Chapter 4: On the Radio

The afternoon light slanted through the towers of Blue Ash City, cutting gold between steel and glass.

The hum of traffic and pedestrian chatter wrapped around the open-air tables of Bingo Burgers, where the smell of grease, pepper, and toasted buns hung heavy in the warmth. Somewhere nearby, a street busker’s synth guitar throbbed over the drone of vending machines and the hiss of fryers. A wallscreen behind the counter cycled through the day’s headlines: protest logistics, traffic reroutes, a weather advisory nobody read.

Apricot Signa slouched on a bench outside, her green-and-white school uniform already creased from the day. Yellow trim at her collar caught the light as she tipped her head back and groaned. “I need a story, a big one, and I need it now.” Her voice carried enough desperation to draw a few glances before the crowd moved on.

The bench’s cold black slats pressed into her spine as she leaned back. Her half-eaten double cheeseburger sagged in her hand, the bun glossy with grease and yolk from the fried egg bleeding through the wrapper. “If I don’t turn in something tomorrow, I’m done for,” she muttered, taking a joyless bite. “The Bureau of Education sent me another warning. Next slip, they ship me off to the labor corps.” She swallowed and dabbed her chin with a napkin, her voice dropping. “I’m not spending my life screwing bolts on some factory line.”

The morning’s unease was still there, tamped down but present, lodged beneath her ribs like something she had swallowed wrong. She had told herself to let it go. The arcade, the cold, the ambulance lights. She had almost believed herself.

Bonni sat beside her, legs crossed, cafe uniform crisp but dusted with flour from her shift. The faint aroma of espresso clung to her hair, mixing oddly with burger smoke. She twirled a chicken nugget through teriyaki and mayo before popping it into her mouth. “Then find a topic, Apri,” she said lightly, chewing. Her tone teased, but her look was warm. “You’re the journalist. Make something up if you have to.”

Apricot scowled. “That’s not how it works.”

Across from them, Sato Takoma paused mid-bite. A violet flicker from a passing holo-billboard slid across his sharp face, giving him a foxlike cast. He brushed black hair from his eyes with a practiced flick. “What about that thing on Ginzu Street last night?” he asked. His wrist comm chimed softly, stacked city feeds glowing over his skin. “I swung by this morning after they’d already taped it off. Whole block was wrecked. Cruisers burned out, storefronts gutted, blood still on the pavement. They had hazmat and military police all over it. I got a few shots of the cleanup before they ran me off.”

Apricot let out a short, dry laugh. “Yeah. Real uplifting.” The humor faded as quickly as it came. She had caught the broadcast this morning, the anchors cycling through it with barely controlled alarm: multiple officers killed, dozens of civilians injured in the panic, an entire block leveled around some antique shop. The footage they aired was sanitized, distant helicopter shots and cordoned perimeters, but even through the careful framing you could see the burn marks on the street, the shattered cruisers. The anchors called it an attack. They did not say what kind. Sato always seemed to find trouble first, always wore that glint that said he enjoyed it too much.

Across the scarred metal table, Machi, his kid sister, speared a cherry tomato from her salad and chewed it slowly. She adjusted her thick glasses, the lenses catching ad-light like twin coins. “You two are disgusting,” she said flatly. “People died, and you’re talking about it like it’s a feature piece.”

Sato smirked. “News doesn’t wait for feelings, sis.”

Machi rolled her eyes and dragged her fork through the salad, pulling up a tangle of greens. Apricot glanced between them, biting the inside of her cheek. She looked down at her burger, the wrapper slick with grease and sunlight. “Still,” she said quietly, “a good story never starts in the safe places.”

Bonni groaned. “Oh, don’t start sounding like Sato.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “Remember that little secret I mentioned?”

Apricot looked up mid-bite. That tone again, the one that usually ended with detention or a police warning. Around them, the crowd had thinned, leaving a few students near the curb and the distant hum of delivery drones threading the late afternoon light.

Bonni’s gaze darted left and right before she leaned closer. “I overheard two cops this morning.” She paused, savoring it. “They sounded scared.”

Sato’s attention snapped to her. He set his burger down, the wrapper crackling. “Scared?” His grin spread, slow and sharp. “That’s new. What’d they say?”

Machi sighed, twirling her straw through melting ice. “You’re both ridiculous.” She stabbed a cucumber slice and ate it without looking up.

