3. CHAPTER THREE #2
The scanner at the gate read my holo-ticket with a soft chime, then flashed an extra icon I didn’t recognize.
“Pit access,” the attendant said, checking my band. Their eyes flicked to my face, then back to the screen, as if verifying something. “You’ve been upgraded.”
“Yeah, about that, I—I didn’t—” My brain coughed up the cost of that kind of ticket and choked halfway through the number. “Are you sure? Because I don’t remember purchasing pit tickets. And I really don’t want to get in any kind of—”
“It’s marked on your code,” they interrupted. “Enjoy the show.”
Maybe this was what it felt like when the universe decided, Fine, you’ve suffered enough. Have something amazing. Or maybe their system was glitching, and I’d be tackled by security halfway through the opener. Either way, my feet were already moving into the arena.
Inside, it was enormous. Much larger than it looked from outside. I stopped at the small coat check kiosk to the side and flashed my wrist comm.
"Thanks," the attendant said grabbing my bags. "When you come back just flash your ticket again. Enjoy the show!"
"Thanks!"
The entry corridor curved gently, its walls lined with panels of refractive crystal that caught the light and fractured it into prismatic streaks across the floor. The air had that charged feeling, like right before a storm. The music was so loud that it vibrated in my chest.
I followed the glowing signs toward my section on the floor, letting myself get pulled along with the clusters of fans. Up close, some of their outfits were even more intense. Those holographic jackets were programmed with looping animations of past performances.
This planet felt so advanced in technology that it was insane.
“Did you hear she changed the opener for tonight?” a human woman shouted to her friend.
“No way!” Her friend shouted back in excitement.
A third friend cut in. “It’s Vela. She always tests new material here first. My cousin caught a song last time that never made it onto the album. How totally cool is that?”
“Liar!” the first friend said, smiling.
As I continued walking down the aisle, I overheard a trio of younger fans chatting. They were huddled around a magazine that had a giant pull-out poster of Zhari in a neon green leotard.
“She did that thing with her throat,” one of them groaned. “You know she only does that when she’s amused.”
“Or when she’s lying,” another said. “Remember the talk show on Oris? The host asked if she was seeing anyone, and she said no. But her pulse flickered and her nose scrunched. She is not a good liar.”
“That was nerves,” the third argued. “She hates those interviews. You can tell.”
The fact that there were entire debates about the micro-expressions of this woman’s circulatory system should have been absurd.
Instead, it felt comforting and familiar.
Back home, fandom had always been something that lived on my screen, in tagged threads and late-night chats.
Here, it was bodies and voices—the shared hum of people who had all, at some point, heard the same song and decided to rearrange their lives around it.
The aisle opened suddenly into the main bowl of the arena.
It was amazing.
Levels of seating rose in concentric rings, each tier lit in a different soft color, so the whole place looked like a cross-section of some luminous planet.
The stage stretched out at one end, a vast structure of platforms, ramps, and suspended rigs, currently dark except for a few busy techs moving like shadows against the crystal. Above it all hovered a circular screen.
My wrist comm pinged, a subtle vibration against my skin, and a holo-arrow appeared in my display, directing me down instead of up.
Pit access.
Right. Somehow, I’d already started drifting toward the nosebleeds.
“First time?” a nearby usher asked as I hesitated at the top of the stairs, taking it all in.
“Gosh, I really do stick out like a sore thumb,” I muttered. “You are, like, the hundredth person to ask me this. Is it really that obvious?”
They smiled. “No, not too much. I don’t think you ever get used to how crazy these arenas are. Follow the path lights. They’ll take you to the front.”
“I am so excited! Woo!” I yelled over the music. “I have never been to one of her concerts before. Stars, I have never traveled off Earth before.” I giggled as I did a little excited dance.
They laughed and gestured to the stairs. “Well, have fun!” They were still chuckling as they turned around and walked back up the aisle.
I started down, the crowd’s chatter rising and falling around me in waves—arguments about favorite bridges, speculation about tonight’s outfit, and someone loudly insisting that Zhari performed better in pink lighting than in blue because “that’s when her dual-pulse syncs with the bass.”
The pit was a wide, open area right up against the barrier, all standing room and no seats—a sea of people pressed close enough that the air felt warmer just walking into it.
