Chapter 379: Ivy Wants to come as well

When Lucy said she was coming too, the whole room went quiet for a second. Not a long silence, but enough.

Enough for everybody to look at her a little differently.

Christopher was the first one to break it. He crossed his arms and looked at her straight on. "Why do you want to come?"

That was basically what all of us were thinking anyway.

He didn’t sound hostile exactly, just direct. Which fit. No point dancing around it when she had spent all this time on the other side, giving orders to the same people we were now getting ready to hit.

"We’re going there to kill your men, you know," he added. "The ones you’ve been leading."

Lucy didn’t flinch.

"I worked with them because I didn’t have much choice," she said. "I’m not attached to them. Most of them care about two things only, killing and screwing around."

Sydney gave a short, humorless snort at that, like she believed it easily enough.

Cindy still looked unconvinced. "That still doesn’t explain why you want in," she said. "This doesn’t even concern your brother."

And she had a point.

If Lucy had asked to come along on the day we moved to get Keith, Mei, Emily, and Tommy out, that would’ve made immediate sense. Nobody in the room would’ve been surprised by that. Keith was her brother. That rescue plan already had her blood in it whether she acted on it or not.

But the hotel raid?

That was different.

This was about taking ground. About forcing Callighan back. About killing our way into a building Lucy herself had ruled over not that long ago. It was harder to read why she wanted to be part of that.

Lucy must’ve seen the suspicion sitting across all our faces, because she let out a breath through her nose and looked more annoyed than offended.

"I’m trying to help," she said. "You’re helping me get my brother back."

Then her eyes shifted briefly toward Christopher.

"And he saved my life," she added.

Christopher said nothing to that, but I saw the way his shoulders changed slightly.

Lucy kept going.

"So let me do something in return. I know the layout of the hotel. Better than any of you. And I might know where they’re keeping Zakthar, even if they moved him."

That landed harder than the rest.

Because that part mattered.

A lot.

I stayed quiet for a second, thinking it through.

Then, of course, Sydney opened her mouth.

"So basically," she said from the bed, sounding way too entertained by all this, "you want to help because you feel guilty that we’re putting our asses on the line to save your brother while you’ve done nothing back."

Lucy shot her a sharp look.

A really sharp one.

But she didn’t deny it.

That was the interesting part.

I didn’t think she was about to betray us. Not really. If she wanted to sell us out, there had been easier moments for it than walking into a room full of people who already didn’t fully trust her. Still, that didn’t change the fact that bringing her back into the hotel she had commanded all this time sat badly with me. There were too many ways it could go wrong. Too many instincts and loyalties people carried without meaning to.

So I looked at Christopher.

He caught it right away.

"If you’re asking whether I think she’s sincere," he said, "then yeah. I do."

Lucy didn’t move, but I saw the slightest shift in her eyes when he said it.

Christopher shrugged one shoulder.

"She wants her brother back more than anything else," he said. "Now that there’s a solid plan to actually do that, she’s not going to screw us over and ruin her own chance."

He paused there, then glanced toward Lucy before finishing.

"If anything, I’d say she wants to come because she wants to make sure the people keeping her alive and capable of saving her brother don’t die in the process."

Sydney made a face like she wanted to say that sounded embarrassingly soft.

Rachel spoke first instead.

"I agree with Christopher," she said with a nod.

That mattered too.

Rachel didn’t trust blindly. Neither of them did. If both Christopher and Rachel were willing to say Lucy meant what she was saying, I was inclined to believe them. Not because Lucy had earned all my trust suddenly, but because their judgment had earned mine.

And honestly, it fit.

Lucy wasn’t sentimental about the people at the hotel. Not from anything I’d seen. Her real weak point, if you could call it that, had always been Keith.

That part of her was real.

"Alright," I said. "You’re in."

Lucy gave a short nod. No smile. No relief on display. Just acceptance.

Then Sydney ruined the moment immediately.

"God," she said, "I think more than her brother, she just wants to make sure Chris doesn’t die. She’s got a thing for the younger guy who saved her life."

"Shut up, Sydney," Christopher snapped, glaring at her.

Sydney only smirked wider.

At this point, with how often she kept saying it, I was starting to wonder if she’d actually picked up on something instead of just causing chaos for fun. Which, knowing Sydney, could easily be both.

Without thinking too much, I glanced at Christopher.

He caught that too.

"Don’t even start," he said, now glaring at me as well.

I raised both hands at once. "I’m starting nothing."

That was true.

Mostly.

Lucy, on the other hand, hadn’t said a word through any of that. She just stood there with her arms crossed, face set in that cold annoyed way of hers that made her hard to read if you didn’t already know what buttons had been pushed.

Then she turned and walked out of the room.

Sydney watched the door shut behind her and grinned like she’d just won something.

"She’s embarrassed~"

Cindy rolled her eyes. "I wonder whose fault that is."

Christopher muttered something under his breath that was probably aimed at Sydney and definitely deserved.

I let out a tired sigh and rubbed my temple for a second before looking toward Ivy.

I hadn’t forgotten what she had said.

And unlike with Lucy, this one bothered me in a different way.

Because if I was honest, I really didn’t want Ivy coming with us at all.

I turned toward Ivy.

"Ivy... were you serious about that?" I asked. "About coming with us?"

She didn’t even blink.

"I was, and I am."

