A day after his loft was reduced to a bunch of ashes and blackened walls, Uri, in the intimacy of Trevor Homam’s house, pretty drunk, came clean and told him the truth behind the accident.

Uri hated hiding stuff from Trevor. Even when telling the truth meant to be considered a freak or a lunatic, he needed to take the burden off of his shoulders, and whiskey had given him the little push of bravery to do it.

He confessed to Trevor the cause of the fire hadn’t been a domestic accident as he declared to the insurance company and the rest of the world, but the intentional act of a maniac who threw energy balls out of his hand. It goes without saying that his narrow-minded friend didn’t believe him, so he had to make use of a demonstration of his abilities to back his words, the same way Juzo had done with him, a few Fridays back.

Trevor went pale when he saw the purchasing manager of his company levitating three feet above the floor and making a bundle of electric discharges with his hand. Uri’s energy turned into a ball of flames, and the weird combustion frightened Trevor so much he’d almost wet his pants.

An unrecognizable, baggy-eyed, non-shaved Uri explained to his friend the happenings of the last weeks; his encounter with Juzo, what had happened after B-Crush; and as the story went along, sobriety imposed onto him, flushing away the alcohol ingested. The whiskey had accomplished its mission.

The complicated part came when Uri was wrapping up his story. Trevor got rid of the horror he had on his face and put on a mask of loathing, impermeable to any emotion; the same mask his old-fashioned mother used to put on every time she talked about her husband’s shady attitudes, Uri recalled.

Trevor adjusted his glasses and looked at him with the fake gesture of: ‘Nothing is going on here, everything goes on as usual.’ He listened to Uri with his head down, nodding once in a while without asking questions, as if he were listening to some political speech on the radio. And Uri had the impression that, like what happened with those speeches, his friend would end up with more doubts than answers.

Then, Trevor said: “As long as you’re fine…”

Uri waited for the rest of the phrase, but there wasn’t much to it. ‘As long as you’re fine—What? I’d be too? I’d be happy? I’ll chill?’ Uri added in his mind: ‘—fine by me,’ and even so, Trevor’s words made little sense. The phrase sounded more like a piece of friendly advice, such as the type someone gives to a friend when he’s going to take an unwise decision; one of those: ‘You know what you’re doing, pal.’

And Uri did what he’d always done when something bugged him, he asked.

“What does ‘As long as you’re fine’ mean?”

And he received the same reply Juzo had given him that fateful night: silence.

Trevor took out his glasses, cleaned their lenses even when they weren’t dirty, and he put them on with a blank stare.

“I don’t know,” he said when he couldn’t shake Uri’s eyes off of him. “Be careful when you do what you do.” He went to the movable table, poured himself some whiskey, and didn’t even taste it, swallowed it in one go. “If things are just like you tell me, then be careful not to get into an international mess,” he added, turning his back to Uri as if he didn’t dare look him in the eye.

“What do you mean?”

“You talked about stolen files,” Trevor said; “and things that are not in the public domain, at least here, on this side of the world. Implants, thrusters… Things that belong to the military government of Markabia, and you know how they are with their things.”

It was true; Uri hadn’t stopped to think about that.

“I know,” he said, trying to dismiss the subject. “Don’t worry, those files are lost and—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Trevor interrupted him. “The Imperial Army are not stupid; they must know what happened to your twin. And I must remind you that you work for an international company, many eyes can fall on us if you get involved in a political scandal with those people.”

Trevor finally turned to him, and in his eyes, he had the same look that he’d given him that time in the hospital when they had talked about moving the influences of one to cover up what happened with the other; a stern look.

“You’re right,” Uri agreed. Maybe it’s best to resign from my position. Thus, international eyes do not fall on Homam Enterprises.

“I don’t think quitting will do any good,” Trevor said. “You could take leave, though. Also, with those fires of yours, if you don’t control them well…”

“I can cause harm. I get it.”

Trevor offered him the key to one of the apartments he owned for rent, so Uri could live there until his loft gets in conditions to be inhabited again. A place on the fortieth floor of a skyscraper, about thirty blocks away from his loft, on the border between North Zone and Cole, the next neighborhood.

This apartment was quite bigger and well furnished, had a huge living room; three rooms, each one with a bathroom; two balconies, and even a recreation room and a bar set up with exquisite spirits and whiskeys. It was a plum, flawless, like everything that had to do with its owner, Trevor.

The only problem: the apartment had divisions; it had many walls, too many, for his taste. No big spaces with no restrictions. Now, he couldn’t go to the bathroom, leave the door open, and had an entire view of his place; now, every place had its door. As if he needed something else to remind him his previous life was over.

