Chapter 40

Hels looked up and thought for a moment. “If you mean your goal, it was the day you came out of the Tower District. If you mean tailing me, it was when you left the Red Light District.”

Both were spot on.

Hels smiled and said, “Hmm? So you have to tell the truth?”

Horne replied, “What I just said was the truth.”

In a certain sense, it really was.

Unable to see Hels’s expression, Horne could only hear his slow, casual tone and feel his breath on his neck. It made Horne feel somewhat uneasy.

Hels nodded to himself. “Oh, but if you wanted to know, why not just ask directly? Didn’t I say you could tell me straight up? I wouldn’t get mad.”

Horne closed his eyes briefly and gave up beating around the bush. He went straight to the point. “You know humans aren’t allowed out of the city gates. What were you doing out there? What’s outside?”

“Is that what you want to know, or what the Tower wants to know?” Hels asked.

Horne’s lips twitched. He didn’t know how to answer. To be precise, he wanted to know, and the Tower probably did too.

Horne answered, “Me.”

“Good.” Hels said softly. He rubbed his thumb twice over the skin on Horne’s wrist, which had been gripped by him the whole time, and finally let go.

Horne let his hand drop and flexed his arm. It was still numb, almost too weak to clench into a fist.

Hels sighed and took a step back.

Horne heard his voice recede a step, but without physical contact, he could no longer sense Hels. He had to judge his position by sound alone.

Then, Hels’s voice echoed through the dimness, each word clear in Horne’s ears.

“You know humans have always been ruled by the Aliens, but humans aren’t willing to just be fish on the chopping block. They secretly built a human base underground in the Frost Plains. This is the secret passage out of the city.”

Horne felt his brain go boom. His whole body stiffened in place, unable to react.

“What did you say?” His lips, ice-cold, moved.

He took a step back, but the wall was already behind him.

He had figured it was probably something like that, but he hadn’t expected Hels to say it so openly, without any suspicion.

Hels’s voice was a bit low. He said, “Sorry, Horne. I should have told you sooner. Humans… haven’t given up. Though many have fallen, there’s a group carrying humanity’s hope, still fighting. It’s been a hundred years. Some of them have never even entered the city behind you their whole lives. They live and multiply in the Frost Plains, waiting for the right moment to overthrow the Tower.”

“Stop.” Horne cut him off in a low voice.

Such information shouldn’t be spoken aloud. It should be buried under the ice and snow of the Frost Plains.

Hels chuckled softly. He said, “Wasn’t that what you wanted to know? I told you. What, want to go see?”

Horne took another step back and said coldly, “No.”

It was unexpected again. Hels grabbed his wrist.

Horne yanked his hand back like he’d been shocked and retreated several steps. He said sharply, “Hels, you don’t need to trust me this much.”

It was no use. Hels dragged him forward.

“Hels!”

“Hels, let me go!”

“Let go! That’s an order!”

The frantic urgency and chaotic footsteps echoed in the dim secret passage. Aside from the two of them, the entire tunnel was eerily quiet.

Horne struggled hard, but he couldn’t overpower Hels.

He felt everything slipping out of control.

He didn’t understand.

At first, Horne issued a few sharp, cold commands. When he realized Hels was completely unmoved, he fell silent.

His silence soon turned strange. It wasn’t normal calm, because his footsteps grew lighter too. Gripped by the wrist, he followed silently behind Hels, growing more nonchalant the further they went.

Until Hels suddenly stopped.

The two stood in the pitch-black quiet, with no beginning, no end, no one else.

Hels didn’t go further because the wrist he held slipped free from his grasp—only to be immediately clasped again, fingers interlaced, just like during Horne’s treatments.

This was Horne’s initiative.

In the heavy silence, Hels turned back and softly called his name. “Horne?”

Horne didn’t answer right away. He waited a moment before saying, “The place where I met you, I saw light there.”

His tone was higher than usual, like an excited child.

“At the end of a wrong path, there’s always a projection. When you get close enough to almost make it out as one, you’re already dead.” Hels explained.

After being in the dark too long, anyone would chase any glimmer of light. This tunnel was full of such “lights.”

“Ah, so are you going to take me outside and kill me?” Horne pressed on. There was no fear or caution in his tone, not even his usual coldness—just exhilarated excitement, tinged with innocence.

Hels recognized this state. It was like the time Horne had just woken up and gone to the arena to save Ains.

There was a term for it: regression. Horne felt utterly out of control right now. He was isolating himself, protecting himself.

Hels sighed inwardly. ‘Trouble.’

Normally, Horne was icy cold on the outside but soft-hearted. Now, he seemed obedient and harmless on the surface, but inside, he had lost all restraint.

“Hmm? Say something.” Horne demanded, gripping Hels’s hand to stop him from moving. He insisted on an answer.

Hels countered, “What do you think?”

Horne pondered. “I think…”

Before he finished, Horne yanked hard with his arm, pulling Hels over and shoving him against the wall. He pinned his shoulders.

His hands were still weak, but better than before.

Hels stood there, pressed against the wall, unmoving.

By feel, Horne drew close to the man before him and wedged a leg between his. He guessed the other was staring down at him right now. He just needed to tiptoe a little and tilt his head up.

Nose tip to nose tip, their breaths mingled instantly. Against each other’s chests, their heartbeats raced in sync.

Hels immediately turned his head aside, avoiding the contact. He patted Horne’s back and said softly, “Calm down first.”

Horne was probably scared, which was why he’d regressed into this protective persona. Hels soothed him with pats on the back and gently pushed him away.

