet this long unless you were dead or in trouble.”

“The kid was right.”

“Usually is. Annoying as hell, but right.”

Joel studies his brother. “You left your boy and came all the way out here?”

“He’s with his mama. Safest place he could be.”

“Maria know you’re here?”

Tommy looks down while gathering ammunition from Manny’s rifle. His silence is answer enough.

“You’re a damn idiot.”

“Says the man I just pulled out from under two Fireflies.” Tommy catches Joel by the shoulder. “Hold still. You’re bleeding.”

“So are you.”

“Mine ain’t pouring out.”

“Tommy.”

Something in Joel’s voice strips the humour from his brother’s face. “They have her.”

Tommy looks toward the hospital beyond the ruined streets.

“In there?”

“Clouser’s got her. Last I heard, she had a gun against her own head.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“She did it for me.” Joel looks down at the silent radio. “Made them let me go. Then the line went dead.”

Tommy studies his face. “You two are dangerously fuckin’ alike.”

“She’s worse.”

Joel reaches for the driver’s door, but pain locks through his side. Tommy takes the keys from his hand. “I’m driving.”

“I can drive.”

“You can bleed and shoot. Pick two.” Joel glares at him. Tommy opens the passenger door. “Get in before your stubborn ass falls over.”

Joel climbs inside with the rifle across his knees. Tommy starts the engine while Joel picks up the radio. Static answers. He changes the frequency. Nothing. His hand tightens around the device.

Tommy glances toward him. “She’s strong, Joel.”

The radio erupts in a burst of overlapping voices.

“—all available units return to the hospital.”

Gunfire rattles through the channel.

“Medical personnel are armed. We’ve lost the east wing. Lower containment access has been compromised!”

Another voice breaks through the static.

“Reinforcements to the laboratory entrance!”

“Fall back! Fall—”

A burst of automatic fire drowns out the rest.

Joel’s head snaps toward Tommy. “We need to find her before the whole damn place comes down.”

Tommy slams the vehicle into gear.

“Then let’s go get her.”

The fighting draws them toward the rear of the hospital. Joel and Tommy move through the narrow lane behind the loading docks, keeping close to the concrete wall while gunfire tears through the floors above them. Emergency lights pulse behind shattered windows. Somewhere inside, men shout conflicting orders over the alarms. Tommy reaches the service entrance first. He tries the handle, finds it locked and steps aside. Joel fires once into the mechanism.

“Subtle,” Tommy mutters.

“Ain’t got time for subtle.” They slip inside. The service corridor smells of bleach, smoke and hot electrical wiring. Bodies lie beneath the emergency lights—Wolves, doctors, people in blood-soaked scrubs. Joel barely looks at them.

“Lower level should connect to the east wing,” Tommy says. Joel is already moving. They descend through a concrete stairwell while the battle continues above them. The gunfire becomes muffled underground, replaced by the pounding of boots and the mechanical groan of failing ventilation. The door at the bottom bursts open.

Two armed men rush into the corridor, firing behind them. A third figure follows between them, still wearing a bloodstained surgical gown beneath his coat. In one hand he carries an insulated case marked with a faded biohazard symbol. William and several armed members of his staff appear at the opposite end of the corridor. Gunfire erupts. One of Clouser’s guards goes down immediately. The second dives behind a medical cart and returns fire while Clouser turns toward the service exit. Then he sees Joel. For the first time, surprise breaks through his composure. Joel recognises the voice before the face.

“Tommy—that’s him!” Tommy fires at the remaining guard, forcing him behind cover. “Go!” Joel charges. Clouser tries to turn, but Joel reaches him before he takes two steps. He strikes him across the mouth and drives him into the wall. The insulated case flies from Clouser’s hand, hits the floor and springs open. Rows of glass vials rattle inside fitted foam. Some contain dark, fibrous material. Others hold clear or pale amber fluid packed between melting cold packs. Clouser looks toward the case. Joel hits him again. Clouser drops to one knee. Joel catches him by the front of the gown, hauls him upright and slams him against the wall. “Where is she?”

Clouser coughs, blood running over his lower lip. Joel shakes him hard enough to strike his skull against the tile. “Where the fuck is she?” 

Clouser looks into his face and smiles. “You’re late.”

Something in Joel breaks. His fist catches Clouser beneath the cheekbone. Once. Then again. Clouser folds toward the floor, but Joel keeps hold of him. “Joel!” Tommy’s warning cuts through the corridor. William and three members of his staff have reached them. Their weapons are raised. Tommy stands between the two groups, rifle trained on William while William’s people aim back at him.

“Everybody hold,” William orders. No one lowers a weapon. William’s eyes move past Tommy and settle on Joel. His expression changes.

“You’re Joel.” Joel knows that face. Charcoal smudged across old pages. A man drawn from memory again and again, sometimes with glasses, sometimes without. A name written beneath one unfinished portrait in your careful handwriting.

