Chapter 128

“Click.”

Horne kept his head buried, his arm tensed straight, holding his silver laser gun in his hand, his index finger on the trigger, the muzzle aimed at Hels’s temple, but he did not look at the person he targeted.

Hels held his breath, said nothing, and did not dodge.

“Tomorrow, the Tower—are you going?” Horne asked coldly, his gaze fixed on the wooden floor, as if speaking to the air.

He immediately followed up: “In front of the Fate Community, do you want to destroy it, or kill me?”

The muzzle trembled slightly. Worried he might not hold steady, he did not give Hels a chance to speak and cut off the answer himself: “Forget it. I might kill you first before we even get there.”

The cool morning breeze slipped in through the gaps in the window boards, pressing against their skin, making their pores shudder. They had kept the posture of sitting side by side on the ground all night.

Horne did not want to hear Hels’s past, did not want to know. Every word he said felt like a blasphemy against what they once had. Horne felt it was a humiliation.

He slowly stood up from the ground. Having not moved for too long, his body almost did not feel like his own. He shifted from the floor to the edge of the bed, but did not lower his hand. Instead, he changed from aiming at Hels’s temple from the side to aiming at the back of his head from behind.

At this distance, his aim at an Alien would not miss. Now, he only needed to move his index finger, and both of them could die at the same time.

“Am I the Hermit?” Horne’s tone carried the hostility he reserved only for Aliens, but with every such sentence he spoke, the “buzzing” in his ears grew louder, like tinnitus.

He had spent the entire night but still could not make himself accept it, not even a little.

Hels, Alien. Hels, Alien. The two nouns were completely split in his mind.

Hels paused for a long time before answering: “No.”

Horne leaned forward, and the muzzle leaned forward too, then the angle sank.

“Today is only the seventh day.”

That little girl had died right in front of them, and it had only been seven days. Yet their embrace while discussing the future felt as distant as something beyond time.

But these two things had no connection. The man in front wanted to speak but opened his mouth and only let out a soft sigh. He could not see the eerie cave mouth, only felt a chill pressing against the pulse at the base of his skull. Horne’s voice seemed to come from this abyss-like darkness.

“One last question.”

A massive explosion roared in his brain, and bone-chilling cold crept up his back.

Horne did not know how he had asked that question at the time. When he realized what he had said, he was already on his way back to Thunder Pavilion.

It was about to burst. What was shrieking in his mind—the angry roars and cries of millions, or the data flood from an overloaded Resident Chip? Where was this noise coming from? It was so loud—couldn’t the people around him hear it?

From the moment he returned to Thunder Pavilion, Horne had been busy, calibrating particle guns with cold efficiency bordering on numbness, attending meetings, listening to their strategic arrangements. He did not drink water, did not eat, felt no sleepiness, and did not stop for a single second.

But the howling did not stop; it even grew louder, wriggling from the depths of his spine, densely climbing toward his skull. He heard nothing else, only the numb repetition of his hand movements.

He was not the Hermit, so entering the Fate Community’s location still posed a risk. He could not let his guard down tomorrow.

The noisy howling gradually turned from cries into some kind of pulse assaulting at high speed, drawing closer to the string of his sanity.

He no longer cared about love or hate, not even the answer to that question.

—“Do you think you’re any different from Ben Yian?”

“Bang!” The gunshot exploded, and with it burst countless voices from the past.

—“I hope most of all that my father and mother stay safe and healthy, that our family stays together forever, forever happy.”

“Bang!”

—“Seeing you makes me feel much better. Don’t go up there. I need you… Hels, I love you.”

The simulated bullets scattered and burst, hitting the wall, countless micro mushroom clouds shattering into dust.

With the bullets came pain like steel nails chiseling from the temporal bone into his brain.

The scene before his eyes flipped instantly. Horne mobilized nearly all his muscles to maintain balance, staggering only one step without falling. He immediately bent down, sweat sliding along his jaw.

“Thump thump, thump thump.”

His heartbeat compressed his eardrums.

Han Ya had been talking to Wen Yu behind him. Seeing Horne’s state, he hurried over in a few steps and supported Horne’s shoulder: “What’s wrong with you?”

Horne’s face was deathly pale, his body slightly hunched, palm braced on his knee, head buried as he panted, chest heaving.