So Horne released his hold on Hels’s shoulders. Instead, he splayed his fingers on the other’s chest, feeling for a few seconds. Then he bent slightly and pressed his ear directly against it.

A powerful, blood-pumping thump.

Horne blinked twice and said softly, “Hels, your heart’s beating so fast.”

Hels laughed. “Is it? Faster than yours?”

“Seems a bit faster than mine. Want to feel?” Horne stood, grabbed Hels’s hand, and placed it on his own chest.

Hels patted the back of his hand twice, then gripped it with his other hand and pulled it away, refusing the touch. He said lowly, “No need. I can hear it.”

Horne found it boring, so he pressed close to Hels again, almost molding their bodies together. He draped his arms over Hels’s shoulders, looped them around his neck, tilted his head to his ear, and whispered, “I think you couldn’t bear to kill me.”

It was overly intimate. Hels poked the arm around him and said lightly, “Horne, hands down.”

Too close. Though he wanted to get closer, he had never truly taken that step.

He didn’t dare, shouldn’t, and couldn’t.

Horne ignored him completely. After Hels spoke, he got even bolder. He tilted his head up, brushing his nose against Hels’s Adam’s apple, then higher until his lips touched the protrusion. He pressed wetly against it, tongue tip flicking lightly over.

Hels’s throat tightened. He immediately seized Horne’s arms and shoved him back.

Horne staggered two steps and said, voice tinged with grievance, “You don’t like it?” His grievance drowned in the darkness.

Hels paused a moment before speaking, his voice low and somewhat hoarse. “I don’t.”

“Oh.” Horne nodded, showing no reaction, then asked immediately, “Then do you want to kiss me?”

Hels sighed, lowered his head, pursed his lips, and smiled. He found this version of Horne impossible to handle. He could only stroke Horne’s hair and say softly, “If you want to kill me, no need for excuses like that.”

If he actually kissed him, he’d probably get stabbed on the spot. Even if he survived and got out, once Horne calmed down, he wouldn’t last long.

“Horne,” Hels’s voice softened, “you’re safe.”

Horne stood straight.

Hels still held Horne’s wrist as they walked, but Horne shook him off and chose to interlace their fingers instead.

Nearly an hour in the darkness, endless silence. The tunnel was long and winding, but Hels seemed to navigate it without eyes. He knew exactly how.

Faint, icy winds occasionally blew in. The dim, damp passage was cold, echoes layering upon each other.

Horne followed. Near the exit, he suddenly returned to the earlier topic. “Hels, you really don’t want to kiss me? I’ve never kissed anyone. I want to try. Try with me.”

Hels’s voice came from ahead, low and pleasant. “Sure, but wait till you’re calm, then say it again.”

Horne scoffed. “Boring.”

Hels smiled without replying.

The old Horne had been bold and flamboyant, without scruples, fearless of consequences, always cutting straight to the heart.

The exit was above.

Horne didn’t know how long they’d walked. He felt the immense security from the tight grip of the hand leading him—the trust he lacked.

As he gradually realized things were still under control, he calmed down.

He wanted to die.

He wanted to die so badly.

Horne closed his eyes, his facial muscles tensing into a pained expression.

He didn’t know where his knife had fallen. Otherwise, he’d have stabbed himself twice right then.

With that thought, Horne shook off Hels and said coldly, “I’ll walk myself.”

Even blind, he could roughly tell the direction.

Hels chuckled soundlessly in the dark, not calling him out.

The tunnel was deep and twisting until Hels suddenly stopped. “We’re here.”

The shaft opened, and howling cold wind rushed in instantly, carrying frigid temperatures. The opening lit up faintly.

Hels climbed up the stone blocks with ease. Horne followed and leaped up.

Indigo-black night, twinkling starry sky, endless snowfield, eternal and boundless.

Horne stood slowly, feeling his heartbeat quicken to his throat. He took two steps forward and breathed deeply. It was cold; his lungs chilled.

Since waking, trapped by so many bizarre events, this was his first time leaving Loch City. Beyond the gates, it was no longer the human world.

The wind stung his face, unchanged for a century, perhaps as Earth had existed for 4.5 billion years.

Frost Plains. He was back on this snowfield.

Night winds often carried snow, blowing sideways into the distance until invisible. As a child, he liked lying by the attic window, gazing at the snowfield’s horizon—but it was always just a line of snow and night, eternal desolation, nothing more.

It was the same now.

His military boots sank into the snow. Horne turned and saw the glow behind him: distant flickering lights like a point in the starry river—Loch City, Earth’s only human city.

The crunch of footsteps in snow approached slowly. Hels’s voice sounded from behind. “Let’s go.”

Hearing that voice made his ears burn, reminding him of his crazed words. Horne wanted no interaction with Hels, didn’t want to see him. He turned his head away, pointed randomly at a spot, and said icily, “Get lost. Stay away from me.”

Colder than the eternal snow.

Hels felt wronged and retreated a meter. Helplessly, he said, “Colonel, this is really unfair. You wanted to hold hands, you wanted to kiss, so why am I the one getting told to get lost?”

Horne’s face changed. He clenched his fist and cut him off immediately. “Shut up! Don’t say another word!”

He took a deep breath, deciding not to waste time on that topic. He turned back, his cold voice urgent. “How far is this from Loch City?”

If the recon drones lost him in the Slum, would they follow this far into the snowfield? Or would they wait for him to reappear after losing the target?

Hels’s voice floated lightly. “Loch City? Which one?”

His voice faded into the ice and snow.

Horne whipped around at last, finally looking at him.