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We bolted from the control room. The shift hit instantly—the air colder but thick with the chemical bite of tear gas, the hum of electronics replaced by echoing screams. The walls closed in with the stink of machine oil and mold. My boots slapped against tile slick with condensation and something darker. Every step jarred up my spine.

We took the stairs three at a time. Kang in front, me close behind, lungs dragging for air. On the fourth floor, we ran into the first guard—Kang dropped him in seconds, left him alive but broken.

Past the laundry, past the kitchen, past bodies slumped against walls, the emergency lights flashing red-blue-red. In the annex, the air felt heavier, each flicker of the overhead bulb making the shadows jump.

At the next turn, I almost tripped over him—a guard, not much older than me, slumped across the threshold of a maintenance door. His throat was open, eyes fixed on nothing, one hand still wrapped around the stock of his rifle.

I stopped, just for a second. Kang hissed, “Move.”

But I didn’t. I stared at the body, the stillness of it, the way the fingers never quite let go even in death.

Somewhere in my chest, an old, half-dead reflex reawakened. The calculus of survival. I knelt, ignoring the blood, and pried the rifle from his grip. The metal was cold, and the Authority badge stenciled on the side was already flaking. The strap was set for a much bigger frame, but I looped it over my shoulder anyway. The sling snapped home with a satisfying click.

Kang watched, face unreadable. He said nothing, but I could tell from the way he straightened—just a hair, just enough to show he understood.

With the rifle, I felt something click into place. Not comfort, exactly, but a rightness. A weapon was a boundary. A way to enforce the line between me and the world.

At the final door before the yard, Kang looked back. “Ready?”

I braced the rifle against my chest and nodded.

He shoved the door open.

For a heartbeat, the world held still.

Then the light hit—white, blinding, scraping every nerve raw. My pupils clamped down hard enough to hurt, and I stumbled, blinking into the void.

The light was a weapon—white, merciless, carving the riot into pieces. My first step onto the prison yard was blind: retinas burned, nerves screaming, lungs catching nothing but the reek of tear gas and something older, like meat left in a summer gutter. My pupils tried to lock down but couldn’t; everything was too bright, too loud, every line of shadow cutting at the edge of my skull.

I staggered, rifle jostling against my chest, and felt a hand clamp my arm—Kang, already moving, already calibrating our path through the chaos. He didn’t speak, just pressed my body to his, sheltering me from the first bullet that snapped the air a handspan from my ear. It took me a second to realize the shot hadn’t come from the guards at the fence line but from one of our own, a wild-eyed inmate with a shiv and nothing left to lose.

Everywhere, the world was boiling.

Emergency floodlights blazed, flickering red and blue in alternating sequence, painting the courtyard with afterimages of trauma: a body on the ground, half-dragged; two silhouettes rolling together, more animal than human; a group of prisoners battering a riot shield with stolen mop handles, their faces shining with adrenaline and something like joy. Smoke rolled from behind the overturned commissary cart, obscuring the far end of the yard. Somewhere above, a siren shrieked, cycling through every frequency at once until it was just a physical pressure on my teeth.

I let Kang pull me, my boots skidding on concrete slick with oil and blood. We moved like one creature, his body in front, mine drafting behind, both of us hunched to half-height and breathing in time. The rifle in my hands was heavier than I remembered. I flicked the safety off with a thumb, then forced myself to count every round in the magazine—a dumb, animal ritual that still calmed me.

We ducked behind the corpse of a vending machine, its glass already spidered, the inside crawling with packets of gum and single-serve chili that had outlasted the rest of civilization. Kang pressed close, his mouth at my ear, the words vibrating straight into the bone.

“Two guards at the north gate. Five at the checkpoint. Rest are scattered. Priority is the exit.”

I nodded, counting the same. “We need a distraction. Or cover.”

He grinned, a flash of white through the dust. “You’re the scientist. Think of something.”

But my mind was already elsewhere, mapping trajectories, cataloging variables. The shortest path to the exit meant running a gauntlet past the checkpoint, but the crowd density there was at least three bodies deep—enough to soak up bullets, but also enough to bog us down if anyone panicked. The south wall was less guarded, but I’d seen the perimeter fence: triple-layered, topped with razorwire, the kind that peeled skin even when you thought you’d cleared it. Still, there were blind spots—places where the camera grid had failed, or where debris blocked the line of sight.

I pointed. “There. Behind the generator shed. We cut left, then circle back. If we keep low, the line of fire from the checkpoint won’t⁠—”

A sudden shriek cut me off. Not a siren this time, but a voice, ragged and raw, cutting straight through the chaos.

“Help!—someone—shit, get off him!”

It was Stitch. I’d know that voice anywhere, even buried in panic. She was on the far side of the yard, not ten meters away, standing over the collapsed body of an old man—one of the lifers, I realized, the kind who’d always kept his head down. Next to her, three more: all elderly, all cowering behind a low cement barrier, their faces cracked with terror. Towering over them, a guard in full armor, visor down, rifle raised.

I didn’t think, just moved.

I tore free of Kang’s grip, adrenaline kicking every muscle into overdrive. His shout followed me—raw, furious—but the sound blurred into static as my feet pounded the concrete, rifle in my hands, body narrowing to the distance between Stitch and the muzzle aimed at her head.