Chapter 33: Alpha Masitydy stepped out of the restaurant’s grimy little toilet feeling remarkably refreshed. She sed stifling work-clothes for the tents of the bag: simple white bra and panties, and a sleeveless summer dress, light and loose and short, peach with vertical pinstripes and leaving long legs bare to a pair of open-toed wedge sandals. Still hot but far more fortable, she smiled easily as she pranced back to her table.
“Look at you,” the waitress said, ing over with dy’s order. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. We could use a little more colour around here.”
“Maybe try ing the pce, then?” called the boy from the ter. He was now engrossed in his phone—dy suspected he may have snapped a sneaky photo of her as she took her seat.
The waitress ignored him. “What’s your name, honey?” the waitress asked, sliding food and drink onto the table, a soy chi sandwich as hearty as the side sad looked sad, and a frothy, pink milkshake.
“dy.”
“Name’s Doreen,” she answered.
dy smiled pleasantly at her. “o meet you, Doreen.” And she meant it—there was something genuinely heroic about the woman, in all her dowdy glory, tired and grey but somehow upbeat and resilient. Her uniform was drab and worn, the apron stained, but her nails fshed a brilliant teal and her carefully coifed hair aiakeup suggested a valiant battle against middle-aged fade. Like a soldier in dress uniform mired in the mud and filth of a trench, she rose by virtue of effort alone above her squalid surroundings.
“You should try the lemon meri’s divine,” Doreen said.
dy gestured at the sandwibsp; “After all this?”
“You won’t regret it.” The waitress spped her thigh as though to highlight the differeween them. “Skinny thing like you?”
“You’re too kind,” dy answered. “It’s the magic of vertical stripes.”
Doreen snorted as she returo the ter.
Taking a dainty bite of her sandwich, dy gnced around the restaurant. The boy kept gng furtively her way, and she made a point of catg his eye, leaning nguidly forward and pursed her wet lips around the milkshake straw, slowly drawing on the sweet drink. He blushed, suddenly unfortable, and turned away.
Hiding a little smile, she took a moment to tap out a quick message to her friends, first Julia and then Dan, inf them she’d be away for awhile. Then her gaze zily danced across the room as she tio eat.
The two other patrons, sitting a few tables away from dy, tiheir secretive versation hunched over some scribbled pages and cups of iced coffee. The maicuted often; the woman shushed him; there seemed to be tensioween them. He grabbed her wrist; she tried to pull away; her voice rose the quiet. Notig dy’s attention, the man gred. She quickly looked away.
A s over the ter drew her attention as it flicked through current affairs, volume off but with subtitles. Images fshed by in their daily deluge of depressing updates: high-altitude video of a rai burning thousands of kilometers away, jumping to drone footage of an armed flict even further abroad, sickly green gas roiling across shattered streets and hollowed-out buildings. Cutting to: a short update on captain Zang aeam, a crisis a hundred million kilometers out and halfway to Mars, spitting oxygen from a pinprick hole and trailing sparkling diamonds into the infinite dark.
Then back to Earth, an update on the heat wave, the nation painted in varying shades of crimson, a heat map the colour of blood and rust. ic attempts at esg overheating: tubs full of ice, a party in a walk-in freezer, cute dogs swimming in a pool. Segue to more serious loews: images of violence, police breaking up a dlelight vigil, zooming in on a middle-aged woman thrown to the ground, heavy knee of authority in her back, and her eyes were wide in terror and disbelief at her arrest, another futile feminist protest against the test rollback hts.
Suddenly unfortable, dy started to drift just as the news flipped over to the strowing s over the variant, vae-resistant and a year overdue, poised to sweep across the try after having already peaked overseas with tens of thousands dead. A Neopharm talking head calmly asserted their researchers had it in hand, then stepped aside and handed over to…
Jeremiah Steele.
dy watched, appetite suddenly gone, as the familiar figure took the media briefing. He looked—good, unged by the events of the previous six months. He stood—fidently, behind a solid mahogany podium diminished by his nearly two-meter height. Strong hands gripped the stand as he spoke, steely eyes severe as he assured listehat NeoPharm was ready, that the same corporate drive and genius that saw the world through the previous crisis would lead the way once again. In his tailored suit, shaven scalp gleaming uhe media’s gre, unfling before a barrage of questions, he appeared a man—powerful, dominant, muscur—in charge, the epitome of alpha masity.
And the cute girl watg trembled, slender fingers curling into the pleated folds of her pretty dress, manicured and painted nails biting into her soft skin. She looked at the impressive man on the s and she wished....
Author's Notes
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