Chapter 25: Top
The heavy facility door sighed shut behind him, cutting off the hum of fluorescents and the smell of antiseptic. Outside, the air was a slap of wet concrete and distant ozone. A fine, cold rain misted down from a bruised sky the color of faded ink, catching the light of buzzing neon signs that lined the perimeter fence: ads for protein paste and radiation screenings.
His aunt’s car was an old, boxy electric sedan, its mustard-yellow paint streaked with grime and patched with matte gray primer. It waited at the curb like a tired animal. The passenger window was down, and Aoi’s face, round and lined with warmth, was already there, her eyes wide with a concern that made his skin prickle.
“Ren! Over here, sweetheart!”
He trudged toward the car, the unfamiliar weight of the pilot’s jacket feeling like a leaden cape. The too-long sleeves flopped over his hands. He stuffed them into the pockets, his fingers finding a folded piece of paper and a single, smooth pebble—his father’s quiet detritus. He left them there.
He opened the rear door and slid onto the cracked vinyl seat. The interior smelled of old rain, Aoi’s lavender hand cream, and the faint, metallic edge of Kaito’s medication.
“Oh, let me look at you,” Aoi said, twisting in the front passenger seat. Her hands fluttered, wanting to touch his bruised cheek, the jacket’s oversized shoulder. “That woman, that captain… she didn’t hurt you, did she? When they called, I thought my heart would stop.”
“I’m fine, Auntie.”
“Fine? You’re wearing his jacket.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the garment itself demanded reverence. “They’re really making you do it?”
From the driver’s seat, a low, rough chuckle. Kaito. His uncle’s broad hands, scarred and knotted, rested on the steering wheel. He didn’t turn around. The rearview mirror captured his eyes—dark, intelligent, set in a nest of scars that pulled at the corner of his mouth into a permanent half-smile. “Of course they are, Aoi. The paperwork’s probably already dried. ‘For the security of the sector.’ ‘In lieu of viable family successor.’ Pragmatic. Heartless. Standard procedure.” He put the car in gear, the electric motor whining softly as they pulled away from the curb. “How’s your father?”
The question was direct, unflinching. It was how Kaito had always been.
“The same,” Ren said, watching the detention facility shrink in the rain-smeared window. “They have him in a medical coma. To stabilize the neural shock, they said.”
Aoi made a small, pained sound. Kaito merely nodded, his eyes on the wet road ahead.
They drove in silence for a few blocks, leaving the stark administrative zone for the cramped, neon-cluttered streets of the residential sectors. Buildings crowded in, their façades a jigsaw of original concrete and hasty repair-work, plastered with peeling propaganda posters urging vigilance against “Spectral Infiltration.” People moved in hunched clusters under makeshift awnings, their faces drawn under the sickly glow.
“It’s too big for you,” Kaito observed, his voice cutting through the patter of rain on the roof.
Ren looked down at the jacket. “I know.”
“He was a big man. Not just in stature. In here.” Kaito tapped his own temple with a thick finger. “And here.” He moved his hand to his chest, then let it fall back to the wheel. “The jacket’s the least of it. The Otowa’s interface… it doesn’t care about your bloodline. It’ll eat you alive if you’re not ready.”
“Kaito!” Aoi admonished, swatting his shoulder lightly. “Don’t frighten him more.”
“He should be frightened,” Kaito said, not unkindly. “A healthy fear keeps your synapses firing. Prevents you from getting vaporized because you were daydreaming about glory.” He glanced at Ren in the mirror again. “Yui will drill protocol, tactics, physical conditioning. She’ll make you a soldier. But she can’t teach you how to listen to the machine. That… I can maybe still do.”
Ren met his uncle’s gaze in the reflection. The man who had been the “Flying Star,” whose posters Ren had secretly torn out of old magazines and hidden under his bed. The man who now needed a cane to walk from the car to the house.
“Why?” Ren asked, the word coming out harsher than he intended. “You never wanted me near this.”
Kaito was quiet for a long moment, navigating the car through a tight alley where rainwater swirled in oily rainbows. “I didn’t,” he admitted. “I saw what it did to my brother. The distance it put in his eyes. The silence it left in his house. I wanted better for you. Something quiet. Something whole.” He sighed, a sound of old pain. “But choice is a luxury this city rationed out a long time ago. You’re in it now. So, if you’re going to do it, you’d better not embarrass the family name by dying in the first five minutes. Understood?”
It wasn’t comfort. It was a pact.
“Understood,” Ren said.
“Good.” Kaito nodded, satisfied. “Tomorrow, after your orientation with the ice queen, you come to the workshop. We start with the simulators. Old, decommissioned ones. They’ll make you feel like your brain is being spun in a centrifuge. You’ll puke. Then we’ll do it again.”
Aoi shook her head, a sad smile on her face. “My two pilots. All talk of vomit and vaporization.” She reached back, her hand finding Ren’s knee and giving it a firm, affectionate squeeze. “We’ll have a good dinner tonight. Your favorite. Protein loaf with the synthetic parsley flakes.”
The mundane offer, so quintessentially Aoi, almost undid him. The domestic normalcy she clung to was a tiny, fragile lifeboat in the raging sea he’d just been thrown into.
The rest of the ride passed in a blur of neon streaks and the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers. The rain fell harder, sheeting down the windows, turning the outside world into a liquid painting of sorrowful light and deep, moving shadows.
Ren leaned his forehead against the cool glass. His own ghostly reflection stared back, superimposed over the flowing distortions of the city. The brilliant white of the jacket was a stark, accusing slash across the image. His father’s jacket. His uncle’s legacy. The city’s desperate hope. A cage tailored for a giant, now holding a nervous boy.
He felt the pebble in the pocket, rolled it between his fingers. He thought of his father’s still face. Of Captain Yui’s implacable eyes. Of the monstrous, shifting black shapes he’d only ever seen on scrambled news feeds. The weight was immense, a geological pressure settling into his bones.
The car turned onto their street, a narrow lane of row houses with reinforced shutters. A single, faulty streetlight flickered overhead, strobing across the rain-slicked pavement.
Kaito brought the car to a silent halt outside their door. “0600,” he grunted. “Don’t be late. And, Ren?”
Ren looked up.
“For what it’s worth,” his uncle said, not turning around, his voice unusually soft, “he’d be proud of you for stepping up. Even if he was too damn stubborn to ever say it.”
Ren didn’t know what to say. He just nodded, the motion felt by no one.
He got out of the car. The rain chilled his face, mingling with the heat threatening behind his eyes. He didn’t run for the door. He stood for a moment in the downpour, letting the water soak into the worn leather of the sleeves, darkening the brilliant white to a heavy, subdued gray. He stared up past the flickering light, past the rain, into the unseen, cloud-choked sky where the deadzone waited.
Inside the house, there would be dinner, and Aoi’s fussing, and the familiar, safe clutter of a life that was no longer his.
Outside, in the weeping dark, the jacket finally began to feel like his own. Not because it fit. But because it was his to carry.
(author note/recap: Deadzone event in Academy, Ren unknowningly managed to use a exo suit and save people)