 William.

Joel releases Clouser and steps toward him. “Where is she?”

“Procedure Room Seven.”

“Tell me she’s all right.”

“She is alive.”

“That ain’t what I asked.” 

Clouser laughs weakly from the floor, wipes blood from his mouth. “Listen to him, Joel. He knows what you’re about to find.”

 Joel starts forward. William holds him back.

“You still need me,” Clouser says. William releases Joel and turns. Clouser looks toward the open case. “The serum is there. Daniel can still be stabilised. The others too, if you stop this now.”

“Yeah?” William reaches into his coat. “I got something for you, you piece of shit,” A sealed syringe appears in his hand. Dark fungal material drifts through cloudy fluid. Clouser’s face drains of colour.

Joel looks between them. “What’s that?”

“A concentrated strain engineered to invade neural tissue quickly,” William says. His eyes remain on Clouser. “His strain.”  

“Cordyceps,” Tommy mutters.

William gives a grim nod. “Modified to spread faster and cross into neural tissue more efficiently than anything found outside this building.”

Clouser begins backing away. “You cannot do this.” 

William kneels in front of him.

“Daniel is alive because of me,” Clouser says.

“Daniel is infected because of you.”

“I gave you proof! Her blood is working. Everything we did brought us here.” William catches him by the jaw and forces his head to the side. Clouser’s composure shatters. “William, listen to me. We can still finish this. We can save him. We can save all of them.” William drives the needle in. Clouser screams. He claws at William’s wrist, but Joel plants a boot against his chest and holds him to the floor while William forces the dark suspension into his bloodstream. Clouser convulses beneath them. The syringe empties. William withdraws the needle. “Death would be mercy.” 

Clouser clamps both hands over the puncture. “The serum. I need it now!” William rises. Clouser scrambles after him on his knees. “William!”  William looks toward two of his men. “Take him downstairs.” They seize Clouser beneath the arms. He fights immediately.

“No! Not the lower ward.”

“Put him in isolation with the subjects he abandoned.” Clouser digs his heels against the floor as they drag him toward the reinforced stairwell.

“You still need me! You don’t understand the protocol!” William closes the insulated case.

“I understand enough.” The stairwell door closes over Clouser’s screams. Tommy watches it shut. “Hell of a way to test his own work.” Joel does not respond. He catches William by the coat.

“Kat…Why’d he say I was late?” 

William hesitates. “She’s sedated.” 

Joel’s grip tightens. “She’s what?”

“We found her restrained in the procedure room. Clouser had begun serial blood collection and was preparing a marrow extraction. Her shoulder had reopened, and she was fighting hard enough to worsen the bleeding.”

“What did you give her?”

“A controlled sedative. She is breathing on her own.”

“Take me to her. Now.”

 William looks toward the people lining the corridor. “Lower your weapons,” he tells them. “It’s over.” Slowly, rifles descend. The last bursts of gunfire above them fade into isolated shots. William takes the case and leads them upstairs. They move through the remains of the revolt. Bodies lie between overturned carts and broken glass. Some wear WLF armour. Others wear lab coats or scrubs darkened with blood. A doctor steps into William’s path. “What about the treatment?”

“Secure the laboratory. Put the samples in cold storage.”

“There isn’t enough,” the doctor says. “Not for the entire ward.” William’s pace falters. Only once. 

Joel notices. “How much did you take from her?”  William does not answer. Joel grabs his shoulder and turns him. “How much?”

“I stopped the marrow procedure and treated the injury.”

“But you kept takin’ her blood.” 

William meets his eyes. “Yes.”

Joel nearly strikes him. Tommy steps close enough to intervene, but William turns and continues toward the east wing. Joel follows because you are ahead of him. Because every second spent hitting William is another second before he sees you. 

The third-floor corridor is quieter than the rest of the hospital. Emergency lights stain the walls red. William stops outside a reinforced door. Joel reaches past him and throws it open. Then he stops. His mind rejects what his eyes show him. For one fractured second, the room refuses to make sense. There is only white light, hanging tubes and the slow pulse of machines. Then the shapes become you.

You lie beneath the adjustable lamp, so still that the bed appears to have been arranged around a body rather than a living person. Your shirt has been cut open across the shoulder and chest. Adhesive electrodes cover your skin, thin wires trailing from them into monitors. Another set disappears beneath your hair near your temple. One arm is extended on a narrow support. A dark line leaves the vein inside your elbow and travels through a collection chamber before descending into a nearly full blood bag. Drops fall into it one at a time. Slow. Steady. Your other arm carries an intravenous line feeding clear fluid back into you. Fresh bandages cover your shoulder and the place near your hip where someone had prepared the marrow site. Bruises circle your wrists. Your lips have lost their colour. Three filled collection bags hang beside the bed. 

