Prophet Ameen's hum played in Joaquim's skull. He glanced at Gabe to see that he raised his eyebrow as well.

Go as far as you can into the center of the flying city where the shield generator is, Prophet Ameen said.

"It must be the seed," Gabe whispered.

Outside of the supersoldiers doing drill, the base seemed to be automated from what Joaquim could see. Right ahead in the hallway were a group of cleaner robots. One of them resembled a multi-headed giraffe, but with clamps holding cleaning products instead of heads. Behind the robots, a platoon of supersoldiers marched in a single file.

Before he arrived, Joaquim's imagination plastered murderous expressions on all the supersoldiers, but now their neutral faces challenged his preconception.

The hallway floor was marble with a checkered brown and beige pattern. Displays of ancient bullet weapons, figurines in a battle field, and older camouflage uniforms adorned the walls.

"So do we just stop following them?" Joaquim whispered.

"Yea," Gabe whispered back.

Joaquim and Gabe kept following the police robots until they reached the intersection the row of supersoldiers came from, and then they split off to search the hallways. Past a row of full-body scanners, they found an exit with automated glass doors.

Joaquim and Gabe walked through the scanners together. They were adult sized and Gabe was as thin as a lamp.

No alarms came on.

Joaquim was getting antsy as a city he only heard of and read about were a few steps ahead, and he rushed past the sliding doors.

The bare sun assaulted Joaquim's eyes, but he kept forcing his eyes open. When he tried to look up at the sky and the sides of the parade square ahead of him, it was like looking through a kaleidoscope with throngs and clusters of lit-up skyscrapers and platforms overlapping, the cracks between them showing skies as blue as virtualtops tuned to virtual worlds promised them to be. The section of the gigacity around and above the base tripled in size each time Joaquim could get his eyes to stop squinting. The view made up of thousands of tacky-colored platforms and buildings above him made Joaquim's mouth gape. There were hot pink streets, baby blue skyscrapers, and the bottoms of the circular platforms were a light khaki color with yellow neon spirals. Joaquim glanced to his right to see an entranced Gabe.

"We need to keep going," Joaquim said.

You both should be outside by now, Prophet Ameen said in Joaquim's skull. The platforms are connected by the teleportation pads created by jaunters and influx engineers. The green pads teleport to residential platforms, and the orange ones are for everything else. I suggest teleporting to the Financial Platform.

"Where could the teleportation pad be?" Joaquim asked.

"I doubt it will be on the parade square," Gabe said. "It should either be indoors or outside of the main entrance of this base."

Joaquim found a glint of orange on the concrete parade square. "Over there."

The boys ran over to the orange hexagon pad, and Joaquim found a floating hologram screen from the city's earthplexus. It had the bar of a search engine with a keyboard. Joaquim typed into the floating keyboard.

Search for: Financial Platform

Did you mean Ember Tree Finances Platform?

Joaquim pressed on the search engine's correction, and the pad glowed to signify its activation. The boys ran on top of it, and just like Corporal Woo's ability, the pad instantaneously sent them to the platform after a faint electronic hum.

A fountain stood in the center of the plaza. The fountain was using floating magnetic plates to maneuver the water from the sprayers in the reservoir, forming the outline of a large diamond shape that poked the metropolitanized skies. Falling water drops made a rainbow with the sunlight.

Once the spectacle of the fountain became repetitive to Joaquim, he noticed the sounds of thousands of voices and footsteps that already surrounded him, and he saw how packed the sidewalks were. Joaquim imagined back in No Man's Land that the citizens would trudge like mindless zombies. They would let the doors close on each other instead of holding them. They would stumble into each other expecting the other person to get out of the way. He expected more frustration and lifelessness on their faces, however, most of the white humans were smiling. In front of a café with robot employees and business people crowding the patio, a space in the sidewalk formed to reveal a non-human in the crowd.

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The arak seemed taller than a human at first, but it was only two-thirds of the average height of a human. It was just that the extraterrestrial floated higher than the people walking around. Even though it looked like a head, Joaquim knew that the upper part of the arak was a pair of giant compound eyes. They reminded Joaquim of the look of a mosquito's eye, except it had an uncountable quantity of spheres and they were a salmon color. The body looked like the fan of a maratus spider, except it had a fleshy texture and it rippled like a forever-deflating balloon. The fan-shaped torso had a bright pattern combining vermillion and scarlet colors with khaki-colored lines. Needle-thin khaki arms and legs were attached to the bottom edge of the torso, four limbs having tiny bracelets. The other four limbs were holding onto a glowing green sphere.

