Distortion of the senses, acute suffering, and dizziness; three things Uri had to endure to materialize again.

This time he didn’t appear in midair or fall flat on his face; this time, he did it with his feet on the ground, and although he swayed like a drunk; as if falling flat on his face would be inevitable upon returning to the world, he regained his balance.

His eyes were closed, but still, he saw flashes; his head was spinning, and his skin burned as if he’d been whipped all over his body.

“See?” Malin helped him just like last time. “The first crossing feels horrible, the second one not so much anymore.”

Uri didn’t seem very sure about that. When he stopped feeling the pungent smell of ozone piercing his nostrils, and began to sense a deep smell of wet grass, he opened his eyes.

It was still night, and the wind was cool and blowing hard.

They were alone in the middle of nowhere, in a beautiful meadow that stretched beyond the limit of the visible, full of hills and some trees scattered here and there; under a night sky, covered with billions of stars, and a small but radiant silver moon shining over them from the horizon.

Wherever they were, they were a long, long way from a city; of that, he was sure.

The other thing he was sure of, although he wouldn’t admit it, was that Malin had been right. This second time, the violent electric shock hadn’t felt as strong, or at least, his senses had recovered faster than the previous time.

He looked around that peaceful landscape and found a small cabin in the distance, three hundred feet away. An old wooden cabin ready to collapse. There were no lights on, and no one was to be seen nearby; it looked abandoned.

He cleared his throat.

“And this…?”

“The Edda Peninsula; this is where Eddanic territory begins,” Malin said. “This is the last Lavra Geyser on the continent; the next one is already out at sea. Although if there were one further ahead of this one, it wouldn’t be convenient for us to enter through it,” she added and pointed in the direction of the cabin. “The Eddanic people live several miles further inland, but my word will have to be enough to believe it because we won’t go there. They are… complicated people.”

Uri waved his hands.

“Better,” he said. “That thing about the Red radiation and the nosebleed—No, no. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Again, showing her hand, she asked him to stop.

“The vast majority of Eddanics are as normal as you and me,” she said. “They emit nothing but a desire to fool you with poor quality baubles at a high price.”

“Huh!” Uri hadn’t expected that answer. “They are traders? I’ve heard of merchants bleed you out, but never this way.”

Malin smiled.

“The Eddanics was a group of nomads who settled on this peninsula, centuries ago, never to leave again,” she said and looked at the horizon beyond the little cabin as if her eyes could pierce miles and miles of meadows and valleys, and see some city ahead. “If you think that the foreign policy of my country is very restricted; that of the Eddanics is extreme. They’re so jealous of their lands and their culture that to visit them you must ask for permission months in advance. Ridiculous. That’s why we won’t take a step further.”

Uri was looking around. Besides the cabin, there was no other sign of civilization out there, not even a road, let alone a paved route.

“Unless they have satellite surveillance, I can assure you no one will notice if we do.”

“They don’t have satellite surveillance, but they will know. Trust me.”

“Okay. I wasn’t gonna insist, either.”

Malin turned and pointed in the opposite direction of the cabin.

“My family came from Middle Ecuadorian, from the territory that ends right here,” she said. “As a child, I heard stories about the Eddanics, about them being sorcerers, or stealing children and offering them to their strange gods. I saw none of that.” Her gaze was lost, and another smile appeared on her face, one motivated perhaps by memories of better times. “I used to see them when they visited my city to do business. They were easy to recognize because they always rode in horse-drawn carriages, but they wore gold-embroidered robes and many jeweled necklaces that were worth more than any limousine out there. They didn’t even have a phone because they rejected technology.”

“There is a town of cultists near Proxima who live just like centuries ago,” Uri said. “But let me tell you, none of those cultists would visit a nightclub, wearing a miniskirt like that white-haired woman.”

Malin shrugged.

“Heavens, boy! There are always people looking for a better place to live, y’know?”

“And so, what about the Red radiation?”

“Intelligence discovered it when an Eddanic showed up dead in Markabia from radioactive poisoning,” she said. Uri’s eyes widened, terrified, so she hurried to reassure him, “It was because of a chemical, not from Red radiation… nor the Lavra one. Among the dead man’s belongings, though, they found notes that talked about the Red one. So, we discovered that one in a hundred Eddanics emitted it, although until today, no one has been able to define it, we only know its secondary effect,” she added and pointed to her nostrils.

“Maybe that story about the Eddanic being sorcerers wasn’t so farfetched,” he said.

Malin smiled again.

“You say the stories my nanny told me were true?” she said, and in the moonlight, her face shone like porcelain. “The radiation may be the product of the contact the Eddanic people had with the minerals and heavy metals that abound on this peninsula. Or so they think. After all, those gold dresses and those precious gems are thanks to entire generations of Eddanics that exploited mining. Who knows?”

“Well, that’s no secret. Most millionaires I know have raised their fortunes that way,” he said. “I’m talking about mining, not weird radiations.”

Another smile from Malin. “All right then, today’s class is over. What do you say we go back?”