You look dead.

Joel’s body understands the sight before his mind does. Every muscle locks. His breath catches beneath his ribs and refuses to rise. The white walls blur as an older terror takes their place. A small body heavy in his arms. Blood soaking through his shirt and running hot between his fingers. Sarah looking up at him without understanding why he cannot make the pain stop. 

No. No, baby girl. Look at me. Stay with me. 

Then Ellie beneath the lights in Salt Lake City. Unconscious on another hospital bed, her skin cold beneath his hands when he lifted her from the operating table. And now you. Still beneath the same merciless white light. 

Too late. 

The thought tears through him. He failed you. His chest clamps shut. His heart strikes once, violently, then stumbles into a frantic rhythm. Joel tries to move toward the bed, but his legs no longer seem connected to him.

“Joel?” Tommy’s voice reaches him through water. Joel presses a hand against his chest, trying to force air into lungs that will not open. Tommy catches his arm.

“Joel. Hey—look at me.” 

Joel cannot.

“She’s breathing,” Tommy says. “You hear me? She’s breathing.” The words are the only thing keeping the room from becoming another grave. Tommy points toward the monitor. “Look.” A green line moves across the screen. A pulse. Joel stares at it. Then the line rises again. 

You are alive.

He forces one foot forward. Then the other. By the time he reaches the bed, his entire body is shaking. Joel touches your face. Your skin is cool beneath his palm. Not cold. Not cold. His fingers slide to the side of your neck, searching desperately for the beat beneath your skin. He does not trust the monitor. He does not trust William or the machines or anyone standing in that room. He trusts only what he can feel. There. Weak but steady. The breath that leaves him sounds almost like a sob. 

Come on, darlin’. 

The words form inside him, but his throat has closed around them. Your eyelids do not move. Joel brushes his thumb beneath your eye and follows the bruising along your cheek. His gaze moves down to the tape, the wires, the line disappearing into your arm. He watches your blood travel through the tubing. Another dark drop falls into the collection bag. Something hot runs down his face. He does not realise he is crying until it reaches his jaw. Joel reaches for the line. William catches his wrist.

“Don’t.” Joel turns toward him. His eyes are wet, but the grief inside them has sharpened into something lethal.

“Take it out.”

“The collection is almost complete.”

Joel draws his revolver and drives the barrel beneath William’s chin.

“I said take it out.” 

Tommy moves beside him, one hand closing around Joel’s shoulder. William slowly raises both hands. “If you pull the catheter without clamping it, you could rupture the vein.”

“Then clamp it.”

“We need the final volume.” 

Joel’s voice breaks as it rises. “Stop taking her fucking blood!” The assistants beside the monitors freeze.

“Listen to me,” William says.

“NO!”

“Joel—”

“You’re William, ain’t you?” The question catches him. Joel presses the barrel harder beneath his jaw. “She drew your face. Wrote your name under it.” William says nothing. “She called herself Kat in. Your daughter’s name.” Joel’s voice trembles with rage. “She wanted you to be the closest thing she ever had to a father. This how you treated her?”

“This is not about her.”

Joel surges forward, forcing William back against the wall. “Everything in this fucking room is about her!”

William looks toward the revolver. “Taking her away will not change what is happening inside her. There may be very little anyone can do for her now.”

Joel pulls back the hammer. “What the—?”

“Joel,” Tommy says quietly. Joel does not look away from William. Tommy studies the filled blood bags and the scans glowing on the wall.

“Hear him out,” he says. “Then we take her.” Joel glances at his brother. For a moment, they are boys again, exchanging an entire decision without speaking. Tommy’s face tells him everything he needs to know. The explanation will not change what happens next. William sees it too.

“Three minutes,” Joel says. “Waste one and you’re done.”

 William turns carefully toward the screen. Two images of your brain glow beside each other. One old. One recent. “The first scan was taken ten years ago. The second was taken today.” Joel sees the pale branching mass inside your skull. In the newer image, it has spread far beyond its original boundaries.

“That’s the infection?”

“It is Cordyceps, but it does not behave like a conventional infection.” William points toward the older scan. “Her exposure began before she was born. Her mother was bitten late in pregnancy, and a damaged form of the organism reached her while her immune system was still developing.” Tommy studies the image. “So her body thought it belonged there.”

“Not exactly. It learned to tolerate one altered colony while recognising later strains as foreign. The original growth established itself in her brain without taking control. Every bite and every concentration of spores introduced a competing strain, forcing the colony to adapt.”

“And it grew,” Joel says.

“Yes.” William points toward the newer scan.

“It produces compounds that prevent new Cordyceps from replicating. Her blood carries part of that response. We infused a small sample into Daniel.” His voice catches.

