Chapter 74

Tinnitus occupied most of his hearing — clearly a state in which thought was impossible — but his body answered on instinct. Xu Ze raised his hand. "Hello." The word left his mouth and he found his voice barely sounded like his own.

Lu Heyang's hand was large, dry, and strong. It clasped Xu Ze's briefly; when they parted, the skin of both palms grazed lightly against the other, and Xu Ze felt a thin layer of callus covering Lu Heyang's finger pads and palm.

That hand was somewhat cool, like Lu Heyang's expression — courteous but carrying no warmth at all.

"The nurse told me Director Zhou is in a meeting, and asked me to learn about General Chen's condition from you."

A voice lower than memory. Xu Ze fixed his gaze on the bridge of Lu Heyang's nose, thereby avoiding, to some extent, the directness of eye contact. He answered as evenly as he could: "Confirmed myelodysplastic syndrome. No infection or complications at present; he falls into the lower-risk group. A few more days of observation will be needed."

"Good." Lu Heyang glanced at his watch. "The nurse said General Chen is resting. I have a meeting as well, so I won't disturb him for now. Thank you, Doctor Xu."

"You're welcome," Xu Ze said.

Lu Heyang gave a small nod, his gaze lingering on Xu Ze's face for a moment, then turned once more toward the elevator.

Just then the doors of elevator four slid open, and a lieutenant in the same training uniform hurried out. "Colonel, they're pressing us in the conference room."

"Understood."

Lu Heyang stepped into elevator four; the lieutenant followed. The doors closed, and the two men's voices were sealed inside, inaudible.

Half a minute later, Xu Ze lowered his head, opened his mobile phone, and pressed send. Then, slowly, he walked toward the nurse station and handed the form to the nurse.

"Why so wrinkled?" The nurse smoothed the crumpled edge of the paper between her fingers, smiling. "First time I've seen paperwork handled by Doctor Xu come out looking like this."

Xu Ze wanted to apologize, but only managed a smile. He knew it must have looked forced and graceless, because the nurse's expression shifted to concern. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing." He had no idea where the pen on his chest had gone. Xu Ze pulled one from the holder on the desk, clipped it to the edge of his pocket, and said, "I'm heading to the bone-marrow aspiration room first."

"Mm, all right."

The medical-staff restroom was, as always, nearly empty. Xu Ze stood before the sink, removed his glasses, turned on the faucet, and cupped water in his left hand to wash his face. He watched the stream flowing endlessly toward the drain, and at last felt somewhat more awake.

Xu Ze wiped at his eyes, straightened, drew a tissue from the dispenser beside him, and dried his face. Then he drew out the right hand that had been sitting in his white coat pocket all along. The fingers were curled, as though cradling something; the whole palm was faintly numb, still holding the residual sensation of that friction.

Only the steady drip of water remained in the restroom. After a silence, Xu Ze lowered his head, brought his hand close, half his face buried in it, and breathed in — the pheromone that had not yet faded from his palm, belonging to another Alpha.

"The Chairman and several Commanders have already arrived." Stepping into the Municipal Government Building, Song Yuke glanced at the message and said, with a note of anguish.

"Why worry." Lu Heyang walked while scanning the information on his communicator. "No one is going to scold you."

"I'm afraid they'll have words for you, Colonel." Song Yuke's face was taut with worry. "Even though we only landed at dawn and trained straight through till morning — the timing really is too tight."

They had received word of General Chen's hospitalization on the way to the Municipal Government. The subordinate on the phone had said the General's condition was, for the moment, not dangerous; but Lu Heyang had still ordered Song Yuke to change course at once for the Military Hospital. He had to hear it from the doctor himself before he could rest easy.

"Not being late is enough." At the conference room door, Lu Heyang took the notebook and pen handed over by the meeting's organizing staff, and said to Song Yuke, "Go back to the car and rest."

A staff member pushed the door open for him, and Lu Heyang entered the conference room.

The meeting had been convened specifically for several units of the Southern Theater that had returned to the Capital City for adjustment during the ceasefire, to arrange certain matters of military deployment and operational tasking. The attendees were few and carefully chosen; several Commanders had all made time in their schedules to be present — no wonder Song Yuke had been on tenterhooks, afraid of being late.

Fortunately, Lu Heyang was not the last to arrive; a few empty seats still remained at the table. The timing of the meeting had not been chosen with much science to it — many of the officers had landed at dawn, then had to oversee their units through adaptive training, and then make their way here from all over. It was inevitable that some would not arrive in time.

From the moment Lu Heyang entered the conference room, every gaze in the place converged on him — not only because he was the only one to have come in a training uniform, but because, as the youngest Colonel in the League, despite the many feats of war to his name, Lu Heyang had never accepted any public decoration or interview, and photographic records of him were exceedingly hard to come by.

An Air Force pilot's rank is tied to flight hours. To be awarded the rank of Colonel at his age meant, by any rough calculation, that Lu Heyang had spent a great many hours in the sky and completed a great many combat missions.

The places he spent the most time were the Base's command room, the cockpit of a fighter, the smoke-streaked long sky — not the great conferences, the ceremonies, the victory banquets, where one mingles and is seen. Over the years, his face had become something of a mystery.