Bonni straightened, enjoying the moment. “They were talking about the Ginzu scene. The same one you mentioned, Sato. That antique shop. Only they weren’t angry or frustrated. They were worried. Like they’d seen something they couldn’t explain.”

Apricot stopped chewing. A faint chill prickled along her neck despite the heat.

“Come on,” Machi said, pushing a leaf around her bowl. “Officers were killed, Bonni. Of course they were shaken.”

Bonni lifted her half-eaten nugget like a lecturer’s baton. “No, listen. They said whatever came out of that shop killed officers in full tactical gear. Bullets didn’t stop it. An armored mech didn’t stop it. And the way they talked about it, it didn’t sound like they were describing a person.”

Sato raised an eyebrow and leaned back. “You’re saying what I think you’re saying?”

Bonni leaned in. Her voice dropped to barely more than breath. “What if it wasn’t someone they could identify? Not a name. Not a face. Just something in the footage they couldn’t match to anything in the system.”

Machi’s jaw tightened. She set her fork down. “If this ends with you quoting conspiracy boards, I’m walking home.”

“I’m not making this up,” Bonni said. The playfulness had thinned. Beneath it was something closer to conviction. “Something’s happening in this city. People disappearing. Attacks that don’t fit any profile. Footage that gets pulled before anyone can archive it.” She looked at Apricot. “You’ve noticed it too. I know you have.”

Apricot filed the words away before she could examine them. She needed evidence, not atmosphere. Facts paid the bills. But Bonni’s tone had shifted, and the shift unsettled her more than the content. Bonni was not performing. She was reporting.

Machi picked up a crouton between two fingers, studied it, and flicked it across the table. It bounced off Bonni’s sleeve and landed in her lap. “Blue Ash has always been full of superstitious junk,” she said. “People still toss coins to Obojo the money-god when payday’s late. That doesn’t make him real.”

She adjusted her glasses, the lenses flashing with the scrolling digits of a live stock feed from a billboard overhead. In that fleeting reflection, she looked exactly as Apricot expected. Rational. Composed. But her foot had moved under the table, pressing against Sato’s boot. Holding him still.

Bonni crossed her arms. “Laugh all you want. But those cops weren’t laughing.”

Sato wiped his thumb through a smear of ketchup. “I’ve heard the chatter,” he said, tone lazy but eyes sharp. “Half the time it’s garbage. Half the time it’s gold.” He shrugged. “If I ever catch something like that on camera, that’s front page everywhere.”

He raised his burger toward Apricot. “Fame for the photographer. Fortune for the reporter.”

Bonni smiled. Apricot didn’t.

“It’s worth looking into,” Apricot said, keeping her voice level. “But I’d need more than secondhand police chatter. Eyewitness accounts. Documents. Something verifiable.” She met Bonni’s gaze. “You understand the difference.”

Bonni held the look, then softened. “I know. I’m just saying, the door’s open.”

Machi snorted. “Thank goodness someone here still has a functioning brain.” She speared the last of her salad and chewed it with deliberate composure, as if the act of eating sensibly might anchor the conversation to reality.

Bonni puffed out her cheeks. “Fine. But when someone else breaks this story, don’t come crying to me for quotes.”

Apricot opened her mouth to respond. The sound hit before she could speak.

A shrill wail tore through the air, echoing down the narrow street. Then another. And another.

Sirens.

The four of them froze. Chatter from nearby diners collapsed into silence as blue and red lights flared against the walls, throwing long, violent shadows across their table. A line of police cruisers screamed through the intersection. Wrappers lifted from the table and spun into the air as the gust hit, hot wind carrying grit, exhaust, and the bite of burnt rubber.

Apricot’s hair whipped across her face. For a moment, the world was nothing but motion and color, sirens and light, the metallic taste of adrenaline in her throat. Then the street emptied as abruptly as it had erupted, leaving only the echo of their passing and the thrum of her pulse in her ears.

Sato had his phone out before the sirens fully faded. The pale glow carved his face into sharp planes, nose and jaw catching the light. Lines of police chatter scrolled across the screen, code numbers and frantic dispatch logs reflected in his pupils.

Apricot leaned closer without thinking, her shoulder brushing his. The screen lit the curve of her cheek as she read over his arm. Disturbance at Okabe Central Bank. Armed suspects. Possible hostages. The words landed one after another, each heavier than the last.