“My son.” William draws a breath. “His fever fell. The infection began to recede within minutes.” Tommy looks toward the filled bags. “And you think it can cure the others.”

“It can stabilise them. If we isolate what is active in her blood, we may be able to reproduce it without taking more from her.” 

Joel keeps the revolver raised. “At what cost?”

“The thing protecting her is also destroying her!”

Joel’s face empties. “What are you sayin’?”

“The organism maintains control by expanding. Every new exposure causes more growth, inflammation and pressure on the surrounding tissue. I cannot tell you when the balance will fail. It may take years. It may happen sooner if she suffers another bite or prolonged spore exposure.”

“No.” Joel says it quietly.

“I wish I were wrong.”

Joel forces the barrel harder beneath William’s chin. “So you figure she’s dyin’ anyway.”

“That is not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you’re sayin’.”

“I am saying her blood can save people now. Sixteen patients are dying downstairs. Children. Parents.” William’s voice fractures. “My son.” Joel looks toward the nearly full collection bag. “Look, I love her too,” William says. Joel’s eyes snap toward him. William does not retreat. “I remember the day she was born. I watched her take her first breath. I was there when the first scans showed us what had happened inside her. I remember the first time she asked me to call her Kat instead of her own name. I knew whose name she had chosen. I knew what she was asking me to be, even if neither of us could say it aloud.” His gaze moves toward your face. “I brought her books. I sat beside her through the fevers. Every time Clouser looked at her and saw an answer, I tried to make sure someone still saw a child.” His eyes shine. “When she escaped, part of me was terrified for her. Another part was relieved she had gotten away from us.” For the first time, shame breaks through his composure.

“I would not choose this if there were another way. What we collected may stabilise three or four people. The final volume may be enough to begin producing a treatment that does not require her.” He looks toward the blood bags.

“If we stop now, people who could have lived will die.”

Joel looks at you. The wires. The bruises. The blood leaving your body one drop at a time. Then he looks at Tommy. No words pass between them, but the answer moves easily through the silence. Tommy’s jaw sets. His rifle shifts toward the assistants beside the monitors. Joel turns back to William.

“Don’t care.”

William stares at him. “What?”

“I don’t care about your patients. Don’t care about your cure. Don’t care what happens to this whole goddamn world. If she’s got years, they’re hers. If she’s got a week, that’s hers too.” His voice grows quieter. “You don’t get to spend what’s left of her life like it belongs to everybody else.”

“People will die.”

“People always die.” Joel’s eyes return to William. “She ain’t dyin’ for them.” 

William’s expression fills with grief. Joel does not lower the gun.

“I know what you did in Salt Lake,” William says quietly. “You’re really going to do it again?”

Joel’s eyes sharpen, he does not blink. “Unhook her.”

“You heard him. Clamp the line.” William remains still. Joel’s finger settles against the trigger.z

William holds Joel’s gaze for another second. Then he gives one of the assistants a small nod. The woman moves toward the bed with both hands visible. Tommy follows her with the barrel of his rifle.“Slow,” he warns. She closes the clamp above the catheter and peels the tape from your arm. Her fingers tremble badly enough that the adhesive slips twice.

“Keep pressure above the vein,” William says. The catheter slides free. A thin line of blood wells from the puncture before the assistant presses gauze against it and wraps your arm. Tommy gestures toward the remaining wires.

“All of it.”

She disconnects the monitor leads one by one. The green line vanishes from the screen. An alarm changes to a single continuous tone that drives through Joel’s skull. Your chest still rises. That is all he watches. Tommy keeps the others covered while Joel holsters his revolver and pulls off his jacket. 

Only then does he see what they have done to the rest of you. Your trousers have been removed for the marrow procedure. A hospital sheet lies twisted beneath one leg, leaving bruised skin and the bandaged site near your hip exposed beneath the surgical light. Joel’s face hardens. He lays his jacket over you carefully, covering you from your chest to below your knees. He draws the sides together and tucks the heavy fabric beneath you so it cannot fall open when he lifts you. His hand pauses against your cheek. Still cool. Still breathing. 

All of sudden, William moves. 

The sound of the pistol clearing his coat is almost nothing. Tommy turns, but William already has the weapon aimed at Joel’s back. Joel becomes still beside the bed. William holds the gun in both hands, tears shining in his eyes. “I cannot allow you to carry her out of this room.”

Tommy swings his rifle toward him. “Put it down.” 

William does not look at him. “Sixteen people are dying downstairs. Her blood is the first real chance we have ever had. If you take her now, everything we sacrificed becomes meaningless.” 

Joel slowly turns.

William’s pistol trembles. 

Joel fires first.

The bullet enters the centre of William’s forehead. His pistol discharges into the ceiling as his body strikes the wall and folds to the floor beneath the glowing scans. For half a second, no one in the room breathes. The assistants recoil and scream.

