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.

Laura surveyed the grimy streetscape outside the station. "Are you sure she meant here? Shouldn't we be going to the border checkpoint?"

"She's taking the shuttle train. It's easier for her because she's taking the high-speed from Canterbury."

Laura looked a tad confused by this. "Nobody uses the shuttle train."

"Riding unpopular train services is a thing over there, apparently."

"Did you hear about the water restrictions over there?" Taking off her helmet, she looked up at the cloudless blue sky. A haze of dust seemed to hang over everything.

"I heard on the radio the other day. It's not looking good."

"At least we have the lake." She raised an eyebrow at at some workers putting the finishing touches on a shopfront. "Hang on. What's a dentist doing here?"

I cast an eye over the workers. "They got shut down by Ryder's private security goons after they botched his root canal. So they laid low for a bit and decided to go for a fresh start somewhere a bit more low-key."

"Hmm." Laura remounted her bike. "Well, I gotta go now. Make her feel welcome."

"What do you mean? She's basically on our side."

"Still. It doesn't hurt." She put her helmet back on. "Oh. And don't forget, you need to call Dan about the contract." Dan was our go-to guy at NC Petroleum, national oil and gas company of Zirconia and our main supplier of diesel. 

"I'll take care of it after I get back."

"And see if you can find a herbalist. Gerta's been trying to get some horehound since forever. She reckons it's stopped growing because of the weather."

"See you later. Love you."

"Love you too." I watched as the bike zoomed off.

***

"It can't have moved address, can it?"

"No. It's had a makeover about ten years ago and that's about it."

"So why exactly are you walking with me?"

"You did say you wanted to get up to date on current affairs."

Catriona was traveling light, with only a small suitcase she was lugging along. We headed along the dusty, uneven pavement, passing gated factories and faceless warehouses. A breeze had picked up, blowing a cloud of dust and bits of rubbish into the air.

"When's the last time it rained over here?" An old newspaper somersaulted across the pavement in front of us. "You could have picked me up in that car of yours-"

"It's not very practical city car, you know. That thing is a bitch to parallel-park."

"I love those things. I think one of the World News journalists used to have one back in the day."

"I got told the other day that it's a Zirconian architect's car."

She guffawed. "I dated an architect a few years ago. He drove a Lexus. So. Do you just take the bus?"

"Or I hitch a ride with someone. You can't refuse giving an Alpha a lift."

"The perks of being an Alpha."

It's not as glamorous as all those Zirconian soap operas would have you believe. Your pack will hate you for shit you have no control over, insane online Zirconians will hate you for shit you have no control over. And the other Alphas are a fucking handful. Keith Moon meets Caligula shit. You get my drift. They think the humans are going to get us. They get spooked over plastic tags on birds."

"I thought the Daily Howl was just making that stuff up."

"I wish they were. They don't have to. It's all true. The scandals, the shopping sprees, the Learjet charters. Probably the best journalism they've ever done."

Catriona was tapping away at the giant phone which bobbed like a permanent attachment to her right hand, checking emails. Considering Laura was perfectly content with an ancient flip phone, this was a new and disconcerting concept to me. "My boss wants to know whether I've arrived."

"I'm lucky to get three emails a day. People like to talk face to face here. We not really big fans of technology."

Catriona surveyed the chaotic traffic and the colourful billboards towering above the street. "This place has taken a bit of a dive since I last came here."

"Your hard earned taxpayers' money at work, and by hard at work I mean hard at work making sure someone's mansion has a new hot tub in the backyard. Many someones, to be more realistic."

"Surely you can do something about it."

I shrugged. "I can raise the issue at the next Congress, but beyond that my hands are tied."

We passed a water vending machine, one of the many which seemed to have popped up overnight. I didn't recall seeing any on my last visit before Congress. "I didn't know Thunder Falls sold water."

She scrunched up her nose. "If I hear about them or see their name one more time I swear I'm going to kick something."

"Why?"

"They're kind of a big deal right now in the world of charity foundations. I'm on the board of one of those NGO things back home, and people are up in arms because Thunder fucking Falls have edged them out of their precious role in providing food to the needy the rogue settlements. Now in their defense, they are kind of glad that they can now focus on the needy back home."

