Uri had opened the door, and there she was, standing in the hallway. The blonde girl, Juzo’s partner.

It was the same girl who that Friday night had thrown herself out of the window and flew off with the thrusters, never to return. She even dressed similar to that time, with blue jeans and knee-high boots. Although, her attitude was different now.

She didn’t radiate the beauty that had dazzled him in the elevator when he’d first seen her, nor did she radiate the determination she’d shown as she moved inside the loft, doing her reconnaissance round with Juzo. The pain on her face said it all.

Her attempt to hide the wound on her shoulder using her hair might have fooled someone like Ruben N43, the super, but it never would have fooled him. What better than an underwear model to know how to hide physical defects using parts of the body or standing in a certain way. Also, the strap of her T-shirt was dirty with blood.

“How did you get here?” he asked. “Who let you in?”

She responded with a gasp. Not only hurt but she was also exhausted.

“As you guys say here, it’s not my first rodeo, boy,” she said, and they stared for a while. “Aren’t you gonna invite this girl in?”

Uri snapped out of the trance he was in and stepped aside.

“Where have you been?” he asked. The girl didn’t answer; she went into the loft and went straight to the bathroom. “Hey, you! Answer me!”

He followed her. He would have bet her injury was related to a certain flying android; although he couldn’t trust that either; everything related to what he experienced the first hours of that Saturday warranted his mistrust. Unfortunately, because of the mental gaps he’d been suffering from, he didn’t trust his own sanity either.

“If you’re looking for something to disinfect that with…” he said, but before finishing the sentence, she opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and got some gauze and surgical tape.

“Name’s Malin, not ‘Hey-you,’” she corrected. “Where do you have the—?” Uri took the alcohol from another drawer and passed it to her. “Thank you.”

In front of the mirror, Malin pulled her hair away and exposed the blow to her shoulder, a red circle with scratches and bright traces of blood. With one hand, she lifted the strap of the bloody T-shirt, with the other she moistened the gauze with alcohol and wiped that red circle on her skin that burned like hell.

Uri expected to hear her squeal, but she barely gasped in pain. She disinfected the wound and covered it with a bandage made of several gauze cloths, secured with adhesive paper tapes.

“What happened?”

“I was attacked,” she said.

Uri put his arms on his hips.

“And I thought you did it by playing dodgeball! Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Malin looked at her patched shoulder in the reflection. Not bad for a job done in a hurry.

“What happened to you?” he insisted, but she just waved her hand, inviting him to forget it. “What? You’ll ignore me like you ignored your partner when he needed you most?”

Malin pursed her lips, and when she started to leave the bathroom, Uri didn’t move out of the way.

“Juzo faced that Cyclops alone, and you turned your back on him,” he accused her with a lump in his throat and his eyes boiling with rage; rage at Juzo’s death and rage at his own cowardice. He hated being responsible for his brother’s defeat, and he hated her for leaving his brother alone. “Where were you hiding, bitch? Why didn’t you go help him?”

Malin bared her teeth.

“You call me a bitch one more time, and I’ll rip your balls out, you prick.” She shoved him aside. “I already did it with one idiot tonight, and I can do it again with another.”

Uri swallowed hard and stared at her, trying to compose himself, trying to regulate his breathing. He glanced at the shelf, at the urn with Juzo’s ashes, and doubted whether to show it to her or leave it for another time. In front of him was who had been his brother’s partner. He must confess his guilt; he needed to.

But his shame was more powerful. Not now, maybe later, he thought. What would he gain if he did? Besides, if he talked about it, he was in danger of choking on his emotions.

Slowly, Malin walked around the table Juzo had used to show the project files and slid her fingers across the surface as if seeking to pick up the trail of a sensation, something Juzo might have been left printed on the wood.

“Juzo…” she said, and looking up at him, revealed tears in her eyes. “What happened to him?”

There was nothing more to say. She knew what the outcome had been. Uri tried not to catch the sadness, but the memory of Juzo was stronger.

