Chapter 26
The next morning starts with the kind of alarm designed to strip paint from the inside of your skull.
First the lights go ultraviolet, burning away any pretense of sleep, then the tannoy slams to life with a voice so distorted it sounds like a throat singing through a cheese grater. “Block D, rise for morning chow. Noncompliance will be sanctioned.”
I lever myself upright, bones humming from the cold and the memory of a night spent cataloging every microcrack in the ceiling.
Stitch is already up—she’s one of those freaks who wakes smiling, as if each day is a fresh experiment.
She shoves a grimy elbow at me. “Ready for another lap in the human zoo?”
I snort, stretch, and glance at my hands. The bruises from yesterday are already purpling, an anatomy lesson in Authority hospitality. I pull on the jumpsuit, ignoring the crust at the collar.
The cell door stutters open, the magnetic lock making a wet, mucosal sound that always reminds me of surgery. The corridor is colder than the cell. The air tastes of ozone, disinfectant, and the stale sweat of a thousand mornings before this one.
Guards stand at intervals along the wall, visors polished, faces unreadable.
The rifles they carry are less for shooting and more for reminding us what we are: liabilities with a pulse.
They herd us like livestock—no, that’s too kind—like spare parts on a production line, pushing and shoving until the hall floods with bodies, all shuffling in the same direction.
The path to the canteen is marked by scratches and bloodstains that no one bothers to clean anymore. The shoes of the inmate ahead of me leave little blue prints with every step. I file that away, just in case.
At the main chow hall, the crowd thickens and slows. I try to stay on the margins, but that’s the problem with being the new girl—everyone notices, and they all want to see if you’ll break. Or if you’ll be the one doing the breaking.
The canteen is a pit, both literally and figuratively.
Two stories deep, the walls ringed with steel mesh balconies that might once have had a function.
Now they just act as observation points for guards and bored prisoners alike.
At the center: a series of benches welded to the floor, each slick with decades of ass sweat and the residue of food too cheap to rot.
The noise is a physical thing. Metal trays bang against the counter.
Someone’s screaming at a guard for extra protein.
A group of ghouls—Zone casualties, not-quite-human anymore—sit in a cluster by the west wall, eating with their hands and making no effort to hide the way they watch the rest of us.
The food line is chaos, but the guards tolerate a little chaos. It keeps the population self-correcting.
I queue up, counting the faces. Five ahead, three behind, two guards at the server window, one eye on the slop and one on the crowd. I keep my chin tucked, eyes down, but it’s impossible to disappear when everyone wants to know how much you’re worth.
When it’s my turn, the server—a lumpy woman with Authority blue tattooed around her eyes—slops a rectangle of brown onto my tray, then gives me a look like she’s trying to decide if I’m edible. “You’re the doctor,” she says.
I nod.
She snickers. “Hope you last longer than the last one. They say she made it a month before they dragged her out behind the laundry.”
I take my tray and don’t answer. There’s nothing to say.
Stitch finds me at the back, where the benches have half-collapsed and no one sits unless they want to pick a fight with the floor. She grins, teeth white against her ruined lips, and waves me over. “Breakfast of champions,” she says, stabbing her protein slab with a makeshift fork.
I sit, back to the wall, tray balanced on my knees. The food is worse than it looks—cold, rubbery, and sweet in a way that makes my teeth ache. I force it down, watching the room through the steam rising off the coffee substitute.
That’s when I notice him. Not Kang, though he’s here, moving up the side of the hall with that predatory calm.
This is someone else—bigger than Kang, blocky and shaved to the scalp, his face a network of scar tissue and prison tattoos.
He’s watching me, and the way his mouth moves, I know he’s already decided what I taste like.
I turn back to my food, but it’s too late. He approaches, flanked by two smaller men who act as his orbit. He leans in, hands braced on the table, so close I can count the pockmarks in his skull.
“Fresh meat,” he says, voice like gravel in a cement mixer.
I keep eating.
He laughs, grabs the edge of my tray, and yanks it out of my lap. The slab of food goes flying, lands with a slap on the floor. “You ignoring me?” He turns to Stitch. “She deaf?”
Stitch shrugs. “She’s got better things to listen to.”
He backhands her, casual, then returns his attention to me. “You don’t talk, I make you talk.”
I know the script. The Authority doesn’t stop shit like this; it’s how they gauge who matters.
I say nothing.
He grins, then moves closer. His breath is hot and rancid, an ecology of whatever he’s been fermenting in his guts. “I said, are you deaf?”
I snap my eyes to his. “No. Just bored.”
