Chapter 82

Ben Yian walked in carrying a small cake. The moment he entered, a smile still lingered on his lips. He saw the scene before him, first puzzled, then frozen in place.

The cake fell to the ground, its protective casing popping off as strawberry jam splattered everywhere.

He opened his mouth, breathing rapidly. One step, then another—from slow to fast, he finally rushed to the bedside like a madman and knelt down entirely.

He collapsed into heartbroken sobs.

Horne stood in the research institute’s lobby, silently enduring Ben Yian’s frenzied accusations and shoves. Why wouldn’t he let them experiment? Why? Ben Mu had just woken up. She could have lived. Why? Why? Why?

Why?

Why were you so stubbornly opposed? Why so insistent on your own righteousness? Why was your belief a belief, but others’ lives not lives?

“She was my only family. She was my only family!!”

It wasn’t him. He had never thought that way.

Horne’s face turned deathly pale as he stood dumbfounded in place, unable to utter a single word of defense.

The sky was like glass, its falling shards turning into rain.

The day before the alien invasion, Ben Yian had found Horne like a wandering soul. After hurling abuse at him and then hugging him while crying, a long silence and calm followed.

They were all just pawns, grains of sand in the chaotic torrent of the era, unable to control their direction or where they would settle.

“I guess I can’t blame you either. I know they blocked the ambulance,” Ben Yian said calmly. “They’ve used me for so many years. I’ve been their logistics man, their adjutant for so long. Sometimes, I just want to become myself.”

His eyes were sunken pits of muddy despair, filled with dead, stagnant water.

All day, he had handled Ben Mu’s body—hastily embracing it, hastily burying it in the frozen soil. Everything felt utterly unreal. Even now, he couldn’t accept that he was the only one left in the world.

Horne wasn’t his, and Ben Mu was no longer. When his parents had died en route to Loch City years ago, he hadn’t felt this heart-piercing pain.

The living room’s incense still burned. Hels poured two glasses of water and, for the first time, placed one in front of Ben Yian before heading upstairs himself.

“I don’t know what to do,” Ben Yian wrapped himself in the sofa in Horne’s living room. He couldn’t even react to Hels anymore. His eyes were empty, bewildered, pale. He murmured, “Right now, in the face of life and death, ethics and morality are luxuries. Only real death reveals the absolute truth of survival itself. But now, I have nothing.”

Horne barely slept that night. He couldn’t name his own emotions. After a long silence, the words he spoke were the same ones he had repeated dozens of times: “I’m sorry.”

He was willing to pay the price, but he hadn’t wanted others to bear it for him. He hadn’t even known that the sample Ganal mentioned was Ben Mu. But he was trapped in a maze with no escape—even if he had known, what then? Should he stick to his beliefs or let his best friend go? If he relented because it was someone close, his principles would crumble instantly due to favoritism, utterly laughable.

If he truly held firm, he shouldn’t be suffering now. So where did this self-reproach come from?

Time reached nine o’clock at night. A terminal notification popped up reminding Ben Yian of his shift at the control tower. He turned it off and sat on the sofa, breathing shallowly.

“Horne, what do you want me to do?” Ben Yian tilted his head back, forcing a deep breath, then fell into a prolonged silence.

Suddenly, he smiled faintly.

“In this life, it seems I’ve never truly lived for myself,” his voice grated like it was filled with sand, sounding decades older overnight. “From childhood to now, every action, every choice I made satisfied others’ expectations—parents, teachers… even the so-called ‘greater good’ you all talk about.

“In Langdao City, I loved going outside the Military District to watch, but my parents thought engineer was better. They made me study engineering, even pulling strings to get me a teacher from the control tower designers’ team, giving me the best resources. If there was an obstacle, they’d use connections; if it could be manipulated, they’d pull backdoor strings. They smugly cleared every hurdle in my life, keeping me from thorns, calling it ‘love.’ I could only endure it, couldn’t speak up, because no matter what I said I wanted, if they didn’t want it, they’d refuse.

“I went from brimming with passion for the world to not knowing what I wanted myself. Even if I did, I’d suppress it, because I’d surely be scolded, criticized. I fell into depression, confusion. Only Ben Mu always supported me—sneaking with me to climb the Military District’s walls, doing dangerous, freeing things. She’d speak up for me, understand everything about me. She was the light of my life.

