Chapter 92

Horne tightly pursed his lips, frowned, and turned his head away, refusing to look at Hels. He only said sullenly, “No, that was just something to say to fend off the recon drone.”

The recon drone had been outside for a long time already, but it wasn’t smart enough. It didn’t realize that although the people in the ward couldn’t see it directly, they could spot its flashing red light through the refraction in the glass.

“Then what are your true feelings?” Hels pressed.

Horne didn’t want to speak, but the other’s gaze kept burning into him, forcing his eyes to shift positions constantly. In the end, he gave up struggling and said softly, “My true feelings…”

“Hm?”

“My true feelings…”

He didn’t know how to express it, nor what would happen if he did. Horne took a deep breath, his throat bobbing. A moment later, his voice was extremely soft, as if afraid even of himself hearing it: “I want to live.”

His words paused for an instant. He closed his eyes briefly, and trembling syllables slipped out: “I want… to see you.”

The movements of his hands came to an abrupt halt, and his breathing stopped too. When Horne came back to his senses and turned his head, he saw Hels holding his hand against his chest. The man had tilted his head back, his face piled full of smiles, grinning without any restraint, utterly disregarding Horne’s feelings.

Horne immediately withdrew his hand coldly and pointed at the door in the same motion. The meaning was very clear: Get out.

“No, don’t be angry. I apologize.” Hels said with a smile, his mouth corners lifted so high they almost wouldn’t come down. He was laughing a bit too much. He coughed a few times, then returned to his previous lazy, indifferent posture, propping himself against the edge of the bed. “Can I hug you?”

“No.” Horne refused swiftly.

Hels immediately put on a troubled expression. “Then what should I do? You’re not the colonel anymore. I don’t have to obey your orders.”

“You can try.” Horne glared at him, the threat in his eyes blatant.

“Then we’ll talk about it next time.” Hels decided not to risk it for now and smartly changed the subject. “So, you’ve remembered everything?”

You just had to bring up the one thing he didn’t want to talk about. Horne thought for a long time before spitting out two words: “No.”

Hels didn’t call him out on it and just smiled. “Good.”

That smile put Horne at ease—it was the thing he’d missed most back when he’d been sentenced to death. But he didn’t want to show it, or Hels would definitely push his luck. This wasn’t the ten-year-old kid anymore, nor the eighteen-year-old youth.

The words had been for the recon drone’s benefit, but the facts remained facts. The sky outside was gray, and the children’s smiling faces were fake.

Judgment would descend upon humanity, ending their pride and arrogance.

Debating the rights and wrongs of past decisions was futile now. All they could do was rescue Ains first, then fight for that slim chance at humanity’s future.

When Horne told Hels about this, Hels listened seriously before asking, “But the underground base is gone, the particle collider is gone, the high-energy particles are gone. Even if we rescue Ains, crack the recon drone’s central brain, and find the location of the Fate Community, we still won’t be able to stop anything. Going to the Tower now would maximize our losses. Are you still going?”

This wasn’t about stopping something—it was that the girl didn’t have to suffer like this. Horne didn’t answer whether he’d go or not and instead counterasked, “Are you coming with me?”

Hels was silent for two seconds before saying softly, “If you need me to.”

Horne’s body, freshly awakened, couldn’t handle much activity yet. He wanted to go walk around Loch City, even though the nurses didn’t recommend it. After lying there another day, Hels brought a wheelchair, its wheels quietly crunching over the crushed stones on the road.

The city stretched on endlessly. Pedestrians hurried by with heads down, afraid even of being glanced at by strangers.

“After the people of Loch City learned there might be things outside, some wanted to kill the guards and run.” Hels pushed the wheelchair, walking at an unhurried pace down the main street. Horne sat relaxed, his gaze slowly sweeping over the sides of the street.

There were far too few people, like the whole city had fallen into decay after a lockdown. Shops were open here and there, but half remained tightly shuttered. The open ones seemed to harbor abysses—black and empty.

“And then?” Horne asked.

Hels gave a helpless laugh. “Then the Aliens killed them, unless they ran fast… or recognized their mistake quickly.”

“Recognized their mistake?”

The Aliens considered themselves merciful. Children who erred could always be forgiven, so as long as people admitted their confusion and impulsiveness, the Aliens would provide a satisfactory way out.

An automated bus drove by on the street side. It stopped, and several panicked students jumped off.

“We’re late!” They rushed toward one end of the street.