The bench goes silent.
For a second, he looks at me like he’s reconsidering. Then his hand closes on my forearm, the pressure of his fingers precise and surgical.
I don’t react, but my pulse jumps. He likes that.
“Look at you,” he says, thumb digging into the meat of my arm. “Pretty skin. You Authority girls always think you’re special. But out here, you’re just—” He grins again, wider. “Protein.”
I could break his thumb, probably, but the guards would tase me, and then I’d be meat for real. He starts to squeeze, and I feel the small bones shift under the pressure. I grit my teeth, fighting not to give him the satisfaction of a sound.
Stitch tries to intervene, but one of the flanking men shoves her back, hard enough that she cracks her head on the wall. The canteen noise doesn’t even dip; violence is the only currency here.
The man leans in, whispering in my ear. “You’re mine, doctor. From now on.”
“Number Thirty-Five!” The voice cuts through the mess like a razor. Kang, standing at the upper level, flanked by two riot guards. His tone is flat, but I catch the echo of something colder.
The man’s grip tightens.
“Hands off,” Kang repeats, this time loud enough that the whole canteen quiets for a beat.
Thirty-Five lets go, slow, then turns to face Kang. There’s a flicker of recognition, a respect born of old pain. “Wasn’t doing nothing, Captain,” he says, showing his palms. “Just saying hi to the new neighbor.”
Kang doesn’t move. “I said hands off.”
The man smiles, all teeth, and backs away. “Sure thing, boss.”
He glances at me, and the look says this isn’t over. When he’s gone, I flex my hand, feeling the ache where blood flow has already started to bruise the skin.
Stitch is back at my side, touching the lump on her head. “Asshole,” she mutters.
I don’t answer. My attention is fixed above.
Kang stands on the balcony like a statue carved from judgment and shadow, his posture too straight to be casual.
His eyes are locked on me—sharp, unreadable, a storm barely held back.
For a second, just one, I think I see it: the faint twitch of his jaw, the way the muscle clenches like he’s biting back something he’ll never say.
He holds my gaze, and I feel it like a tether tightening between us.
Anger. Frustration. Something else buried underneath.
Then he turns away without a word, barking orders to the guards, his voice clipped and cold.
I know what he’s done. He’s painted a target on my back. He’s made me worth fighting for, made it clear I matter more than I should. It’s tactical. Calculated.
But there was a moment—just a flicker—where he looked at me like I wasn’t just another mission file. And despite everything, despite the cuffs and the orders and the walls he never lowers... I felt it.
I hate him for it. I hate how part of me aches for what that look could mean.
So I file it away, sharp and silent, like a blade I might need later.
After breakfast the canteen door slams shut and the guards herd us into the labor corridor, the tannoy crackling to life: “Assignments. Line up.”
The line is a parade of ragged bodies. I hang at the back, pressed for space. Stitch limps beside me; I offer my arm, but she waves me off. “Gotta learn to roll with it,” she says, eyes fixed ahead.
The guards tick off names, pairing each inmate with a shift.
You can tell a lot by the task—they shunt the disposable into tunnel duty or refuse detail, keep “clean” work for anyone they think might pay off.
When it’s my turn, the guard—a square-jawed hulk with boredom etched into his face—barely glances at me.
He shoves a slip into my hand, no partner included.
I’m the new girl; I know exactly what that means. They want to make it harder for me.
Stitch steps away, clutching fungus-scraping gear for her “bioremediation” detail in the west tunnel.
I unfold my slip: “Sanitation—Shower Block.” Mopping the shit off shower floors.
Everyone’s eyes flick to me—half warning, half pride.
“Don’t let the ghouls get you,” Stitch calls over her shoulder.
At the rusted metal locker, orange with time, the guard clicks open the padlock.
Others crowd in, grabbing the decent brooms. He glares when I hang back, but says nothing.
Once they’re gone, I pick a bucket cracked at the rim but still watertight, a brush with bristles splayed like a dead insect, and a bottle of blue disinfectant—label faded, cap crusted shut.
I pop it open; the old-kind stench almost makes me retch.
I swirl the liquid in the bucket until it sloshes.
Enough to clean a block of showers or strip skin in seconds.
The guard chews a toothpick. “You gonna stand there all day?”
“No,” I say flatly, slinging the bucket. The brush goes in my back pocket, the bottle at my belt.
I step into the narrow, coffin-like corridor leading to the showers. Water stains creep down the walls like drowned fingers, and dead LEDs flicker overhead. The air is thick and damp. I walk slow—busy, invisible—and arrive at the showers.