When Han Ya circled to his front, he was stunned and fumbled to guide him toward the rest area: “Don’t scare me like that. Didn’t get enough rest?”

Wen Yu crossed her arms over her chest. She glanced at the particle gun in Horne’s hand and his fierce but strained expression, then turned to drag over a chair.

Horne took slow, deep breaths, pushed away Han Ya’s hand, straightened up, regained his calm, and said in a voice cold as ice: “I’m fine.” Then he continued loading the particle gun, turned, fired another shot expressionlessly, reloaded, fired again, repeating endlessly.

Han Ya pointed at him from behind, stunned: “What’s going on?”

Wen Yu shook her head: “I don’t know. Go ask Hels.”

“I’m done. In the middle of the night, only a ghost would go find him.”

Homan came down to the training camp and handed the frequency tuner to Horne and Wen Yu.

“The frequency is now stable at 440 Hz. Keep it on you and make sure it’s secure,” Homan cautioned repeatedly. “One calibration stabilizes for up to 72 hours. Once time’s up, bring it back to me for retuning.”

He thought about it and felt his last sentence was redundant, then added: “But it’ll definitely be enough anyway. It’s just tomorrow—either success or failure.”

Han Ya asked puzzledly from the side: “Why only 72 hours max?”

Homan chuckled: “Reasons galore. External magnetic fields, electromagnetic interference, temperature changes, charge buildup… Even cesium atomic clocks need periodic relocking, let alone a frequency tuner. The more complex the environment, the shorter the stability. Sigh, I told you, you wouldn’t get it.” Here, he pointed to the platinum-topped groove on the frequency tuner. “You just need to watch this. When the frequency stability drops to under 5 hours, it’ll beep to remind you to come find me.”

He tilted his head back slightly, his voice rising: “I designed this frequency tuner myself. Only I can calibrate it right now. Don’t break it, and remember to return it after.”

No one responded. He felt a bit awkward and looked around: “Where’s Hels?”

No one answered.

“He’s not going?” Homan asked again, his gaze naturally shifting to Horne. The others looked over too.

Horne kept his head buried, seriously examining the frequency tuner. He did not hear and did not answer.

Thunder Pavilion fell quiet, sinking into the ultimate stillness before war. Several lights turned off, leaving only the main floor illuminated.

Horne said he was just a bit tired and told them not to worry. After contacting You Wenjie, he went to the fully asleep ward area, found an empty room, and waited, silently flipping through the farewell messages on his terminal. Those screen-filling electronic messages were people’s final memories to leave in this world.

Soon, You Wenjie came down. Footsteps echoed in the dimly lit corridor until the echo faded. The door opened, and the man on the sofa had already closed the terminal, speaking coldly.

Horne: “Seems you’re quite used to working with Aliens.”

You Wenjie’s figure froze abruptly at the doorway.

Send time: 14/12/2210 04:11

Sender: ?

If you see me, then cry.

In the Scandinavian Snowforest before dawn on Good Friday, in the last Loch City.

Loch City, early morning, silent. The last warm light in the residential building went out, leaving only cold wind on the long street.

Tower District. Ancient sea god carvings emerged at the base of the Obelisk, while distorted xenomorph particles at the top dispersed and reformed once more.

160:00

In this night, two figures hurried through Central Avenue, splashing through puddles, passing the Slum, gradually approaching the North City Gate.

“What exactly is it?” Wen Yu asked the question again. She had been resting but was dragged out by Han Ya.

Han Ya walked hurriedly, and Wen Yu could only quicken her steps to keep up. The cold wind carved cracks into their skin. The faint white streetlamp light tore their shadows into fragments.

“I can’t describe it! You’ll know when you see it!” Han Ya spoke urgently too, but unusually serious. He had never managed to describe it. He had originally wanted to find Hels, but from the Slum, he could see the North City Gate at a glance. When he glanced over casually, he almost doubted his eyes.

“Why are you out here in the middle of the night?” That was what puzzled Wen Yu now. She wrapped her clothes tighter against the sudden chill.

“Didn’t you tell me to find Hels?”

“Hels lives around here?” Wen Yu countered. She did not know Hels’s personal matters. “How do you know?”

Han Ya paused, realizing he had said too much, felt annoyed, and simply stopped explaining, hurrying toward the city gate.