Reaching his seat, Lu Heyang offered the routine salute to the senior officer at the head of the table; the Commanders nodded to him in return. Lu Chengyu, seated among the Commanders, remained unmoved — which was just as well, for Lu Heyang had no need of a Lianmeng Government official's approval before sitting down. He took his place and began to read through the documents.

Lu Heyang had been appointed to take temporary command of Chengxi Military Airbase. The Base had been completed four years earlier, built for airspace monitoring, flight training, the takeoff, landing, and parking of fighter aircraft, and the transport of military matériel.

After the meeting adjourned, the Southern Theater Air Force Combat Commander, Luojun, asked Lu Heyang to stay for a private word.

"You've been flying missions since your second year. Take this ceasefire as a chance to stop and rest." Luojun spoke with the weight of a man who meant it. "After all these years in the Theater — not just you, but the men under you — everyone needs a chance to ease up, psychologically and physically."

"Understood," Lu Heyang said.

"Taking over Chengxi Base is a heavy beam to shoulder. Whether you can carry it — plenty of people are watching. Don't disappoint me. Once you're promoted to Brigadier General, I can retire in peace."

Lu Heyang smiled. "Still early."

"There you go again — 'still early.' When I try to introduce you to an Omega, you say 'still early' too." Luojun clapped Lu Heyang on the shoulder, looked him up and down, and couldn't help a laugh. "You stubborn kid, growing this tall — if I'd known you'd put on another inch after eighteen, I should have given serious thought to whether to admit you back then."

Lu Heyang smiled and offered Luojun a military salute.

On overhearing the nurses discussing the Air Force Colonel who had appeared on the seventh floor that morning and just as quickly vanished, Chi Jiahán could only sigh.

In the afternoon, he went up to the seventh floor. Xu Ze had just come out of the operating room — disinfected, changed, preparing to head back to school.

Xu Ze looked, to all appearances, as he always did. He asked Chi Jiahán, "What's up?"

"Nothing much." Chi Jiahán stood at the door of the Alpha changing room, watching Xu Ze pack his things in an orderly way and shut the locker. He asked, "Will you make it in time? Want to take my car?"

"I'll make it." Xu Ze stepped out. "Traffic's a crawl at this hour. The subway's faster."

Chi Jiahán looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Then I'll head up first. I'm going back to school a little later too."

"All right."

After Chi Jiahán left, Xu Ze took a step outward, then stopped. He turned back into the changing room, went to his locker to retrieve the mobile phone he had left behind, and at the same time noticed the communicator had not been switched off. Xu Ze turned it off, shut the locker door — and only then saw that the key was still in the lock.

He was rarely so scatterbrained — almost never, in fact.

Xu Ze washed his face once more, signed out, and said goodbye to the nurse. Of the six elevators, three stood empty. Xu Ze raised his head, glanced over them, walked past the nearest empty elevator six, and made for elevator four, tucked away toward the corner.

No one boarded along the way; the first floor arrived quickly. Xu Ze kept his gaze lowered to the floor. The doors slid slowly open, and into his line of sight stepped a pair of black training boots, a combat uniform of deep navy.

Xu Ze froze. Slowly, he followed those legs upward, until at last his gaze came to rest at the tip of Lu Heyang's nose. Lu Heyang's eyes were pressed down by the shadow of his cap brim, appearing very deep, their expression unreadable — but Xu Ze realized he was being watched.

He wanted to step forward, but Lu Heyang was, quite simply, very tall. The training uniform was not as formal as it had been that morning; one button had been undone, exposing the Adam's apple. He stood there at the elevator doors, with no apparent intention of stepping aside.

Song Yuke, standing nearby, was at a loss. "Colonel?"

The Colonel still gave no response. Xu Ze lowered his head a fraction and stepped outward, angling to the right. The fabric of their sleeves brushed, very lightly, against each other. Just as they were about to pass, Lu Heyang spoke. "Doctor Xu."

The voice sounded from just above his ear. Xu Ze stopped in his tracks. He did not look up; even so, he could feel that the gap in height between them was greater than it had been in high school. He wanted to ask, What is it? — but his throat had gone tight. Xu Ze tilted his head slightly, to show he was listening.

"Did Doctor Xu also graduate from the Preparatory Academy?" Lu Heyang asked.

Xu Ze nodded, stiffly. "Mm."

"You sat next to He Wei in your final year?"

"Yes." Xu Ze's lips had gone dry; his heartbeat seemed to be shaking his whole body with it.

"No wonder he mentioned you to me, once." Lu Heyang looked at Xu Ze's profile, and smiled. "Quite a coincidence, then."

"…Yes," Xu Ze answered, very softly.

Lu Heyang said nothing more. He stepped aside and walked into the elevator; Song Yuke followed. Just as the doors were about to close, through the narrowing gap, Song Yuke saw that Doctor Xu had at last stirred, and begun to walk forward.

"Why does this Doctor Xu…" Song Yuke hesitated. "…look so afraid of you?"

"Does he." Lu Heyang tilted the brim of his cap up a fraction, his eyes on the tightly shut elevator doors. His voice was very even. "I was wondering the same thing."