“That night, the android and other guys ambushed us, and…” he started to say, but anguish tied his throat and stopped his words. “Well, I tried to escape, and Juzo… Sorry, it was all my fault.”

Malin’s expression hardened. Her eyes widened; her lips pursed again; she took a deep breath. Uri thought he was going to get slapped; no, not a slap, a punch. But that punishment didn’t come.

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, and walked away from the table, looking away, anywhere other than where Uri was. “Juzo was a soldier and knew the risks.”

And while she seemed to hold the air, Uri was releasing it.

“It’s funny, you know,” he confessed. “I didn’t even have time to appreciate the bastard, but I’m still a wreck.”

Malin turned to him.

“That was Juzo’s secret power,” she said. “To make one feel sympathy for him despite his great smugness.”

They both smiled, and when they realized they had just shared a gesture, they felt uncomfortable. Malin adjusted the bandage on her shoulder even if it wasn’t necessary.

“Hey, why don’t you go to a hospital?” he asked.

“No need. This will teach me not to lower my guard.”

“And the android? It’s still out there, isn’t it?”

“And with his red eye well lit,” Malin said.

“Was he the one who did that to you?”

Malin shook her head. She went to the kitchen and asked permission to open the fridge. With Uri’s go-ahead, she poured herself a glass of cold water and gulped it down.

“That night at the disco,” she said, “I heard a woman’s voice behind me. I felt a tingle here, on the back of my neck, and everything… vanished.”

The memory of the black-skinned, white-haired woman exploded in Uri. That look that seemed to have absorbed him, that intimidating smile…

“I woke up today in a hospital, in a town near Markabia,” she continued. “Someone left me there last night with no one seeing anything. Where was I these last two weeks?”—she shook his head—“Here…”—she touched her temple—“there is a void. A nurse told me they found me with traces of blood on my nose, though; I suppose Juzo told you what that means.”

Uri nodded. “Red radiation. The Eddanic woman,” he said, and couldn’t help comparing Malin’s story with the way he had appeared in the hospital as a baby, from one moment to the next and without anyone noticing. Similar modus operandi, no doubt. Perhaps, as far as the organizational logistics of the project were concerned, Broga had not been the first to use mercenary help.

“I escaped from the hospital before one question led to another and that attracted the authorities,” Malin said. “I guess you already know that citizens of my country who leave without permission and return are not well received. I needed to get back here to find out what happened to you and Juzo; I couldn’t do time in a cell. And then, this happened.” She showed the wound on her shoulder. “A few blocks from the hospital, one bastard who works with Broga took me by surprise. I’m sure he was watching me. The good thing was it saved me from having to think about how to get here.”

Uri took a step back with a huge look of doubt printed on his face.

“And how did you get here so fast? You said you woke up in the hospital today, but there is an entire ocean of distance between us, and let’s agree that buying a plane ticket should not be easy for you people.”

She smiled, enigmatic. “I’ll show you if you show me what you can do.”

Uri took another step back. “How do you know what I can do?”

Malin looked at him, somewhat puzzled.

“Boy, Broga is still out there,” she said. “If you are here, breathing, it’s because the project was successful. And you can bet he’s monitoring the living hell out of you.”

Uri went from suspicion to terror. He looked around for something odd, for some object that shouldn’t be there; something that could hide a camera or some other transmitter. Nothing. Everything in the living room was in the usual place; all the lamps, at least as far as he could see them, looked the same; there was nothing out of place or anything that seemed different.

“There’s no use.” Malin guessed what was going through his head. “Juzo and you were monitored for decades! And none of you knew. You could wear a tracker under your nails, and you wouldn’t know it.”

Uri despaired.

“And then what should I do?”