I found a spot near the center, two bodies back from the rail, and wedged myself there with the stubbornness of someone who had not crossed space to watch from the nosebleeds.
The arena slowly filled. The upper levels glowed as more Velans filtered in, bracelets lighting up in colors that corresponded to sections, as if someone were assembling a giant pixelated image one row at a time.
Above us, the ceiling dimmed from bright crystal to a deep, dusky hue, sprinkled with projected stars that drifted lazily in slow orbits.
Pre-show tracks from other artists played over the system, low and rhythmic.
Each bass line sat in my chest like a second heartbeat.
I tried to imagine where she was right then.
Probably backstage in some cavernous dressing room, light threads being woven into her hair, stylists adjusting chromeskin panels while she ran through scales.
My palms were already damp. Not from fear. From… okay, a little bit of nerves. Suspended over a pit of excitement.
The lights dropped without warning.
For a second, there was only darkness and the sound of thousands of people drawing in the same breath.
Then a single tone rolled through the space, low and resonant, vibrating up from the floor into my calves.
It built slowly, gathering overtones, harmonies folding in like layers of color.
The starfield on the ceiling flared, and all the bracelets in the arena synced to the same soft pulse.
The stage exploded into light, and everyone started to chant her name.
“ZHARI! ZHARI! ZHARI!”
“WE LOVE YOU, ZHARI!” a bunch of female aliens yelled out in front of me.
Zhari slowly rose from the center on a hidden platform, her arms outstretched.
Her chromeskin outfit caught the illumination and split it into shards of magenta and gold.
Her skin glowed a warm, bioluminescent pink that deepened along her throat and cheeks.
Glitter covered her body, with glitter streaks woven through her hair.
The first song detonated. The floor kicked under my feet, the air turned solid with sound, and something behind my sternum jolted like it had been jump-started.
“Welcome, Lumara! Is everyone ready to party?” Zhari screamed.
“Yes!” I shouted back. “This is incredible!” I threw my hands into the air and clapped.
Video streams were a joke. A crime, almost. They flattened everything. This was… more. Every note seemed to travel through my bones instead of past my ears.
Neon heartbeat, running through the wire,
Starlight burning like a live electric fire.
Zero gravity, but I’m falling into you,
Satellite dreams in a midnight-blue hue.
If the whole world fades into the afterglow,
Take my hand, baby—where the galaxies go.
By the time the next track bled in, I was already moving.
I didn’t think about it—I just did it. I let the beat catch me and drag me under.
People were packed tightly on all sides, shoulders knocking into mine, someone’s laugh sharp in my ear followed by loud singing.
Lights flashed so quickly that everything turned into color and motion instead of actual shapes.
“We’re in zero gravity—ooh!” I sang, breathless and already grinning.
“Don’t stop now!” the crowd roared back.
I laughed, the sound swallowed by everything around me as I threw my hands up and jumped with the drop, my boots barely feeling the ground when they landed.
“Hands up, feel the energy—let’s go!”
“We won’t come down!”
The whole place shouted it back, voices piling over one another until it felt like the floor might give out beneath us. For a second, it actually felt like it had—as if I wasn’t fully there, as if I could lift right out of my body and keep going.
Onstage, she moved like gravity had given her a discount, her steps guided by invisible lines of force.
Light threads in her hair flared in time with the beat, changing color with each chorus.
Holographic versions of her flickered into existence around the stage—three, then five, then a full ring of Zharis, all singing harmony on the bridge before collapsing back into one.
I screamed the lyrics with everyone else, my voice disappearing into the ocean of sound, and still, it felt like she could hear me.
Between songs, she spoke in Velan, which was such a beautiful language despite the fact that I couldn’t understand it. One of her favorite quotes from interviews, which she said several times during the show, translated to: “Lumara, my home, my heart.”
The crowd answered as if the city itself were shouting back.
I lost track of the set list. Time didn’t feel like normal time. It stretched and snapped and doubled back, each track bleeding into the next so seamlessly that I only realized we’d reached the end-concert lull when the lights cooled to a softer hue and the band slipped into a slower intro.
“This one,” Zhari said, her voice dropping, “is for anyone who crossed a long way to be here tonight.”
That was when she saw me.
Or I imagined she did.