“He told me.”

The two walked faster and faster.

“When did he tell you?”

At the same time, in the ward area of Thunder Pavilion. You Wenjie stood silently at the door. Horne slowly stood, approaching him, each step extremely slow and heavy, until he reached him and asked.

You Wenjie answered truthfully: “From the beginning.”

His fingers clenched tightly, then quickly released.

From the beginning—how early was that? Earlier than that snowy night?

Horne forced himself to breathe slowly, suppressing the nausea: “Why?”

You Wenjie stared into Horne’s eyes. After a long time, he took two steps forward, passing Horne, and slowly walked toward the window: “Colonel, let me tell you a story… perhaps an accident.”

Horne did not turn. You Wenjie did not look back either. Only his voice lingered behind them.

“Before the Control Tower incident, Aliens often mimicked our fighter jets’ flight paths and patterns. In that chaos, people often could not react in time to whether the one flying beside them was friend or foe.

“Because of that, once, I mistakenly shot down one of our own fighters and received severe punishment. I thought that was the end of it, but the person I killed by mistake had a brother with deep connections.

“In a later battle, I ordered him to guard the city in another direction. Instead, he chose to betray humanity to perish with me. When he flew at me, I was unprepared.”

That man charged at him with bloodshot eyes. Bai Yin, in the last 0. something seconds, had no choice but to aim his gun at an ally.

The bombardment shattered, the fuselage shook, flames and thick fog exploded before his eyes, the Falcon’s alarms howling. That time, Bai Yin did not emerge unscathed; he was badly injured.

“After that, I learned to look at only one thing: who targets the same enemy as me.”

You Wenjie finally reached the window, leaned forward, hands braced on the sill. He gazed at the city outside and took a deep breath. Each syllable felt like malicious code, pricking at Horne’s neural network: “So when you ask me why, I’ll only tell you this: I don’t care where he comes from. I only care where he’s going.”

“Stop!” Horne stopped him in a low voice. His brain began shrieking again, dizziness forcing him back onto the sofa, head buried, hand clutching his chest, brows tightly furrowed. He repeated, “Stop.”

The miniature city’s moonlight shone on the pure white curtains, turning them gray. The wind made the curtains tremble, just like his index finger that morning—holding the gun but never pulling the trigger.

You Wenjie sighed, showing a long-lost playful smirk belonging to Bai Yin.

“Hero Colonel, your love for him is in your life, but I truly didn’t expect your hatred for Aliens…

“To be on your epitaph.”

To love him for a lifetime, yet hate him for eternity.

Horne laughed bitterly from his throat, then regained his icy composure: “You haven’t lived my life. You have no right to judge me.”

“Of course. I’m different from you. After all, what ruined me wasn’t an Alien, it was…”

The words cut off. You Wenjie swayed as if off-balance, steadying himself against the wall, leaning on it.

His arm suddenly burned like fire. He lifted his hand to look at the reddened spot from the sting, brows furrowed tightly.

The interrupted sentence had no follow-up.

Horne had been sitting on the sofa, head buried, expression hidden in his cold palm. Soon, he lowered his hand, looked up, paused, and asked: “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. See for yourself.” The chaotic footsteps rounded the last street corner as Han Ya burst out of the midnight alley with Wen Yu. He pointed to the North City Gate right in front of them.

More people had gathered at the North City Gate than when Han Ya had come earlier—almost all vagrants from the nearby Slum. They all craned their necks, staring up at the city wall.

The wind from the Frost Plains howled outside, just as it always did.

Wen Yu’s footsteps slowed more and more until they came to a gradual halt. She held her breath, gazing at the familiar North City Gate, scarcely able to believe her eyes.

“…What is this?”

Amid the shoving crowd, someone exclaimed, “Is this the end of the world?”

Besides the Tower District, the city wall was the tallest structure in Loch City.

And now, at the very top of the city wall, countless black particles were dissociating and flowing—not scattering in all directions as she knew them, but slowly and precisely in the same direction, vertically pouring into the sky like an inverted curtain of rain.

“Many Aliens dissociated here?” Wen Yu asked. Immediately, she realized her mistake.

No, it wasn’t.

The top portion of the city wall had vanished.

It wasn’t the Aliens dissociating. It was the city wall—the structure itself dissociating!

The building was… evaporating?