Chapter 9: Night Wanderings

An omega’s heat comes once per season, lasting for three days, during which waves of need rise and fall like a tide. Without an alpha, the lulls between upwellings is very short, enough to torment someone to exhaustion. But with a participating alpha, it’s much less severe.

Yasha stays at the rented room for two nights, remaining at 329’s side for almost the entire heat. Sometimes she’ll leave for a while, but she always returns before 329 enters another upwelling. She pushes an air mattress to the side of 329’s folding bed, the same height as the cot, then layers on a thick blanket to create a big, soft bed. Yasha solemnly bounces atop it, as if to test its sturdiness. But then she rolls back and forth on the bed, which probably doesn’t have much to do with testing anything.

While she messes with the bed, 329 is in the lull between two peaks. His skin is still sensitive, but his desire isn’t as overwhelming as it is during an upwelling. He can calmly stand to one side, holding the cup Yasha gave him, drinking the energy beverage Yasha brought him. The hot drink tastes pretty good, even if he doesn’t know what it’s made of—329 doesn’t care to know, especially regarding the price. He looks at Yasha arranging the bed with the glee of someone going to summer camp. This luxury-raised girl shows nothing but curiosity toward experiencing life in a cheap apartment, remaining in high spirits all three days. Thank heaven and earth, she doesn’t poke her nose into the breakdown 329 had on the first night.

“It’s like a dream,” says Yasha one time, before they sleep.

Right then, she’s knotted inside 329. They lie on their sides, Yasha at 329’s back, head pressing against his back, fuzzy and warm. They’ve made it through three obscene days. To tell the truth, there’s not much they can do in a space this small. Yasha provides all the food (she doesn’t like compressed biscuits.) Sometimes she leaves to wash up (or clean up using her tech, who knows, either way she doesn’t use the bathroom here with its irregular hot water.) She doesn’t know how to do her hair, and asks 329 to tie it back for her; his handiwork is pretty unimpressive. 329 doesn’t think these couple days make for much of a dream fantasy. A ramshackle room and an an omega who smells nothing special. Adequate at best.

His heat smoothly runs its course. On the third morning, he finds Yasha and her air mattress gone without a trace. She leaves only a paper note. Like before, there’s no words written on it, just a heart emoji. 329 goes to work, feeling energetic and refreshed in a way that he hasn’t for a long time, a nice perk to having an omega’s body. His heat wasn’t like being in hell; this is honestly the first time, in his truncated memory.

For the entire next month, 329 doesn’t see Yasha. Sometimes he thinks of her; sometimes he even feels a strange sense of concern, wondering if such a young alpha might wind up with health problems from that level of debauchery. Then he realizes his worries are baseless. The elites even have STD vaccines.

More likely, she’s just sick of him, like a diner who eats too much of one food in one sitting and loses all appetite for it; even if they don’t swear it off forever, they might need a couple years before they can touch it again—if they still remember at that point. That’s just how it is with wealthy people looking for fresh amusement. They have too many options.

But the next month, Yasha appears with her motorcycle once more.

This time, it’s late at night. 329 is still awake because he’d received notice that afternoon. His wristcom had pinged to tell him of an incoming message; he ignored it, thinking it was junk mail, at which point the wristcom began to ding ding ding without pause. 329 looked down. A message popped open: You don’t need to go to work tonight. Please go to bed early. See you at midnight! >3<

A few seconds later, the message disappeared. A few more seconds later, a new message popped open. You saw correctly! Please get some rest? Like before, it deleted itself automatically.

So 329 was pretty sure who this was, and pretty damn sure he won’t be working tonight. He ate an early dinner, showered, and went to bed in preparation for the royal audience.

Yasha doesn’t look much different from before, naturally; even a teen in the middle of puberty won’t change much in just a month. She leaps off her motorcycle and asks 329, “May I?” With his assent, she slips gloves on his hands and ties a scarf around his neck. “Today’s going to be cold. We’re going to go high up.” She laughs. “Way high up.”

They get on the motorcycle.

