Uri and Malin entered the loft. The scarlet light of sunset sneaked through the windows and painted the place red, staining the rest with huge shadows and deep darkness.

The crackling of energy reached their ears, and a flash exploded behind Malin, piercing the gloom.

Something splashed on Uri’s face. Stunned, he ran his fingers over his cheek to see what had caught him: It was red, and it wasn’t because it was lit by sunset; it was blood. Malin’s face was twisted with pain and she was ready to break down; someone had just thrown her a shock grenade right into her wound. He tried to help her but was slow to react.

“That was from the kick in the balls,” a man said.

Malin managed to stand, and with anger and tears in her eyes, she finished taking off what was left of the bandage on her shoulder.

“How…?” She couldn’t grasp what was going on.

“Did you think stealing from me the Auriga would buy you time?” His attacker was in the dark, sitting on the kitchen counter. “Or did you think that by being with him”—he pointed at Uri with his chin—“the android would tell me: ‘Don’t go after her’?”

Why didn’t you kill that bastard when you had the chance? Malin scolded herself, this time furious with herself. With this, they went three times that they surprised her from the rear; twice on the same day and at the hands of the same idiot. Though, the contempt for her enemy and the frustration of feeling like an idiot helped her cope with the burning that bit her back.

Winding through the gloom, Uri found a man with a cynical look and bushy mustaches, sitting on his kitchen counter—the one he always tried to keep clean—and for some reason, he was not surprised that the stranger wore a military uniform. Was there a rule that lunatics from now on had to be in uniform?

And that was when he recognized him.

“You were one of the mercenaries who attacked us in the park!” he pointed.

“Guilty!” The mustached man declared himself, and with a little jump, he stood up, stepped out of the shadows, and entered the red glow of sunset and the marks of darkness. “A piece of advice, Juzo’s brother,” he added; “you should close the windows before leaving. Remember, there’s no floor in the heights where you’re safe.”

With his elbows, the guy pushed the sides of his unbuttoned combat jacket away; between his chest hairs were elastic X-shaped straps—he had one of those portable thrusters folded on his back. Then he moved his arms with his hands turned into fists, like a boxer ready for the next round. His body odor rose like shaking dust.

Malin stepped in front of Uri.

“Uri, this is Simon,” she nodded, noting that the mercenary had new bracelets. “Believe it or not, there was a time when we were partners.”

Simon laughed.

“Luckily, you’re one of those who easily find a new heartthrob,” he said. “Are you a hopeless whore, Malin, huh? Your boyfriend hasn’t been dead for over two weeks and you’re already wanting to get under his brother’s sheets.”

“Simon, listen to me well. If you hurt him, not just me, Broga will chop your head off.”

“Malin, Malin! If people constantly change their minds, why the hell can’t androids do it? The orders were to stay away from him, but I think the Cyclops took pity on my pain, y’know? ‘Go after her and say hello to the weakling for me,’ he told me.”

“I highly doubt he said that.”

Nervous and scared, Uri couldn’t do anything but take a step backward for every step that man took forward.

Meanwhile, Simon enjoyed the fear he caused. He was laughing, excited, and at the same time, trembling, anxious. Advancing toward an injured woman, glancing sideways at a poor fool who was overpowered by the situation, as if to say to him: ‘Easy there. After her, it’s your turn,’ had printed a psychotic verve on his face that was difficult to ignore. Shaking his hand, he revealed a crackling Fotia and tossed it like a baseball ball.

Malin countered the grenade with another like it, and she did it so fast that Uri still had not finished covering himself, when the attacks had already canceled each other, exploding in the middle of the adversaries and sparking sparks throughout the living room.

“Stop!” Uri shouted and tried to hold Simon back.

“Uri, get away from him!” Malin yelled, watching them struggle. If Simon took Uri hostage, the situation would reach a level of complexity that she wasn’t sure she could handle.

“Listen to your girlfriend, sissy boy!” Simon pulled away from Uri and pushed him against the couches.

Uri hit the leg of the coffee table and fell to the floor.

Malin activated her implants and fired two Fotias. Simon disintegrated the first one by colliding it with his own Fotia, and evaded the next one, which ended up hitting the staircase that led up to the bedroom, blowing up the wooden steps.

Hiding between flashes and a shower of sparks, Simon stepped forward and struck Malin one blow to the face, then another, and then a hook to the stomach that left her on her knees, on the verge of collapse. Wiping his hairy arm across his forehead, he wiped off the sweat and, shaking it off, threw it at her. And as if that wasn’t humiliating enough, he spat on her.

“Women like you love this, don’t they?” he said between giggles.

Malin was too sore and disgusted to let Simon’s words affect her.

You can’t give up against this human waste, gal. Not now, she told herself and straightened up once more. This time, it wouldn’t do to rile her enemy up and wait for him to get distracted before attacking. From the way the damned man laughed, it seemed like he had already overstepped the limit of sanity.

