Page 96 of The Atom Between Us

I exist, at first, in pieces.

Flash: white light.

Flash: glass walls, faces in mirror shield. A voice—my own, cataloging observations in cold, clinical monotone. “Subject stable. Reaction time within parameters. Prepare next cycle.” The words bounce off nothing, fill nothing, disappear.

Then something else: a warmth at my midsection, hands curved across my belly. Not surgical. Not Authority. Intimate, possessive. The sensation blooms inside me with a heat I can’t name. It is a memory, but it is not mine.

The hands squeeze with such tenderness. I try to turn, to look behind me, but there is no body—just the hands, just the arms, just the ghost of pressure. A mouth at my neck, the whisper of breath: “Almost done, my love.” I try to see the face, but every time it slides away, replaced by light, pain, or static.

Fragment: my own voice, high and brittle, saying, “We’re not supposed to⁠—”

Fragment: a row of lab rats in glass tubes.

Fragment: a hallway that never ends.

Fragment: fire.

The world arranges itself in layers. Below me: vibration, the bass thud of boot steps through soft earth. At my back: heat and solidity, a ribcage flexing in time with my own breath. In my nose: the ammonia tang of dried sweat, underlaid with old blood and the sharp, verdant reek of vegetation run out of control. My hands won’t move, but I can feel my arms, limp, oscillating with each stride.

My mouth tastes like copper. My tongue is a foreign object, thick as a sponge.

Above me: blue, but not sky. Veins of indigo and violet rippling through a ceiling of transparent flesh, or maybe fungus. Pinpoints of bioluminescence drift overhead, blinking in rhythm with the pulse at my throat.

I am moving.

Someone is carrying me.

I try to speak, but the only sound is a low animal whine, the kind of thing you make when your brain has no higher function left.

The hands—real, present, not memory—shift under my legs and shoulders. I feel the scrape of stubble against my temple. A voice, familiar, somewhere above: “You’re okay. You’re okay, Dee. Almost there.” It’s not the clinical monotone. It’s rougher, worn down by panic and effort.

I cough. The taste in my mouth spikes from copper to iron. My vision fills with white for a moment, then settles into a blur. The world dips, then tilts—my body being adjusted, the sensation so sudden I nearly black out again.

We stop. The arms holding me ease, gently, careful not to jar the joint at my shoulder. I feel my back settle against something soft and half-rotted. Not concrete. Not Authority plastic. Something organic, the fibers catching at my shirt.

I open my eyes for real.

A face resolves in front of me: Kang, sweat-slicked and wild, hair in his eyes. The forest behind him is alive, writhing. Nothing Authority about it—ferns as high as men, fungus stalks painted with blue fire, vines that pulse with sap. It’s a fever dream, or maybe just the way the world is now.

He crouches down, hands bracing either side of my face. “Look at me,” he says, voice low and clipped. “You here?”

I try. My eyes focus, then lose it. I blink, slow, dragging each eyelid up like a tarp off a corpse.

“Diana,” he says, and the way he says it is not Authority. It is not even Kang. It’s just a man, exhausted, running out of options.

I croak, “That’s my name,” and my lips crack. Blood beads up, red-black against my skin.

He exhales, almost a laugh, but not quite. “You’ve been out for an hour. Maybe two.”

I nod. Or try. The motion sends a lightning rod through my right side. My arm is numb, but not dead. I can feel the blood running, slow and thick, down my bicep. The shoulder—my shoulder—is a hot, pulsing ache.

He sees it. “You’re shot,” he says, not gentle, not cruel. “You lost blood. I tried to—” He stops, jaw locking, then unclenching. “You’ll live.”

The sense memory of running comes back. The yard. The fence. The gunshots. Stitch’s face. “Stitch,” I say, the word barely sound.

His eyes go hard. He looks away, down at the ground. “She didn’t make it. The old guys did. They’re a few klicks north, safe as they can be.”

It lands in my gut like a brick. The pain in my shoulder is nothing compared to the pressure behind my eyes.