Chapter 35
Sleep never lasts. Not here, not ever. My body still aches from the pit, the new bruises layering old ones like the skin of a dying onion, but I manage three hours of dreamless void before the noise comes.
It’s not the usual morning bell or the rude boot at the door.
This is sharper, more urgent—a stutter of the magnetic lock, then the slam of bodies against metal, hinges groaning in protest. I’m yanked upright before my eyes even open.
Two shapes—Authority black, faces hidden behind mirrored shields—pull me half off the bunk, one on each side, so hard my shoulder cracks.
I get a single inhalation before something cold and reeking of disinfectant is jammed over my head. Cloth, but stiff, lined with rubber at the collar. I open my mouth to scream, but a hand clamps my jaw shut, fingers squeezing until I taste blood at the back of my throat.
“Don’t struggle,” the left one says, voice filtered through an old smoker’s vocal cords. “You’ll just hurt yourself.”
I struggle anyway. Instinct trumps reason. My arms are wrenched behind me, wrists zip-tied in a way that turns my hands to meat hooks. My knees catch the edge of the bunk and scrape raw, then the floor is under me, cold and alive with the tremor of a thousand feet above.
They drag me. Not walk, not march—drag. The bag blocks everything but my own pulse, roaring in my ears.
The fabric is so tight my hair snags and pulls with every jerk of my head.
Breathing is suddenly work, each gulp of air scented like industrial bleach and something else, something almost sweet underneath.
We turn left, then right, then down—stairs, my feet banging every riser. The Authority doesn’t believe in ADA compliance. I lose count at four flights. Every time I try to gauge direction, the bag muffles the geometry of space, turning everything into a shifting pressure map.
I try to catalog the trip: the length, the number of turns, the subtle changes in air pressure. But the panic eats at my memory as fast as I can store it.
At some point, we stop. My knees hit concrete, then I’m up again, rough hands hoisting me under the armpits. I can hear metal, lots of it—doors hissing, hydraulic pumps, maybe even a faint hum of generators deeper in. The floor here vibrates in a different key. We’re not in the block anymore.
There’s a pause. I smell ozone, sharp and false, and something underneath it that sets every hair on my arms upright: the faint tang of burnt plastic, or maybe just the memory of it.
The bag is ripped off. The world goes white.
It takes me a full three seconds to adjust. The light is clinical, cold, not the blue buzz of cellblock LEDs but something worse.
Everything is glass and metal, scrubbed so hard I can see the smear of cleaning fluid at the edges.
The room is not big, maybe five by five, but the ceiling stretches twice as high as standard.
At the center is a chair—not the kind you sit in, but the kind you never get out of.
Built into the base are metal clamps, foot and wrist and waist, like a dentist chair married a medieval torture rack.
They manhandle me into the chair, one on each limb, and as soon as I’m seated, the machine comes alive. Restraints hiss and close, cold metal ringing my ankles, my wrists, my chest. The foot clamps bite hard enough to bruise.
On my right, a white-coated Authority doctor steps closer, badge half-turned. He doesn’t speak. The guards work silently, inserting an IV, taping it down, fluid beginning to creep into my veins.
I turn my head just enough to snarl, “You want to explain what the fuck is happening?”
No answer.
The doctor adjusts a panel — scrolling data, progress bars. In the corner: Subject 132 — Preparation for Amnestic Protocol.
A memory wipe.
All the faces I’ve memorized, the patterns, the files, the names…him… gone.
The air grows thick with the scent of vanilla laced with ozone. My pulse spikes.
I dont want to forget…not again.
The heavy door suddenly hisses open
Kang steps in, his boots hitting the floor like a gavel. He looks composed—completely in control—but the way his chest rises a fraction too fast gives him away. He’s catching his breath, like he ran here.
His eyes sweep the room once, sharp as a blade.
“Why the fuck wasn’t I informed about this?” His voice doesn’t echo; it cuts.
One of the guards stiffens. “Petrov’s orders, Captain. Said she’s becoming more trouble than she’s worth.”
The doctor doesn’t even look up as he adds, “The original plan didn’t work. We’re moving to a… final adjustment.”
The words prick at me like glass under the skin. Original plan? My gaze snaps to Kang, searching his face for answers. He doesn’t look at me.
“Where’s Petrov?” Kang asks, clipped.
