Page 87 of Obliterated
The Pit snaps from chaos to a deadly, controlled silence.
The roar of the crowd falters, the Touched, twitching and half-lost in their haze, fall still. Even the sirens die.
All the while the red rain keeps pouring, slow and sick, the sky spitting infection and rot.
The red rain…
I jerk my head to Kieran. He’s standing there, fixed on the dais, a frown creasing his face while red streaks glide over his beautiful face.
“Kee,” I breathe, because he doesn’t react. No twitch in his muscles, no shifting eyes, no telltale sign… He’s just standing solid, present in his own mind, staring at the man who might have saved us, soaked in red.
He blinks my way, and a blinding, stupid hope lights his eyes up. “Hesavedus.”
“Kee,” I say again, wonder threading my voice. A manic cackle escapes me, sharp and surprised.
“Iknow.” His smile is blinding, the ocean swirling. “Roesavedus. We’re going to survive.”
“No. I mean yes.Yes, we will. But shit,Kee. It’sraining.”
He looks up then. Tiny red splatters pepper his forehead, dot his cheeks. He exhales, flat. “I know… It doesn’t matter. I’m already infected.”
I shake my head, grab his shoulders, start shakinghim.“No, Kee.It’s raining.”
I just can’t get the words out, but I see the moment it clicks in his head. His eyes widen, his mouth falls open. “I’m not… I’m not—”
“No!”I cut him off. He’s Immune. The bastard isImmune. “You’re not responding, Kee. You’re not twitching and not—” My voice breaks under the weight of that word.
“Not Touched,” he finishes for me.
“No, you’re not. Fuck, I think you’re like me.” The words tumble out, less a question and more a prayer turned into a promise. My heart soars, then sputters, then rockets back to life.
“What?” he looks astonished. “I’m like you?”
“You’reImmune.” The world narrows to the heat of him under my hands, to the stupid, ridiculous relief flooding my skull.
A sob wrecks through him as the weight of it finally hits. He almost folds in on himself for a second, shaking, and then he throws himself at me.
Arms on my shoulders, face buried in my neck, shuddering. All sticky and wet and fucking amazing. “I’m Immune. Oh shit. Do you really think it’s true?”
“You are. I justknowit’s true. That crescent mark on your arm… it makes sense.”
He lifts his head, blinks at me, then down at his arm. “Oh, fuck. You’re right… My mother…” His voice trails off. His damned mother. She tried everything to keep him safe, to hide him from the world.
The world they came from didn’t fuck around with Immunes. They locked them away, used them for experiments. She kept him safe in the only way she could: by not telling him what she’d figured out when he was still a kid.
And now he’s here. Immune. Safe. Mine. Fuckingoursfor however long I can have him. Rain and Walkers be damned.
I can have him forever.
My forehead drops to his. I breathe him in, warm and real, in my arms. “I love you, Kee. I love you so fucking much.”
That sends him over; he sobs for real this time, a ragged, grateful sound that rips my chest open. He clings to me like I’m the only thing holding him to the world.
“I love you too,” he says, and the words seep into me, hot and real, soaking into the place in my chest that thought it was hollow.
That is until—
“OPEN UP THE FUCKING GATE!” Noura screams, and every head snaps to the dais.