One reaches toward the alarm panel. 

Another dives for William’s fallen pistol. 

Tommy fires.

The first assistant falls against the monitor. The second collapses before his fingers reach the gun. The remaining two freeze against the wall. Outside, voices erupt.

“That came from Procedure Seven!”

“Security to the east wing!”

Boots thunder toward the room. Joel turns to Tommy.

“Tommy. Help me.” 

Tommy sees what has settled into his brother’s face. Not rage anymore. Something quieter. Something far worse. He has seen that darkness before—after Sarah, during the years when survival meant doing things neither of them ever named afterward. He also knows Joel cannot carry another hospital out alone. Tommy crosses to the door and tears the privacy curtain from its track. Joel bends over you. He slides one arm beneath your knees and the other behind your shoulders. 

Your head rolls weakly toward him as he lifts you from the bed. “Easy,” he whispers, though you cannot hear him. “I got you, baby. I got you.” He gathers you tightly against his chest. Your face settles against his neck. Your hair brushes his mouth, carrying the faintest trace of rain and smoke beneath the antiseptic. Joel closes his eyes for one brief second.

There you are. Still breathing. Faintly. Barely.

But you are breathing.

And if keeping that breath inside you meant killing every last person left in this world, Joel would do it without hesitation.

Gunfire erupts beyond the curtain. He shifts you higher, keeping the jacket wrapped firmly around your body. His revolver rests beneath your bent knees, secured between his forearm and your weight. The curtain jerks aside. Tommy appears through the smoke, blood freckling one side of his face. “Come on.” 

Joel follows. Two guards lie in the corridor. One still moves, fingers dragging toward his rifle. Tommy fires once without slowing.

“Left side’s clear. Stairwell ain’t.” Shouts echo from both ends of the hall.

“They’ve got the girl!”

“They’re taking her!”

“Do not shoot the subject! She has to stay alive!” Joel’s arms tighten around you. Subject. Tommy glances over his shoulder and sees the change in his brother’s face.

“Keep behind me.” They move. Tommy leads with his rifle raised. Joel stays close, keeping your head tucked beneath his chin. A soldier steps from a side room and aims at Tommy. He sees you in Joel’s arms, and the barrel wavers.

“Put her down!” Tommy shoots him through the chest. More boots pound ahead. “Down!” Tommy shouts. 

Joel drops to one knee and curls himself over you. Gunfire tears through the corridor. Bullets punch into the wall above his head, showering his back with plaster. Tommy fires over him in controlled bursts until his rifle clicks empty.

“Shit.” He ducks behind an overturned cart and reaches for another magazine. A soldier advances through the smoke. Joel lowers you carefully behind the cart, keeping one hand beneath your head until it rests against his folded jacket. He draws the revolver and fires twice. The first round catches the soldier in the shoulder. The second takes him beneath the eye. Joel is back beside you before the body reaches the floor. Tommy slams in a fresh magazine.

“Got her?” 

Joel gathers you into his arms again. “Move.” 

They reach the intersection leading toward the stairwell. A group waits beyond it—Wolves in body armour, hospital security and two doctors holding pistols with hands that shake too badly to aim properly. Behind them stand nurses and frightened civilians who have emerged from the patient wards. A woman grips a photograph against her chest. A man beside her is crying. One of the doctors sees the jacket wrapped around you.

“You can’t take her.” 

Tommy keeps his rifle level. “Get outta the way.”

“My wife is downstairs,” the doctor says. “William said her blood was working.” Joel does not stop. The doctor raises his weapon. “She can save them.”

Joel’s face does not change. “She ain’t savin’ anybody.”

He fires before the doctor can pull the trigger. The bullet catches him in the chest and throws him backward into the people behind him. Joel steps over the spreading blood without looking down, holding you tighter against him as he keeps moving.

Someone behind the doctor shouts, “Shoot them!” The corridor erupts. People scream and scatter into the patient rooms. Tommy fires toward the armed men while Joel turns sideways, placing his body between you and the bullets.

“Stay down!” Tommy shouts. 

Joel lowers you behind the reception counter, one hand protecting the back of your skull. He rises over the edge and fires until the weapons across the corridor fall silent. He checks you immediately. Your breathing remains shallow but even. “I’m gettin’ you outta here, darlin’.” A bullet tears through the counter. Tommy grabs the back of Joel’s shirt and pulls him lower.

“Gotta move.” 

Joel’s cylinder is nearly empty. Tommy points toward a dead Wolf beside a gurney. “Take his.” Joel drags the rifle toward him, checks the chamber and strips two magazines from the man’s vest.

“Now!” Tommy shouts. Joel lifts you again, and they run bent low through the smoke. A nurse presses herself against the wall as they pass. She stares at your limp hand hanging beyond the edge of Joel’s jacket.

