"How?" Joel rasped. "When? You ain't… you ain't one of their experiments, are you? One of those freaks they caught?"
Ethan shook his head, his voice low, steady. "No. I got bit when I was little. During the QZ outbreak. My grandpa… he died protecting me." The words came out flat, practiced — he'd said them to himself enough times that they'd worn smooth. "I just… didn't turn." His gaze held Joel's, firm, giving nothing away beyond the sentence itself.
Ellie flinched. "You were bit too? And didn't turn?" Her voice cracked between awe and something desperate. "I thought… I thought I was the only one."
Ethan let his breath catch, audibly. He widened his eyes, let his jaw drop, took half a step back with his hand coming up — a full-body performance of shock, tuned to look exactly like what Ellie was feeling.
"You… you too?" he whispered. "You're actually immune? Just like me? I thought I was the only one in the whole world."
For a moment the two of them just looked at each other — the only two of their kind, as far as either of them could prove, standing in the gray dawn outside a dead Firefly post.
"So you came all this way by yourself?" Ellie asked. "Just looking for answers? About why you didn't turn?"
"My parents were in it," Ethan said. "Military. Task Force Nightingale — top secret, even before the outbreak. They vanished in the Houston chaos." He watched her face. Nothing — the name meant nothing to her. "I heard the Fireflies had data. About what caused all this. About people like us."
Ellie chewed her lip. "The Fireflies think I'm the key. That they can make a cure from me. Marlene wants to take me to a hospital out west."
"A cure." Ethan kept his voice neutral. "They got proof? Or just hope?"
"Marlene seemed sure." Ellie's voice went softer. "But Joel's not convinced. He just wants to get me there because he promised Tess."
Ethan let Tess's name sit between them a moment. "I saw what happened to this outpost. Clean work. Professional. FEDRA?"
"Yeah. FEDRA." Ellie's expression hardened. "They were already dead when we got here. Most of the bodies were out in the yard, by the loading dock — Joel found them." She paused. "He was… really messed up about Tess. She was his partner. He didn't say much after. He just got quiet."
Ethan nodded slowly. He'd come in through the vents on the admin side — the yard was a part of the complex he'd never seen. It fit. The drag marks he'd found made sudden, ugly sense.
"Joel was supposed to hand me to the Fireflies," Ellie went on, frustration leaking through. "But they're all dead. So now he's taking me to his brother, Tommy. Out west. Tommy used to be a Firefly. He might know where the rest of them went."
Joel came back then, settling downwind with his shotgun across his knees, his eyes never quite stopping their sweep.
"Alright, 'Immune Two,'" he grunted at Ethan. "You got a name, or you just 'woods kid' forever? We're traveling together. Might as well have one."
"Ethan," he said. "Ethan Winters."
Joel's eyebrow twitched. "Ethan. Right. So, Ethan — you got all this 'classified intel' in that pack. What else did you find? Anything useful?"
Ethan pulled out the modified data reader, its little light dark now, and the brittle stack of files. "I siphoned what I could before the power died. And these." He laid the reports on the ground between them. "Non-conversion subjects. My data, your Firefly intel — it connects to my immunity."
Joel picked up one of the files, his thick fingers careful with the brittle paper. "Non-conversion subjects," he read. "You saying there's others? Like this kid?" A nod at Ellie.
"The data suggests a rare genetic marker," Ethan said. "A deviation in the Cordyceps strain that causes non-conversion. It's not a fluke — there's a biological reason for it." He pointed to a faded diagram. "And this. 'Task Force Nightingale.' My parents' unit. They were studying something related, near Houston, just before the outbreak. Investigating this specific strain."
Ellie leaned in, eyes wide. "So there's more of us? More immunes? People like me and you?"
"Not many. It's rare." Ethan met her look, then Joel's. "But more than one. These reports show multiple undocumented cases, studied by Task Force Nightingale. If the Fireflies are really trying for a cure, they'll need this data. Especially if my parents were in it before the world ended."
Joel was quiet a long moment, reading, the weight of two impossible secrets settling visibly onto his shoulders — the line of his jaw tightening, his thumb rubbing slow circles on the file's edge the way men do when they're doing arithmetic they don't like. Then he set the file down.
"So this ain't just luck," he muttered. "This is something else. And your parents were in on it. Part of this… unit."
"They were military. Classified." Ethan kept his voice level. "I think FEDRA hit this outpost because the Fireflies were getting too close to answers. Too close to something FEDRA wanted buried."
Joel ran a hand through his hair. "Alright, Ethan. That gives us a reason. A damn good one, if it holds." His gaze hardened. "But it don't make you less of a liability if you go charging Bloaters like a dumbass. We're heading west. To Tommy. He might know about this Nightingale unit, or where the rest of them are. You can come — you're useful. But you follow my lead. No heroics. No solo missions. You pull a stunt like that again, I leave you behind. Understood?"
"Understood," Ethan said. "Your lead. No heroics. Just survival. And answers."
Joel grunted and stood, shotgun coming up easy into the crook of his arm. "Good. Now — you said you know these woods better than a map. What's the fastest way out of this hellhole? No more tunnels. No more surprises."
Ethan pulled out the scavenged map and spread it on the ground, Ellie crouching beside him to look. He traced a line with his finger — away from the outpost, into the tree line, west.