Authors: Andrew Vrana

Dreams in the Tower Part 2 (8 page)

“Battery should give you light until I get you out tomorrow,” Redding said. “Then I’ll get you in a cabin. Got it?”

“Yes, thank you.” Dellia went right in and set her bag down in a corner. Jason hesitated for a moment.

“Well,” the captain said expectantly.

“It’s your choice,” Dellia said.

Looking back towards the city, Jason saw the faint orange glow, the haze lighting up the predawn dark. The sun would rise soon and light the ashes, the broken glass,
the bodies. And the battle would go on, stamping the previous night’s remains into the foundation of the city to be lost to time’s unheeding push onward. He knew the same scene stretched all the way back, city to city, to his little abandoned apartment and beyond. Everything behind was lost; only going forward made sense anymore.

His footsteps echoed against the metal as he stepped into the container. “Let’s go,” he said. The door closed behind him, and the sound of the latch locking into place was deafening.

The plane ride so far was calm and relaxing, and that’s how Seito knew there was som
ething very wrong with him.

Since his first time on a plane—going to Kyoto for a spring family vacation—he had abs
olutely
hated
flying. They usually took the train, but his mom had gotten a great deal on plane tickets that year. The pressure buildup in his ears had pained him half the flight, and then it had taken most of the next day before his head felt normal again. And that wasn’t the worst part; something about being crammed into tiny seats for hours at a time, bumping elbows with strangers who smelled and made annoying noises and movements, was just intolerable. Then there was the feeling of air travel itself: the pressure changes, the bumps and the jolts, the deafening roar—he hated it. During his college years he had made the unbearably long trip between San Jose and Narita at least twice a year, and his hatred had grown exponentially. He loved his home city of Chiba, but flying back more than once every couple of years now wasn’t worth the maddening sardine can seating, the face-clawing frustration, the soreness in his legs from hours of holding the same position. It wasn’t worth it, because flying was shit.

But this wasn’t.

If anything, this repurposed cargo jet should be much worse than commercial air travel. It was much louder and bumpier; the three long rows of seats had been dug out of salvage and bolted into the very back of the jet, and Seito was crammed up against Steph on one side and an obese stranger on the other. The large man was snoring sloppily and apparently hadn’t showered in days judging by the odor wafting over from him. And yet…in some strange way Seito was calm and relaxed, and that’s what scared him. It would be nice to just go with it and zone out for the duration of the flight, but his world wasn’t that easy anymore.

There was a moan and a rustle as Steph shifted in her sleep—no, not in her sleep, in wha
tever
this
was, the state she was in all day and night. Placing a shadowy hand on her arm, he leaned over and looked out of the window—and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing clear. They were over the Pacific Ocean in the middle of the night, but he was almost certain those were lights down below. Lots of lights. Could they already be over Japan?

No, there was no city, because there was no window at the back of a cargo jet.

So tired
, he thought. Two straight nights without sleep had caused the hallucination: that had to be what had happened. The lightless wall grinned back at him and mocked him for his stupidity. Hallucinations…
Baka
. So dumb. But what if it was not a sleep-deprived brain’s delusion? Maybe it was…

“You know where they’re dropping us?” The obese man had awoken at some point and was spilling his gut over the armrest towards Seito.

“North Honshu, somewhere,” Seito said, glad for the distraction. “Away from the major cities towards the south.”

“Honshu?”

“Japan’s biggest island. Where Tokyo is.”

“Will I be able to get to Tokyo?”

“Yeah,” Seito said, though he couldn’t understand why the man would want to go there. All these people here were on this plane, stowed away in a modified cargo hold, because Silte and Guardian and probably one or more of the various Anti-Corp offshoots wanted them incarcerated or dead. Seito wanted nothing more than to go to his parents’ house in Chiba, but even outside the US big cities were dangerous for the likes of him and Steph. They and anyone else aboard who was smart would hide out in the mountains or the rural areas. It seemed this guy wasn’t smart. “You can go by train,” he told the man.

“Nice,” the fat man said. “I always wanted to go there. You know, being on the run is going to be a lot like being on vacation.”

“Yeah, enjoy it while you can.” But the man had already rolled over and resumed his napping position, thankfully with his face pointed away from Seito now.

Opening his mouth wide, Seito sighed—not yawned, sighed.
Yareyare.
Why can’t I just fall asleep already?
It was so strange how he wasn’t tired in the least bit. And he wasn’t anxious either; complacency filled his mind and pushed everything else out. Half a dozen organizations had his name on the kind of list he had spent his whole life trying to stay off of, and just a few hours from now he’d be living a life free from everything worth living for…except Steph. He had her—or rather she had him, and he wouldn’t have gone nearly this far if she hadn’t needed him. Was she worth it, though, living a rat’s life?

“Of course I’m worth it,
Sei.”

“Stephanie?” No. It couldn’t have been her. She was sick. He was…

“You look like shit, Sei,” Steph was giving him the same look she often gave him when they were holding each other after sex, sometimes with him still inside her. “You should get some sleep.” This time he saw her mouth move to speak the words. Her sea-green eyes smiled at him; her hair, oily and matted from weeks without a proper wash, was mussed and wild against the headrest. The rest of her face was a blur and her skin shone with millions of tiny glowing speckles of every color.

“You’re not awake,” Seito said.

“No, and you’re not in japan.” Her voice came through a curtain of fuzz. “But look,” she said stretching a vague arm toward the front of the plane. Seito looked and saw the cherry blossoms blooming, pink and white and poetic, over some timeworn bridge in Kyoto. Beyond was the busy street in Chiba he had walked down on his way home from school every day. Somehow a fold in space had negated the miles between the two places and juxtaposed them here, on this hulking cargo plane over the Pacific Ocean.

Out of the veil, Steph called, “Go there. It’s where you want to be.”

Without moving his legs, without getting up, Seito went home.