Chapter 4: Home
The train was a silver artery pulsing through the city’s underbelly. Saku found a sliver of space near the doors, the press of uniformed bodies a familiar, cramped warmth. Through the grimy composite window, the segmented city flashed by: a blur of sterile residential blocks, then the sudden, jarring sight of a Quarantine Buffer—a hundred-foot-tall wall of flickering holograms and rusted physical barricades, plastered with cheerful, peeling posters that read RECLAMATION IN PROGRESS!BE PATIENT, CITIZENS! Beyond it, the distorted skyline of a Deadzone swam in a heat-haze mirage, geometry all wrong, like a broken transmission.
He pushed his headphones into his ears, a primitive but reliable barrier. The soaring, synthesised opening of Kanye’s Wonder filled his skull, a private anthem for a nascent hero. He’d discovered it in an archive labelled ‘Pre-Collapse Morale Music,’ and it felt… correct. As a VTOL shrieked past the window, its downwash rattling the train, Saku’s inner monologue of tactical scenarios dissolved into the music.
His head gave an involuntary nod.His fingers tapped a staccato rhythm against his thigh. The beat climbed, insistent, and without realizing it, his lips moved. A low, tuneless whisper at first, just the vibration in his throat.Then, as the chorus swelled, his eyes slid shut. The outside world vanished, replaced by a vision of piloting a Mark IV Exosuit, weaving through crystalline shard-storms, a symphony of destruction and purpose. His voice escaped, a half-broken, earnest drone against the rumble of the train. “I stand up and I’mma do my thang…”
A woman in a maintenance jumpsuit glanced up from her tablet, one eyebrow arched.Saku didn’t see her. He was riding the beat, his whisper gaining volume, a passionate, off-key confession to the empty air between the seats. “Walkin’ in the studio and I do my thang…”
“Kid,” muttered a man clutching a briefcase.
“And I… I wonder if you… if you remember… Decembeeeeeer…” Saku breathed the last word out, a long, shaky note of profound, misplaced feeling.He opened his eyes. Four people in his immediate vicinity were staring at him with varying degrees of pity, amusement, and annoyance.His face burned. He yanked the headphones down, the music now a tiny, embarrassing shriek from the earpads.
“Sorry,” he mumbled to no one in particular.“Signal… lag.From the Buffer. Corrupts audio streams.” He nodded once, decisively, as if confirming a technical fact, and turned rigidly towards the window, his reflection a portrait in flushed humiliation.
The train slowed, the automated voice chiming, “Academy District. Disembark with purpose.”
Saku flowed out with the crowd, his academy boots clicking on the platform’s polished floor. The air here was different—charged with anticipation and the sterile, clean smell of industrial solvent.Holographic flags of the Cleaner Corps snapped in a non-existent breeze. He was scanning for the fastest route to the sim halls when a long arm hooked around his shoulders.
“Bro,” a familiar voice rasped in his ear.“Was that a new prayer? Sounded like you were trying to seduce a malfunctioning speaker.”
Saku twisted, irritation melting into a smirk. “Wataru.You’re late.”
“I’m on time. You’re just… early for everything. It’s unsettling.” Wataru Inazuma straightened up, a good head taller than Saku, all lanky limbs and sharp elbows. His brown hair was a mess, his stubble more of a suggestion, and his uniform was already partially unbuttoned, grease smudges on the cuffs—badges of honor from some pre-dawn tinkering. “Seriously, though.You looked like you were having a moment with the overhead rail. Everything okay at home? Uncle Jun still trying to teach you to knit with hydraulic lines?”
“Home is fine.Optimal. Aunt Aoi made eggs.” Saku fell into step beside him, the brief awkwardness of the train shed like a used ticket.“And no. We ran diagnostics on neural impulse patterns. My harmonization is point-zero-three percent above the academy record.”
Wataru grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course it is.” He bumped his fist against Saku’s shoulder.“Hey, you hear about the breach this morning? ‘Light casualties.’ My cousin’s in the fourth brigade.Said they lost a whole scout squad. Got turned around in a mirage field. Shades came out of the walls.”
Saku’s stride hitched for a single step.He had heard.He had seen the report. But hearing it from Wataru made it feel… gossiped.“Tactical misstep.Probably poor zone literacy. The fourth is mostly Contractors, not legacy.” He said it without malice, a simple statement of fact. “Their pattern recognition protocols are likely outdated.”
Wataru looked at him, his playful demeanor thinning.“They’re people, Saku. Not protocols.”
“People who signed up,” Saku countered, the fire returning to his gut.“People who knew the stakes. We can’t afford sentiment.Sentiment gets you disoriented. Sentiment gets you… turned around.” He parroted Wataru’s words back, but stripped of their gravity.
They walked in silence for a few paces, the sound of their boots echoing in the vast transit hall. A holographic ad played on a loop above them: a gleaming Exosuit stood triumphant over a dissipating Shade, a heroic, filtered voice booming, YOUR SKILL.OUR TECHNOLOGY. A CLEAN TOMORROW.
Wataru sighed, the sound lost under the ad’s crescendo.He bumped his hand against Saku’s again, this time a casual, forgiving gesture. “Whatever.Just… don’t waste it, okay? All that… harmonization.” He waved a hand vaguely at Saku’s head. “Some of us are trying to get by on actual mechanical skill and charm, you know?”
Saku bumped his hand back, a smile returning. “Your charm needs recalibration.And your valve gaskets are leaking. I can smell the lubricant.”
“It’s a new cologne,” Wataru deadpanned. “Called ‘Industrial Promise.’ Now come on, top percentile. We’ve got a sim to ace and a future to secure.” He threw an arm around Saku’s shoulders again, “Alright, let go!”