Page 47 of The Atom Between Us

I ignore her. “You’re walking into the eye of the storm if you take the north ridge. The only safe route is west, along the drainage basin. It’ll get you out of the spike in under a klick.”

Kang doesn’t move, but his lips twitch—a sign, if you know him. “That’s not standard Authority doctrine.”

I smile, baring every broken edge of my teeth. “Neither is sending three squads to babysit a single research asset.”

The pause hangs, then Kang turns to the lieutenant. “Recalculate with her inputs. Verify against onboard sensors.”

The young woman glowers, but pulls up her tablet and starts punching numbers.

I shift my stance, feeling the eyes of every guard on my back. I can sense Kang’s calculation: risk versus reward, the utility of listening to a convict scientist versus the cost of one mistake.

I look up at the sky, watching the weird blue corona ripple over the treeline. I want to say, “You could have been out of here already if you’d just listened,” but there’s no point. In Authority, pride is an ecosystem all its own.

A minute later, the lieutenant’s face goes pale. “She’s right, sir. The rad vectors spike north, but there’s a decay curve due west—could be a window if we move now.”

Kang nods, just once. “Order the convoy to the basin. We’ll reassess at the far side.”

He turns to me. For a moment, the blue light makes him look years older, every scar and worry line etched in neon. His eyes are tired, but there’s something like gratitude behind them.

“You always this insubordinate?” he asks, voice low and flat—but there’s an edge beneath it, like he’s testing something.

I shrug, the zipcuffs tugging tight enough to burn against my wrists. “You should know by now, Captain.”

For a second, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.

But I see it—the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth. A flicker, like he’s fighting a smirk and nearly loses. It’s gone in a heartbeat, buried beneath the hard lines of his face, but I saw it. And it hits me harder than it should—this one brief, human glitch in his otherwise bulletproof façade.

We stand there, suspended in it. That electric pause. The space between what we say and everything we’re not saying. Then a scream slices through the air, sharp and ragged, shattering the moment like glass under pressure.

The spell breaks.

It’s from the third APC—civilian transport. The guards inside are trying to restrain someone, but the figure breaks free, stumbles into the open. It’s a woman, hair shorn to the scalp, eyes rolling in terror. There’s a black band at her temple: Mnemonic Suppressor, glinting with the Authority’s sigil.

She collapses to her knees in the fungus, hands clawing at the device. Her mouth is open but the sounds that come out are more animal than human, a series of gasps and sobs, then a litany of fractured words.

“They said—I can’t—I’m not—I remember—please—my name—my name⁠—”

Two guards move in, but she bats them away, fingers tearing at the Suppressor. There’s a brief, electric sizzle and the smell of burnt hair.

She looks up, eyes locking on me. “Don’t let them do it,” she begs. “They erase you. They erase everything.”

The guards close in, one jamming a syringe into her neck. She slumps, instantly limp, but the echo of her voice vibrates through the column. Kang’s face is unreadable. He gestures at the guards, then at the rest of the civilians still trapped in their own Suppressor-induced haze.

“Get her inside. Restrain her until we reach base.”

The guards obey, dragging her limp form back to the truck. For a second, I can see her face, slack and empty, the blue light playing across her cheekbones like the surface of a drowned body.

I want to vomit. Instead, I look back at Kang.

He’s watching me, not like a jailer, but like a man who knows exactly how much is at stake.

I want to scream at him, to shake him until he understands what he’s done. But the words won’t come. Instead, I whisper, just loud enough for him to hear:

“The radiation doesn’t behave randomly. It follows patterns if you know how to read them.”

He meets my gaze, and in the space between us is everything that matters and nothing at all.

The convoy starts moving again, engines grinding as they lurch toward the basin.