Page 51 of The Atom Between Us

We stand like that, the silence an ocean between us. Then he straightens, leads me onward.

At the far end of the block, a glass door slides open. Beyond it, a long, clinical hallway, empty except for a single guard at the far end. Kang walks me down it, says nothing. The door at the end opens before we reach it.

Petrov waits inside. He stands behind a desk so clean it might as well be a surgical slab.

“Kang,” he says.

“Commander Petrov,” Kang replies.

Petrov doesn’t look at me. He looks at Kang, then at the folder on the desk. “You brought me quite a prize. The asset survived the worst breach in recorded history, then outperformed your entire unit in pattern response.”

Kang says nothing. The lines at the corners of his mouth deepen.

Petrov finally looks at me. “Doctor. Or would you prefer Diana?”

I ignore the bait. “What’s the experiment this time?”

He smiles, just a flicker. “Same as always. Adaptation. Humanity is slow to learn, but fast to break. Our job is to test the edge between the two.”

I glance at Kang, but his face is a mask again.

Petrov gestures at the chair in front of the desk. “Sit. We’ll begin intake shortly.”

I do, mostly because I want to see how it ends.

He asks questions, the usual Authority intake: name, ID, prior assignments, genetic status, history of exposure. I answer most. He doesn’t care about the content, only the pattern of the response.

Finally, he leans forward. “You understand you are not a prisoner here yet. You are part of the solution.”

I almost laugh. “You killed half your own convoy and let the rest be eaten. If this is the solution, I want out.”

Petrov’s voice softens. “We do what we must for the species.”

I stare at the steel in his eyes, and I realize he believes it.

He stands, walks to the door, and motions for Kang. “You did well. Debrief and report at nineteen.”

Kang nods, then turns to me. For a second, he looks almost human.

“If you’re going to survive here,” he says, “pick your fights.”

I watch him go, the echo of his footsteps fading down the corridor.

Petrov returns, with two white-coated techs at his side. “Walk with me,” he says.

They guide me through a maze of labs and holding bays, the air colder and more sterile with each step. We pass a room lined with glass, inside which civilians huddle on cots, each one with a Mnemonic Suppressor at the temple. Every few minutes, a tech checks the readout, adjusts the frequency, moves on.

We pass another room, this one stacked floor-to-ceiling with Spheres. I watch a tech poke at one, and it flares in a burst of blue that lights his face from the inside out.

Petrov watches me watch. “You could do great work here,” he says. “We need people who understand the patterns.”

I shake my head. “You need people who don’t ask questions.”

He shrugs, unconcerned. “Everyone asks questions. The difference is who lives long enough to get answers.”

He leads me into a private suite—clean bed, white sheets, a view of the base through a narrow slit. “You’ll stay here for the night. In the morning, we’ll begin.”

I nod, and he leaves.