Page 7 of The Atom Between Us

There’s a moment before every disaster where time suspends itself, goes elastic. I look over at Jackson and see his face: hard, focused, but a trace of worry in the lines around his eyes. He nods, once, in my direction.

“Ready?”

No. Never. But I say, “Yes,” and it’s true enough.

The torch cuts out. For a second, the world is silent except for the distant shriek of the wind outside the sealed hatch. Then the wall explodes inward, sending a sheet of fire and shrapnel down the corridor. Jackson is already firing, his first shot clipping a helmeted head before the body even crosses the threshold.

The Ravagers come in a wave—three, then five, armored but careless. They trip the first wire and the acid floods their boots, eats through the soft joints at the ankles. Screams echo, but the rest surge forward, firing blindly. The pendant at my chest flashes once, then twice, searing heat against my skin. I return fire, my shots tight, measured, surgical.

A raider barrels toward me, swinging a blade. I duck, step inside the arc, and bury the backup knife in his armpit. He collapses, red arterial spray painting the floor. My hands are slick, but I don’t slip. I grab another acid canister, hurl it down the hall. The glass shatters, mist hissing as it eats through both armor and flesh.

Jackson’s voice is a low growl, steady despite the chaos. “Two more, left side.” I shift, see them. I fire—miss once, hit twice. One goes down, the other staggers, falls into the puddle of acid left by the first trap.

I reload without looking, body doing the work before my mind even catches up. The corridor is a slaughterhouse now, bodies twitching on the concrete, the air thick with the smell of burning plastic and singed hair. For a moment, there’s no movement except for the trembling of my own breath.

Jackson calls out: “Hold.”

I freeze, pistol aimed at the darkness beyond the breach. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes.

We wait. Ten seconds, twenty. A minute. The only sound is the tick of the Geiger, now slow, almost restful.

Jackson rises, shoulders squared, and walks the length of the corridor. He pauses by each downed body, checks for life. He’s methodical, unhurried, as if this were just another round of target practice. When he finishes, he turns to me. “You did good,” he says. It’s not praise, just a statement of fact. I sag against the workbench, the world narrowing to the pendant’s pulse and the electric burn in my arms.

“Who were they?” I ask, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

“Ravagers,” Jackson says. “Clan Vost. They’ve been after this place since before you woke up.”

“Why?” The question is more rhetorical than real, but he answers anyway.

He kicks a dead raider, nudges the helmet off. The face beneath is young, barely old enough to shave. “For the same reason as everyone else. They want what’s left. And they don’t care who they kill to get it.”

I look at my hands, see the blood under my fingernails, and feel nothing.

Jackson returns to the workbench, pulls a flask from under the top drawer, and takes a long swig before passing it to me. “Drink. You’ve earned it.”

I do. The alcohol sears my throat, clears my head. When I hand it back, Jackson looks at me with something like pride, or maybe just recognition. He wipes his mouth, then gestures at the breach. “They’ll be back. Always are.” He reloads his pistol, motions for me to do the same. “You ready to do this again?”

I glance at the corridor, at the carnage. At my own hands. “Yeah,” I say, surprising myself.

He nods. “Good. Because next time, they’ll bring friends.”

We reset the traps, reload, and wait. The bunker isn’t safe, but it’s ours, for now.

When the attack comes, it’s more efficient. That’s the first thing I notice—the noise isn’t wild, but orchestrated. It starts with a calculated volley, a thud against the reinforced outer hatch, followed by silence.

Jackson signals me to the fallback barricade. I slide behind a stack of riot shields, pistol ready, acid vials lined up along the top like sacrificial offerings. The air tastes of copper, and the sharp stink of burned insulation from the last breach still hangs in the vents.

I glance down the corridor. The bodies are gone—dragged away or trampled flat, it’s impossible to tell. The only evidence of the carnage is a dark, irregular streak across the floor and the haze that clings to the light fixtures. My hands tremble, but only when I look at them.

We wait. The quiet lasts long enough to turn anticipation into dread. Then, with no warning, the outer hatch buckles in on itself, blown open by an explosive charge. Shards of metal ping down the corridor, slicing a rain of sparks through the haze.

The first wave enters with precision: two at point, three behind, all armored in mismatched plates and duct-taped ceramic. Their rifles sweep the corridor in a disciplined arc. I fire—two shots, center mass—and one of them staggers, his chestplate cracking but not giving. Jackson nails him in the neck with a controlled burst; blood geysers, and the body flops backwards.

The rest surge forward, firing in tight, overlapping bursts. Bullets gouge the walls, the doorframes, the far edge of my barricade. The noise is all-consuming, so loud it blots out even thought. I duck, throw an acid vial, and it bursts on the boots of the lead raider. The acid eats through the seam; he goes down screaming, voice high and girlish in his helmet.

A second wave follows—these are less disciplined, more desperate. They run over the bodies of the first, firing wildly, some switching to sidearms when the rifles jam or overheat. One gets close enough that I see his eyes—pale, wide, flecked with something white. He fires point-blank, misses, then vaults the barricade.

My body reacts before I do. I catch his wrist, twist, force the gun up until it’s under his own chin, then pull the trigger. The recoil kicks the meat of his thumb clean off. He slumps, leaking from two holes. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my tongue.