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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.”