Simon lunged like a rabid animal; his left fist raised and engulfed in electrical discharges. With her forearm, Malin interrupted the attack’s momentum. And before Simon tried to hit her with his other arm, she punched him in the eye and elbowed him hard in the nose knocking him back.

Simon halted his fall to the ground. His face was bruised, wrinkled in an expression of pain and hatred. He spat fury from his eyes—one tighter than the other—and blood from his nose, blood staining his mustaches and chin. He was breathing hard, and his chest puffed out for air, just like Malin had done seconds before.

“C’mon, baby!” he yelled at her and doing those same stupid boxing moves, spat at her again.

Suddenly, something pushed him forward. Uri had thrown himself against him from behind and they struggled again.

“Uri! Stay out of it!” Malin yelled.

Uri tried to hold his enemy by the waist, but the bastard was so sweaty it was impossible to hold his grip for more than a second. He threw a couple of punches from down there, but only a few of them hit the target. Simon grabbed him by the hair, wanting to shake him off, and took a couple of blows to the jaw, though nothing strong enough to push him back.

“I already told you, listen to your girlfriend!” With a hook, Simon left Uri on the brink of unconsciousness. Uri fell to the ground with a split lip. “You may look a lot like Juzo, but is there a difference between the two of you!”

Malin kicked Simon in his knee and made him scream. The man with the mustaches staggered, and she sank the heels of her boots right into his thorax.

Simon’s yell was so loud Malin thought that if the neighbors hadn’t been alerted by the fight yet, now they would.

Simon couldn’t stand up straight, the pain in his knee was immense; he tasted the taste of his own blood, and that filled him with rage. He looked at his chest and discovered, between his hairs, the cut caused by that bitch’s heel and more blood. The humiliation of being beaten twice by the same woman outweighed the pain that beset him. He screamed in rage and then did what a scorned little boy would do when he realized he couldn’t get away with it: break the first thing he had at hand. He formed a Fotia, feigned that he was going to release it on Uri, but fired toward the kitchen and destroyed the gas pipe running through the wall.

There was a loud CRACK! And everything lit up blue.

Fortunately, the stopcock was closed, but the little gas left in the pipes had been enough to cause a bluish fiery ball that consumed the kitchen and spat out hissing flames that spread everywhere.

Uri was still, with blood on his lips, as everything burned. The blaze spread its fiery cloak across the loft, a cloak that had turned from blue to an immense and painful range of reds, while he stood there, trying to fathom what he was witnessing. His breathing wasn’t racing; his heart wasn’t punished by tachycardia; his fear was so big it had overwhelmed his survival instincts.

“Get out of there!” Malin yelled at him. One fireball was going straight for him.

Uri would have died that day if it hadn’t been for Malin.

The fire opened its jaws to engulf him, but Malin pushed him aside; the explosion only licked him glancingly.

Uri reacted late and saw Malin fall at his feet. He looked at his house covered with fire. The things they had bought, the things they had built, their beautiful parquet floor, the platform with his bedroom; everything was burning. He remembered the sacrifices he’d made and the long stretch traveled from his departure from the orphanage to the fulfillment of his goals, those that allowed him to buy that place.

Until, finally, the fire reached the immense photograph of him where he was walking half-naked among the rocks of a cliff by the sea, and from there, it jumped to the shelf. The flames rose, and the urn with Juzo’s ashes disappeared forever.

Defeated, he looked down at where Malin lay. The young woman had just saved his life, and he didn’t know if she was alive or dead.

And above the mass of explosions and flames, he heard the crazed laughter of the damned one who had caused it.

Simon emerged from the flames, and though he had fire sparks in his hair and uniform, and he was covered in soot—a large black stain painted his face—the bastard was in one piece. He stepped in front of Uri, grabbed him by the neck, dug his fingers into his throat, and began to strangle him.

“I won’t wait for you to die burned, sissy boy. I’m gonna kill you myself.”

Uri’s feet hit the ground.

Unable to defend himself, Uri felt the air escape his lungs; he lost consciousness. With the stench of the burning, Simon’s stink no longer meant anything to him; he would soon lose his sense of smell. His vision was darkening, and he could no longer groan. Simon would end up suffocating him at any moment if he didn’t kill him first by ripping out his neck.

He heard a noise. Perhaps it was his neighbor, Mr. Quintana, knocking on the door to see if everything was okay. No, Mr. Quintana! Run! Get out of here!

Everything began to darken.

“Don’t fade away!” Juzo ordered him. “Wake up, you moron!”

Uri reacted.

And in the depths of his spirit, he felt the presence of his brother, like a supernatural engine spinning at a thousand revolutions per second, crying out for safe conduct to release all that accumulated energy. It was as if he had just discovered that in his head there was room for two people, that there had always been room and that, at that moment, he, who was the pilot in charge of that machine called a body, stepped aside and handed over the commands to his co-pilot.

A luminescence coated Uri, then decomposed into jets of energy with a kind of violence greater than Simon could bear. So much so, the mercenary had to let go of his prey and back off.