At this hour, the streets are almost deserted. Even if they bull their way through, they don’t have to worry about running anyone over. She seems to have modded the motorcycle again; its movements are even more powerful. The engine roars like thunder, loud enough to wake people in a ten-mile radius. The alpha pays no mind, looking perfectly unconcerned.

Maybe she didn’t choose to come out at night for the purpose of stealth. Maybe she has other methods. Last time, racing on the street, no one had given them a second glance. 329 guesses that there’s some sort of optical device installed on the motorcycle, capable of turning it and its riders invisible. With that kind of technology, it wouldn’t be hard to hide sound either. 329 suspects that the motorcycle doesn’t need to be this loud at all; Yasha had made it this way out of nostalgic fondness.

That’s not to say he dislikes it.

He likes the lightning speed, likes the sensation of weightlessness when they round a corner, and likes the rumble of the motor as well. Some people like the sound of rain. Some people like the sound of wind. 329 likes the sound of a motor, maybe because he’d once worked at a repair shop. Civilian aircraft are always accompanied by a dull tututu , like some kind of a signal, or a the call of a horn. He doesn’t remember how he became a hunter, but he still remembers how his father had carried him into the plane in his childhood.

He’d sat on his father’s knee, touching the indicator panel, the joystick vibrating in his palm. That bulky old flyer was like their household beast of burden, wordlessly and reliably carrying their weight. Back then, sitting atop his father, he’d craned his neck to look out the window, thinking that one day, he’d grow tall enough comfortably look out the window without anyone propping him up. Someday, he was going to fly.

“Please hold on tight!” says Yasha, in front of him.

The motorcycle accelerates again, so fast everything’s a blur. It’s the grand boulevard in front of City Hall; even late at night, there’s no shortage of vehicles. The speeding, levitating motorcycle weaves between the vehicles, faster and faster, faster and faster, straight for the City Hall building. In front of them there’s no room left, traffic hems them in on either side, but Yasha doesn’t slow, only hits the gas hard. 329 grabs on tight to Yasha, palms sweating.

A wall rushes toward them.

And then suddenly they’re going up .

Up, down, left, right abruptly somersault, the wall becoming the ground, the night ahead. The hovering motorcycle rushes up the side of the City Hall, the front lifting, thrusters unfolding from the taillights. The vehicle, the wall, and their skulls all remain unharmed. They climb up the tall building, leaving the ground behind them.

Neither of them falls off the motorcycle, which has some kind of system to keep them secured in place. Yasha’s earlier words were less to warn him than to retrieve his attention. 329’s heart thumps madly in his chest. He looks behind him; the ground grows farther and farther away, the torrent of vehicles and night travelers becoming the crawl of ants. The sounds of people and cars fade; neon lights and headlights dissolve into shining ribbons. The farther they get, the less real it all seems, like it has nothing to do with him, like none of it matters.

The City Hall is the tallest public building in the Protected Area. They continue to climb, higher and higher. Soon, the pinnacle is before them; their vehicle rushes toward it as if approaching a gap in a bridge. Yasha whistles. “Let’s go!” she exclaims.

The vehicle shoots over the broken bridge.

The thrusters silent, the motor rumbling: that’s how the replica-antique motorcycle charges off the pinnacle. The vehicle runs out of road, and the front of the vehicle lurches, but it doesn’t smash against the building roof. The two sides of the vehicle fold up. A pair of wings emerge.

Yes, a pair of wings. Not rigid aeroplane wings, but bird-like, flapping, fucking-covered-in-metal-feathers wings. The vehicle wheels in the air, swoops downward, and at the lowest point in the arc, flaps its wings and takes off soaring. How do you describe this ride? It’s an antique replica, a creation of advanced technology, a steel pegasus from a child’s fantasy. The rider who’d transformed it whoops the shrieking laughter of a child on a roller coaster, wild and joyous.

329 wants to shout too; Yasha’s voice resonates with his throat. It’s as if he wants to shout, but when he opens his mouth, no sound comes out. He’s grown used to staying silent to stay safe, or faking sound to be left alone. Sound that actually belongs to him finds itself trapped in his body, unable to escape.