“Please,” she whispers. Joel hears her. He does not look back. The stairwell doors are twenty feet ahead when another squad pours from the adjoining corridor. Tommy fires first. The lead soldier drops. The others spread behind pillars and return fire in short, disciplined bursts. Joel and Tommy retreat behind a concrete support.

“We’re pinned,” Tommy says. Joel looks down at you. A smear of blood has appeared along the bandage at your arm. The darkness in his eyes deepens. Tommy recognises it.

“No. You hold her. I got this.” He searches the vest of a dead Wolf and finds a smoke grenade. He pulls the pin and throws it. Thick white smoke pours into the corridor.

“Can’t see them!”

“Watch your fire! The girl’s with them!” 

Tommy steps into the haze. His rifle flashes in the white smoke. One body falls. Then another. Joel follows the sound of his brother’s shots, holding you tightly enough to feel each shallow breath against his chest. A shape emerges only a few feet away. A soldier sees Joel and raises his weapon. Then he sees you. He hesitates. Joel does not. The rifle bucks once against his shoulder, and the soldier disappears into the haze.

“Joel!” Tommy calls. “This way!” A hand catches the back of Joel’s shirt. He turns and drives the rifle stock into a guard’s face, kicks his knee sideways and fires before the man can reach his pistol. The recoil tears through Joel’s wounded side. His vision darkens. He nearly drops to one knee. Tommy catches his arm. “Stay with me.”

 Joel adjusts you against his chest. “’M fine.”

“Keep movin’.”

They enter the stairwell and start down. Gunfire follows them through the door, rounds striking the concrete wall. At the next landing, two guards rush up from below. Tommy shoots one, but his magazine empties before he reaches the second. Joel lowers himself onto the step, braces you against his thighs and fires from beneath your knees. The guard tumbles backward down the stairs. Tommy takes the fallen man’s carbine. By the time they reach the ground floor, a mechanical voice is ordering all personnel to evacuate. Smoke leaks through the ventilation system. The lobby is full of armed men. A barricade of overturned desks and medical carts blocks the main exit. Beyond it, hospital security and surviving Wolves wait with rifles trained on the stairwell.

“Put the immune subject down and surrender!” Joel steps behind the concrete wall. Tommy looks across the lobby. “Too many.”

 Joel studies the emergency exit map beside them. “Loading dock’s west. Hall’s exposed.”

“Got another idea?” 

Tommy searches the pouches on the fallen guard’s vest and finds a fragmentation grenade. “Yeah.”

 Joel sees it. “Do it.” 

Tommy pulls the pin. “When it goes, stay on me.” Joel looks down at your face. Then nods. Tommy throws the grenade over the barricade.

“Grenade!” 

The explosion tears through the far side of the lobby. Glass bursts inward, followed by smoke, dust and falling debris. Tommy moves before the echoes fade.

“Go!” 

He runs low across the lobby, firing into the shapes rising behind the barricade. Joel follows directly behind him with you in his arms. A soldier aims from behind the reception desk. Tommy shoots him. Another appears beside the elevator. Joel shifts you against his left side, draws the revolver and fires across your covered legs. The man falls against the closing doors. Joel secures both arms around you again without breaking stride.

“West hall!” 

Tommy shouts. The loading corridor stretches ahead beneath flickering red lights. The service door at the far end stands partly open, cold daylight cutting through the smoke. Three guards move to block it. Tommy fires until the carbine clicks empty. Two fall. The third dives behind a supply cart. Joel lowers you behind a concrete pillar, his hand cradling the back of your head.

“Stay here.” 

He knows you cannot answer. Still, the words leave him like a promise. Joel rounds the pillar with the captured rifle. The guard fires first, the round grazing Joel’s upper arm. Joel barely reacts. He walks through the pain and fires until the guard stops moving. Tommy reaches the door and waves him forward.

“Clear!” 

Joel drops the rifle and returns to you. He gathers you back into his arms, drawing your face beneath his chin.

“Got ya.” He carries you through the service exit. Rain strikes his face. The loading yard is scattered with abandoned vehicles, bodies and discarded weapons. Gunfire continues behind them as more security teams pour toward the west wing. Tommy points toward an armoured utility vehicle near the gate.

“There!” 

They run. Joel’s wounded side tears wider with every step. Blood warms the inside of his shirt. His vision pulses black, clearing only when he looks down and sees your face. Tommy reaches the driver’s side and shoots out the damaged lock. He climbs inside and leans across to open the rear door.

“Get her in!”

Joel climbs into the back without releasing you. He sits sideways across the seat and pulls you into his lap, one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back. Your head rests over his heart. Tommy starts the engine. Rounds strike the rear of the vehicle.

“Hold on!” 

