Chapter 4: On the Radio

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

Traffic and pedestrian chatter surrounded 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 worked over the noise 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 wilted 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 complained to the sky. “I need a story, a big one, and I need it now.” There was enough desperation in it to draw a few glances before the crowd moved on.

The bench’s black slats dug into her spine. Her half-finished double cheeseburger drooped in her hand, the bun glossy with grease and yolk from the fried egg soaking 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 chewed, 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 smell of espresso followed her from work, 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. Violet light from a passing holo-billboard slid across his sharp face, giving him a foxlike cast. He pushed black hair from his eyes without thinking about it. “What about that thing on Ginzu Street last night?” he asked. His wrist comm pinged, 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 look 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 didn’t look up. “News doesn’t wait for feelings, sis.”

Machi rolled her eyes and pulled her fork through the salad, lifting 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 made a face. “Oh, don’t start sounding like Sato.” She bent 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 emptied out, leaving a few students near the curb and the distant whir of delivery drones crossing 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 shifted to her. He set his burger down, the wrapper rustling. “Scared?” His smile spread, slow and sharp. “That’s new. What’d they say?”

Machi sighed, stirring her straw through melting ice. “You’re both ridiculous.” She forked 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. The morning’s chill brushed the back of her neck again, out of place in 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 sat back. “You’re saying what I think you’re saying?”

Bonni’s 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 mouth went tight. 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 gone out of it. Beneath 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.”

The stock feed from a billboard overhead scrolled across her lenses. In that light 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 cleaned a line of ketchup off his wrapper with his thumb. “I’ve heard the chatter,” he said, tone idle but eyes sharp. “Half the time it’s garbage. Half the time it’s gold.” He tipped his head. “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 tone even. “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 scoffed. “Thank goodness someone here still has a functioning brain.” She finished the last of her salad with pointed 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 answer. She never got the words out.

A sharp rising note broke over the street, echoing down the block. Then another. And another.

Sirens.

All four of them stopped. Chatter from the nearby diners cut out as blue and red lights flared against the walls, throwing long, violent shadows across their table. A line of police cruisers blew through the intersection. Wrappers lifted from the table and spun into the air as the gust hit, hot wind carrying dust, exhaust, and burnt rubber.

Apricot’s hair whipped across her face. For a moment, the world was nothing but motion and color, sirens and light, adrenaline sharp at the back of her throat. Then the street emptied as fast as it had filled, leaving the fading noise of their passing and her own heartbeat.

Sato had his phone out before the sirens fully faded. The pale glow turned 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, stacking.

“Anything good?” she asked. She tried to sound detached, and didn’t quite manage it.

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

Her pulse jumped. 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. He stood and dropped a handful of emerald-green credchips onto the table. They clicked into Machi’s empty salad bowl.

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

Machi’s mouth fell open. “You’re ditching me? Again?” Her glare landed on Bonni.

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

Bonni pressed a hand to her chest, feigning innocence, but the curl of her mouth gave her away. “I’ll get her home safe,” she said, and for once there was no joke in it. “Go.”

Machi groaned, gathering up the credchips. “I hate all of you,” she muttered, though the edge softened when the credits caught the light 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 easing into something closer to worry. The cruisers’ strobes moved across 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 idled low and heavy, vibrating up through the pavement. Red underglow lit the wet asphalt beneath him.

Apricot jogged over, her skirt lifting 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 brightness 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 of them noticed Apricot’s book bag still under the bench, or the street camera overhead, its red light steady. Its lens turned to follow them out of frame.

---

Sirens carried through the stone valleys of Blue Ash. Their pitch tangled with the snarl of Sato’s trail bike as it cut down the avenue, a streak of crimson in the traffic.

Apricot held on tight, fingers wound into the fabric of his jacket. The wind pulled her hair straight back as the neon streamed over them. Green, red, violet. Each color caught in the chrome of the bike’s fairings and slid away. Police lights showed ahead, repeated in passing windshields.

Skyscrapers walled the avenue, holo-billboards stacked up their faces. Power lines webbed the skyline. One massive display lit up as they passed:

OKABE SECURITY: YOUR SAFETY, OUR MISSION

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

Sato dropped lower over the tank, shoulders tight. He swerved around an automated delivery van, its rear sensors chirping angrily as they missed it by inches. The backdraft smelled of hot oil and machine heat.

Ahead, traffic packed solid. A stalled river of cars bottlenecked by police barricades, taillights burning red down the line.

“Damn it,” Sato muttered.

He cranked the throttle. The bike lunged as they darted between lanes, slipping through gaps barely wide enough for a shoulder. Horns blared. A driver shouted something she never heard.

Everything narrowed to motion and noise. Light trails. Asphalt. Faces blurred behind glass.

A sharp turn came up fast. Sato leaned into it, tires juddering as they scraped past a truck’s mirror close enough for Apricot to see herself in it for an instant. Her insides dropped.

“Sato!” she shouted, the wind taking most of it. “Slow down, we’re going to–“

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

The street ahead went red. Brake lights, all at once, a solid line of stopped cars.

Sato grabbed the brakes. The rear end broke loose, fishtailing hard. Tires burned. The stink of it filled the air. Inertia threw Apricot forward. She locked her arms around Sato’s waist and held on as the bike skidded.

It stopped dead, inches from the dented rear bumper of a cargo truck.

Stillness. Then the ticking of the engine as it cooled, and Apricot’s breath leaving her in one long exhale.

Sato banged the handlebars. “Traffic’s locked down.” His eyes went down the line of vehicles ahead.

Red and blue strobes beat against the street, jumping off windows and chrome. From somewhere ahead came the sound of it. Shouted orders. Breaking glass. The low, rolling noise of a crowd on the edge of panic.

Okabe Bank had to be only a few blocks away.

Apricot looked at the stopped traffic, then at the gaps between the cars. Narrow, tight, but passable on foot.

She didn’t wait to discuss it. She swung one leg over and dropped off the bike, landing hard enough that she had to catch 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 and looped the strap over her neck.

“Hey–” Sato started.

Apricot was already gone, working 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, and kept going.

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 in among the cars now, moving forward, the camera warm against her chest.

The sirens were louder now, urgent and close. 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, the bike revved hard. The engine noise rose between the buildings as he peeled off to find his own angle, then faded. She was alone with whatever waited ahead.

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

Apricot moved fast, cutting between mirrors and bumpers, careful with each step. A delivery drone passed overhead, its light sweeping the street. She ducked around a family in a van, their faces lit pale blue by a dashboard holo-screen, then edged past a limo whose open window let out the heavy scent of synthetic cologne.

The squeal of rubber reached her first, high and sudden.

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 swung sideways, its front bumper coming straight at her.

She tried to jump back, but her boot slid on a slick patch of oil. Metal caught her leg with a dull, heavy blow.

Pain shot 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 biting through her jacket and into skin. Everything tipped. Headlights ran into ribbons of color across the concrete.

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

Apricot pushed herself upright, breathing hard. Her ankle throbbed. She flexed it once. It held. Her elbow was skinned, 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, too quickly for it to be true. A thin line of blood traced her shin, soaking into the rip in her knee-high sock. She swatted at her skirt, hands not quite steady. “Really. No harm done.”

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

“Don’t worry about it.” She was already backing away, one hand 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 was loud around her. Horns, engines, sirens coming back off the steel. Somewhere in the distance, something was breaking.

A faint ringing ran under the noise, 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 hands, chasing the pulse of Blue Ash into the storm.