Page 46 of The Atom Between Us

“Where did he go?” I ask. My voice is thin, rasped dry by hours of filter-processed air.

Kang shakes his head. “He’s already at the site. Preparing.”

Preparing for what, I want to say, but I know better.

The child screams outside, a raw, shattering wail. The mother lunges for her, but is stopped by the guards, who force her to her knees. The child’s headband flares, and she goes quiet, just like the others.

Kang doesn’t look away this time. He stands there, watching me watch him.

The guards return, the hatch closes, and the engine cycles back to life. This time, the transport is empty but for me, Kang, and the guard.

“You’re not going to memory-wipe me,” I say, testing.

Kang doesn’t answer for a long time. Then he sits beside me, close enough I can see the ragged cut at his jawline from the Sphere incident.

“No,” he says finally. “You’re different.”

I think he means it as a threat, but it doesn’t land. Not with the way his hands tremble, or the way his eyes keep falling to the zipcuff marks on my wrists.

For the next hour, we ride in silence. Outside, the Wasteland whips past: a dead city here, a forest of blue moss there, always the haze of distant aurora rippling through the dawn. Inside, the hum of the engine and the soft whine of the life support are the only constants.

I keep waiting for Kang to talk. To explain, to apologize, to interrogate, to touch.

He does none of it. But when the engine hiccups, when we hit a patch of radiation so thick the filter can’t keep up, he grabs my arm, steadying me. Just for a second, just enough to remind me of the world before the Spheres, before the Protocols, before I was a test subject instead of a scientist.

Then he lets go.

No one tells you the air in a convoy is worse than a prison cell.

My wrists are zipcuffed but my mind isn’t, which means every second in the armored personnel carrier is spent counting: number of soldiers in my compartment there’s six, two of whom are rookies by the way they grip their weapons. number of hatches and gunports there’s eight, plus a kill-switch panel near the driver’s seat. number of times Kang’s gaze flicks up from his datapad to my face. I lose track before the first hour is out.

We’ve been rolling for hours through the wasteland, the world outside stitched together from flashes of blue-white and blotched shadow, like the lighting designer is drunk and wants us all dead. The APC vibrates with the churn of military-grade treads over broken concrete, but you can still feel the pulse of the Spheres from miles away, the way a migraine sours your mouth before it even hits your brain.

It happens with zero warning.

A spike of EM hits the convoy like a fist. For half a second, every electronic in the rig shorts: lights strobe, internal comms fry to static, the wrist monitors on three guards all flatline at once. The APC lurches and shudders to a stop. For one, perfect moment, the only sound is the after-echo of machinery dying.

Then the doors unlock with a heavy clunk, and the world outside comes pouring in: blue bioluminescence, brighter than any sane noon, and the dense, honeyed stink of mutated pollen. I see Kang at the hatch, shoving the release with his shoulder and stepping out like he’s expecting a bullet to the head.

I’m hauled out next by a guard with more zeal than coordination. My boots hit ground—soggy, uneven, not-quite-dirt. The air is sharp enough to taste, laced with the chemical ozone that means a Sphere is close, and the more familiar tang of fear-sweat from the guards.

The convoy—five APCs, three supply trucks, one unmarked Humvee—sits idling in the middle of a low valley. The landscape is a fever dream: old trees broken into angles, their bark furred with blue and purple fungus; the grass is gone, replaced by mats of something that ripples in waves like it’s breathing. Ten meters out, you can see the Spheres, half-buried like landmines, their surfaces crawling with hexagonal reflections.

Kang stands at the head of the column, consulting a holo map projected from his sleeve. The other officers cluster behind, hunched in the blue haze.

There’s a commotion up the line—a tech trying to recalibrate the lead vehicle’s EM shield. I drift closer, ears tuned to the murmurs of Authority jargon. A young lieutenant, hair buzzed so tight it looks airbrushed, points at the map: “If we skirt the north ridge, we’ll clear the rad spike and avoid civilian losses. That’s protocol for this sector.”

Kang grunts, unconvinced. “The last pulse came from the south, not the Spheres. Wind’s wrong. Patterns don’t match any prior data set.”

The lieutenant tries again “We have standing orders⁠—”

He cuts her off with a flick of the hand. “We have standing orders to survive. If that means violating route, I’ll answer to Petrov myself.”

I step forward, half-expecting to be shot for the breach of perimeter. But Kang’s eyes lock on mine, and for a second, the world shrinks to two bodies in a vacuum.

“The Spheres don’t behave randomly,” I say, voice as flat as I can make it. “If you map the emission spikes with local wind vectors, you’ll see the plume curves back on itself. Classic vortex pattern.”

The lieutenant’s jaw tightens. “Civilians aren’t allowed to⁠—”