He slams it into gear and drives through the loading-yard barrier. The metal gate folds beneath the front bumper as gunfire follows them onto the road. Tommy accelerates toward the southern edge of Seattle. Behind them, smoke pours from the shattered windows of the hospital. Flames flicker in one of the upper corridors, half hidden beneath the rain. Joel does not look back. He adjusts the jacket around your legs and pulls you closer until there is no space between your body and his. His hand remains against the side of your neck, feeling every pulse beneath his fingers.

Weak. Steady. Still there.

“Don’t you dare leave me, baby,” he whispers into your hair, his voice cracking despite the warning in it. “Y’hear me? Y’stay with me.” 

Tommy watches them through the rear-view mirror.

Joel’s face is streaked with blood and tears. You lie motionless against him, wrapped in his jacket, one bare foot visible beneath the dark fabric. His brother holds you with the same desperate strength Tommy remembers from another night, another ruined city, another person bleeding in Joel’s arms. Only this time, they had gotten to you before it was too late. 

They had pulled you from that cursed hospital bed. Carried you through the gunfire. Gotten you out alive. F

or now, that was enough. 

Neither brother speaks of the scans or the pale growth spreading through your brain. Whether you have years left or weeks—whether the thing inside you will eventually take you from them—belongs to another day. Until they are beyond Seattle’s borders, only one truth matters. They saved you. Tommy faces the road. The hospital shrinks behind them, leaving smoke, shattered glass and bodies in their wake.

He presses harder on the accelerator and drives toward the gates of Seattle.

please don't forget that your thoughts and feelings about this story matter deeply to me so please share them with me. Thank you for being here. 💋

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Joel Miller and Tommy Miller

Nothing's gonna hurt you baby - Step uncle Joel Miller x fem!reader x step dad Tommy Miller by @aurorawritestoescape (Bad Blood extra)

Summary: feeling sad about leaving Austin and returning to college, you decide to take something with you — a hot sex tape, starring Tommy, you and Joel.

Guard Dogs - Joel Miller x f!reader x Tommy Miller by @sprigsofhazel (series - ongoing)

Summary: your mom falls in love, elopes and suddenly you're uprooted from your shitty apartment and moved into a house with her new husband and his two sons, joel & tommy. your mom thinks you're the brady bunch, but you wholeheartedly disagree, until things between you and your step-brothers slowly start to shift into forbidden territory.

Tommy Miller

Show me how bad you can hurt me - Raider!Tommy Miller x f!Reader by @mrsnanamiller (series - completed)

Summary: Four years after the outbreak, Joel and Tommy Miller are hardened smugglers in the Boston QZ: mean, violent, and willing to do whatever it takes to survive. When they’re paid an obscene amount to smuggle you across the ruined country to Columbus QZ, they didn't ask what secrets you carry to be worth that much. They just expect an easy job. You're supposed to be just cargo. They will soon discover this cargo has teeth… and the power to make even the worst men start to crack.

Joel Miller

Put me in a movie - dark!truckdriver!joel miller x f!reader by @cadavercarcass

Summary: you hitch hike to escape your small town, but the man that picks you up isn't the savior you initially see him as.

Guitar Gig - dbf!Joel Miller x f!reader by @baronessvonglitter

Summary:You show up for Joel's gig when your dad can't make it.

The Sleepover - best friend’s stepdad!Joel Miller x f!reader by @baronessvonglitter

Summary:Your plan to seduce your best friend's stepdad is coming along perfectly. But there's one small hitch..

Let me teach you - boyfriend’s dad Joel Miller x fem!reader by @aurorawritestoescape

Summary: your boyfriend begs you to have anal but knows jack shit about the act. Much to your surprise and pleasure, his dad steps up and teaches him. By example.

Unfaithful part 2 - Contractor!Joel Miller x Married!Reader by @peepawmiller

Summary: Joel takes you on a date. And then he takes you home.

You should feel lucky part XII - dark!Joel Miller x f!reader by @ess-evo (series - ongoing)

Summary: You reminisce about your times with Joel while he has something special in store for you.

Cain's Curse part 8 - Joel Miller x f!reader by @ishestillapunk

Summary: A close call makes Joel cut every distance that you try to put between you and him.

Happy Campers - camp counselor!Joel Miller x f!reader by @baronessvonglitter

Summary:Joel Miller, the new head counselor at Camp Happy Trail, makes sure this summer will be one you won't forget.

Ringlets - Joel Miller x curly hair!fem reader by @lvely-prose

Summary: you can’t stand your curly hair. joel loves it.

Season of the wolf - a Joel Miller x reader story by @mcthsman (series - completed)

Summary: The giant wolf that has been killing people around town shares a very striking feature with the quiet man that keeps breaking into your home— They both have the saddest, warmest brown eyes you've ever seen.

