Chapter 24
The Authority makes a fetish of routine, but tonight the air crackles with deviation.
Ellis comes at lights-out. No tray, no file, just a careful step and a sideways glance at the camera lens, which she knows is always ten seconds behind.
Her uniform looks real until you notice the way the nameplate’s been filed down, the way the belt sags at her left hip like a holster used for something heavier, once.
She holds out her hand. “Standard issue,” she says, voice flat.
It’s a wristband, Authority blue, identical to the biometric tracker I’ve worn since intake. The moment I touch it, though, I know: it’s not Authority, not even close. The texture’s off, the weight a fraction too light, the edges feathered as if by an artisan’s file.
Ellis’s thumb taps a pattern along the band—twice, then once, then a long press. “Go to the bath and put it on. It’s keyed to your pulse.”
I play along, step into the microbath closet, and shut the door. The lights flicker, then go UV. I fit the band to my wrist, and for a moment, nothing happens. Then the band’s inner face stings with a pinprick, drawing a single bead of blood that evaporates instantly.
A blue line crawls up my arm, hidden by the sleeve. I flex my wrist, and the band’s face changes: a tiny, holographic diode flashes, then projects a barely-there dot of light onto my palm.
I whisper, “Maven?” because I want to believe.
The light blossoms into a face—three centimeters tall, grainy but unmistakable.
“Diana,” Maven says, as though they’re across a table. Their voice is tinny, compressed for bandwidth, but the cadence is pure Thorne. Quick, analytic, laced with subdermal panic.
I sit on the bath’s lid, knees drawn up, watching the hologram flicker on my palm.
“Protocol is active,” Maven says. “Can you hear me?”
I nod, then realize the device won’t pick that up. “Yes.”
“Listen,” they rush. “The Protocol, the one they ran on you—it’s not just for erasure. It’s a reprogram. They’re rewriting everyone in the Zone. Even Kang.”
A static pop as the microtransmitter in my wristband shifts frequencies.
“I know,” I say. “I saw it in the blood. Nanites, clustered around the hippocampus. They’re leaving markers—memories you can’t trust, impulses that aren’t yours.”
Maven’s mouth tightens. “Petrov’s version is the most aggressive yet. The plan was to roll it out slow, but the last Sphere event scared them. They’re pushing it into everyone, even the guards. Even Petrov’s own people.”
I think of Kang, the way his eyes blazed when Petrov questioned him, the way his hand trembled as he braced against the pain. “What do we do?”
Maven’s face flickers, the blue light painting their features in shifting bands. “I’ve set up a dead drop in the main lab. You need to get a sample of the new Protocol, get it out to me. I have someone inside who’ll pass it along.”
Ellis. It has to be.
“Can I trust her?” I ask.
Maven grins, but it’s a shark’s smile, nothing but hunger. “No one’s trustworthy here. Not even me. But she wants to live, and so do you.”
A sharp click echoes from the corridor. I freeze, crushing my wrist to my chest. Maven’s face shimmers, then resolves again, eyes narrowed.
“Someone’s coming,” I whisper.
“Go dark,” Maven orders. “I’ll ping you again at oh-three.”
I tap the side of the band, and Maven’s face winks out. I slide the sleeve down, adjust the band until it’s indistinguishable from the other trackers.
A minute passes. Then the outer door cycles.
I’m back in the main suite, perched on the cot, staring at the cracked screen of the wall monitor. Kang steps in, unannounced, his face a study in contradiction: Authority mask in place, but eyes wild, as though he’s just run through a minefield.
He scans the room, then me. His gaze lingers on my hands, my face, my hands again. “Lights were out of sync,” he says, voice clipped. “You have a malfunctioning fixture?”
I keep my voice steady. “Nothing I can’t live with.”
He stands there, letting the silence do his work.
I wonder what he sees: the same scientist he tried to break, or a version of me rewritten by Petrov’s pet Protocol.
“I need you to run a blood panel on a new batch,” he says, stepping closer. “Orders from the top.”
I nod. “I’ll do it in the morning.”
He shakes his head. “Now. It’s urgent.”
He tosses a vial onto the desk. I pick it up, scan the label: blank, except for a time code and a three-digit serial. Kang’s eyes flick to my wrist, then back.
I feel the panic rise, but tamp it down. “You want to stay and watch?”