The school was enclosed in a plot of land, with no iron fences—only fully transparent glass separating it from the street. Even passersby could see everything happening inside completely.

“Humanity once descended into chaos: lost creation, rampant information, frequent wars. We lost our way and hurt each other.”

“The past was disorderly. We must hold a critical view of it, but now we no longer need to cling to obsessions about the past. We only need to remember that history begins with civilization.”

The school grounds were lush and green, their saturation so high it seemed like the gray sky was the false part stitched on. The students stood together, listening intently to the speaker on stage.

“The answers are given without need for thought; problems are solved without being raised. Freedom is not whim—it is obedience; thought is not doubt—it is acceptance.”

A recon drone hovered above the school. Hels looked up at it and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

They passed out of the school’s range, and the speech voice grew fainter behind them.

“The speech is well-written.”

It wasn’t anything particularly laughable. Horne recalled the schools in Loch City from his childhood. By then, few people sent their kids there anymore. What they heard most was priests’ prayers or individual lessons from their parents.

They walked empty streets, passed gray dirt paths, and went by a group of street vagrants. These were people he’d never seen before, and they didn’t look like long-term wanderers.

“That night a month ago, during the riots, the Aliens clashed with humans. They destroyed some houses, and these people are still homeless. The Tower hasn’t dealt with them.” Hels explained to him.

They were just passing by, but the vagrants’ gazes stabbed into Horne like needles. He kept his head down, avoiding their eyes.

The amusement park facilities were piled with a layer of dust. There were no crowds of kids playing like on TV—just a swing swaying in the settled dust.

Horne had never wondered what a civilization and race thought about in the months or days before total extinction. For him, even surviving in a crumbling era, he’d always found ways to resist. But when the enemy grew too powerful to fight back…

The wheelchair stopped in front of a massive building. Marble piled into an edifice topped with a cross, its bronze archway tightly shut below, floral, fruit, and animal motifs carved into the surface. In the instant a gap opened, chants emerged—dense and prayerful.

Thick fog rolled, climbing over the church’s rose windows. They stood in the back row, silently waiting.

Hels kept coughing, his face never improving. Horne asked softly, “How long has it been like this for you?”

“Just this recent period. It’s nothing.” Hels explained it might be aftereffects from the low-temperature hibernation pod. He’d had it before, plus injuries from the snowfield. It would get better on its own in time.

Horne nodded lightly.

At the front of the church was the altar: stone-carved idols, mottled murals, burning candles. Humanity had started in ignorance, fervently worshiping religion, then turned to science. But at the end of wisdom, they returned to religion. It seemed there was no other way.

“I’m not reconciled.” Horne said. His voice was very small, almost swallowed by the vast church space and the people’s obsessive prayers.

For an instant, he wished he truly hadn’t woken up.

“Not reconciled to what?”

Horne lowered his eyes, his peripheral vision catching only knees on the kneeler. The more powerless to change things, the more devout people became.

“I don’t want it to end like this.”

But as Hels had said, decades of struggle were destroyed in an instant. His personal persistence couldn’t shake anything.

Hels smiled faintly. He leaned down, arms draped over the wheelchair’s backrest, and said softly, “The path of seeking truth has always been arduous. War is cruel—it makes people lose so much, more than you can imagine. It shatters all your cognitions, reveals truths you refuse to believe, and forces you out of your dreams. The process is extremely painful.”

“I know.” Horne closed his eyes. “I’ve been through war, loss, and waking from dreams. That’s nothing.”

He could be broken, but not broken without doing anything first—that was true torment.

Hels understood and nodded. “I just want to know how much you’re willing to give up for this.”

Give up?

“You’re asking what I’ll choose?”

“I’m asking about your resolve.”

Hels spoke casually, but Horne sensed the extra weight in his words. He looked up immediately, his voice tightening. “What are you trying to say?”

Hels straightened lazily, gazing at the hundred people praying. His voice echoed amid their ceaseless prayers.

“I mean that humans are extremely intelligent creatures. The Aliens learned humanity’s cleverness, but cleverness is actually a rather inferior trait.”

Horne didn’t quite understand. He held his breath instinctively, staring into Hels’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

Hels said gently, “Let me take you somewhere.”

Horne’s wounds healed quickly. The bone reset device on his body was almost fully removed. From waking to moving freely took only a week, and during that week, Hels hardly left his side.

