Chapter 27
The showers are the coldest room in the block.
Not just in temperature, though there’s no shortage of that—the water is drawn from somewhere below freezing, the walls sweat all year round, and the floor is a patchwork of standing ice and black slime where the drains gave up decades ago.
No, it’s something deeper. The way sound doesn’t quite carry; the way the fluorescents flicker with deliberate irregularity, like someone is watching, just on the other side of the hum.
The way your skin puckers before you ever strip off your clothes.
The door at the entrance is painted with a yellow line, “AUTHORIZED INMATES ONLY,” but that’s a joke.
Everyone knows it’s a free-for-all past the threshold.
I enter with my bucket and brush and stand a second, letting my eyes adjust to the stutter of light.
The tile is white, or was, each square spiderwebbed with cracks, grouting gone gray with the fungus that nothing can kill.
Rust streaks snake from the hardware—old pipes, newer faucets, one replaced recently, the rest not.
The air stings with ammonia and something sour, unplaceable, beneath the industrial bleach.
First task is the grout. I drop to my knees by the central drain, kneeling on the ridged rubber mat that’s supposed to keep you from slipping and instead soaks up every drop of moisture, pressing cold through to the bone.
I dip the brush in the blue disinfectant, watching the color bloom like an oil slick before jamming it into the narrow hole behind the drain.
Scrub in slow circles. Count each hairline.
The acid eats the fungus, but only just. My hands sting and crack; I barely feel it anymore.
I scrub in rhythm: clockwise, counter, two fast, three slow. The only way to get through it is to disappear inside the pattern. I recite numbers under my breath, muttering, memorizing. The sound is eaten by the room.
At the far wall, the “showers” proper: a row of battered steel heads, only three functional.
I move down the line, checking each one for hair and gunk, scrubbing away the gray knots that collect like polyps.
Each nozzle is crusted with scale, the water pressure a lottery.
In the center stall, the tile is shattered, and someone has jammed a rag in the gap to slow the leak.
I pull the rag, wring it out, and add it to the bucket. Chemical taste rises off my skin.
Once the baseline clean is done, it’s my turn. Strip and rinse. Unwritten code, but no one else is here.
I peel the jumpsuit away, standing it on the plastic bench while I test the first shower head.
The water hits with the shock of a live wire, finding every cut and bruise I’ve been ignoring.
I step into the spray, letting it run from crown to ankle, biting my lip when it finds the fresh scrape at my wrist from the cuffs.
The pulse of the water is uneven, the sound alternating between high-pitched hiss and a gutteral clunk as it fights the sediment in the line.
I brace my hands against the wall and lean forward, letting the water sheet off my shoulders.
I try not to shiver. I fail. The chill ratchets up my spine, setting every muscle on edge, but it’s better than feeling the dirt.
I close my eyes, counting the pattern of drips as they echo from the high ceiling.
Three seconds, then two, then another three. I match my breathing to the intervals.
It isn’t until the third set that I hear the door.
I turn, water streaming from my hair. The entrance is half-obscured by the locker partition, but the footsteps are unmistakable. Two: one heavy, one deliberate.
I run the inventory. The heavy one is Inmate thirty five—the guy who tried to stake me in the canteen.
His walk is broad and confident, the kind that comes from years in the system.
The second, lighter, more measured. I tense, but force myself to keep the posture casual, hands still braced on the wall, face turned away.
They wait a beat. The heavy one speaks first.
“Shit, look at that. Fresh meat, all alone in the wet room.”
His voice bounces off the tile, thick with intent. I keep my eyes locked on the soap dish embedded in the wall, letting the water mask my face.
“I’ll make it quick,” he says, laughter in the words. “You Authority girls, you always act tough until someone puts you on your knees. What you gonna do when I bury my cock in that pretty mouth if you can’t fight back, princess?”
I risk a glance. He’s in the doorway, flanked by the corrupt guard from yesterday—the one who let the fight ride, then wrote it up as “disorderly conduct.” The guard leans against the frame, expression blank, already turning away to light a cigarette.
“You gonna watch, or you gonna fuck off?” He sneers to the guard.
The guard shrugs, barely meeting my gaze. “Just don’t get blood on the drain. I’m not writing it up again.”
I turn back to the wall, force my body to stay loose. If I tense, he’ll know I’m expecting it. That’s when they go for bone instead of just skin.
He steps up behind me, the heat of his breath on my neck. “You hear me, doc?”
His hand finds my shoulder, squeezing hard enough to grind the joint. I let my knees bend, making him think I’m collapsing. Instead, I slide my left hand down, palm flat against the broken tile under the soap dish. My thumb finds the edge—a razor sliver, forgotten by the last fight.
He crowds closer. “Good girl,” he says. “Knew you’d see sense. You Authority bitches are all the same. Strip off that uniform and you’re just another hole.”
His other hand finds my hip, twisting me toward him. I move with the pull, stepping sideways and pivoting so my right side is to the wall, water still running. His hand is now at my waist, thick fingers digging in.
“You wanna beg now, or after?” he says, voice rising as he tries to laugh.
I angle my head just enough to see him. His face is inches from mine, jaw stubbled, scar above his right eye, the faint stink of rot in his breath. I fix the image in my mind.
He leans in, tongue darting to wet his lips. “Come on, doc. Show me what Authority teaches you.”
He presses his knee between my legs, pushing until my back is against the wall, bare skin freezing on the tile. I clamp the tile shard between two fingers, palm up, and drive it straight across his cheek, from lip to ear.
