Chapter 14 · Contaminated Waste

"Don't move." Milo's mouth is still on my throat, teeth still hooked into the muscle he just opened, and my fist is buried in his collar hard enough to feel the seam give. Blood — mine, sliding hot down into my collarbone — tastes like a bitten battery. Neither of us has let go yet. That's the whole point.

Then the comms panel on the wall clicks alive, and a voice that isn't dispatch reads numbers into the container like it's reading a grocery list.

"Manifest four-four-seven-one Bravo. Contents flagged contaminated. Disposal authorized, incinerator three, oh-six-hundred."

Milo goes still against me. Not soft-still. Coiled-still.

"That's us," he says into my skin, and I feel the word more than hear it. "That's this box."

I shove him back by the sternum — the gravity pin breaking the second I put weight into it — and we come up off the floor at the same time, both of us breathing like we just went twelve rounds, which, in a way, we did. My jaw throbs where his canine dragged bone. His throat's got my mark rising already, dark and swelling under the collar line he never bothers buttoning.

"Contaminated waste," I say.