“Anything good?” she asked. She tried to sound detached, but her voice frayed at the edge.

Sato turned the phone toward her. “Bank robbery. Right now. Okabe Central. Not far from us.” His voice had gone quiet, the grin replaced by something more focused. “This is real, Apri.”

Her pulse kicked. The world sharpened. Noise, light, the smell of fried oil and exhaust. She was on her feet before the thought fully formed. “We have to go,” she said. “This is the story.”

He didn’t argue. He never did when that look crossed her face. In one smooth motion, he stood and tossed a handful of emerald-green credchips onto the table. They clinked against Machi’s emptied salad bowl.

“Cab fare, kiddo,” he said, slinging his primary camera over his shoulder and patting the second one clipped to his belt. Sato never carried fewer than two. “Head home without me.”

Machi’s jaw dropped. “You’re ditching me? Again?” Her glare snapped toward Bonni.

“Oh no,” Machi hissed. “You are not leaving me alone with her.”

Bonni pressed a hand to her chest, feigning innocence, but the grin curling her lips gave her away. “I’ll get her home safe,” she said, and for once her voice carried no joke. “Go.”

Machi groaned, gathering up the credchips. “I hate all of you,” she muttered, though the edge softened when the credits gleamed in her palm.

Apricot squeezed her shoulder as she passed, eyes already on the flashing lights vanishing down the boulevard. “I owe you one, Machi. I’ll fill you in later.”

Machi gave a reluctant wave, her scowl slipping into something closer to worry. The reflection of the cruisers’ strobes shimmered in her glasses as she watched them go. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she murmured, the words lost to the wind.

Sato was already astride his motorbike, one boot braced on the curb. The engine rumbled low, a throaty mechanical growl that vibrated through the air. Red underglow painted the wet asphalt beneath him.

Apricot jogged over, her skirt flaring in the wind. She barely caught the rear handle before swinging onto the back. “Go,” she said over the engine.

“Hold on,” Sato warned, and twisted the throttle.

Bonni watched from the table, one hand raised. She did not call out. The grin was gone. She watched until the bike’s taillights merged with the traffic and disappeared, then turned back to Machi with a gentleness that surprised them both.

Neither Apricot nor Sato noticed the canvas satchel still resting under the bench, or the soft red pulse of a street camera overhead. Its lens adjusted to follow their departure, silent, unblinking. Watching.

*     *     *

Sirens wailed through the stone valleys of Blue Ash, echoing off glass and steel. Their pitch tangled with the snarl of Sato’s trail bike as it tore down the avenue, a streak of crimson weaving through the city’s arteries.

Apricot clung to him, fingers knotted in the fabric of his jacket. The wind ripped at her hair and skirt, whipping strands across her face as neon bled over them. Green, red, violet. Each flash pooled in the chrome of the bike’s fairings and slid away. Police lights flickered ahead, reflected in passing windshields.

Skyscrapers loomed on either side, their windows pulsing with holo-billboards stacked sky-high. Power lines webbed the skyline, humming faintly. One massive display blazed to life as they roared past:

OKABE SECURITY: YOUR SAFETY, OUR MISSION

The words smeared into a band of fluorescent white across Apricot’s vision. She looked away.

Sato hunched lower, shoulders tight. He swerved around an automated delivery van, its rear sensors chirping angrily as they missed it by inches. The backdraft carried the stink of hot oil and ozone.

Ahead, traffic thickened. A frozen river of cars bottlenecked by police barricades. Red taillights flickered like warning beacons.

“Damn it,” Sato muttered.

He twisted the throttle. The bike screamed as they darted between lanes, slipping through gaps barely wide enough for a shoulder. Horns blared. A driver shouted something lost in the wind.

The world collapsed into motion and noise. Light trails. Asphalt. Faces blurred behind glass.

A sharp turn came up fast. Sato leaned into it, tires shrieking as they scraped past a truck’s mirror close enough for Apricot to see her reflection flash by. Her stomach lurched.

“Sato!” she shouted over the roar, her voice shredded by the wind. “Slow down, we’re going to–“

The rest vanished beneath the engine’s scream as the bike surged into the intersection.

The world ahead erupted in red. Brake lights flared in unison, a wall of stopped cars.

Sato yanked the brakes.