“Then I met you, and I realized how alluring it is to live for myself. I-I couldn’t help liking you. How could you be so free…” Ben Yian closed his eyes. “So I wasn’t content as an engineer. I wanted to join the Military District, to be near you, even like you. All these years, you and Ben Mu were my only support.”

For a moment, Horne wanted to refute him—he didn’t have the freedom Ben Yian imagined. They were all struggling in their obsessions, clinging to the last drifting hope.

“Others say I’m smart and reliable, calm and composed, but I know it’s just lack of courage. Stepping into this house, I lost the courage to face the snowfield outside. So I kept cooperating, like a precisely functioning gear—turning, endlessly turning, endlessly used. I thought that was a way to prove my worth.

“I was wrong. The world never pities the tolerant.

“Little Horne, I don’t hate you, or Ganal and the others. I wanted too much. Endurance never won me anything. How laughable…”

That night, Ben Yian talked a lot. Horne listened silently to his outpouring and despair, unable to say anything. In the end, Ben Yian took a deep breath and even gave Horne his usual smile. “I have to go on shift at the control tower. Hels is still upstairs waiting for you. Go rest; don’t keep him waiting too long.”

Horne was stunned. He felt uneasy, but Ben Yian said that losing all ties to the world had made him clear-headed instead.

Who could know how things had step by step led to this point—because of whom, because of which fleeting thought? Tomorrow and death were just probabilities toyed with by God.

Nothing was resolved, and there was no room to breathe.

The next day, the aliens attacked. The entire sky was covered in black bony wings. At noon, the sky was as dark as an unlit night.

Shrill screeches circled over the whole city. Demons descended.

Some residents of Loch City hid at home, afraid to come out. Others grabbed guns, eager to rush to the front lines. Bombardments shook the city to its foundations. People saw scenes from their windows they’d never imagined in their lives.

Countless pitch-black aliens dove from the sky like falling meteors, smashing into the electromagnetic net in midair. The front ranks of particles dissipated, but the ones behind immediately surged forward.

The usually transparent electromagnetic net, under the relentless assault, revealed its semicircular body above. That barrier had protected Loch City for decades, but now it trembled like a glass dome in a storm, on the verge of shattering.

The whole of Loch City screamed, an unending wail.

Over a hundred snowfield armored vehicles spread out across the snowfield. Fighter jets circled and fired in the air. Conductive lines ran red-hot. Explosions were so loud that even with windows closed, the ground vibrations carried them clearly.

Horne stood at the control tower’s console, his expression more serious than ever, face taut. He received nonstop messages on his terminal, precisely directing every laser bombardment.

From his vantage, he could see most of the situation to the north.

War always brought blood and corpses. Alien deaths left no trace, but human ones littered the ground with wreckage. Even so, they roared and charged out to protect the city behind them.

No one knew what the next second would bring—just as, back when humanity had hopefully sought extraterrestrial life, they hadn’t imagined the end would come so swiftly.

— “Horne, wake up, okay?”

Horne pressed the laser bombardment switch again. Intense electric light erupted in the aliens’ area, black particles vanishing in smoke.

Amid the dissipating black, Horne saw Hels’s figure. He had taken his place at the foremost dangerous position.

“Watch for cover!”

Horne couldn’t hear what Hels shouted—perhaps that.

In an instant, several aliens swept over the ground of their defense zone, only to be precisely shot down by Hels.

Horne’s calm breathing hitched for half a beat, then he steadied it.

— “When you asked me in the Red Light District if I knew you, I said no. I lied. And the holographic game map—it wasn’t open to tourists. It was designed just for you. Wake up, okay?”

A voice kept flashing in his mind, like an auditory hallucination drifting from afar.

Horne’s expression never changed, exuding a murderous aura throughout.

Messages flashed nonstop on the control tower terminal.

[Tower 2: Electromagnetic net is about to exceed load. Requesting activation of Emergency Defense System. – Ding Man]

[Tower 3: Alien numbers too vast. Electromagnetic net exceeding threshold. – Qiao]

The electromagnetic net had load limits, but aliens rarely attacked on this scale—almost suicidal attempts to breach humanity’s key defense.

[Tower 3: South city gate needs reinforcements. – Qiao]

[Main Control Tower: Received. Dispatch notified. – Horne]

[Main Control Tower: Emergency Defense System authorized. – Horne]

As Horne sent that, another swarm of aliens flew in from the horizon—their reinforcements, a suffocating black mass that instantly destroyed several of their fighter jets.