Uri took one last look at that lonely cabin, swallowed up by night, covered by the wind, and nodded.

A spark, a shake, a dreadful feeling, lots of ozone smell, and they were already back in the alley, next to Dana’s. It no longer smelled of wet grass, but of garbage and urine.

Uri glanced up. There was no moon there, not yet, although the sky had turned orange; dusk had begun to fall.

He fixed his static-shaken hair, and between sighs, looked at the bracelets on his wrists. And to think that the first time he saw them he’d thought that it was a new wrist-phone from the competition.

He couldn’t believe what he had just experienced. He must have been one of the few in the entire metropolis, perhaps the only one there, who has just been transported to the other side of the world in the blink of an eye.

Already in the car, he buckled up, and before starting the engine, he waited for his body to overcome the tingling that the electric shocks had left in his muscles after the jumps. Then, he laughed at the thought that just two weeks ago his biggest concern had been that a freighter boat would be stranded in a foreign port with the company’s purchases, or that his casual lover wouldn’t leave the loft before the bells toll for his visit to the toilet. Now the challenge was to experience impossible things every day and survive the experience.

On the way home, Malin felt the wound on her shoulder, making sure the gauze didn’t come off. Uri caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye and veered around the next corner.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the hospital,” he said.

“No!”

“You have to see a doctor,” he insisted.

“I said no!”

“All right, all right.” Uri raised a hand in a truce and started back toward his apartment. “Damn! What a temper!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “But I’m fine. I need to rest for a while, that’s all.”

Uri shot her a suspicious look. “What are you afraid of?”

She looked back at him. “Come again?”

“With how little I know you,” he said, “I can tell you’re not the type of girl who would go to great lengths to avoid making others uncomfortable. It’s just like what happened to me a little while ago when I saw my friend Trevor. If you don’t want to go to a public place, it’s because you’re hiding from something or someone.”

Malin gave the same enigmatic chuckle as before. “Sharp, huh? You’re definitely Juzo’s brother.”

“Are you hiding from the android? Or from the mercenaries?”

“Broga doesn’t worry me, and the mercenaries are on the other side of the ocean,” she replied.

Uri drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.

“Aha! So, other vultures are hovering nearby, huh?”

“There are,” Malin said, “but trust me, they are my problem.”

“What will you do now?” Uri asked her as they got into the elevator.

“I promised Juzo that if something happened to him, I would take care of you,” Malin confessed.

Uri smiled without grace.

“Take care of me? What? Are you expecting to be my bodyguard?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. More like a watcher, a…”

“…Guardian?” Uri’s eyes sent a clear message to Malin: ‘You are not welcome.’

“Don’t worry,” she answered; “Juzo’s idea was that you have protection against any threat, even if he wasn’t present. But now that you have your own powers, you don’t need me. I’ll return to the eastern continent as soon as I know you’re well and safe.

“I’m fine and I’m safe,” he hastened to say.

The elevator doors opened, and they moved toward the loft entrance.

“Let’s make a deal that will be beneficial to both of us,” Malin said. “You’ll train with me; I’ll help you know how to handle your fire, and when you are ready to defend yourself, I’ll go. What do you say?” She raised her eyebrows, making a gesture as if she were offering Uri the bargain of his life. “I’ll have kept my promise to Juzo and I’ll have a clear conscience, and you will do whatever you want.”

The idea of ​​training was not to Uri’s liking, much less if he thought he would have her bossing him around.

“Think about it,” Malin insisted. “If we do it, after a while, you won’t have to see my face and I won’t have to see yours.”

Uri curled his lips, though he didn’t know whether to turn them into a smile or a sour grin.

“Training to control my powers,” he muttered.

The proposal didn’t tempt him in the least. How much skill would someone need to drop an energy bomb or to fly? All right, he’d set his pants on fire and burned his thigh, and he’d also blown a hole in the ceiling. But what the hell would he need to control his powers for if he didn’t plan on using them? Those white flames terrified him, and the experience of flying he had had with Juzo and those thrusters, contrary to what he had always fantasized about, had turned out to be frightening as hell.

He wasn’t a soldier like Malin or his brother had been, nor would he be. Yes, there were a thousand things that didn’t click in his head, yet he saw no reason to use his powers.

Uri was determined to return to his old lifestyle. He would reclaim the carefree bachelor life he’d been leading for the past few years as soon as a few things subsided, like Juzo’s voice in his head, for example, and the tricks those energetic leaks were playing on him.

But that memory returned to his mind: Juzo, kneeling on the ground, wounded; and that whirlwind of shame and responsibility marred his countenance again.

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll do it for Juzo.”

Uri opened the door, and with so much fluttering in his head, he forgot to take the wooden rod with which he turned the lights on, and he did so directly with his finger. He realized it too late, so he waited for a spark. And nothing. The switch didn’t work? Or had the circuit just burned out?

He didn’t think someone could have tampered with the fuses. He didn’t think that someone had broken into his house while they were gone and was now waiting for them in the shadows.