Chapter 10 · Neither Door

Milo's hand closed over mine before I got a knuckle on the override.

"Don't," he said. Low. Wrecked. His pulse was slamming against my wrist where he'd pinned it to the panel casing. "You hit that button blind, we both cook."

"Get off my hand, Drake."

"Make me."

I could've broken the grip. I'd done it twice already tonight, once against the scrubber grate, once against the wall hard enough to crack the housing behind his skull. But the panel was still lit red under both our palms, and the readout wasn't finished loading, and some animal part of my brain — the part that had been screaming since the suppressant patch failed two hours back — wanted to know what it said more than it wanted to win.

DUMP LIST — REV 3 SUBJECT A: ROURKE, C. — CAPTAIN, QUARANTINE COMMAND SUBJECT B: DRAKE, M. — PERIMETER, UNLISTED GLAND CLASS STATUS: CROSS-CONTAM CONFIRMED DISPOSITION: BURN BOTH

My stomach dropped through the deck plate.

"Burn both," I said. "They wrote that before we're even done fighting about it."

Milo's jaw worked.