Page 131 of The Atom Between Us

I already have…

I think about the dreams, the missing hours, the days I wake up and don’t know what’s real. About the rumours, the experiments and Maven’s plan to burn it all down.

“Not anymore,” I say, finally. “If I go, at least something will remember I was here.”

He pulls me closer, wraps me in both arms, and kisses my forehead. “I’ll remember,” he murmurs, words lost in the green.

We stay there, in the quiet warmth of the grow room, while the world above plots its next disaster.

HQ is chaos by the time we get back from the garden. Not the panic of a raid or the white-hot scramble of evacuation—this is the slower, heavier kind, the work that comes before a storm. The lights flicker with every surge from the generator, turning the shadows into a Morse code of impending violence. There’s a stack of printed maps the table, each annotated in three different inks. Rifle parts and medkits are everywhere, bleeding onto the floor or taking up entire chairs. Even the smell is different: less sweat, more gun oil, undertones of sharp metal and panic.

Rosie has commandeered one corner with a sewing machine, cranking out what look like makeshift bandoliers. Someone else is disassembling a drone, fingers black with grease. Kang stands just inside the door, boots planted, as if bracing for incoming fire.

Maven is at the center, arms spread across the table, eyes glittering in the lamp’s glare. When they see us, the tension in their jaw resets to zero, replaced by a too-wide smile.

“Right on schedule,” they say, sliding a map to the center. “Let’s keep this quick. No one sleeps tonight.”

People drift in, forming a ragged perimeter. Kang stands next to me, our arms just touching. He’s wound tight as a cable, but the edge is focused; he’s back in Authority mode, eyes scanning every face in the room for micro-expressions, tells, nerves.

Maven taps the map with a pen. “Here’s what we know: Authority isn’t just patrolling the perimeter. They’re running ops out of the old relay station.” The pen moves. “We cut their comms, they fall back. We cut their power, they go blind.” Another point, sharp. “But the real target is here—the core node. We hit it, we shut down their entire grid.”

Someone—one of the kids who’d been climbing Kang the day before—raises a hand. “Why not just blow the relay? Wouldn’t that do the same thing?”

Maven cocks an eyebrow. “Because if we blow the relay, Authority knows it’s sabotage. They go full lockdown, hunt us with every drone in the arsenal. We need them confused, not angry.”

Rosie chimes in from her perch. “Chaos buys us time.”

“Exactly,” says Maven. “So: three teams. One at the relay for the cut, one at the power junction, one at the node.” The pen circles.

The plan is brutal in its simplicity. The kind of thing that would get you laughed out of a boardroom, but here, it lands like gospel.

Maven sweeps the room. “Questions?”

Silence. Then Kang clears his throat. “Who leads the node team?”

Maven smiles, wolfish. “I was hoping you’d volunteer.”

There’s a ripple through the crowd, equal parts fear and relief. Kang doesn’t flinch. “Consider it done.”

He looks at me, and I see what he isn’t saying: We might not come back from this.

Maven turns to me. “Diana, you’re on deck for the Sphere.”

My stomach drops. “You want me to stay here?”

“It’s not a request,” Maven says, soft but immovable. “If you crack the Sphere, we get the code. We get the code, we can open every fucking lock in the zone.”

I bristle. “You need me at the node. I know the protocols. I know how to bypass⁠—”

Maven shakes their head. “No one else can break the Sphere. This is your job.” They look at Kang. “You want to take her along, that’s on you. But if we lose her, the whole op is wasted.”

Kang’s jaw tics. “She should choose.”

“Choice is a luxury we don’t have,” Maven retorts.

There’s a pause, heavy as lead. Every eye in the room is on me. Part of me wants to throw a chair, tear up the plan, storm out. But the other part—the part that’s spent a lifetime solving puzzles under a gun—knows Maven is right.

I exhale, slow. “Fine. I’ll crack your Sphere.”