Colonel Bai Yin personally joined the fray. His FX-71L Falcon struck swiftly, as ambitious and dangerous as the man himself.

They still didn’t know the limit of this alien assault—was it to overrun the human city entirely, or just retaliation for killing their cooperative alien?

Thinking of retaliation made Horne recall Ben Yian’s warning days ago: Ganal’s government planned to use this invasion to sacrifice him in the war. He had to be careful.

The snowfield was chaos in battle. Everyone’s eyes turned red with bloodlust—humans, aliens, laser guns, madness, despair.

Horne decided to stay at the control tower. He didn’t want his injury to be a liability, and it would foil Ganal’s government’s scheme too—a win-win.

[Tower 2: Emergency Defense System signal activated. – Ding Man]

“Buzz.” A control tower at the city’s other end entered overdrive mode.

In the Main Control Tower, the Emergency Defense System button sat dead center on the console.

Horne suddenly heard his heartbeat and a faint, almost nonexistent ringing in his ears.

[Tower 3: Emergency Defense System signal activated. – Qiao]

“Buzz.” The electromagnetic net let out another low hum.

— “Horne, wake up, and I’ll tell you what happened that year.”

Two overdrive approvals lit up. Only the final gray one remained.

After receiving messages from Towers 2 and 3, Horne reached out and touched the cold metal button in the center. The chill spread from his fingertip to his heart, but Horne pressed it without hesitation.

The instant the button depressed, the whole city fell into brief silence. Horne saw a faint distortion in the air before him.

Blinding laser beams erupted.

In that moment, the black-covered city welcomed its first ray of sunlight that day.

The light pierced the defenses—stark white.

Blindingly white, nothing visible.

Horne instinctively raised his hand to shield his eyes.

Electromagnetic net overdrive shouldn’t produce light. Had something gone wrong elsewhere in the city?

The light pierced the clouds. Air twisted violently, burned. Vast swaths of black bony wings vaporized instantly.

Three seconds later, “Boom!” A massive roar, and the control tower shook violently. Dust and stones rained down.

The explosion instantly robbed Horne of his hearing.

The world held only a “buzzing” screech.

He drew a breath into his lungs, pores flaring wide, left only with gasps.

The next second, a huge shockwave swept in. Windows shattered, shards exploding like arrows. Several sharp ones pierced inward into Horne’s body.

A muffled grunt. Pain hadn’t yet reached his brain when the shockwave blasted through the window’s void, flipping him inside.

“Bang!”

An irresistible blast of air sent Horne smashing into the wall, shards embedding into him. His vision went black for a moment, and he immediately spat out a mouthful of blood.

There was no time to react before another massive explosion rang out.

“Boom!” The wall crumbled apart.

Horne’s expression changed drastically. Ignoring the pain, he struggled to his feet.

He couldn’t hear anything, only a dull pounding, and the wall he was holding onto trembled and shook.

Dust filled his lungs, making him cough violently. He had just taken a step forward.

“Boom—” Another enormous rumble came from overhead. Horne halted, looked up, and his pupils shrank.

The ceiling cracked, and chunks of stone came crashing down.

The Control Tower was collapsing.

His heart raced.

Run!

Enduring the intense pain, Horne took a step, but the ceiling fell.

His breathing stopped.

Another stone dropped. To dodge it, Horne shifted aside, but a rock from the other side smashed into his back.

His knees buckled, and he knelt uncontrollably.

More debris fell, more heavy impacts.

What had gone wrong?

In the second before losing consciousness, Horne saw outside the Control Tower, over Loch City, a translucent mushroom cloud rising into the sky from midair.

Darkness engulfed him, pure darkness.

In the darkness, the second hand ticked on, time unrelenting. Amid the chaos, that voice echoed in his mind again.

‘As long as you wake up, anything goes. Still want to go to the Holographic Game map? There are still many places you haven’t visited.’

Amid the ruins, a two- or three-year-old child woke up. He stood from the rubble, his face covered in dirt and his body drenched in blood. Somewhat dazed, he picked up the laser gun that had fallen onto a stone, glanced at it curiously with the barrel pointed at his own forehead, and pulled the trigger.

“Bang!”

His consciousness plummeted until there was nothing left.