The cut isn’t deep, but it’s clean. Blood beads, then spills, bright against the white tile. He rears back, shock turning to rage in an instant. His hand flies to his face, then comes back red.
“You fucking cunt—”
He swings, hard. I duck, but his fist catches my ear and sends me sideways, head ringing. I hit the wall, sliding to the floor, knees skidding on wet ceramic.
He’s on me before I can move, left hand in my hair, yanking my head back. The tile shard is still in my fist, but the angle is gone. I rake it upward, catching him in the armpit. It doesn’t break skin through the jumpsuit, but he howls, kneeing me in the side.
I gasp, air gone. He drops on top of me, pinning my arms overhead, his bulk pressing every ounce of breath from my lungs.
“Should have just opened your legs,” he says, spitting blood as he slams my wrists against the tile. “Now I’m going to fuck you until you scream for—”
His voice cuts off, replaced by the shriek of the door slamming open.
The world lurches as the guard is flung through the air, crashing into the partition.
I twist, craning my neck, and see Captain Kang—face set, eyes flat as glass—hauling the corrupt guard by the throat, dragging him like dead weight.
Kang slams the guard’s head into the tile, once, twice, three times, until the neck snaps with a wet, final sound.
He drops the body, then turns to Inmate thirty-five, fists clenched.
For a heartbeat, everything is silent except for the drip of water and the ragged rasp of my own breath.
Then Kang charges, and the world goes blue.
Kang’s charge is physics, not violence. He covers the space in two strides, boots hydroplaning on the soaked floor, and smashes Inmate 35 into the wall so hard the tile flexes.
The sound is a shotgun blast—bone and ceramic giving way in unison.
The first punch lands in the man’s solar plexus, folding him double.
The second is an uppercut to the chin that snaps his head back, blood and spit and something yellow spraying across the grout.
Thirty-Five manages a grunt, but Kang is already on his throat, lifting him a full inch off the ground, pinning him to the tile with one hand while the other hammers into his ribs, once, twice, again.
The man kicks, flails, but Kang is stone.
The muscle at his jaw twitches, eyes flat and vacant, the face of someone who’s not here to make a point, just to erase the problem.
I press myself into the furthest corner, the cold shower still blasting down my back.
My hands are numb, the tile shard somewhere under my knees.
The air is chemical with bleach and adrenaline and the bright metallic tang of blood atomized into the steam.
My heart hammers, every beat a shotgun in my ears.
I can’t decide if I’m terrified or thrilled.
The next punch breaks teeth. I hear the click and scatter of them as they hit the ceramic, rolling to a stop at my bare feet. Thirty-Five’s eyes roll back. He tries to claw at Kang’s wrist, but the grip is absolute. The fingers just flap, then go limp.
The violence is surgical. Each motion is calculated for maximum effect, minimum resistance. I know the drill—Kang’s Authority record was full of this kind of improvisation, the body count always lower than it could have been, but never zero. He was trained to do this. He’s doing it for me.
The realization is a slap. I shouldn’t want it, shouldn’t even process it, but there it is: the animal satisfaction of being protected, of watching someone else’s pain transmute into my safety.
I catalog the sensation, but it’s slippery, hard to pin.
Somewhere in my chest, a molten warmth pools, unexpected and shameful.
Thirty-Five’s head lolls. Kang drops him, letting the body slide boneless to the floor. The man twitches, one leg jerking in a slow, mechanical spasm. His face is already swelling, the left eye buried under a bloom of purple. He tries to suck air, but the sound is wet, bubbling through the red.
Kang stands over him, breath slow and regular, shoulders squared. For a moment, I think he’s going to finish it. But instead he steps back, turning to scan the room.
His eyes land on me. He freezes.
I’m still naked, still shivering, water cutting tracks through the blood on my skin.
The silence is total, except for the drip of water and the high-pitched whine of the dying lights.
I want to say something—thank you, or fuck you, or just a scream to fill the void—but my voice is locked in my throat.
Kang doesn’t blink. He just stands there, hands flexing at his sides, every muscle tight as wire. There’s blood on his knuckles, and on the collar of his shirt, splattered up from the tile.
He looks down, then back at me, and something in his face changes. The mask slips, just a hair, and I see the man underneath.
His lips part. “Diana,” he says. Just that.
The sound of my name in his mouth is a bullet. It hits, but I don’t know where.
I want to cover myself, to hide, but I don’t. Instead, I stand up, letting the shower pour over my bruises, refusing to give him the satisfaction of shame.
“Why are you here?” I ask, voice a rasp. “Why did you—” I gesture at the heap of meat on the floor, at the dead guard by the partition, at the streaks of red already congealing in the grout. “Why?”
Kang doesn’t answer, not right away. He wipes his hand on his sleeve, then wipes again, as if trying to erase the evidence of what he’s done.
“You shouldn’t have been here alone,” he says, finally. His voice is flat, but I hear the quiver underneath.
I snort, short and mean. “You threw me in here, remember?”
He looks away. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. I heard what he was—” He shakes his head, starts over. “I couldn’t let him—”
He stops. The sentence trails off, but the meaning is clear.
I step forward, water pooling at my feet. “So what now?” I ask. “You gonna haul me off to the hole for fighting back? Or is this part of the experiment?”
Kang’s face twitches. He glances at my body, then away, as if the sight burns him. “Get dressed,” he says. “I’ll clean this up.”
He turns, dragging the dead guard’s body toward the door with one hand, as if it’s a sack of potatoes. I watch, feeling the tremor in my own hands, the way my body still hums with the aftershock of violence and fear and something else I don’t want to name.