“In a confidential meeting,” the doctor says, then nods toward the corner. “But he’s watching the feed.”
Kang’s gaze flicks to the camera—just for a heartbeat—and the glare he sends it could cauterize. Then he nods once, slow.
My stomach drops. He just stands there for a long, still moment, eyes unreadable. Panic gnaws at me. If he’s not here to stop this, then maybe nothing between us was ever real. Maybe everything we’ve done, was just another Authority game. Maybe he’s here to make sure I forget him too.
The doctor steps forward “Hold still.”
Time does something strange in the chair.
First it slows, syrup-thick. I see the progress bar on the wall—eighteen percent, twenty-two, twenty-four—every number a shot of panic straight to the brainstem.
The air pulses with cold blue light, so bright it makes the skin on my arms crawl.
The vanilla-ozone mix is suffocating, sweet and metallic all at once, coating the inside of my nose with a film I can’t swallow down.
Then it speeds up, the panic folding into itself, a fractal of what-the-fuck.
My heart races, a double-time arrhythmia.
I can’t blink, can’t look away. The whitecoat stares at the readouts, never once meeting my eyes.
Kang is, frozen in silhouette against the blue, and I want to scream at him: move, now, do something—
Kang suddenly speaks up “Why now?”
“Ask Petrov,” the doctor says. “My job’s just to carry it out.”
Kang’s jaw flexes. “I’ll take over.”
The guards look at each other. The taller one shifts, uneasy. “Orders—”
“Changed,” Kang cuts in. “Petrov’s not here. I am.”
For a beat, nobody moves. Then Kang walks toward me, slow, clinical. He crouches at my side, hands brushing over the restraints, fingers skimming bare skin where the straps leave gaps. It’s deliberate — enough to raise every nerve.
“Checking for swelling,” he says for the room’s benefit.
“Bullshit,” I breathe.
The first restraint hisses open. My left hand is free before I even process it.
A guard moves in. Kang spins — his elbow smashes into the man’s jaw, the blow snapping his head sideways. The guard crumples, not dead, but out cold. Controlled. Clean.
Kang turns back to me —
The second guard lunges, blade flashing. I see it too late. He’s not going for Kang. He’s going for me.
Kang’s entire body changes — no restraint, no calculation. He grabs the man mid-strike, wrenches his arm until bone cracks, then drives his head into the wall with a wet, final sound. The body drops.
The doctor bolts for the console — Kang doesn’t even glance. His hand flashes to his belt, a knife arcs, buries itself in the doctor’s throat. The man collapses before he can hit any keys.
The room is silent except for the hum of the machine.
Kang is at my ankles now, unfastening clamps, his hands skimming skin as if to ground me, to check I’m still whole. “Petrov told me to take you down after the pit,” he mutters, low enough only I hear. “Said you’d crossed the line. I told him I needed more time. Didn’t know he’d put you here.”
He unclips the last restraint, slides the IV needle free, presses his hand over the mark until the sting fades. “Can you walk?”
I nod, though my legs feel like lead.
Kang whispers, “We’ve got thirty seconds before the doors seal. We have to go.”
I swallow. My throat is raw. “Where?”
He grins, just a flash of the old arrogance. “Anywhere but here.”
We move.
We hit a stairwell. Kang practically throws me up the first three steps, then shoves the fire door open with his shoulder. The sound on the other side is deafening: the pounding of boots, the shouts of men.
He pins me to the wall, a hand across my chest. “Quiet,” he mouths, then listens.
Two voices, maybe five meters away. I catch fragments: “Secondary hall—check the vents—Petrov wants her alive—”
Kang breathes, once, deep, and his whole body goes loose. For a second, I think he’s giving up.
Then he’s moving. He grabs my wrist, yanks me down the hall, staying low. We duck behind a rolling cart stacked with old biohazard suits, then cut left into another corridor. I see the words “Research Wing: Level 1” painted on the cinderblock.
Every muscle in my legs screams, but I keep pace. I have to.
At the next junction, Kang stops so suddenly I almost collide with him. He peers around the edge, then pulls me back, hard, chest to chest. His hand covers my mouth before I can gasp.
Three guards, full armor, rifles up. They talk into their radios, scanning every door. Kang looks up, searching, and I realize he’s memorizing the camera placements, the blind spots. He waits for a second, then tugs me into the shadow of a maintenance alcove.
