Page 75 of The Atom Between Us

I finished the towels, folded them into perfect Authority rectangles, and stacked them in the bin. My mind spun with the new data. The pit. End of the month. Groups went in, some came back “wrong.”

I’d seen a lot of ways to break people, but this was a new one.

Back in the cell, I lay on my bunk, staring at the vent above my head, counting the number of times it rattled with the change in air pressure from the block doors opening. I thought about the pit, about what it might be—a punishment, an experiment, a kind of random culling. The Authority didn’t do random. They did data collection. They did controlled chaos.

Maybe the pit was both.

I drifted off cataloguing the possible variables: body count, psychological profile, group size, exposure duration. I dreamed of Kang, but this time, his face was covered in a mask, and his hands were full of blue fire.

I woke with the memory of the pit still in my head, and the taste of something metallic on my tongue.

The day cycle started again. More towels, more shirts, more sheets. Every now and then, I caught sight of the C block girls in the hallways. They never met my gaze, but they always moved a little faster when they saw me.

A week later, the schedule changed. New guards, new faces. A memo on the digital bulletin board announced “Maintenance for South Block” and warned of temporary service interruptions. The laundry doubled its output, prepping for something no one would explain.

The night before the end of the month, I watched as a new group of girls were pulled from their cells and marched off, not to labor, but to the sublevel below admin. I saw the fear on their faces. I heard the rumors ripple through the block.

No one slept that night. Not really.

The next incident hit when I was least expecting it—middle of the sleep cycle, the cell dark but for the tiny diode above the door, a blue dot that pulsed in time with the block’s heartbeat.

I was deep under, finally, when the weight landed on my chest.

A hand—dry, rough, and so fast I barely had time to react—slammed over my mouth, pinning my head to the pillow. My body remembered the old drill before my mind did: I bit down, hard, and tasted the iron tang of blood before the muffled voice reached me through the darkness.

“Easy,” it hissed. “It’s me.”

I went still. My brain caught up. The hand didn’t let go.

The voice came again, this time slower. “Don’t scream. Don’t move. I’ll let go if you promise.”

It was Kang. The certainty flooded me—a cocktail of dread, relief, and the old fury that sparked at the base of my skull.

I nodded, once. The hand slipped away, and I inhaled, sharp and deep, cataloguing the sweat, the hint of soap, the ozone crackle that always clung to him.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, voice barely a breath.

Kang’s silhouette loomed over me, a shifting mass in the zero-light. He was out of uniform, or at least missing the armor. His shirt was Authority black, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and his left hand—already bandaged—was dripping blood onto the blanket.

He leaned close, eyes searching for mine. “Get dressed.”

I bristled. “Or what? You’ll choke me out? or just completely disappear for weeks again?”

He didn’t answer, just pointed to my boots at the end of the bed. The air between us vibrated with all the things we weren’t saying.

I sat up, pulling the jumpsuit over my sleepwear. Kang watched, arms folded, scanning the cell like he expected the walls to sprout ears. I laced my boots with numb fingers. When I stood, he caught my elbow and steered me toward the door.

The corridor outside was pitch black. Kang moved ahead, his steps muffled by soft-soled shoes. He led the way with practiced precision, never once pausing or second-guessing. I followed, hyper-aware of every sound, every shift in air pressure as we passed the cell doors.

The corridor was so narrow the cinderblock scraped my knuckles if I let my arms dangle. Kang—or whatever version of him this was—moved ahead with feline purpose, one hand always grazing the wall, reading the hum of security in the dark. When he turned, I matched him, shoes dead silent on the cold poured floor. He’d bled through the bandage on his left hand; a single dark bead crept down his knuckle, the color lost in the blue-strobe emergency lights.

We turned at a T junction. The prison’s main artery should have been alive with cameras, but I saw only the afterimage of a lens, then nothing. Kang had mapped the schedule, or maybe he owned it.

He stopped at a blank steel door, no signage, only a key panel. The code he entered was slow, fingers deliberate. The lock snicked, and he ushered me inside with a nod, careful not to touch me.

The room was colder than the halls, but the walls were so clean it made my skin itch. No Authority graffiti, no cigarette burns, not even the patina of sweat or rage that covered the rest of Penitentiary 07. Just a metal table, two chairs, and a pair of fluorescents overhead so white they made me see colors. For a second, I almost believed I’d stepped into another world, one where the laws of filth and entropy didn’t apply.

Kang shut the door and turned, finally facing me.