Page 69 of The Atom Between Us

I checked my arms, the side of my head, then shrugged. “Not as much as he is.”

He flinched, a tiny tic at the corner of his mouth. “You should get that seen to.”

“By who? The corpse you left out front?” I meant it as a joke, but it came out acid.

Kang stepped inside, letting the door fall shut behind him. The echo of it rattled through the pipes, then faded. He crossed the tile slow, careful not to slip, every inch the predator testing a new territory.

He stopped a meter away, looked down at me, then at the wall, then at his own hands.

“You shouldn’t have been here alone,” he repeated, like if he said it enough it would become true.

“I can take care of myself,” I spat back, but even I didn’t believe it.

He crouched, one knee popping. The movement brought him down to my level, but not eye-to-eye. His gaze hovered somewhere just above my shoulder, as if I was a variable he couldn’t solve.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke.

“You could have been killed,” he said finally. “Or worse.”

I wanted to laugh in his face. Instead, I picked at a fleck of dried blood on my thigh and said, “You care now?”

He didn’t answer. The silence between us flexed, stretched, threatened to break.

I felt it then—the anger that had been simmering all through the assault, the humiliation, the rescue. It surged up my throat, raw and electric, and when I spoke my voice was almost a snarl.

“Why are you even here? What are you trying to prove?”

He met my eyes, green shot through with red, the vessels at the edges gone to burst. “I don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “It’s my job.”

“No, it isn’t. Your job is to watch. Record. “ I spat the word. “You don’t get to play hero, Kang. Not when you’re the one who threw me to the wolves in the first place.”

His jaw clenched, a tic running down the scar on his cheek. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Try me.”

I expected him to lash out, to hit the wall or yell. Instead, he just stared, his whole body coiled tight. “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said, voice gone thin. “Being the one who decides who lives, who doesn’t. Who gets fed to the machine.”

I laughed, sharp and mean. “You’re not the machine. You’re just another cog.”

He surged forward, hand snapping out. For a second I thought he was going to choke me, or punch me, but he just grabbed my wrist and held it, tight enough to hurt but not break. The heat of his skin was shocking after so much cold.

“Don’t ever call me that,” he growled, voice low and dangerous, breath hitting my cheek like steam off boiling metal.

I tried to twist free, yanking my arm, but he didn’t budge. His grip was iron. Unforgiving.

“Let go,” I hissed.

He leaned in, his body radiating heat, every line of him drawn taut like a wire about to snap.

“You want to die in here?” he snarled. “Is that it?”

“Better than living like you,” I spat.

That did it.

His pupils blew wide. His chest heaved once. For a heartbeat, I thought he might break something—me, the wall, maybe himself.

Instead, he crashed into me.