The bike screamed against the asphalt, fishtailing hard. Tires burned. The smell of scorched rubber seared the air. Inertia hurled Apricot forward. She locked her arms around Sato’s waist, clinging as the bike skidded.

It slammed to a stop inches from the dented rear bumper of a cargo truck.

Silence. Then the tick of cooling metal, the faint hiss of steam, and Apricot’s breath shuddering out in one long exhale.

Sato smacked the handlebars. “Traffic’s locked down,” he growled, eyes cutting to the line of vehicles stretching ahead.

Red and blue strobes washed the street in frantic pulses, flickering off windows and chrome. From somewhere ahead came the echo of chaos. Shouted orders. Breaking glass. The low, rolling sound of a crowd on the edge of panic.

Okabe Bank had to be only a few blocks away.

Apricot stared at the wall of stopped cars ahead, then at the gaps between them. Narrow, tight, but passable on foot.

She didn’t wait to discuss it. She swung one leg over and dropped off the bike, knees buckling for a moment before she caught herself on a car’s side mirror. Sato turned, mouth opening, but Apricot was already reaching for the secondary camera clipped to his belt. She unclipped it in one quick motion and looped the strap over her neck.

“Hey–” Sato started.

Apricot was already moving, slipping between the first row of bumpers. She turned back just long enough to hold up the camera. “I’ll get you a good shot!” she called over the noise, already jogging.

Sato blinked. For a second his expression hung between protest and disbelief. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upward. He shook his head, smirk settling into place, and called after her. “You better!”

She did not hear him. She was already between the cars, weaving forward, the camera warm against her chest.

The sirens were louder up ahead now, shrill and desperate. Her fear had not faded. It had changed shape, sharpening into something functional, the narrow focus of a person with a job to do and not enough time to do it.

Behind her, she heard Sato’s throttle kick. The bike’s roar echoed between the buildings as he peeled off to find his own angle, then vanished into the distance. She was alone with the storm ahead.

She turned back to the gridlock, camera clutched close. Trucks and sedans packed so tight she could see her reflection warped across their hoods. Engines hummed and sputtered, filling the air with exhaust heat that shimmered off the asphalt.

Apricot moved fast, weaving between mirrors and bumpers, careful with each step. A delivery drone buzzed overhead, its spotlight sweeping the street. She ducked around a family in a van, their faces washed pale blue by a dashboard holo-screen, then slipped past a limo whose open window leaked the heavy scent of synthetic cologne.

The noise hit first. A sudden, high-pitched squeal of rubber.

Apricot spun.

An impatient driver, red-faced behind the wheel of a glossy electric sedan, had mounted the curb to escape the jam. The vehicle lurched sideways, its front bumper veering straight toward her.

She tried to jump back, but her boot slid on a slick patch of oil. Metal slammed into her leg with a dull, wet thud.

Pain exploded up her ankle. Apricot yelped as she twisted and fell, one thought louder than the rest: the camera.

She hit the ground shoulder first, the rough pavement clawing through her jacket and into skin. The world spun. Headlights smeared into ribbons of color, neon graffiti streaking across the concrete.

“Miss, I’m sorry!” a man shouted, panicked. A car door slammed. Footsteps rushed closer.

Apricot forced herself upright. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her ankle throbbed. She flexed it once. It held. Her elbow was raw, but when she lifted the camera, the recording light still glowed. No cracks. No damage.

She was on her feet before the driver reached her.

“I didn’t see you,” he stammered, reaching out. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, her voice brittle around the lie. A thin line of blood traced her shin, soaking into the rip in her knee-high sock. She brushed at her skirt with trembling hands. “Really. No harm done.”

The man hesitated, eyes flicking from her scraped skin to her pale face. “You’re bleeding.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She was already moving, already limping backward, one hand clamped around the camera. The story lay ahead. Sirens, smoke, chaos. She could feel it pulling at her like gravity.

She turned and pushed into the line of stalled cars, ignoring the man’s protests. Each step sent a jolt through her ankle, but she did not slow. The city roared around her. Horns, engines, the echo of sirens bouncing off steel. Somewhere in the distance, something was breaking.

A faint ringing threaded through the noise, thin and constant. Whether it came from her ears or the alarms, she could not tell. It did not matter. She was moving again, camera steady in her grip, chasing the pulse of Blue Ash into the storm.