But what does that matter? They’re flying.

The steel pegasus takes them charging through the black of night, the entire Protected Area beneath their feet. They wheel and barrel roll, charge and turn, plunge then climb. The little alpha shows off her technique, a dazzling performance that only the two of them in its midst can see. The changes in acceleration should make his head spin, but 329 takes them in stride. It’s as if his body remembers, even when he doesn’t.

“I’m good at flying, aren’t I?” Yasha asks.

They’ve flown for a long time, criss-crossing the night sky. At last, the vehicle slows, gradually drifting upward; the roller coaster has become a ferris wheel. When Yasha calls to him excitedly, 329 answers honestly, “You’re very good.”

“I practiced for ages,” Yasha says proudly. “They won’t let me touch a real manned plane, so I built one myself.”

“Is this the first time you’ve flown for real? Isn’t that a bit…” 329 hesitates, then says delicately, “Not very safe.”

The girl huffs in front of him. 329 doesn’t need to see her face to guess at her dismissive expression. She says, “Simulators can replicate practically everything, with over 99.7% verisimilitude. I’ve flown tens of thousands of times in a sim environment. I’ve even died hundreds of times. They say that ‘surviving a campaign makes you a seasoned soldier.’ Well, I’ve survived and gotten killed in so many battles that I’m practically a seasoned general!”

329 has heard of simulators, but he’d never imagined that the rich and powerful could imitate reality in their sim environments to such a degree. From Yasha’s tone, she seems to have experienced the complete virtual reality, without sensory dulling.

It’s surprising. 329 doesn’t know why she’d do that. Death under one hundred percent pain sensitivity can’t be pleasant. Yasha undoubtedly lives in luxury, pampered and spoiled. It’s hard to imagine why she’d choose to go through that.

“I like it,” says Yasha, as if she predicted his surprise. “It’s fun, but unfortunately not many people around me are interested. Look at the rebel army—they love to fly, from the common grunts to the commanders, from the runners to the fighters. All of them know how to fly a plane.”

That’s because anyone who doesn’t has no way of escaping from encirclement and annihilation, 329 thinks inwardly. He feels a familiar resignation. It’s like how the rich think that poor people dig through garbage for fun and amusement.

“To be honest, they wouldn’t even let me try the uncensored flying simulation,” Yasha says with a hmph . “It’s not as if injuries in the sim environment actually exist.”

“But it’ll still hurt,” says 329.

“It’ll hurt for a little bit, and then it goes away when you leave the sim. It’s like a game. If you can earn experience without the penalty of death, isn’t that great? If you really can’t take it, you can delete that segment of memory,” says Yasha. “If your body doesn’t change, and you don’t remember anything, and you delete the record from the simulation, and no one else knows, is that any different from it never happening at all?”

329 instinctively feels that’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to refute her.

He feels a faint sense of unease. Yasha often unsettles him, even frightens him. There is an enormous gulf between their perspectives, as if they look upon two different worlds. This alpha isn’t evil. She can even be called warm and affectionate, sweet and adorable, stylish and dashing. But every now and then, she reveals something alien. It’s like seeing scales and claws peeking out from under human skin.

She might be a good, flawless person, where “good” is measured by her standards. 329 can’t even begin to guess at her standards. She’ll break a man’s legs to return 329’s shoes, with a little card tucked in the laces, a pink heart on it.

Or maybe he’s just frightened of her power. Maybe he’s just afraid of the technology and authority that can so easily manipulate a man.

The sky fades at the edge, the night growing translucent. Visibility improves around them; he can see manmade clouds and patrol drones. The main city is a no-fly zone; patrol drones and the surveillance moon will shoot down all non-official aerial objects, including birds and balloons. Yet right now, they’re still in the air. The patrol drones fly by at a distance, paying no mind to them.

