Page 62 of The Atom Between Us

One group is pressed against the west wall, hands locked behind their heads. A guard paces behind, ticking off numbers as he passes, then lashes the last in line across the calves with a collapsible rod. The prisoner drops, screams, but the rest don’t so much as flinch. It’s a show, or a lesson.

There’s another section, cordoned off with mesh and a padlocked gate. Civilians, by the look—soft hands, faces too clean, eyes full of questions they should’ve learned not to ask. These are the ones who pissed off the Authority with too many letters, too many “requests for reconsideration.” They cluster together, trying to shrink into the background, but the guards patrol here more than anywhere else.

The real wildcards are the ones in the southeast block. Their uniforms are tattered, many stripped down to bare skin, which is painted and carved with patterns that have nothing to do with Authority order. They mutter to themselves, some in languages I don’t know, a few in numbers and colors. One sits rocking in a puddle, humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as he bashes his head gently against the wall, leaving a perfect ring of blood. No one stops him.

The guards shove me through the checkpoint, then up a stairwell slick with rain and what I hope is only water. At the top, an officer with a face like a kicked-in pumpkin reads from a slate.

“Diana. Block D, room 17. Ten-minute orientation, then you’re on your own.”

He looks at me, and I see something like recognition flicker in his eyes. It dies quickly.

“You used to be Authority,” he says. It’s not a question.

I shrug. “I used to be a lot of things.”

He sneers. “You’re meat now.”

He hands me a bag—my bag, from the lab, stripped of anything useful except the clothes I arrived in and a half-melted bar of synth soap. He gestures to a second guard, who grabs my elbow and hauls me through a series of security doors.

As we walk, I study the building. The layout is a spiral, each block radiating out from a central hub like the vanes of a windmill. Every door is double-reinforced, every camera blinkered and ugly. The lights overhead strobe with a sickly blue, and the air inside tastes of ammonia, sweat, and panic.

The cells are identical: three by two meters, a single metal bunk, a combined toilet/sink, and a vent that hums at intervals. The mattress is a thin pad, riddled with holes where previous residents tried to stash contraband or shiv the next shift’s unlucky guest. There are scratch marks on the wall, some vertical, some diagonal, a few that form words: “HELP.” “WHY.” “OUT.”

My new cellmate for the night is already there. She’s stretched out on the bunk, staring at the ceiling, hands folded over her chest like a corpse. When she sees me, she sits up, legs swinging down to the floor. Her eyes are black, with the kind of intelligence that Authority hates most—sharp, adaptive, unwilling to die quiet.

She grins. “Fresh meat.”

I nod, drop the bag on the bunk. “I’m Diana.”

“Call me Stitch,” she says. “They do, anyway.”

I glance at her arms—laced with old, meticulous scars, each one a thread in a pattern I don’t recognize. Her fingers are restless, tapping out a sequence on her thigh.

I sit, keeping my back to the wall.

She studies me, then snorts. “You’ll last longer than most. You’ve got the look.”

“What look?”

She leans in. “The one that says you’re already dead, but nobody told you yet.”

I almost laugh.

From the corridor comes a scream, then a thud, then a silence that is somehow worse.

Stitch shrugs. “Give it a week, you’ll stop hearing it.”

The guard slams the door shut. The lock clicks, a solid finality.

For a while, neither of us says anything. The only sound is the drone of the vent, the faint, distant howling from the yard.

After a minute, Stitch reaches under the bunk and pulls out a crumpled, bloodstained sheet of paper. She smooths it, offers it to me. It’s a map, hand-drawn, showing escape routes, guard rotations, even the locations of every camera. Someone spent months on it.

“Found it in a dead girl’s shoe,” Stitch says. “Might help you last another week.”

I study the map, cataloguing every exit, every blind spot. My brain is already whirring, calculating odds.

“Thanks,” I say, tucking it into my sleeve.