He leans on the edge of the desk, hands splayed, eyes never leaving mine. “I don’t have to.”
He’s close enough now that I can see the hairline crack on his jaw, the way his pulse hammers at the corner of his throat.
I load the sample, start the process. The machine whirrs, clicks, and prints a strip of data. I read it, pretending not to know exactly what I’m seeing.
Kang watches every move, eyes hungry.
“Do you ever remember things that shouldn’t be yours?” I ask, voice just above a whisper.
He blinks, once, slow. “No.”
I smile. “Me neither.”
He stands, abruptly. The mask is back. “You’re due for another Protocol session tomorrow. Petrov wants results.”
“I’m sure he does.”
He moves to the door, then pauses. His hand drifts to his left hand—wedding finger, bare. He rubs it, a reflexive motion, then lets the hand drop.
“You ever get tired of being the experiment?” he says, not looking at me.
I want to say yes, or no, or both. Instead, I just watch him leave.
When the door cycles shut, I slide the wristband off, palm it, and stare at the sliver of light where Maven once was.
The world outside is silent, but in my chest, something howls.
At oh-three, the band pulses against my skin. I wait, blood humming, as Maven’s face blooms on my palm.
“Did he see?” Maven asks.
I think of Kang’s hand, the absent ring, the mask he wears like a second skin.
“Not yet,” I say. “But he knows I’m not the same.”
Maven nods, satisfied. “Neither is he. The next time he comes, ask him about the Facility. The one before the Zone. If he remembers, he’s not lost. If he doesn’t—”
I close my hand, crushing the ghost of Maven to blue static.
The hunger in me is real, burning through the lies, the protocols, the Authority’s best attempts at erasure.
Tomorrow, I’ll ask Kang about the Facility.
Tonight, I count my own pulse, and promise myself I won’t forget.
Not ever again.
It’s early afternoon now, and I haven’t seen Kang since that tense moment last night. Still, I went on with my so-called duties as a scientist—hands damp with solvent, calibrating the Raman scanner, neck bent low over the control panel. I didn’t look up when the door burst open.
Petrov stormed the threshold, Authority dogs snarling at his heels. His boots hit the floor like hammer blows, each step a promise of trouble. Two new guards fanned out behind him, laser designators sweeping the walls as if I were a walking target.
“Diana,” Petrov barked, voice so parched it rasped the air. “Step away from the equipment—and drop your tablet.”
I froze, wiping solvent from my palms on the hem of my lab coat. “I’m mid-assay. If you want results by shift change, I need—”
He cut me off, slamming a glow-lit tablet onto the desk. The screen showed me creeping through the quarantine wing after lights-out, clutching a vial of blood. Cameras only caught me—no sign of Ellis, but I kept that to myself.
“You were testing on blood samples,” Petrov growled, voice low and dangerous. “Unauthorized experimentation. That’s your second infraction this quarter.”
My chest tightened. “Those logs are incomplete. Authority’s own harmonics don’t match the incident data—”
He shoved the tablet in my face. The image trembled under his grip. “Curiosity killed more than cats in this place, Doctor. I warned you.”
I swallowed against the burn of fear and anger, studying the old burn scar curling along his jaw. He looked exhausted—hollowed by endless shifts—but drunk on the power he wielded over me. I said nothing more. I knew any word might be my last.
He turns to the guards. “Strip her clearance. Effective immediately.”
The one on my left steps forward, hands shaking a little. He’s green, barely out of orientation, but his grip on my arm is iron. The other, older, has seen enough of this to look right past me as he jams my wrists together and cinches the flex cuffs until skin breaks.
I flinch at the pain. Not much, but enough for Petrov to smirk.
“Doctor, you are hereby relieved of your duties. Transfer to Wasteland Penitentiary 07 is immediate.”
The room tilts, just a little. My brain inventories the microfractures in my wrist, the metallic bite of the cuffs, the way the air thickens with ozone when the Sphere’s core goes unstable. I try to count, to focus, but the blue light in my vision is a distraction I can’t shake.
The guards drag me out before I can protest. The lab is gone in a blur, replaced by the corridor’s strip lights and the chorus of half-whispered rumors from every room we pass.
Some faces I know—Ellis, hunched in the instrument bay, refusing to meet my gaze; two techs from Central who duck into a closet rather than watch.
