I stiffened. There was a moment where it could have gone either way; a moment where I could have grabbed him and dragged him along with us, where we would have been caught in the government lockdown when it hit our building.

Please, George whispered.

The moment passed.

“Who has the ID Dr. Wynne made for Kelly?” I demanded. Kelly blinked as she produced the card from her pocket. I snatched it from her hand and passed it to Dave. She started to protest. I cut her off, saying, “You’re not carrying any trackers, and your equipment checks clean. This is the only thing with circuitry we can’t decode, and somebody traced you here. Understand?”

Mutely, she nodded, face gone white with increasing terror. I’m not sure she’d realized before that moment that she could still be followed.

Dave shot me a pained look, saying, “Shaun—”

“Just don’t. You fucker, you better make this count.” I turned my back on him and continued down the stairs, snapping, “Move out!” to the others. I heard steps going up as he started back toward the apartment. Then the others were moving with me, Alaric and Becks hustling Kelly along.

We were halfway down the tunnel when the bleach jets came on, but that was all; no acid, no nerve toxins designed to target the infected and the healthy alike. We just got decontaminated, and then we were out, moving through the empty garage to our vehicles. Becks got Alaric and Kelly into the van while I donned my helmet and straddled George’s bike, shoving the key into the ignition.

Cameras ringed the parking garage; cameras with feeds that plugged into the building’s security system. I turned to the nearest of them, blinking back the tears that were suddenly threatening to blur my vision, and saluted.

“Move it or lose it, boss,” said Dave, voice cracked and distorted by the speakers in my helmet. “You’ve got ten minutes at most before the fire rains down.”

“Don’t you dare move into my head after you die, you fucker,” I said. “It’s crowded enough in here.”

“Boss?”

I closed my eyes. “Open the doors.”

Whatever whack-ass computer voodoo he’d worked on the security system was good; the doors slid open as soon as I gave the command. Only a few of the infected were visible on the street outside, but they’d start to mob soon enough. I gunned my engine, waving for Becks to follow, and roared out into the light. She follows bikeout fifteen yards behind, both of us cutting a path toward the closest major street—Martin Luther King Boulevard—and our hopeful survival.