Loch City’s gray sky finally cleared a bit. The ashes by the trash bins below had been cleaned up, leaving no trace of past burning.

There were more recon drones in the air than a month ago, but as the human rebellion threat eased, the resources they deployed gradually decreased.

The place Hels took Horne was the holographic game room in the Red Light District—that black hall.

It was still eerily quiet, lit only by ground light strips. Horne groped his way to an empty game pod. Its transparent glass was open, and he sat on the edge.

Quite a few people were gambling in the holographic game, betting on Hels’s wish. Looking around, half the pods held people lying inside, eyes tightly shut, green gas swirling around them. Everyone’s expression was serene.

Hels came to Horne’s side and gestured for him to lie down. Horne did.

“Going into the holographic map?” Horne asked, his trailing tone immediately absorbed by the hall’s soundproofing cotton.

Hels leaned over, his fingertip brushing Horne’s ear skin, then trailing to the spot behind his temple—that was the motion to directly access Horne’s personal terminal. He asked softly, “Do you want to go?”

“You’re the one who said you’d take me somewhere.” Horne didn’t resist or ask why, letting the other take control of his Resident Chip’s scheduling rights.

“Mm.” Hels withdrew his hand and propped himself up slightly. He asked in a low voice, “Then do you mind if we share a game pod?”

Horne was stunned for a moment.

Game pods weren’t designed for two people. After Hels got in, it became extremely cramped and narrow. They could only lie on their sides, skin against skin, warmth slowly spreading.

The transparent glass closed, sealing them completely inside. In an instant, all senses amplified: breathing, heartbeat. Hels chuckled lightly and whispered by his ear, “Colonel, why’s your heart beating faster all of a sudden?”

He heard it clearly—not just heard it, but felt it clearly in his chest too.

It took Horne half a day to grind out a few words: “Not mine.” His tone was cold and curt, as if it were true.

“Oh, then it must be mine.” His smile deepened.

Green gas began to fill the pod. A few seconds later, Horne sensed something wrong.

He didn’t feel drowsy like under anesthesia. Instead, Hels’s voice grew clearer and clearer: “I remember you asked me here before about the double masks.”

“Mm.”

“The place you’re lying on now is a double-layer composite gel pad.” Hels spoke extremely slowly and softly, almost right by Horne’s ear, like a whisper. Whenever he spoke, his breath swept over the earlobe—very ticklish. Horne gripped his clothes, not letting any unnatural reaction show.

“It’s uniformly sealed with gallium-indium-tin alloy throughout. The entire underground of the Red Light District uses this material, especially the holographic game rooms. One, to enhance immersive neural connections. Two, to form segmented signal interference layers, blocking signals and also isolating recon drone scans.”

The green gas grew thicker and thicker, but Horne still didn’t feel dizzy. He only sensed Hels’s breathing.

“The Aliens suspect that humans are privately building an underground base. They detected my Resident Chip’s location outside the city, so their guesses and attacks were all correct.”

Hearing this, Horne slightly raised his head. He hadn’t told Hels about the Resident Chip’s location being exposed. That had been Ais’s grip on Hels after capturing him.

So Hels had known all along.

Immediately, Horne reacted: “You did that on purpose?”

As he spoke, the green gas completely enveloped the entire cabin. The spot where he lay began to vibrate intensely, accompanied by a slight sense of weightlessness.

Horne’s heart suddenly pounded fiercely, even harder than before, and his fingertips went numb.

A minute later, the person pressed close to him pulled away. Horne immediately reached out and slid his hands to both sides, but he didn’t touch any boundaries. It was as if he had arrived in an endless space out of thin air.

“Hels?” Horne called out.

“Here.” Hels responded softly. “You can sit up now.”

He was still nearby, just a bit farther away than before—about the distance of one person between them.

Horne slowly sat up straight. Halfway through, he even raised his hand and swiped through the air twice. There was no transparent glass above anymore, only empty darkness and the sound of wind rushing into his lungs.

They were falling, plummeting down from that game pod. They hadn’t even realized from which second it had started—they had already silently left the cabin, left the game hall, left the Red Light District.

Recent events flashed through Horne’s mind. He gazed at the pure blackness and lightly touched his lips, murmuring: “So that time when I returned to the game room and couldn’t find you…”

So that was how it was.

Hels’s voice was still beside him, carrying a trace of long-lost hope: “Horne, welcome to the Thunder Pavilion.”