"Stop staring," Gabe said.

The arak floated towards Joaquim, stopping midway between him and the crowd on the sidewalk.

"I know humans get used to staring without being noticed, but I can see all around me," the arak said.

The arak's voice had pangs of static when pronouncing vowels. It reminded Joaquim of physical speakers instead of crisp influx-induced sounds from the earthplexus.

"Would you be a new supersoldier?" the arak asked. "Your facial expressions tell me that you have never seen anyone like me before. I envy how mammals on Earth are so expressive."

Joaquim took a few steps back, his shoulders leaning in with each step.

"It's okay. If we wanted to wipe out humanity, we can do it from the comfort of our own solar system in Brennisteinn," the arak said. "Well, that Ameen fellow might need a bit more effort."

"S-sorry for st-staring," Joaquim said.

"No worries. My name is Wexil. Would you be a supersoldier?" the arak asked. "Sorry to stereotype you, but the only way most humans of your breed get to come up here is by joining the army. Statistically, my guess should be correct."

"Did it say we were a breed?" Gabe said.

"Ah right, humans don't like to be spoken to that way," Wexil said. "But you shouldn't refer to me as an it either."

The plaza that you should be in has a residential pad close by, Prophet Ameen said. This might be confusing, but our hacker told us there are three other force fields inside the city that protects the outer force field's generator. The residential pad should be the only pad that teleports to the first force field that protect the generator. Try and see if you can teleport to it or if it requires some sort of password or ISB key.

"Hello? I asked you a question," Wexil asked.

Joaquim shook his head.

"Sorry can you repeat it again?" Joaquim asked.

"What are you doing here? You shouldn't be leaving the base," Wexil said. "I doubt you have been adopted this fast, and I am sure you only arrived today."

"Uhm, we are totally adopted-like-just now," Gabe said.

Joaquim did not have any memories of his actual parents, and neither did his brother based on the times he asked, but he understood what Gabe was doing.

"Fantastic. I doubt you were adopted by a caretaker robot. Humans and araks fight over adopting influx-receptive children," Wexil said. "I would love to take you guys home, but there is a waiting list. And you, the one with the hijab, I think you are terrified of me already, so that's not going to work. Who adopted you? It was probably a famous supersoldier that got priority, wasn't it?"

Joaquim and Gabe glanced at each other.

"Trickster adopted us," Joaquim said. The nickname of Trickster belonged to Colonel Iker Felix, the most famous supersoldier outside of 1 platoon. Killing well-known foes granted supersoldiers a moniker.

"No way, he is way too young to be a father!" Wexil said. "You know what. Forget I said that. I am so proud of you guys! I hope you guys find peace and opportunity in this city! I am sure just breathing this air was a relief."

"Okay bye," Gabe said. He grabbed Joaquim by the shoulder and ran. On the other side of the massive fountain was a green hexagonal pad, and the boys arrived to its outskirts.

Joaquim went up to its hologram to type into it. He did not notice it from the base, but now that he was higher in the sky city, he could see the dim purple forcefield that bubbled Ember Tree City. Would its shield generator also be protected by anti-influx forcefields? Should he put it in as a search term?

Prophet Ameen said that there are three force fields protecting the outer force field's own shield generator, Joaquim thought. We need to teleport to the first force field.

Search for: First force field of the outer anti-influx force field's generator

Did you mean Imogen Shield Generators?

"You suck at search terms," Gabe said. "You're overthinking things again."

Blaring alarms and a strong wind brushed against Joaquim's dress, making it ripple violently. He covered his face with his inner elbow, then he brought down his arm to see police robots surrounding him and his brother.

"I knew it!" Wexil said. He levitated closer with more incoming robots. "Those humans are Alkrezian terrorists; that is the only explanation for them to try to get to the shield generator! Arrest these aliens!"

"Please refrain from Alkrephobic statements," one of the police robots said.

"Like I care about the Party of Love's regulations," Wexil said. "I will make sure none of their bills pass."

Pranked ya, Farouq said. Joaquim's chest tightened.

"No fucking way," Gabe said. "It was... him all along."

"Lie down now," one of the robots commanded.

Joaquim and Gabe got on their knees, and a police robot cuffed them behind their backs.