Getting to Mr. Kobayashi’s store was easier the second time around. Nagia had her dress and gear laid out across her desk the night prior, her mother packed her bag before breakfast, and the elevator was near their floor to begin with, so it did not take the usual 50 million years to take her down.

  And also, Mr. Kobayashi was driving her. That was the main thing. At first, Nagia rejected the offer to sit in his car, but he told her that he lived close by and could not afford to wait for her to mosey her way to the store, and that her mother had asked him to do this.

  ‘Go, Nagi,’ said Sara, sheperding Nagia into the little box-shaped car. ‘Don’t squander this generosity.’ Then something weird happened. She smiled at Mr. Kobayashi, who smiled back at her.

  Weird…

  It wasn’t as bad as Nagia thought. She worried that Mr. Kobayashi was a small talk kinda guy, but the moment they started moving, he turned up his radio. Not to play songs, but a podcast. It was a guy talking about keeping lizards as pets, which made Nagia wonder briefly if she hadn’t just gotten into the back seat of a psychopath.

  They arrived at the store an hour before opening time. It was too early. The smog hadn’t even finished rolling across the rooftops yet. Mr. Kobayashi unlocked the metal arms in front of the store.

  ‘Are you sleeping with my mum?’ Nagia asked

  Mr. Kobayashi dropped his keys. He bent down and picked them up.

  ‘Why did you just drop your keys?’ Nagia asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ The man pushed open the doors and stood back to let the metallic arms swing out and slide across the ground, two perfect wraps made across the staircase. He went in, not holding the door open for Nagia, but the robot, which looked like it had been paved into the storefront, did.

  Inside, the store was the same as yesterday. The only difference was the fountain of flutes. The rack stood upright and empty, all the instruments within the holders now gone. Nagia felt a twinge of guilt at what she done, but then reminded herself that every penny spent repairing the flutes would come out of her own salary, which couldn’t be high to begin with.

  Still, she got the job. That was what mattered, right? If anything, it would stop her mother from pestering her about getting out of the house.

  Mr. Kobayashi came out from behind a counter with a broom and a pan. He placed these onto Nagia’s lap and told her that her first job every day was to sweep the front of the shop.

  ‘I can’t use the pan,’ she said, reaching down to show him that she couldn’t get past her ankles.

  Mr. Kobayashi frowned. He took the pan off her. ‘Just use the broom, then.’

  Nagia started from the counter. Working steadily, she made her way around the tables and drum kits, trying her best not to touch anything that looked expensive, which was everything, really. Before coming into Antique Sound, she had never seen so many instruments in one place before. People became musicians in the other world. It was easier, instant, and most of all, there was too much to do in the real world. When each day had only 24 hours, and you had to spend half of that working and the rest preparing to do it again the next day, you tend not to tinker with things that don’t bring immense enjoyment at the cost of only a single skill point.

  There was a harp near the entrance, which looked like it was ripped straight out of history with its beautiful Victorian curves and sleek strings. Nagia plucked one, gently. Her pile of dust had grown into a small hill at this point, and there didn’t seem to be a way for her to get rid of it without the pan. That was when she heard a mechanical whirring. Reaching in from the main door, a steel arm extended into her field of view, belonging to the robot ramp. Nagia almost jumped out of her chair. The robot had half-detached from the doorframe and was twisted so that it was looking in. One of its multi-segmented arms, no longer acting as a ramp, was now placed in front of her. Three red buttons blinked where eyes would be. Its mouth was a coin-sized grate. It said nothing, did nothing, until Nagia looked down. Flattening its flat hand against the floor, the robot had made a perfect pan in front of the dust hill.

  ‘His name is Mr. Bub.’ The voice of Mr. Kobayashi startled Nagia. She turned to see him with his feet up at the counter, magazine in hand. ‘Mr. Bub has been here longer than this building.’

  ‘What is he?’ Nagia asked.

  ‘A robot.’

  ‘Not like any I’ve seen.’ Nagia swept the dust into Mr. Bub’s palm. With a whisper, the robot leaned back out of the shop, stretched its arm all the way across the footpath, and dumped the dust into the public trash bin. It then returned to its place around the door and lowered its arm back to create the ramp again.

  Nagia returned the broom to the closet. ‘It’s like a Halloween installation. Do you really expect to have customers when you have that thing standing guard?’ she asked Mr. Kobayashi.

  ‘Don’t be mean,’ said Mr. Kobayashi. ‘Mr. Bub is a distinguished gentleman.’ He then ordered Nagia to reorganize the vinyl records stacked against the west wall, and no further discussion about the borderline alien construct acting as the face of this strange store.

  At lunch time, Nagia stole a few moments for herself by lying to Mr. Kobayashi that she was going to buy something from the nearby convenience store, when in truth, Sara had already packed a lunchbox, but Nagia hid it in her bag. Mr. Kobayashi didn’t know that, or didn’t care. Either way, Nagia made it out of the store, hesitating at the top of the ramp as she studied Mr. Bub. The robot gave no hint that it was going to move. If its LED eyes could see, it was staring upwards, through the smog-ridden skies, at the pale wings of passenger ships.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  A thin film of grime clung to everything, making Nagia clutch onto her wheels as she slid down the footpath. The heat here was wetter than the kind that knocked on the windows of her room. The cicadas she’d been used to hearing were gone here, drowned out by the droning of cars barreling down the road.

  The internet cafe stood on the corner of the street, unchanged. Nagia almost expected it to have burned down. That was a stupid thing to expect. Maybe she just hoped it would.