We reach the elevator. The older guard pushes me in, jams his thumb on the pad, and the doors hiss shut.
No music. Just the rattling of the floor counter as we plummet to Processing.
I glance at my hands. They’re still streaked with chemical stains—blue and black, a map of the morning’s work.
The cuffs dig in deeper every time I try to shift.
I catalog the sensations, one by one, as a way to keep the panic from boiling over.
At Processing, they make a show of the intake: mug shot, DNA swab, retinal scan.
The old man at the desk spits into his glove before taking the swab, a little dominance game I refuse to rise to.
The retinal scan takes three tries; the machine’s old, and the blue rings in my iris always throw it off.
A clatter of keys, a push through another door, and then I’m in the holding pen.
Ten square meters, glass walls, the stink of disinfectant so strong it burns my throat.
The only furniture is a single steel bench, bolted to the floor.
I sit, arms twisted behind me, shoulders screaming from the angle.
I can hear Petrov in the next room, arguing with someone on a comm.
His words are clipped, angry, but I catch the gist: there’s disagreement about my transfer.
Someone upstairs thinks I’m too valuable to waste.
Someone else wants me erased. I wonder, for a moment, if Kang is the reason I’m still breathing.
Or if, in the end, he’s the one who handed me over.
The door hisses open. Petrov himself enters, alone. He circles the cell, gaze unblinking. “You got lucky,” he says, voice low, deadly. “The Captain argued you’d be more useful alive than as a stain on the lab floor. That’s the only reason you’re not ghoul food.”
He steps close to the glass, so near I can see the blood vessels writhing in his eyes. He taps the glass, once, twice, like he’s checking for cracks.
“You’re a problem,” he says. “A dangerous one. But not dangerous enough to matter.”
He’s baiting me. I know it, but I can’t stop myself.
“I know more about the Spheres than anyone you’ve got,” I say, every syllable a calculated risk. “Without my data, you’ll lose containment in under a week.”
He smiles, slow and predatory. “Containment is an illusion. We don’t contain the Spheres. We adapt to them.”
He turns to leave, then hesitates. “Enjoy the ride to Seven, Diana. If the Ghouls don’t get you, the locals sure will.”
He steps out, and the room goes silent except for the buzz of the overhead lights.
I count sixty-three seconds before the guards come to collect me.
They yank me up, rougher than before, and march me down a corridor so narrow my shoulders scrape both sides.
At the end is the transport bay, a concrete slab open to the wind and the smear of rain that never quite lets up in the Zone.
The vehicle waiting for me is Authority-issue, matte gray, the kind with the reinforced prisoner cage and no windows except for a slit barely wide enough to admit a finger.
The guards shove me inside, unceremonious. The older one pulls a coarse black bag from the seat and jams it over my head. The air inside tastes of rubber and dust, and I feel the world shrink down to the heat of my own breath and the hiss of sweat trickling down my spine.
The vehicle lurches into motion. My wrists scream with every bump; the seat is cold, so slick with old blood and disinfectant that I slide with every turn.
For the forty minutes, there is nothing but the roar of the engine and the distant, muffled voices from the cab.
Once, the vehicle swerves, and I hear gunfire in the distance—sharp, staccato, over in three bursts.
The guards don’t react. Either it’s normal, or they know it’s not meant for us.
In the dark, every sense ratchets up. I inventory the smell of diesel, the taste of iron where my tongue cut against my teeth, the way the sweat beads under the bag and trickles into my eyes.
I think of Maven, and what they said to me: “We need you out, and we need you to remember. The Spheres aren’t just artifacts—they’re a map. You’re the only one who can read it” I try to remember the feeling of their voice, the cadence, but it’s already going fuzzy at the edges.
The transport slows. Gravel crunches under the wheels, and then the vehicle stops. The door opens. Hands grab me, haul me out, and for a moment I’m airborne, then slammed to my knees on wet ground.
When they rip the hood off, the world turns weaponized.
Floodlights sear through both eyes, each bulb engineered to cut.
For three, maybe four seconds, all I see is white—so pure and featureless it might as well be the inside of a bomb.
Then the pupils catch up, shrink to pinpoints, and the prison resolves around me: walls, towers, chain-link and razor, Authority muscle everywhere you look.
Wasteland Penitentiary 07.
My new home.