The day before the race, I came back to the apartment around eight in the evening and found Eliza and Gabriela at the kitchen table, drinking Moskovian vodka with Robert, Melissa and another guy with golden hair I didn’t know. Eliza was sitting very close to him and then I realized this was Taylor, the guy from Eliza’s division she wouldn’t stop talking about. They invited me to sit down with them, and I felt there was no way I could say no.

  As soon as I sat, Taylor said, “I heard you’re racing tomorrow.”

  “You heard right. Did you also hear I’m going to win?” I responded, taking a shot to the laughs of everyone at the table.

  “Blake said you’d say that too. I do hope you win. He’s my good friend, but he’s won too many times.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I will. So, he’s a friend of yours, you say?” I thought this might be a good opportunity to get more information.

  “Yes, he’s my roommate,” Taylor said. I found that very odd, since I had learned in the past couple of days that the leadership lived in a large suite on floor 166.

  “So, he doesn’t live in the royal suite?” I asked jokingly.

  “Ha! The ‘royal suite,’ that’s a good one. No, he moved out of it as soon as he could, a couple of years back. Some issue with Katharina and Cora. Royal stupidity. By the way, Blake also said you found a location in South America where survivors might still be living.” Hmm, maybe not everyone in The Tower was as brainwashed as I thought. Unlike Victoria, he didn’t seem to have much praise for the leadership.

  I couldn’t ask more about it, though, because Gabriela interrupted with a tedious comment, trying to impress Robert. “By she found, she of course means I found. Through her suspicions, of course, but I hacked the files.”

  “Gabriela, I think everyone already knows you’re the hacker genius,” Eliza said, rolling her eyes.

  “Did you make contact?” Robert asked.

  “I did not. As soon as I beat everyone on Sunday, I’m preparing to fly down there with the ship. I’m going to clear all the debris on top and see if there’s anyone down there.” While I was finishing my last few words, I heard the door of our apartment opening. It was Marcus. I could see he was uncomfortable seeing me and Melissa at the same table. But what was he expecting? Melissa moved into my apartment on her own; I didn’t tell her to.

  I could sense that Melissa was also uncomfortable about the situation, so I said gregariously, “You can come in, it’s all good.” At that moment, though, I remembered Marcus getting closer to me the other day, and I felt awful. I would not let that happen again, I swore to myself.

  Marcus sat next to Melissa, but at least they didn’t share a kiss in front of me. “Where have you been?” Melissa asked, not in an overbearing-girlfriend tone but rather in a caring-girlfriend one.

  “I was talking to Harry,” he responded. Nobody else could tell he was a little nervous, but I knew him well enough to know he was.

  “You’ve been there a lot lately,” Eliza said. “You indeed became very good friends in those five years we were away.” I didn’t realize this myself, but Marcus and Eliza had always been very good friends, and they probably had had many conversations away from me since we had gotten back.

  “Yes, we were. Well, we are…we are good friends. Many things to talk about,” Marcus responded nervously again.

  “You went to Mars together, I heard,” Taylor said to Marcus.

  “Yes, we did. He led the whole mission to research radioactive bacteria.” Marcus sounded like he was responding out of obligation, but that he didn’t want to talk about it. I could tell he was hiding something. In the past, he used to love to talk about his research and his travels to space. Now he just wanted to get the conversation over with using as few words as possible.

  Right when I was forming a wave of conspiracy theories about the last Mars mission, our direct host Victoria knocked the door of our apartment and entered the room. “Hello, everyone!” she said, as bubbly as ever. “We’re all meeting in the terrace in a few minutes to have a party in preparation for tomorrow’s race. You all should join us; we’re expecting you.” Everyone walked out except Gabriela and Eliza, who were watching me from the door while I was glued to my chair. They knew I didn’t want to have any party, as I took my competitions very seriously.

