Chapter 9: Chapter 9 – Over the Rooftops (1)

"Shit," Aki breathed into her ear in his deep voice. As her body reacted, giving her goosebumps in the most impossible places, Wave guessed that he must have felt quite the same when she jumped. What he must have felt when he still had a body, at least.

She ran across the roof, set to leap, pushed herself off the edge with all her strength and sailed over the people below her, arms outstretched. The wind tugged at her body, but only enough to cause a tingling feeling of bliss to spread through her stomach. A boy looked up at the sky, tugged at his mother’s jacket, and pointed upward in awe. Wave almost felt sorry for him, because his mother would think he was crazy. She had already disappeared from his sight, landed on the nearest roof, rolled off and came to a skidding halt in a half-kneeling position.

Wave threw her head back and looked over her shoulder. She estimated the distance between herself and the building she had jumped from and whistled in admiration. "That’s a great gift, Ember."

"Yeah, pretty great, you only left it in the closet for five years to notice that."

"The alternative would have been for you to come visit me in prison every other day and get me out for climbing on something that I’m not supposed to climb on."

Wave looked out over the city, over the deep canyons that made their way between the building complexes up to the next city ring. Concrete blocks, stretching to the horizon. She turned her gaze yearningly toward the Citadel, which broke through the black-gray billowing clouds in the distance. She wondered what storm clouds might look like from above, and how far she could see from there on a clear day. All the way to the ocean, perhaps?

The ocean. Memories came up. Good memories. How she sat on her father’s shoulders and chuckled, messing up his thick, red strands, defying his protests. They climbed a hill and from a distance a smell snuck into her nose, salty and foreign. Then they reached the hilltop and there it was, the ocean. Blue, beautiful and endless. She looked at the waves breaking on the shore below them and whooped with joy. Beside her, her mother stepped into the picture of her memory, smiling and pointing ...

"Wave, stop dreaming!", Ember interrupted her trip down memory lane. "We don't know if we lost them yet."

"They certainly didn’t climb after me, and there are no hover cars allowed up here. Unless they’re in cahoots with the Secs, as this conspiracy article claims, they can’t get up here."

"And if they can? I know you’re kind of high right now, with all the climbing and jumping, but you’re not safe up there. I have a better idea than hiding on the roof."

"A better idea? Uh, I’m shaking."

"Ha ha. How about you come to my place? I mean, where would you be safer than in a Sec’s apartment?"

"Out of town, maybe?" Wave couldn’t help grinning, even if Ember couldn’t see it.

"Surrounded by savages, sure you’d feel comfortable there." Now it was up to Wave not to see Ember certainly sticking her tongue out at her. Of course, she could add the video feed, but Wave wanted to see where she was landing when she jumped. "All right, I’m coming to you. Is school over for the day?"

"If my best friend is being chased by weird guys I'll have to rush to her rescue. School has no say in the matter."

"You’re the best." Wave hoped Ember didn’t eventually hit a wall with that attitude. She had at least to follow rules in the Security Corps, or she wouldn’t last long. "I’m going to call it a day so I can fly over the city streets undisturbed."

"Have fun and don’t get caught. See you later."

With that she was gone and Wave looked at the next gap to cross. The synth suit boosted her jump distance by three, maybe four meters and caught some of the energy of the impact. It would send the energy to wherever the raw materials came, that were used to build everything in the city. Supposedly another dimension, timeline or whatever. Her parents had explained that to her once, in a moment when they weren’t silent about their past. Secrets, so many secrets. It was time to reveal one for once. "Aki, are you there?"

"Yes, Wave. Are you done jumping from house to house? My stomach hurts every time you jump."

"Do you really feel that?"

"I ... I think so."

Wave wondered how any of this was possible. She didn’t assume he was making it up. For these men to break into her apartment to take her hearing aid, that just screamed that there was something fishy going on. Ember had a good sense for these things, and Wave was glad she was on the line when the doorbell rang.

"Do you know who these men are?" she asked him.

"No."

"Then why did you tell me to run?"

"I don’t know who they are. I just ... wait a minute ... they came for me. I’ve seen them before. Somewhere ..."

"You’re not exactly the best help in solving your own death." Wave frowned and looked around, trying to get a sense of where she was, but everything looked the same from up here. Only the Citadel stood out.