That flat answer of hers somehow made it worse.

I stared at her for a second, trying to see if there was any sign she was joking, or testing us, or just being difficult because she liked watching people scramble around her calm face.

Nothing.

I mean, she was clearly not someone joking to begin with.

"It’s dangerous," I said. "Even if you can handle Infected and even if you know how to use a gun, that doesn’t change what you are. You’re a nurse. You’re one of the most important people we have. You staying alive matters more to everyone here than you taking part in a raid."

I meant every word of that.

Ivy wasn’t just another person who happened to be around. If one of us got torn up, shot, feverish, infected, half-dead, she was the one we needed standing, thinking clearly, and still breathing. People like her were rarer than good weapons.

But Ivy only looked at me and answered as if I’d said something obvious and not remotely convincing.

"There will be injuries there," she said. "In that case, I’ll be more useful on site than sitting here."

Sydney immediately pointed at her. "She’s got a huge point."

I shot Sydney a look, but Cindy spoke before I could say anything.

"But Miss Ivy..." Cindy said, clearly worried now. "There’ll be armed people everywhere. They won’t hesitate to shoot."

That was exactly the problem.

Everyone in the room knew Ivy could handle herself better than most civilians. She wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t helpless. But that didn’t mean I liked the idea of dragging her into a building full of men with guns just because she happened to be useful after the shooting started.

And Ivy wasn’t just some distant figure to any of us anyway.

For Cindy, Christopher, and Rebecca, she had been there before the world collapsed. She’d worked as the nurse at Lexington Charter while they studied there, and from what they had told me, from the moment they knew her she had always been the same calm, a little distant, impossible to fluster, and somehow always more aware than anybody else in the room. The reason she had gotten close to Mei in the first place was because Mei had some medical issue Ivy had been helping her with back at school.

I’d learned that a while ago, and honestly it had surprised the hell out of me.

I’d wanted to ask about it.

But it was obviously personal, and I wasn’t stupid enough to pry into something Mei never brought up herself. Nobody else did either, from what I had seen. Whatever that had been, it stayed hers.

Still, it meant Ivy wasn’t some random nurse we picked up on the road.

She mattered.

And she was the oldest one in our whole group too, the only person who actually felt like a real adult sometimes. Rachel was one too, sure, but even Rachel was only twenty. Ivy carried herself differently.

"I’ll be fine," Ivy said shortly.

"Ivy—" I started.

"It doesn’t matter what any of you say," she cut in calmly. "I’m coming either way. With you or without you."

That shut me up.

Because that changed the whole argument.

She wasn’t asking for permission. She was informing us. And worse, she meant it. If we refused and tried to leave her behind, she’d just go on her own.

That I liked even less.

The thought of Ivy wandering toward the Golden Nugget alone, armed with that same detached expression and absolutely no intention of turning back, was bad enough to make my answer come faster than I wanted.

"Alright," I said.

I let out a breath and gave up on fighting it.

"Alright. Fine."

Sydney grinned like she had just watched me lose a bet.

I ignored her and kept looking at Ivy.

But something still sat wrong with me.

Not just the risk. The reason.

Why did she want to come this badly?

And yeah, if I was being honest, that part bothered me more because Ivy had never seemed all that interested in much of anything. She observed. She commented when she felt like it. Half the time she looked like she was studying everybody from a distance for reasons only she understood. The most direct personal thing I could remember from her was that absurd request she once made about wanting to watch me have sex with another woman, which was insane enough on its own and not something I had exactly agreed to.

So now, seeing her this intent on joining a raid, I wanted to know why.

Apparently Sydney wanted the same answer.

"Why do you want to come that much, Ivy?" She asked bluntly, voicing exactly what I had been thinking.

The whole room looked at her.

Even Cindy stopped smiling. Christopher raised his head. Rachel waited quietly. Everybody expected some practical answer. Something about injuries, field treatment, medical necessity, whatever.

Ivy looked at me.

"To watch over you," she said.

I blinked.

"Huh... oh." I nodded awkwardly, suddenly feeling like I’d missed a step somewhere. "Okay."

My first thought, naturally, was the normal one.

Watch over us.

All of us.

Like the responsible adult in the room making sure we didn’t get ourselves killed doing something reckless. That made sense. That was a completely reasonable explanation.

Unfortunately, I was apparently the only person in the room whose mind went there first.

Everybody else looked between Ivy and me.

Then between me and Ivy again.

Sydney pinched the bridge of her nose like she had physically suffered enough.

"Ryan Gray," she said in a tired voice, "from a thirteen-year-old teenage girl to a sexy nurse to an elderly woman, nobody ever escapes your grasp."

Cindy burst out laughing at that.

Christopher lost it too, laughing hard.

I felt myself visibly wince.

Ivy did absolutely nothing to help.

She didn’t explain. Didn’t correct them. Didn’t even give me one of those dry looks that might’ve saved me a little dignity.

She just turned and walked out of the room completely unbothered, leaving me standing there in the middle of everybody’s amusement like she hadn’t just thrown me under a truck on purpose.

I stared after her.

Then I looked back at the others, still laughing.

"Yeah, yeah," I groaned. "Keep laughing."

Rachel, at least, was kinder about it.

She only chuckled softly, smiling in that warm, amused way of hers while I stood there taking psychic damage from all sides.