  “Come on, Mia,” Gabriela said. “You’ve worked so hard to find this place in South America. We deserve this. Besides, Robert had to wait for the end of the world to finally look at me. And Eliza’s getting close to Taylor.” She was right; we had been working intensely in the last week, and they truly deserved to enjoy themselves a little bit. Also, at least their love lives were working out in this new Tower world. I couldn’t say no to them; they were happy for the first time in a long time, and I wanted to see them enjoying themselves. Eliza didn’t have it easy; our ship explosion had occurred under her watch, and we lost twenty-five years of our lives because of it. Gabriela lost her twin sister with the invisible radiation.

  The good news for them was that it didn’t take them too much time to recover. Love, or at least the hope of love, was curing them. I was ecstatic seeing them happy, so I went with them to the terrace level. It was mostly people in their twenties, but the leadership was there too, and at least this time they weren’t sitting up in their thrones on the stage. Katharina was with some girls on a table, and Harry and his wife Cora were talking to Blake and some other friends. This time they didn’t look like the dynasty I had imagined in my head a week ago, since they were talking to others as if they were at the same level.

  Seconds after I entered the room, I felt a lot of people turn and look at us. “Why are they looking at us?” I whispered to Eliza and Gabriela.

  “I have no idea,” Eliza responded, right before Cora approached us.

  “Ah, I finally get to welcome you personally,” she said. “You all have been hiding this whole week. I’m so happy you decided to race tomorrow, Mia. It means a lot, seeing a young lady fly again.” I remembered Cora from our old therapy sessions, but we were never friends. She was already much older than me even then, and everyone was scared of her.

  “Okay…thank you, I…guess. It’s just a race.” I responded. I felt very confused, and I felt Eliza’s elbow hitting my ribs.

  “Oh, it’s more than just a race tomorrow,” Cora continued. “Our world has changed, and we haven’t seen a lady race since Blake’s mom died. The malfunction of her hydrogen cell didn’t just cost her life.” I looked at Blake who was a few feet away, glancing at me. He hadn’t told me that part of the story. As soon as he saw I was gazing at him, he smiled. Then I looked back at Cora, who was still talking away. “After that, we simply didn’t encourage young girls to start training, and it became a men’s sport in the new world. But the leadership cannot let this happen anymore. You are our hope to get the girls back in the game. We should have the same number of girls racing as the boys, and with you we’ll have them very soon.”

  Now I was angry. I knew I should hold my tongue, but I just couldn’t. “With all due respect, Cora,” I began, “there’s a lot of things you lost in this new world of yours. But I guess there’s still no difference in politics between the old and the new world. Politicians still manipulate problems for their own political goals, like keeping power forever. Please remember this very well: I am doing this because I love to fly, not to be your mouthpiece. If there’s anything I would want to share with both the girls and boys of The Tower, it’s that respect is earned, not given.” I turned to the crowd and yelled proudly, “You want to race, girls? Start training and earn a spot. It’s not about having an equal number of boys and girls racing. It’s about having the best pilots racing.”

  It was only then that I realized that everyone was looking at me silently. I didn’t want to stay there any longer, so I quickly turned around and left for the elevator and my apartment. I thought maybe someone was calling me, but I was so involved in my thoughts I didn’t pay attention. But when the doors of the elevator started closing, I saw a silhouette slip in next to me. It was Blake. “Oh, you,” I said.

  “What did Cora say this time?” he asked. “You’re still racing, right?” I could tell he was not fond of her, based on his comment.

  “It doesn’t matter what she said,” I responded. “Just know she deserved that very much. And yes, I will race. Did you think I would ignore my opportunity to kick your ass?” I tried to be light and joking, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I was exiting the elevator when I felt Blake’s hand touching mine as I was walking out. I sensed a soft electric pulse going from my hand all the way to my chest. A romantic smile came to my face, but then reality hit me. Ever since I had woken up from cryosleep my life had been tumbling, and I wasn’t ready to add falling in love to it. As soon as I realized what this meant, I quickly left the elevator, leaving Blake in it.