The vehicle slowly rises, at last reaching the highest point of the Protected Area. Any higher, and they’d hit the Shield. Outside of the Shield is the real sky, full of radiation and particulate matter. The surveillance moon hangs in the man-made vault of heaven; the laser-spitting cyclops is silent at the moment, its single eye tightly shut, like an inert piece of space garbage. As they fly past, Yasha reaches out a hand to rap on its steel outer hull. 329 badly wants to give it a kick. He resists the urge.

“This is the best location,” says Yasha. “In a moment, we can see the sunrise.”

“I thought the weather report said it’s going to rain?” says 329.

Weather in the Protected Area is fully under human control. Weather reports are actual reports, and whatever weather they state is whatever weather it’s going to be. At most, the adjustments are off once or twice a year.

“No, it’s going to be clear today,” Yasha answers simply. And then she says exuberantly, “The sunrise is most magnificent seen from the sky, especially when there’s these huge cloud layers. The sunlight makes the clouds blaze red in distinct layers, with all the colors roiling through, like a sea of lava. It’s stunning.”

A few scattered images flash through 329’s mind. He feels like he’s seen the sunrise from the sky before. The sky below, as clear as a lake. Fish-scale cloud layers electroplated with scarlet, burning across the sky like a wildfire. The blazing radiance of the rising sun. Even though the real sun has been buried behind the dense particulate for centuries, the man-made imitation still captures the imagination.

Dimly, he remembers the rumble of a plane, remembers grayish particulate around him. That’s right. He hadn’t been inside the Shield then. He’d been outside. Had flight outside the Shield not been banned yet? Or was that in fact the crime he’d committed? He doesn’t remember. But if he’d truly been condemned for staring into the sun, 329 doesn’t feel particularly regretful. That forbidden sky mesmerizes him.

The artificial sun rises.

“It’s beautiful,” 329 says quietly.

“Isn’t it,” Yasha says proudly. “I hacked those stupid drones so they won’t bother us. It’s a pity they’re such a downer to look at, even just hovering around. They’re so boringly identical. Civilian aircraft are much more interesting. They look much better when they’re flying.”

“Civilian aircraft haven’t been allowed to fly inside the Protected Area since the Third Airspace Ban,” says 329. “The ban was enacted over half a century ago.”

“But there have always been law-breakers,” laughs Yasha. “The rebel army sometimes flew. During the Easter Incident, their planes filled half the sky. They were magnificent, planes weaving between lasers and bullets. Eagle No. 27 broke through three layers of encirclements, downing nineteen planes in a single battle, taking six hits and still managing to ram into the statue of the Consul, while the pilot switched planes and escaped. He was incredible!”

She talks about the Revolutionary Army’s ace pilot, then talks about the Revolutionary Army’s organization and training, her face alight, her tone full of admiration. When she’s done, 329’s not sure how to continue the conversation. He’s forced to ask, “So you want to open up the sky?”

“Aren’t you more interested in knowing what I really think of the rebel army?” Yasha says, her insight sharp. “Because I praise them, but I call them the ‘rebel army’ and not the Revolutionary Army.”

Only with her laying it out in the open does 329 realize that he did mean it that way, just a little. But what’s the point of asking that? He doesn’t say anything. Yasha turns around and keeps going on her own.

“Let’s not talk about that. What a dull topic,” says Yasha. “But, those aerial tactics were beautiful, and those pilots were beautiful, charging at the Steel Battalion like moths into the flame. Wasn’t it beautiful, the way they looked, nosediving and crashing amid the dazzle of lasers? We can communicate our aesthetics without needing to persuade each other of anything. But politics isn’t like that.”

The motorcycle hovers in midair. Yasha changes position, sitting sideways, the better to hold 329’s arm. This lovable, terrible girl finds a comfortable position against him, not minding his silence. She sighs contentedly.

“It’s so wonderful,” she says. “Like a dream.”

What do you want from me? 329 wonders. He can’t figure it out, and he doesn’t dare ask.

To him, it really is like a dream. It’s not a nightmare, nor a sweet dream. Just a strange dream, that’s all.