The sound had been explicitly designed to have an unsettling effect – to trigger a human's natural flight response by making them as uncomfortable as possible. It was like metallic blades scraping along your bones, paired with a swarm of angry ants crawling all over your body. And before the third wave was over, the Colosseum had already emptied, and people streamed back into the main hangar room.

I had expected the evacuation of this secret party hideout to be a chaotic, tumultuous procedure, so I was surprised by the efficiency at which people not only vacated the building completely but also removed any traces of there ever having been a party in this place at all. Still in a state of shock over the bone-chilling sound of the alarm, I was just moving along with a throng of people, when I suddenly felt someone grab my hand. I jerked in surprise, but was quickly relieved to find that it was Moon. She had taken something with her on the way out as well – an unlabeled bottle with a clear liquid inside.

Outside the hangar, the crowd rapidly dispersed as everyone made their way back along different footpaths through the patch of forest. Groups of people were lingering a bit, probably to avoid the strange impression a herd of students would make if they all burst out at the other end of the woods at once.

"What a night," Moon remarked and took a sip from the bottle, as we slowly walked through the ruins of the lost sector, towards the edge of the forest where we had come from.

"Are you sure this is safe to drink and not some leftover chemical?" I asked her.

"At this point I honestly wouldn't care if it was hundred percent methanol."

I eyed my friend warily from the side, and wondered at what point she had become so inclined to drinking. Sure, I had seen her epic hangovers, but now I realized this was the first time that I was witness to the origin of one of them. And it was the first time that I saw her in this peculiar state of not just being drunk, but somehow miserable in a way that I could not quite grasp. I had a hunch why – or rather, because of whom – she was in that mood, but I didn't want to ask her about that again and risk annoying her.

"I have to say, I'm impressed how well organized all of this is," I just said instead.

"People have been paranoid about being busted by the faculty for years, so there's a strict emergency protocol. We know that they know that these parties are happening, but as long as they don't catch anyone specifically, they can't punish or expel us. And honestly, I believe they don't really care. But just in case... there's the emergency evacuation protocol."

"There's an entire protocol for that?"

"Well, it boils down to: if there is reason to believe that campus security is approaching, everybody grabs something on the way out to hide our traces," she held up the bottle, "And we try to lay low for a couple of days."

"But this is not about campus security," I remarked.

I would have been less surprised about a security patrol busting the party than that unexpected radiation alert. I couldn't even remember when exactly the last one had occurred – I must have been a child back then. And the drills had gotten lax in the past couple of years.

"Still, everybody at a hangar party knows what to do if we ever need to evacuate," she said, "Whatever the reason might be."

"I didn't know," I mumbled.

"Well, that's why you were there in the company of somebody who knows," she said and hooked her arm through mine.

Her gait was unsteady, and as much as my feet hurt from my shoes, I dreaded to even imagine what her footwear might feel like in her situation.

"So, Queen of Sims, what do we do with the rest of the night?" she asked, pulling the laurel from my head to give it a closer look.

I laughed, and replied "I don't know what you're up to, but I'll get rid of these shoes for good and catch a good night of sleep."

And tomorrow, I will think about whether or not I regret what I did tonight, and will try to figure out if it destroyed my only other human relationships besides this drunken mess of a girl on my arm.

"That sounds very reasonable," she mused, twisting the laurel in her hands. "And also terribly boring."

Nonetheless, she didn't object any further and we continued to walk in silence.

"You know," she started again after a while, "I really tried to stop him."

"Who? What?"

"Bastion."

"Oh," I said, feeling an uncomfortable lump form in my throat.

I was stuck a dilemma of trying to imagine the extent of the awkwardness when I would talk to him the next time, and simultaneously trying really hard not to think about it at all.

"When I realized what he was up to, I tried to convince him to just play the match and leave you out of it. But he wouldn't listen, he's just so... ugh."

"Wait - so you knew before? That they were... fighting? Blaze and him?"

"I –" she hesitated for a moment. "I knew that they weren't exactly friends, and had this rivalry thing going on throughout the tournament season. I didn't know that it was about you until they made it to the final round. It all kinda escalated from there..."

I let that sink in for a moment, and tried to make sense of it.

"Did you know what he... that he..."

I couldn't spell it out. It was too ridiculous. It was impossible. Bastion and I had been friends for years, and there had never been a shred of anything more.

Moon knitted her eyebrows together in deep thought as she searched for words. "It's not like that... I think."

"Oh?"

"He was upset about Blaze trying to... uh, impress you like that. And I guess he was jealous, in a way? But he doesn't... how should I put this..."

From the side, I watched an array of complex emotions wash over her face. It seemed like she wasn't quite capable of explaining what she meant in her current state.

"So he didn't want to win my heart, he just wanted to make sure that Blaze doesn't?" I suggested.

It made this whole story none the less mind-bogglingly stupid and I wasn't quite sure if I fully understood, but it seemed marginally better than any other possible explanation for his asinine behavior.

Moon nodded. "I think so. They really made a pair of asses out of themselves, huh?"

I heaved a weary sigh.

"I'm not gonna be the judge of that. What I did tonight... let's just say it probably wasn't exactly my most rational moment either."

She giggled. "That's true. You definitely made a lasting impression, though. History was made," she indirectly quoted Bones and stretched to put the laurel crown back on my head.

"It was a stupid idea to try to impress you with something you're so good at," she remarked. "But then again, considering your overall awesomeness and kick-ass dedication that make you so disgustingly good at everything, most people who fancy you probably will have trouble finding anything left to impress you with."

I snorted with suppressed laughter. "Thanks... I guess."