  * * *

  The next day I woke up at five a.m. to do the final checks to my flycar and move it to the starting line of the race, scheduled to begin at nine. The start of the racecourse was by the old 110 freeway next to the convention center. The race was supposed to be twenty-five laps above the old freeways 101, 110 and 10, which used to delimit the old downtown decades ago. Back then the only tall buildings were built within those boundaries, but now we had even taller buildings beyond those freeways, thus the race was mostly squeezed in between these structures, and we had only the width of the highway to maneuver. For me this race would’ve been no harder than a regular training exercise during pilot school in the Space Force, but it wasn’t easy. No wonder inexperienced racers could die in this competition.

  Only nine racers were competing that day, while the rest of the spectators were on the terrace of The Tower. Our new home would have good visibility for one side of the race, and the rest would be watched through cameras they had installed throughout the freeways. Before getting in my flycar, I looked away and saw Blake a few feet away, watching me. As soon as we exchanged looks, he smiled at me. Against my will a blissful smile developed in my face.

  A sound stopped our long and deep look. It was the horn indicating that it was time to get in the flycars and elevate ourselves into the sky for the start of the race. I got in my HydroStar and quickly started the power cell engine, elevating it up in the sky as the other eight racers did. We were all next to each other, around fifty feet away from the freeway below us. I had my foot ready in the pedal, and my hands on the piloting wheel. On my right there was a large screen anchored to the top of an old building, which started a countdown from ten.

  Ten…nine... I was still thinking about Blake and his flirtatious look.

  Eight…seven... What did it mean that we would always smile at each other?

  Six…five… Why did I even care about it?

  Four...three… I started feeling a bit nervous in my chest as I saw the clock getting closer to zero. Then, Blake finally vanished my mind.

  Two…one…

  I pressed the pedal all the way down and accelerated in three seconds to 150 miles an hour. We all had a hologram in our flycars to see where we were in the loop, and we could see the distances between us. I was in first place already and Blake was second, right behind me. The other seven were struggling to chase us. I felt free, and I had adrenaline pumping all through my body. I was flying within concrete and steel structures at 180 miles per hour. It was reckless and exhilarating. I was finally home.

  CHAPTER IX

  BLAKE: A DEAD END

  After ten laps the racers were still in the same positions, and I was still on Mia’s tail. I could tell by her style of driving that she was starting to get frantic. She probably didn’t just want to win; she wanted to have a notorious win. Mia started accelerating in ten-mile increments with each lap, while I matched her velocity and kept close to her. We were at a reckless speed, 250 miles per hour in lap twenty-two. For a moment I thought about letting her win, since I didn’t know how far she would go to win this race. But I didn’t have time to reduce my velocity and let her win before seeing Mia’s flycar do the exact same. I didn’t understand if there was something wrong with her car or if she was just giving up. I quickly passed her, but I could feel something was wrong with her flycar, as it was acting similarly to when my mother died all these years ago. Fear consumed my body when. This had to be a failure of the hydrogen cell.

  I reduced velocity and turned around as fast as I could. It all happened so fast that all I saw was Mia’s HydroStar crashing into the corner of a glass building on my right. There was no way for anyone to survive a crash like that. But I quickly looked up in the sky and I saw Mia swinging down in a half-opened parachute. She had been able to eject herself from the car, but the parachute had a similar malfunction to my mother’s all those years ago. Fortunately, Mia’s parachute finally opened a little more on the right side and slowed her descent.

  I was going at full velocity in the opposite direction of the race. If any of the other racers got to this area, they could hit either me or Mia. The only way for me to save her was to grab her parachute in the sky with my flycar. I flew towards the swinging half-opened parachute and let it fall on top of my car, so that the parachute would hang from my HydroStar. My flycar started to swing side to side due to the unbalanced loads. I slowly started descending to the concrete highway to let Mia gently drop on the ground.

  Unfortunately, my idea sounded better in my head than in the execution. We were twenty feet up in the sky and my flying car was swaying like a boat. With my own weight I tried to balance Mia’s weight, until she was close enough to the concrete pavement that I could break the rope with my dark matter pocket gun and let her fall. Dark matter guns were not even common in the old world—there were only a hundred in the US before the end of the old world—so mine in the new world was almost unheard of. I didn’t wear it all the same, just when racing, exactly for emergencies like this. The guns are very effective at melting, breaking or destroying any material on Earth and quickly, as soon as antimatter gets in contact with the matter.

