The People's Alpha ✔

20: Second Wolf

The light turned green. Laura gunned the engine of the Hayabusa, and we were off.

I held on for dear life and tried to imagine myself effortlessly cruising in the Moon Goddess, which honestly didn't help much.

I was still a little groggy from last night, and the unnerving sensation of my stomach trying to retreat into my small intestine was not helping at all, as we squeezed through a gap between two cars at breakneck speed, in the middle of an intersection where only half of the lights were working.

I felt extremely exposed on this ridiculous thing which my mate called her 'second wolf'. The wind gushing around me and the size of the vehicles we were passing at breakneck speed only amplified the effect.

I could sort of see where she was coming from, but it really wasn't my thing.

My other half, however, seemed to be completely unaffected as she weaved through the heavy morning traffic, passing bicycles like they were standing still and finding new gaps in the traffic at lightning speed. Soon we had all but left the traffic behind. And there was only the bulldozer grunt of the growling engine and the rushing wind to keep us company.

Countless billboards were cantilevered across the roadway, Zirconian soft power flexing its muscle, exploiting our love-hate relationship with our neighbours. One of which I was meant to show around later this morning.

I was still thinking about Adlai's words the day before. The People's Alpha. What had he meant by that?

The long overdue rains had still not arrived, and as we caught up to the next set of traffic lights we wiggled our way between the ragged lines that the cars formed themselves into in the absence of road markings were long obscured by dust.

Dust seemed to be everywhere. In the air, coating everything in a thin layer, from car windows to the hawker stalls that formed an informal threshold between the sidewalk and the speeding traffic. There seemed to be more black pickup trucks than usual, but I couldn't be sure. We passed the gleaming headquarters of the OPLU, certainly a contrast with the dusty street below where the sidewalks had gone to seed. There were window washers on the plate glass in hi-vis vests, kind of like those poison arrow frogs.

Surely their priority was taking care of things down below, right?

My wandering thoughts were briefly and abruptly cut short. I suddenly felt the contents of my stomach shift in a new and exciting direction, as Laura banked to make a roundabout. A truck passed mere centimetres from us. Dust buffeted around my helmeted face.

There was a statue of Werner Holtz in the middle of the roundabout. The father of the Industrial Zone, and one of the founding members of the OPLU. Now he was stuck here, trapped behind iron fencing, choking in traffic fumes and being slowly consumed by acid rain.

Coming out of the roundabout and onto the road towards the station, we squeezed through an impossibly narrow gap between an Interpack bus and a semi-trailer. I prayed like hell that the people in the bus wouldn't recognise me.

The traffic got lighter as we headed off the main road and approached the railway yards. A freight train was passing through from the mines near the Hollow Cedar Pack, double headed with 110 full ore hoppers, headed across the border and to the port in New Brighton, precious mineral wealth slowly trickling away.

The train station loomed up ahead, an unassuming grey rectangle of reinforced concrete. Hawkers covered the concourse, and a few little bicycle taxis milled around, waiting for their next passenger.

Laura pulled up on the kerb, narrowly dodging a puddle of water that looked like it could stand up by itself, which had formed in the runoff from a nearby market. The smell of rotting food and petrol fumes hung in the air. I had agreed to meet Catriona here.