We press together, close enough that I can taste the salt of his sweat. He’s shaking, just barely, but his hand is steady as it strokes down my hair, pushing it flat.
He mouths, “Almost there.”
Then he’s out again, dragging me at a crouch down the hall. My boots slap the tile, loud as gunshots, but the guards are focused ahead, not behind. Kang pulls me into a door marked “Specimen Storage,” slams it behind us, and finally lets go.
Inside, it’s dark and cold. The hum of refrigeration masks our breathing, but not by much.
He slumps against the wall, exhaling. For a moment, we just stare at each other.
I break the silence. “Is this real?”
He doesn’t laugh, not exactly. “I’m not that good an actor.”
I want to believe it, but I can’t stop the doubt. “Petrov will kill you for this.”
Kang’s smile is half wild. “He’ll have to catch us first.”
No time to dwell. He straightens. “Three minutes before they triangulate. Move.”
We run, together this time. Not captor and captive, not even Authority and rebel. Just two animals with the same hunger: survive, at any cost.
The corridors are a blur. I hear shouts behind us, the crackle of radios, the heavy clomp of boots. I count the steps, read the numbers on the doors, measure the distance in heartbeats.
At the junction, Kang covers me as I duck left, past the canteen and up the narrow stairwell. The doors here are all locked, but Kang has the codes. He punches them in with one hand, the other never leaving his sidearm.
Suddenly the sounds of footsteps down the hall grow louder, Kang shoots out a camera with a single, casual shot. The bulb explodes, showering the hall with black plastic.
He kicks a nearby door open and pulls us in.
For a second, all I can do is gulp air. Every inhale is glass in my lungs. I want to scream or laugh or maybe just collapse right here, but Kang is already moving, already scanning the room.
The air in here feels different—stale, heavy. Papers scatter across a desk. Ash curls from a half-burnt cigarette. On the corner, a framed photo: Petrov with a woman in her forties. Wife? Partner? Whoever she was, she’s smiling like the world’s still good.
“Shit. This is Petrov’s office,” I mutter.
Kang’s eyes rake over me—knees scraped, blood caked under my nails, my face pale but steady. “You okay?”
I laugh, cracked and bitter. “I will be. Once I know why you burned your entire life for me.”
He doesn’t answer. His mouth twists like the words would taste wrong.
I go to the console. The login is standard Authority protocol: six-digit badge, then retina.
I don’t have the badge, but I remember how the system is coded.
I pop the back of the terminal, exposing the port cluster, and short two pins with the tip of a paperclip.
The screen flickers, then drops to root.
Kang watches me, head tilted. “How did you—?”
“Laundry detail,” I say. “They make you reimage the terminals every week. It’s all the same shit.”
He almost smiles.
I’m in. The directory is a mess—hundreds of folders, most named with Authority jargon, all meant to be indecipherable. But I spot what I’m looking for: “EXZONE-7,” top-level, last modified five minutes ago. I open it.
Inside are files, hundreds, each tagged with a unique subject code and experiment type. There are logs, videos, scanned reports. I feel a jolt of nausea as I read the headers: “Chemical Augmentation Trial.” “Behavioral Override Test.” “Amnestic Protocol—Results.”
I click on one at random. The screen fills with images: faces, some I recognize from the block, others not.
Most are labeled “Terminated” in red. The log details every stage of the experiment, every side effect, every failure.
In the margins are notes, in Petrov’s hand: “Increase dosage.” “Try combination with vector #132.”
That’s me. I’m the vector.
I keep digging, hands flying over the keys. Every new file is a fresh wound, but I can’t stop. I find a folder called “Special Projects.” I open it, and my stomach drops.
There’s a file: “Lance_Diana.” No other details. I click.
The air goes dead still.
The screen flickers, spits static, lines of corrupted text, half-formed images that dissolve before I can make them out.
Kang’s shadow falls over me. “What the fuck is this?” His hand slams the desk.
I set my palm over his, pressing down. “It doesn’t matter,” I say softly, though my chest aches with the truth—it does matter.
We hold each other’s eyes.
Then—boots in the hall. Dozens. The metallic clack of rifles being chambered. A voice barking, “On my mark—” Kang exhales once, slow and deliberate. “We’re out of time.”