Uri knew he was under the influence of narcotics and sedatives while remaining in a limited state of consciousness.

The feeling was odd; a physical numbness mixed with a mental lethargy that was enough to let him know that something was off, but not so much to make him react. Under that situation, there was no alternative but to give up.

When he came to his senses, he faced an oval-shaped gray image with a single sparkling dot: an eye! Broga was in front of him!

His eyes got rid of the blurriness, and he realized the gray thing was a lamp on the ceiling, and the spot of light, its bulb.

Soon, the beep of the medical equipment came to his ears, and he saw an IV bag hanging beside him.

I’m in a hospital.

What had happened? The last thing he remembered was him in the park and the android coming closer with a bundle of discharges, ready to fry him. Juzo must have saved him.

Juzo!

He looked for his twin and didn’t find him.

Uri was alone in the room, so he feared the worst. A pain stabbed him in the chest. He had fuzzy images of himself and his twin in adjoining beds, spreading their arms, trying to reach each other. Was that a dream?

He raised his head a little; his neck was stiff. The room’s door was in front of him. Tried to call someone to clarify what was happening, whoever was around, but his tongue was numb, and he was so stunned he couldn’t utter a word. He returned his head to the pillow. Groped at his sides, found the button to call the nurse, and before pressing it, the door opened. Thought the android would appear; he felt unprecedented relief to see it was a friend.

“Welcome back,” Dr. Sarah Lanen greeted him.

“Where is he?” Uri asked; it hurt to speak.

Sarah fell silent, looked him in the eye, and Uri knew his fears were correct.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “We did everything we could.”

“It’s okay,” he said with a lifeless gaze.

No, it wasn’t okay. Confirming the death of Juzo caused him a very strange feeling of loss. It wasn’t anguish, but an irrational pain for not having met him before, and impotence justified by how it had ended. That last thing was called guilt.

At that moment, everything he had experienced that night had become a fantastic complement to a tragic story, from having flown holding on to his brother, to having been chased by a damn droid and attacked by mercenaries, besides having witnessed the destructive capacity of those wonderful balls of energy. Because the true meaning of that tragedy was something more primary: the dichotomy between cowardice and heroism.

There, in his mind, was he running in the park, desperate, wanting to run away from what he couldn’t run away from; and there was also his brother, on his knees, wounded for trying to protect him. There was no question about which of the two was the face of cowardice and who was the face of heroism.

He looked down at his hand and mimicked the claw position Juzo had used to form those energy grenades. Like his neck muscles, he struggled to move the muscles in his hand.

Sarah took a seat next to him and wrapped his hand with hers.

“You too… You left for a moment,” she told him.

Uri knew very well he’d come close to not coming back.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

“It’s your third day. You got out of the intensive care unit this morning. You’ll be under observation for a few days and then… home.”

Three days. One, two, and three. Considerable time had passed. If Broga hadn’t come back to finish him off, it was because Juzo had blown him to pieces, or because the android had already taken from him the proteins needed to reactivate the Binary project—maybe, a small blood sample was enough to do it, and that’s why he was still alive. Would the droid leave him alone, if that was the case?

With the jumble of things in his head, between thoughts and nausea, he had a hard time thinking and asking questions. Although the urge to quench his intrigue was strong.

“How did we get here?”

“The paramedics who were attending the victims of the crash found you guys,” Sarah told him.

Uri recalled the multiple-car crash caused by Broga’s shot, the same one that was about to leave him headless.

“In the park… My brother and I—Were we the only ones there?”

Sarah adjusted her glasses, intrigued.

“Yes. Should anyone else have been there?”

“No, no,” Uri was quick to say, not wanting to complicate things by making a reckless comment when even he didn’t understand what was going on. “And fragments of… something robotic, perhaps?”

Sarah didn’t quite understand the question.

“As far as I know, park-caretaker robots aren’t active during nights,” she said. “You mean one of them?”

Uri asked her to forget it.

Sarah took a deep breath.

“I kept your brother’s body in the morgue,” she said. “I thought you’d want to—I don’t know, give him a proper burial.”

“Thank you,” Uri nodded. “His name was Juzo Romita.”

Sarah was waiting for him to tell her where that twin brother had come from, or what had happened that night. Curiosity was eating her alive.

“How did you guys…?” She didn’t know how to ask. “I mean, for people like us this is a huge deal and…”

But it was more than clear that Uri didn’t want to talk, at least not at the moment, so she didn’t push it.

“Later,” was all he said and fell silent.

That afternoon, a young female nurse finished her round, checking that everything was all right, and left the room. Not without first saying goodbye with a smile and a wink, though.

Uri knew what that gesture meant; he had received it thousands of times. However, to his very surprise, he didn’t feel in the mood to reciprocate her, so he acted distracted and looked the other way. He didn’t want her to think that he didn’t find her attractive, because he actually did; it was just that…

If this had happened a few days ago, he would have asked her for her number or even asked her to close the door, and he would have set aside for her to lie next to him in the bed. But not now. Only Juzo occupied his mind.

He made himself comfortable on the bed and faced the vast city landscape that unfolded after the window, bathed in the scarlet halo of the sunset, took his cell phone, and entered a search engine. He typed ‘News from Markabia.’ There was nothing about two deserting soldiers, or the theft of some secret files or the theft of thrusters, or anything like that.

No wonder. The military regime under which people lived on the eastern continent had strict regulations as to what information came out of there and in what way. It would be very difficult to find out anything, anything, about his brother and the whereabouts of his partner, that blonde girl.

He searched for the Edda Peninsula. Some results that mentioned the name Edda popped up, but none referred to a specific site. Not surprising either, considering that it was a place within the eastern continent.

He put the phone down and sighed.