"I’m sorry, Wave. These memories come ... when ... hmm. You know, at first everything was dark, I didn’t see anything. Then there was this music playing and I just knew, hey, that’s my music after all."

Wave turned on the navigation, which showed her where Ember’s apartment was with a little green arrow at the edge of her field of vision. Then she stepped to the edge of the roof to gauge the distance to the nearest apartment complex.

Aki cleared his throat. "And when I see you looking down like that, I know it’s not a good idea to jump over there."

"Are you really afraid of heights?"

"I’d call it respect. Maybe ... maybe it’s because I died from a fall."

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"Yeah, that kind of makes sense to me, even if I don’t really relate to the concept of a fear of heights." She frowned. "Do all the things I look at actually bring back memories? I mean, once I walk across the city, does it all gradually come back to you?" Wave didn’t wait for the answer, took a running start and sailed over to the next rooftop.

"Whew!" made Aki. "If it’s getting wet in your ear, it’s because I’ve wet my pants right now .... God, that was a bad one, wasn’t it?"

She had to grin. "I’ve done worse jokes." He was scared and tried to downplay it with humor. It was something she knew from the settlers she’d escorted through the jungle. On him, however, it just seemed foreign and wrong. But if she was honest, what had she expected? Aki was only human, he couldn’t always be the perfect and confident radio host she had come to know from afar, could he?

"As for your question, no not everything brings back memories. I think ... hmm ... I only believe things that particularly move me. My work, which I obviously loved. My death, which traumatized me ..."

"... and me? Where do I fit in? Hold on, wait with the answer."

The next building was taller. That meant she would bounce into the wall and not be able to dissipate the force of the impact with a roll. Not the best idea. Jumping into an open window? Sounded cool and would look good in a movie, but she knew better than to try it. She’d just collided with a desk, so she didn’t want to mess with a building wall, too.

"Hey, Wave, what are you doing? We’re supposed to go that way."

"Too high, I’m taking a detour."

A pause arose until Aki cursed softly. "Even more jumping?"

"Sorry," she replied softly.

"Can’t we just climb down and keep walking on the ground?"

Yes, they could, but it was less fun. And there was another reason she was up here. "Do you notice anything when you look up at the rooftops?"

"They’re high off the ground?" Aki laughed. The humor of a doomed man.

"They’re gray, without distractions. No one thought of putting advertisments on them. They’ve just been forgotten."

"You’re right, I’m noticing that now, too."

"So," Wave shook her arms and legs, "why me? You care about the Arena, sure. But even if we’re at the top of our league, we’re no professionals, not one of the top teams." Then she ran off.

"I ... I’ll be honest with you. I’ve always been ... always been a fan of your parents."

That hit her like a truck, and by a hair Wave had missed to jump. This jump would still be off. The angle didn’t fit and she didn’t land properly on the other side. She stumbled instead of running and fell. Clumsily, she rolled over her left shoulder, then rolled over her side a few more times until she finally came to rest facing the sky. "Brontoscheiße, damn it!" she cursed.

"Whoa, what was that?"

"That was your fault! Fan of my parents? How did you think I was going to react? You know what they did. Everyone knows!"

"They saved the city?"

"What?" Then it dawned on her. Aki had to be mistaking her for someone else. There had to be another person somewhere down there in the city who had her name and maybe looked similar to her. With heroes for parents and not ones who slaughtered innocent people for revenge.

"I remember ... remember seeing them as a kid. They were celebrated for something ..."

As a child? "How old are you, Aki?"

"Older than you, that much is clear ... but other than that ..."

"Other than that, you don’t know." Wave closed her eyes and tried to remember what her parents could have been celebrated for. Sure, they had always been greeted like friends in all the settlements. She always thought it was because they took such care in carrying out the Wanderers' orders. They protected the pioneers who went out to open up new living space deep in the jungle and accompanied them even if the journey took weeks. They also took care of the smaller worries that the people had out there, chasing away pests that stole the crops or settling disputes. They were role models for everyone until one day they weren’t anymore. But what they had done before they adopted Wave, they were silent about. Was that the explanation why they had changed so much? The secrets of their past?

"Aki, what do you know about my parents?" Actually, she was supposed to help Aki instead of using him to dig into her parents' past. Was that right to do?

The world outside her closed eyelids darkened.

"Hey, Wave, there’s something hovering above us."

Wave’s eyes snapped open.

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