Joel - The summer fling - part of Guy-Crazy - Joel Miller x OFC by @baronessvonglitter

Summary: You head to the beach for some R&R, only to find what you really need is some Big D.

Sloth (Never enough part 2) - Joel Miller x fem!reader - part of Se7en collection by @milla-frenchy

Summary: after you promised Joel to try something new in bed and managed to make him skip patrol and stay home, he makes sure you mean it. So you enjoy a chill morning with him, and then you make good on your promise

Backyard Pool - dbf!Joel Miller x f!reader by @takochan-writes

Summary: You're alone at home while your parents are out celebrating their wedding anniversary. Feeling daring, you decide to masturbate in the backyard pool. Little do you know, your dad's best friend and neighbor, Joel Miller, can see you clearly from his bedroom window.

Messy Girl - Daddy!Joel x f!reader by @littledes1re

Warnings: 18+, smut, daddy!joel, slight ddlg undertones, unspecified age gap (only if y'all like), joel being physically aggressive, fingering, clit rubbing, overstimulation, squirting, crying, praise kink, unprotected sex

Harry Castillo

The Ex Education - Ex husband!Harry Castillo x Ex Wife!F!Reader by @missadangel

Summary: Born and raised on the Upper East Side — mother’s an actress, stepfather runs an empire that’s suddenly “under review,” and your brother’s the reason you have gray hair. You married perfection in your 20s Years after your picture-perfect marriage went up in smoke, you left New York to “heal.” Now you’re back, in your 30s — and saw your ex-husband on the cover of TIME. Wow. He got richer, your family’s going down, and somehow, you ended up working for him. Cried? Yes. Bad idea? Definitely. What could possibly go wrong?

Tim Rockford

The Detective and the agent (part3: Until next time) - Detective Tim Rockford x fem!reader x Agent Marcus Pike by @604to647 (series - ongoing)

Summary: You, Tim and Marcus make a souvenir of your time together.

Ted Garcia

Councli Meeting - Office Hours series part 5 - Ted Garcia x f!reader (series - ongoing) by @baronessvonglitter

Summary:Amid a busy day at City Hall, you and Ted can hardly keep away from each other.

Clint Flood

Clint - The Helping Hand (part of Guy-Crazy) - Clint x OFC (series - ongoing) by @/baronessvonglitter

Summary: In need of a helping hand, Daisy turns to a familiar place - and a familiar face.

Frankie Morales

Control - Frankie Morales x f!plus size reader - Wingman part 4 by @tateypots

Summary: Already feeling fragile about your reluctance to take things to the next level with Frankie, your mom pours gas on the flames. Frankie is there to put them out.

Dave York

The Blind Date (part of Guy-Crazy) - Dave York x OFC (series - ongoing) by @/baronessvonglitter

Summary: Daisy's sister sets her up on a blind date.

Couple Trouble - Dave York x f!reader by @petalsinblood

Summary: Your last and most important mission with Dave doesn't exactly go ad planned. But in the chaos he still shows his unwavering love for you.

Dieter Bravo

One Room Left - Dieter Bravo x f!reader by @ess-evo

Summary: A bad storm hits California, causing you to pull off into the nearest hotel. The cost of the room at the luxury resort is shocking, but what's even more shocking is who you end up sharing it with.

Alex Serian

Let me Play - Alex Serian x fem!reader Drabble by @604to647

Match my Rhythm - Alex Serian x f!reader by @petalsinblood

Summary: You help Alex practice a harder cello piece. But this practice is somehow entirely different from the previous ones.

Pope Cody

Pope Cody x f!reader blurb by @sugartalk-ing

My Work:

Taco Tuesday - Jackson!Joel x f!reader

Tags: Jackson!Joel, soft!Joel, friends to lovers, smut, dirty talking, dry humping, eating, mildly food play, nipple play, biting, pussy pronouns, Joel is such a tease.

Take my hand where you want it - Boss!Joel Miller x married!f!reader

Summary: After you discover that your husband is cheating on you with Joel's secretary, Joel becomes your confidant. One night, after your husband comes home late yet again, you rush to Joel for comfort. And Joel makes sure you get everything you deserve.

Fantasy made real - Tess Servopoulos x f!reader

Pope Cody x f!reader blurb

Lola - Javier Peña x f!reader Drabble requested for my Drabble for V's Birthday event

Thirsty - Jackson!Joel x f!reader requested for my Drabble for V's Birthday event

Summary: Getting a glimpse of one of your intimate, tender moments triggers something in Joel that he never would have expected…

Sober - Dieter Bravo x f!reader requested for my Drabble for V's Birthday event

Summary: After being sent to rehab and after reaching his newfound sobriety, Dieter is ready to work on a new project. When he meets you, he’s totally struck by your demeanor and your confidence. Little does he know, you’re going to make a sweet perfect sub out of him and you will give him a new and rediscovered joy of living.