I thought about how I had danced with Blaze and how I had, in fact, genuinely been impressed. Not just by his dancing skills but the effort he had put into finding something that he thought I might like. And I had liked it very much. Even if he hadn't asked me to dance, just showing me that VR sim alone would have been a sweet gesture, and I could appreciate the thought behind it. That stupid feud with Bastion and the show that Bones had put on, on the other hand, left me with the devastating feeling of being nothing but another of his conquests. A prize. Something to be won, a name to be added to a list, another notch in the bedpost, a fun little toy to be used and discarded once it got boring.

And the problem was, I was inherently boring. My existence so far had been defined by numbers: mission scores, grades, the percentages of my aptitude test. There was a reason I was good at being a Ker, a reason I had won that sim game and why I had managed to fight off the drones during the Daidala test run. It wasn't because I was special in any way, but because I dedicated so much time to training and honing my skills. But that left little time to develop an interesting personality beyond that.

I should have known from the start that this thing with Blaze had been bound to go awry. He was everything I was not, and I had been pretty naïve to believe that somebody like him would have any reason to want something serious from someone like me. And I should probably have taken my own doubts over my feelings for him more seriously too, and not let myself be enthralled by his charm so easily.

"I don't think I want to be impressed," I realized. "Or convinced. Or 'won over' or whatever. I just... I don't know, I just think it's just not supposed to work like that. When you really like someone, you should know that in your heart, shouldn't you? There should be something that connects you. You should just feel it. You shouldn't need to be coerced into feeling it."

"Okay, tell me, why is it that I'm smashed and you're sober and yet you're the one who's talking like they had a close encounter of the spiritual kind?" Moon asked.

"I personally think I haven't had such a clear head in a long time," I concurred. "And I'm not gonna let myself be... drawn into something like that again."

Admittedly, there were still millions of thoughts and doubts and questions swirling around in my head. But for some reason, the fact that all of them concerned occurrences in the real world was somewhat comforting. Surely enough though, as soon as I thought about that, I had to focus really hard to prevent my thoughts from descending down a rabbit hole, leading to an to impossible other world.

"Aww, come on." Moon's voice held me back before I toppled over the edge, and my thoughts remained anchored in the real world. "You're not old enough to be so bitter about love, Sky. Maybe we just need to expand the pool of contenders to find somebody worthy of your attention."

She let go of my arm and stepped away, stopping right in the middle of the path.

"Listen well, people of Pharos, the ultimate challenge has just been announced, for the brave and bold to try and turn that lump of ice in this girl's chest back into a real heart," she announced loudly, mimicking Bone's manner of speaking. A group of students walking through the forest ahead of us turned their heads back in confusion. I elbowed her side to hush her, but at the same time her imitation caused me to let out a laugh.

We finally left the patch of forest behind us and were back on familiar campus grounds. The clear view overhead revealed that the radiation defense systems were already active. The wire mesh that spanned over the entire city was so fine that it was invisible to the naked eye, but when active, it would emit a quiet hum, and occasionally, a thin bolt of electricity would cackle across the night sky, before decaying in a small cascade of sparks. The mesh would repel any of the radioactive, charged particles that dust storms from the wastelands sometimes carried with them for thousands of kilometers across the land. In this case, whatever was headed our way must have been something big –the issued warning had been level three, urging everyone to seek shelter indoors in case of a mesh failure.

Back in our room in the dorm, Moon placed the now-empty bottle next to my laurel on a shelf like two trophies on display, and then went straight to bed. Despite being hit by a wave of exhaustion the very moment I had taken off my shoes and clothes, I now found myself strangely restless, as if the electric hum in the air was coursing through my body too. Gazing out of the window, I watched the crackling lights dance across the sky like short-lived glimpses of an aurora.

I looked over to Moon's side of the room, as she rolled over with a deep sigh. She was fast asleep already, and from her quiet mumbling I could tell that she was dreaming, even though the smooth fabric of her sleep mask covered her eyes. It had a custom print of red hearts on a pink background, which on first glance easily distracted from the fact that it was actually a highly sophisticated piece of tech wear.

Interwoven with the fabric was an array of micro-LEDs that could be programmed to act as an alarm clock. At a desired time, the lights would gradually brighten and adapt the color spectrum of a natural sunrise, thereby awakening the wearer softly and without perturbing their natural circadian rhythm. For Moon's sake, I was hoping it would help her wake up despite the colossal hangover that was likely waiting for her the next morning.

Reassured that I wouldn't disturb her sleep because her eyes were covered, I turned on the wall screen and zapped through the TV channels with muted sound. There wasn't much to watch. Several channels ran the storm warning, but most just had the same old re-runs. I could have accessed the network to watch some really old movies from before the war, but now I wasn't in the mood for that either.

As I lay back on my pillow with a weary sigh, my gaze fell on my bedside table, and the box with the blue sleeping pill. I had almost forgotten about it.

I picked it up and looked at it against the bluish light of the wall screen, twisting it between my fingers so that the marbled pattern of swirls within the little sphere refracted and distorted the light's glow. The last nights had taken their toll on me, and the thought of a night of restful sleep was enticing.And  I still had the medical bracelet, so there was no harm in trying it.

I swallowed the blue pill dry. And while I still wondered how soon it would take effect, I could feel my eyelids grow heavy and my mind grow dim and hazy. I felt like the room was spinning around me and I was falling backwards into a deep hole. For a brief moment, my gaze was drawn to the wall screen once again.

The last thing I saw was an oddly familiar looking face, casting me a gentle smile. She threw back her auburn hair that was bound in dozens of intricate, decorated braids, and winked at me before I passed out.