Savor it
Chapter 26
"We need to talk. But first, we need to wash off whatever this... stuff is. Smells so bad I think I lost half my sense of smell," Leo said, half-carrying Duncan by the shoulder toward their rooms. The rest of the crew just watched, confused and worried, a dozen questions crowding up with nowhere to go. There wasn't much to do but wait for the two of them to clean up and rest before getting any real answers.
*Later that evening.*
A door opened, spilling light into the hallway hard enough to make him squint. Kaito stepped out and made his way toward the cafeteria, stretching muscles that still ached from all that crawling under cars. The near-death feeling hadn't fully left him yet — the fight with Tony, the taunting that had kept crawling back into his head the whole walk down. He remembered fighting him. Remembered winning. Past that, everything blurred — how the fight had actually ended, how he'd gotten back to the hotel, whether Brad and Sasha had made it home safe. He looked down at his own hand, faintly shaking, and for a second caught fragments of groaning, of struggle, before his fist clenched and the thoughts scattered on their own. By the time he reached the cafeteria, they were gone.
"Morning," he said, dropping into a chair. The cafeteria had a few of the hotel's built-in tables with movable seating — barely used by guests back in the day, though it'd apparently been a favorite spot for staff.
"Did I say something wrong?" he asked, thrown by the stares aimed his way.
"It's already night," Sasha said.
"What?" He blinked. "How long was I out?" He genuinely couldn't process the answer before it came.
"Nearly nineteen hours. Your body hit its absolute limit," Jane said. "If you feel anything unusual, tell me right away." She didn't let it show, but some part of her still felt like she owed him — if he hadn't done what he did when that freak knocked her out, there was no telling how that day would have ended for her.
"Got it, Doc," he said.
"Alright. Since we're all here, let's get into it," Leo said, standing near the window, easing the curtain aside just enough to check the street. "First thing — we're being watched. Or to put it plainly, someone's got eyes on us, and they're not the kind of people who play well with the rest of society."
"Who is it?" Amy asked, worry plain on her face. The undead, the freaks, and now this — it was getting to be too much to hold at once.
Sasha could see Amy wasn't handling it well, but she stayed quiet, waiting for the rest of what Leo and Duncan had to say. As much as she wanted to complain about how much their circumstances kept piling up, this wasn't the moment for it — Brad and Kaito had nearly died trying to protect her, and now Leo and Duncan had come back from something just as bad.
"His name's Alejandro. A real piece of work," Leo said.
"A jackass is what he is," Duncan added, balancing his knife idly on one finger.
"Was he the one who made you kill all those zombies? Was there an actual reason, or was he just testing you?" Jane asked.
"Both. All I know for sure is he's dangerous," Leo said, meeting every set of eyes in the room to make sure the point landed properly. "Weapons. Guns, pistols, shotguns, grenades — whatever you can think of, he's probably got it. He's not friendly, and he's got a whole crew of lowlifes willing to do whatever he pays them to do."
"So— so what does that mean for us?" Alex asked, voice cracking, fear plain in every word.
Leo held his eyes a second, weighing what to actually say. The man in front of him looked like he'd never lifted anything heavier than a pencil in his life — weak posture to match, the kind of person who became a liability the second things went sideways. Still, he kept that thought to himself.
"All I'm sure of is that we're safe for now. He agreed to stay off hotel grounds," Leo said.
"How'd he even find out people were in here?" Jane asked, arms crossed. "What about the horde that passed through a few days ago — are we even sure we're the only ones left in this area?" The timing of Alejandro's visit, right on the heels of that horde, felt like too much of a coincidence to just accept.
"She's got a point," Duncan said. "When he came to grab us, he never asked where the rest of you were. He just went along with whatever he assumed. There's a real chance he doesn't actually know how many of us there are." He glanced at Leo, agreeing with Jane's read on it.
"If that's true," Duncan muttered, half to himself, "then outside of me and Leo, he doesn't know about the girls. Or about Kaito." That gap in Alejandro's knowledge might be worth something — if he'd known there were women here, he probably wouldn't have bothered negotiating at all. He'd have come in shooting and taken what he wanted.
"Here you go," Amy said, setting down a hot plate of rice and curry, the smell announcing itself to the whole room before she'd even finished speaking.
"Wow, that smells amazing," Sasha said, eyeing the cart. Simple as the meal was, the smell of the spices was enough to make everyone forget their worries for a minute, settling in to eat down to the last grain.
"Amen," Kaito said, closing his eyes for a beat — and opening them to find Tony sitting right across from him.
Nobody else reacted. Nobody else could see him. While the rest of the table ate, laughing quietly over something Amy said, Kaito sat frozen, listening to what wasn't really there.
*You wouldn't want to disappoint this nice lady after she made you a meal like this, would you?* Tony's voice, taunting, exactly the way it had been in that parking lot.
*Make sure you savor every last bite.*
He laughed. Only Kaito could hear it.