  The young man at the reception recognized her. He stood up, the spike in his mouth quivering. ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked.

  Nagia slid a card across the table. ‘I need another thirty minutes,’ she said.

  ‘You want to do this again?’

  ‘Hence the passing of my card to you.’

  The young man’s eyebrows shot off his face. He hesitated a long moment before picking up the card. He looked at it, remarked, ‘This is a food ration card.’

  ‘I am aware,’ said Nagia. She held the young man’s gaze. He seemed to struggle with this for a moment, before letting go of whatever questions he had. Nagia watched him swipe her card, the rest of her lunch for this week going up into the ether. ‘Is that… technician here?’ she asked.

  The card slid back to her. ‘She doesn’t work here anymore,’ the young man said.

  This time, Nagia was in room 17C. She asked the receptionist to show her the way, and he begrudgingly obeyed. He seemed afraid of her, or perhaps it was residual fear from the punch that the blonde girl had given him yesterday. He brought her to a different wing this time, one with walls glowing with greenish neon instead of red. At the door, he told her, ‘When the thing hits your leg, please actually leave.’

  Nagia’s heart was racing at the sight of the pod. Dreadful memories threatened to drown her courage, but she held them down until her fear died. Turning, she showed the young man the wristwatch she’d filched from her mother this morning, now on her wrist. ‘Don’t worry. I got my own timer for this,’ she told him.

  The boot sequence took a few minutes longer, possibly because the machine Nagia was strapped into was an older model. Back when the other world was first introduced, it needed an entire garage filled to the ceiling with circuit towers and industrial fans. Over the years, this space requirement had been steadily shortened until all you really needed was a headset, five antennae that came down from the ceiling like the top half of a bird cage, and a specialized computer system so small it could fit inside your bedroom closet.

  It was nothing compared to the technology of the Terrans, though, and when Nagia’s celestial form woke to face the jagged hull of a titanic war vessel capable of destroying planets, she was once again struck by the sheer awesome power of humanity in this other world.

  These humans had completely mastered Terra years ago, going so far as to influence its orbit to suit their agricultural needs. They colonized the entire Sol system in what felt like days, and were at the heart of the galaxy now, holding the last of the celestial dragons at gunpoint. That included Nagia.

  A burst of static came into Nagia’s mind, manifesting into Selien’s voice after a few adjustments in the frequency of the psychic energy that connected them.

  ‘Do you have the dragon?’ the legionnaire commander asked. Evidently, she had been waiting on Nagia and was running out of patience.

  ‘I will bring you to her,’ Nagia promised.

  It was the wrong thing to say. All the cannons on the warship’s outer shell pivoted towards her. There were more than a hundred, maybe a thousand. Each barrel could fire a beam with the power to melt through the hardest materials in the universe. During the height of the Terra-Celestial war, Nagia had seen them burn through a moon to get at the celestials who hid on the other side.

  ‘That was not the deal,’ said Selien.

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not that easy,’ said Nagia. The barrels heated up. She added quickly, ‘If you kill me now, the only chance you’ll have of catching this dragon off guard will be gone. Can you afford that?’

  ‘You are brazen and foolish to assume we are at poverty of anything,’ said Selien. ‘Our colonies span more than half of this galaxy. We are launching ships with claws that can rip into the hearts of planets that will not bend to our will. The Legion Empire has crushed all other races in this universe, including yours, Keeper. I merely wish to save myself time by not hunting out this renegade dragon, but make no mistake, it is well within my reach to do so.’

  As the human commander spoke, a small wisp had zipped through space and hovered over Nagia’s eyes. She accessed it. From within the specks of light that the wisp disintegrated into, she read a set of coordinates. It must have been sent by Brianna. She sent this information through the metal gateway to Selien. ‘What you want is there,’ she said.

  There was a long pause. Then the warship’s cannons lowered. Selien commanded, ‘Lead us there, Keeper.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Nagia told her. ‘My wings were destroyed when your people turned my planet into a bomb.’

  ‘Then by the grace of the Legion, you shall borrow mine,’ said Selien, and a squadron of sleek drones whizzed out from a slit in the side of her warship’s hull. They clipped onto the base of Nagia’s tattered wings, stacking over one another to form a majestic pair of metallic wings. Two more drones positioned themselves at the corners of her eyes, sticking to the fine scales that protected her cheeks. Selien explained that these drones would read Nagia’s intent to move and adjust their thrusters in accordance. All she needed to do was fly like she was used to.

  Nagia didn’t believe it, but when she tried it, everything changed. She looked at a point in the distance, moved her body like she still remembered, and the drones started pushing her there. It took a few attempts to get the hang of turning and stopping, but Nagia was soon doing it again. Flying.

  She was flying again.

  It was incredible. Unbelievable. She had not moved like this in three years. The momentum spread through her body, electrifying her blood and feeding her soul. A gasp of exhilaration escaped her nostrils as everything woke up inside her. Stiff joints creaked back to life. Space became fluid once more. She slid through the stars, faster and faster, twisting her graceful form into concentric shapes as she lapped around the Terran warship.

  She heard Selien whisper, probably to herself, but it echoed across the psychic gateway between them, ‘I wonder what that feels like.’

  Freedom. This was what it felt like. But Nagia did not say anything. She reined back her galloping heart, reminding herself that this gift was temporary and came with a cost. She adjusted her heading and made for the place she was supposed to go, where Brianna was waiting. What she would do when she got there, she wasn’t sure, but it would change her life forever, she knew.

  She flew, dreading what was to come.