  After I cut the ropes, Mia’s body fell to the ground a couple feet below her. She wasn’t moving, and I didn’t know if she had just fainted or if all my efforts had been in vain and she had been killed just like my mother. I quickly lowered my flycar to the highway and jumped out as soon as I landed on the ground. I touched her neck to get a pulse. She still had one and there was still time to save her. I took the parachute off her shoulders and carried her to my flycar, pulling up from the highway quickly to get going as fast as I could to the medical center in The Tower. Mia was asleep next to me. Her long brown hair was all over her face, and her freckles illuminated her pale skin. Even if she was hiding her blue sparkly eyes, she was just as beautiful as when I met her.

  CHAPTER X

  MIA: RUNNING AWAY

  I opened my eyes. I didn’t recognize the room I was in, but I assumed it was the medical center of the Tower. The last thing I remembered happening was my HydroStar holocom going blank, and me needing to eject from the flycar. Nothing in my body hurt, which meant I was under a cocktail of medication, since from that ejection I should have at least one broken rib. I was laying on a medical bed and Eliza was on a chair next me, resting her face on my arm, completely asleep. I moved my hand to try to wake her up. She opened her eyes slowly and looked at me surprised. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay. What happened to my car? Why did I fall? How am I even here? How long have I been asleep? How many ribs do I have broken?” Eliza explained to me the whole story. The ejection had broken two of my ribs as I expected, but the most interesting part was that my parachute hadn’t opened correctly. If it weren’t for Blake, I wouldn’t be alive.

  “You were lucky I was there to save you,” Blake said from across the room. He was standing by the door. I stared at him for a long time. Long enough to not see Eliza leave the hospital room.

  “Thank you for saving me,” I responded while he walked towards me and sat down on the same chair Eliza had been sitting on. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to finish. I still would have won…but you know, I have to say, you’re a decent pilot.”

  “Whoa,” Blake said. “Who knew that all I had to do to get you to start being nice to me was save you from sudden death?” We both laughed.

  “Did your mom teach you?”

  “A bit, but actually it was mostly her boyfriend. He was also a Space Force pilot, Ernest White.” He paused for a minute while he squeezed my hand. “I was worried when I saw the parachute not opening up. I felt it was like my mother’s accident all over again. But anyway, you should rest. We can keep talking later.” He tucked my hair behind my ear and gave me a kiss in my cheek. I couldn’t contain my smile. He looked at me again and gave me a blissful smile back and left.

  When he was about to leave, I asked him, “I have a weird question I wanted to ask you yesterday. Why did you move out from your uncle’s?”

  “That is a weird question. But if you really want to know, I moved out because crazy Katharina is obsessed with the idea that I needed to marry to continue leading The Tower. I was annoyed. I didn’t want to do it, so I left. But anyways, you need to rest.” He fixed my hair behind my ear and gave me a kiss in my cheek. I couldn’t contain my smile. He looked at me again and gave me a blissful smile back and left. That comment just confirmed to me that Blake was not consumed by power, and would not take extreme actions to remain in power.

  Then, a terrifying thought came to my mind; I knew that someone may have tried to kill me because I was saying too much. It was also too much of a coincidence that I almost died the same way Blake’s mother did. This made me realize I was not being irrational after all, and that all my conspiracy theories might just be right. I made a note to ask Gabriela to check all the cameras to see if there was any indication this was done on purpose.

  Meanwhile, I pulled out my holoscreen and began checking the files that Sydney had isolated as relevant, from all the files we took from The Hills. AIs are intelligent, but they’re no humans. Sydney had selected around 150 recordings and documents that were suspicious, relating to the invisible radiation. I spent the next twelve hours vacillating between sleep, talking to visitors, and trying to go through all the data.

 

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