Uri was hovering in the air with an electric current in the form of white flames coursing from his feet to the tips of his spiky hair. He opened his eyes full of divine lights, fixed them on Simon’s, and gained the bearing of an arrogant being.

The young man, who until a while ago couldn’t hit a good punch, was now possessed by an unrecognizable force.

He reached out and by grabbing his enemy by the neck, reversed roles and shook him with the electric power that flowed from him. The energy he released was so strong that both Auriga he had on his wrists and those Simon had burst into a shower of sparks.

Simon let out unintelligible babbles that were meant to be pleas for his life.

“What is it, piece of crap? Are you afraid I will kill you?” Uri/Juzo said and shook Simon. In his hands, the damn thing looked and felt like a rag doll; something so fragile that he couldn’t help but feel some pleasure. And suddenly, like someone who remembers having forgotten to take out the trash on time, the humor faded from his face. “You stink! Let’s get this over with.”

Sliding through the air, his feet some inches off the ground, Uri/Juzo led Simon to the loft’s largest window, the one after the living room that burned, under the platform of the bedroom that had minutes left before the fire crumbled it.

The noise of the fire consuming everything mixed with Simon’s screams.

Dragging his prey by the neck, Uri/Juzo approached the window. The fire licked its frame; the rumblings had taken care of breaking its glass.

Uri/Juzo was ready to throw out the trash. Using Simon as a human cloth, he removed the remains of the crystal that hadn’t yet fallen, then dragged him over the cliff. The wind blowing up there on the twelfth floor fanned the flames.

Simon looked Uri in the eye; in there, there seemed to be no soul, only power. And yet he knew how to hold his gaze on that kind of god. Not everything was lost; he had an ace under his sleeve, or rather, under his jacket.

“Don’t think I’m forgetting that,” Uri/Juzo said as if he had read Simon’s mind, and reaching under Simon’s jacket, tore off the thrusters from his back. Like the Auriga, the small chrome rectangle spat sparks and smoke and then shattered into splinters of light.

“N-no!” Simon panicked. “No, p-please!”

“Poor bastard.”

Then, Uri/Juzo imagined Simon smashed against the pavement below, bleeding; or sunk in the roof of a car, like a sack of meat wrapped between the broken glass and a bent sheet of steel. What vibrated in his hands required him to bring to reality that image he had in his mind. He was furious at Simon for betraying Malin and for hurting her, furious because of Juzo’s death, because of the blows received, and for the fire that stretched through his home. No. He stopped. He wasn’t like that. And when he was about to open his hand and drop him off, he regained some control. Whatever he was going to do with him, he had to do it now; before the desire to kill him was inevitable. He brought the man close to his face, so much that they almost rubbed their noses, and said to him, “I never want to see you again.” And with his fist covered in white flames, he struck him in the pit of the stomach and pushed him against the building across the street.

Simon flew through the air and slammed his back against the windows of the building opposite, disappearing into a dark pit of broken glass.

Uri/Juzo turned in Malin’s direction, very slowly; the flames had already covered almost everything around him. He lifted his partner off the ground. He saw her frown; she was still alive.

He took one last look at his home, and before the flames submerged him, he levitated back to the window through which he had thrown Simon and projected himself into the sky with Malin in his arms. Dusk covered his escape with a soft blanket of darkness.

He descended onto the roof of the first skyscraper he found nearby and plunged beneath the red obstruction lamps that flickered at the tip of an antenna.

From there, Proxima City looked beautiful, an ethereal veil of lights, so vast there was no horizon without buildings. However, for him, there was no beauty in that picture. His eyes found a column of smoke rising not far from there, and he looked away like someone who doesn’t want to see a loved one suffer in their last moments of life.

Carefully, Uri/Juzo leaned Malin against the outer pipes of the ventilation shaft. He tried to see how badly injured she was, but between shadows, with the red light of the lamps beating like a heart over him, there was little that he could see—he only distinguished bloodied bruises and scrapes that shone through the ripped, scorched fabric of her T-shirt. Malin was alive, that was for sure; though he didn’t know how long. He had to take her to a hospital; it didn’t matter she wanted to avoid them. He carried her back into his arms.

But at that moment, he fell prey to a strange decompensation. More than a physical sensation, it was a psychic puncture. Juzo’s personality was withdrawing from his conscious part and hiding again somewhere in his mind, taking the power with him.

Uri’s heart pounded so suddenly he gasped for breath. A flood of emotions overwhelmed him and he sobbed in despair. He felt elated by the triumph achieved, and at the same time, nervous, and afraid there would be another battle in his future.

He rubbed his neck, where Simon had strangled him. It no longer hurt; he knew there would be marks left, though. He watched the Auriga on his wrists; they were completely scorched.

He raised his eyes to the tower of smoke and forced himself to witness the end of what had been his home for so many years.

There, his home was disappearing; his refuge. There would be no more sacred spaces for him.

The time when he could enjoy his wonderful solitude was now completely gone.