“Nothing,” she said, amazed at his naivety. “It’s all done, Uri. Broga’s mission was for the proteins to come into contact, and they already did. What else can you do? “Go find him? How? For what? Do you think he’ll give you an explanation? Look, the files Juzo had were incomplete, I don’t know the extent of your powers, but I’m sure it’s greater than what I have as a Grenadier. If Broga or any of those mercenaries show up again, I believe you could blow them to pieces if you wanted.”

Uri tried to pull himself together, modulate his breathing, and count to ten; he barely reached five, but he managed to do a good job curbing the waves of terror and paranoia. Letting himself sink into resignation was the best thing he could do at the time.

He then showed the palm of his hand and, trying to hide his fear behind a gesture of seriousness, let the electric current flood it into a handful of white flames.

Bathed in light, ululant and radiant like the burning heart of a star, Malin opened her eyes wide, and her heart stopped for an instant. She couldn’t utter anything more than a sigh.

“By Imitating the movement that you guys made with your fingers, I was able to mold my own Fotia,” he said, and by contracting his hand, he shaped his fire into a sphere. It didn’t have a shape as circular as the Grenadiers’ Fotia; this one threw spits of fire here and there, and the sound it emitted was closer to the crackle of the flames than to that electric buzz the others ones released. And yet, it was far more intimidating than any grenade Malin had ever seen.

Uri feared losing control like the time he broke the ceiling, so he made the energy disappear before the demonstration turned into misfortune.

“I know the scientists who came up with this are dead,” he said. “But there must be more people who were involved in the project who didn’t die in that stupid lab accident. Human assistants, not androids; financiers, lab companies, even janitors; someone. For Juzo and for all the other twins who died from this, babies and children alike, I wanna bring the bastards who are still alive to justice. I don’t care if they are eighty or ninety years old now. It doesn’t matter that the project originated on your continent, I have powerful friends; influential people that can—”

Malin raised her hand, asking for the floor.

“I know how you feel, believe me,” she said, “but answer me something, what will cause more shock, an illegal project, of which most of those involved are already dead, or a man who can create fireballs, without chemical serum and without implants that—?”

“And float,” Uri interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“Create fireballs and float,” he corrected.

Malin’s eyebrows rose almost to her crown. She had just realized that Uri’s feet were not touching the floor at that moment.

“And float,” she added, trying to process one surprise after another. “Good heavens! Well, I think my question answers itself. If you start picking up the phone and asking questions, you’ll attract the attention of people who won’t seek justice for you and the other twins, but rather take advantage of you, and by people, I mean mainly the authorities of my country.”

Uri got the point and pushed by frustration let himself fall onto the couch.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The informant who gave Juzo the files is working on the case. When he knows something, he’ll tell me.”

Uri’s response was a long sigh.

“In the meantime, there’s one thing I can answer,” she said, and to Uri’s puzzled gaze, she went to the kitchen and reached behind the fridge. “Right, right where I left them.” She removed two black things, that with a squeeze, shaped into bracelets, similar to the ones she was wearing. “That Friday, I crossed my fingers so that if you survived, you wouldn’t find them. I was afraid that… I don’t know, you would freak out and throw them away, or worse, that you would give it to someone.” She ran her fingers over the chrome surface of one of her bracelets; she withdrew a tiny chip from there and inserted it into the pair that had been hidden. “This will give them the energy they need to do it.”

Uri crossed his arms. “Do what?”

“I’ll show you how I got to Proxima in record time,” Malin said, returned the bracelets to their rectangle shape, tucked them into her jeans pocket, and headed for the door. “Take your car keys. Let’s go to a place, and I’ll show you.”

“You can show it to me right here, right?”

“No, it must be in that place.”

Uri took a deep breath and gave in to Malin’s demands. Everything to get at least one answer to so many questions. He buttoned up his shirt and looked for the car keys.

“I traveled by car with people from Markabia and ended up bad,” he said. “I hope the tragedy doesn’t happen again.”

“Take it easy, boy. You won’t wake up in a hospital again after this if that’s what you’re afraid of. That said, maybe you’ll do it with little nausea.”