"That's good, then."

"But on the other hand, now all the spoiled private school kids in Canterbury can't put a paragraph on how they went across the border to donate soup cans to the needy on their resumes. And because most of their funds come from fundraisers done by said kids, they've just lost their biggest source of income. So they're pissed."

She lowered her voice conspirationally. "Now personally, I don't have a problem with any of that. Because those private school wankers can get stuffed."

"Can't they just take them over the border anyway and get them to build a school or something?"

"Well, they've all pulled out after the rogue attack."

"We haven't quite established whether it was a rogue attack yet."

She watched as a black pickup with security personnel in the bed drove past. "I thought this place would have been under lockdown or something."

"As I said. Paranoid is the default state of mind here. It's almost like we've been expecting this to happen."

"And then there's the fact Adlai called them to a meeting or something and they freaked. Wouldn't blame them."

You've met Adlai before?"

She just nodded. "I was an intern with the Daily Howl back in the eighties. I was assigned to cover this car parts company which had set up an assembly line in the Zone, don't remember the name. Anyway, apparently he was one of the investors in this factory, and he was there at the opening."

"You worked for the Daily Howl?"

"Back then they still had standards."

"Anyway, this factory. It was one of those con jobs that were everywhere back then. Grossly overpaid workers, parts shipped in from who knows where, bare-bones facility. But it was the 1980s, Everyone was getting in on it back then, anyone could find good work over the border, we were all optimistic as hell, blah blah blah, we all know how well that went.

"And he was there. He was one of the people I interviewed. He was a lot younger and slimmer, but he was still tall and imposing. He just made me uneasy. The whole time he was staring at me with this intense look, like he was trying to stare into my soul or something."

"He seemed quite nice when I spoke to him at Congress the day before."

She gave a shrug. "Oh well. People change. Anyway, I didn't really hear about him again until recently with this whole NGO thing. I know he's put in tenders before for supplying some of the supermarket chains over the border. But so has Groundnut Hill in the past. And they never win over the locals and the foreign suppliers."

"Have you ever heard about him travelling into Zirconia?"

Catriona snorted. "I haven't heard anything. And come on. You still haven't gotten over that."

"We do."

"It's the Republic of New Carinthia. I thought we got over that twenty years ago. One silly sketch show on TV and you guys can't get over it."

"It was funny. It still is funny."

"Oh, stop it. Tell you what, Jim? You should visit Corviston. It's honestly incredible how much it's changed since you left."

"From what I heard, it's basically one huge construction zone at the moment."

"Well, it's still a great place to visit. Did you hear? The Briarleaf One opened. You have got to visit that. There's a rotating restaurant on the top floor."

"I'm not sure what my pack would think about it."

We turned the corner onto a side street. "Oh wait. Your 20th anniversary's coming up, isn't it? That would be the perfect surprise!"

"Laura's not too big on heights. That's her one flaw. She is rather fond of Corviston as a city, though."

"Oh well, I'm sure she'll love it anyway."

"Actually, she wants to move," I said, almost blurted out.

"She what?" Catriona didn't catch on for a moment. Then she did. "Now she's the last person on earth I'd think would say that."

"I don't think she's completely made up her mind yet. But it's definitely a possibility in her mind."

"Well, at least someone is being decisive."

"What are you even getting at, Cat?" The nickname I called her when we were roommates all those years ago felt foreign in my mouth.

"Let's face it, Jim, you've always been a bit of a pushover." The hotel loomed up ahead, twelve storeys of plate-glass and concrete. "Well, if you make up your mind, call me and I'll see what I can do."

***

No sooner had we said our goodbyes, I heard the honk of a horn and someone calling my name. It was Thurgood, leaning out of the cab of a black pickup with Willow Security stencilled on the side, shouting from across the road.

"Jim. Breakthrough. There's been a match."

"Hang on there." Dodging traffic, I made my way across the dusty asphalt. "A match with what?"

"Get in. I'll get Lister to explain once we get there."