“Is something wrong?” Trevor asked him upon seeing his face. “Don’t you like the apartment? It’s the best one I have, but I can lend you the—”

Uri stopped rubbing his stubble and looking around like a hopeless loser.

“No. No. It’s okay,” he said and tried to change his face. “It’s more than okay, man. Honest! Thanks a lot!”

Uri hugged him. Trevor hugged him back, though he wasn’t quite effusive. Actually, Trevor wasn’t much of a ‘hug and affection showing’ kind of person, but in this case, Uri detected something different about his friend: a distance provoked by fear—divisions, like in the apartment. He felt something cold in his heart, and he feared the mask Trevor was hiding behind was a forecast of an irreparable schism in their friendship.

“Well, I have to go,” Trevor said and shook Uri’s hand as if he were a real estate agent that had just clinched a deal. “I’ve got a meeting with some investors. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Are you kidding? What else could I ask for? This place’s amazing!” Uri answered, and camouflaging his anguish, he opened a liquor from the bar, served two glasses, and raised one, proposing a toast.

Trevor took the glass and toasted him back, but he barely dampened his lips.

“Hey, Rita told me that tomorrow you have to meet with Lisandro,” Uri said. He didn’t care what his secretary had told him, he just wanted to get a conversation out of Trevor to feel something of that complicity between friends he needed so much, and what better than an issue they almost always agreed on: business. “Will Homam Enterprises finally team up with the Carinae to compete against Morris & Co.?”

Trevor smiled. A win for Uri.

“I’ll tell you as soon as you rejoin us. I have to go now.”

Trevor took off. Uri waved goodbye and left the door open for a while.

The first days living there were a strange thing for him.

Uri felt like a fish out of water, not only in the apartment Trevor entrusted him with, but in the district as well. It wasn’t a family neighborhood like his, there was no peace here. No quiet streets, only busy avenues, and traffic jams. All the places he knew were too far away. Every time he went on foot to the gym or the supermarket, he looked up and watched the daunting skyscrapers around him; there wasn’t even one he could see its top. In front of those structures, he felt small. And he hated that feeling.

“All right! Give me that fine shit and get out of the way, you freaking robot!”

Uri turned to see a truck driver sticking half his body through the window, yelling at the traffic officer robot, who also showed no interest in quickly complying with the man’s request. A bus, which had had to stop behind the truck, honked its horn.

“Hey, bastard!” The trucker turned to the bus. “Don’t you see they are fining me?!”

The honking and shouting continued. Uri’s heart raced, and he had to get away from there. Fights in traffic during rush hour and reproaches against the traffic officer robot or the parking meter robot were not foreign to him; they were every morning common occurrence when he went to work in the other neighborhood. And yet witnessing one now seemed to tighten his nerves more than before.

His perception of the city had changed. The opulence and magnificence of Proxima, as well as his life, had gained a scary, almost aggressive, vibe to it.

Although, a good business manager always knew how to gain some profit out of misfortune.

After having unloaded his rage against Simon, Uri didn’t experience for a while the overabundance of static energy that had him blowing up light bulbs, home appliances, and everything working with electricity. That’s how he discovered he had to get rid of the energy excess often if he wanted to avoid later inconveniences.

In the evenings to come, when the sunlight was diffuse, but the night was still very clear, Uri would hide between some crags by the sea, and after making sure he was alone, he vented streams of white fire into the water. A couple of minutes of continuous bombardment against the water were more than enough to make him feel empty. The good thing was that the same water vapor that he raised also served to hide him from the curious eye, in case someone was hanging around.

But if the scourge of the electric current in his body was very strong and there was no time to reach the coast, on the other side of the city, he went to a nature reserve near the apartment; and after making sure the park ranger android was making his round on the opposite end from where he needed to go, he went into the woods until he reached a pond and did the same thing as in the sea. He let the water consume his fire.

And then there was his physical appearance.

He would stand in front of the mirror and make sure nothing was out of place. He shaved and used special hair products, with greater zeal than before. Until one morning, he ended up giving in to that stubble and those messy hairs that insisted on appearing as if by magic every time it dawned. He wasn’t sure how, but he was sure that, having absorbed Juzo’s Binary proteins, he had also assimilated his personality and even part of his behavior. And there was no better proof of that than when his cell phone chimed, he answered and heard a:

“Hello, Uri, my love… why haven’t you come back to me—?” His lady friends’ mellow voices were so exasperating to him that he cut off calls before even saying ‘hello.’

He asked his friend, doctor Sarah Lanen, for a medical checkup. With so many energy releases and exposures to weird radiations, he needed to be sure his health was not at the edge of decline. Lucky for him, except for the lack of sleep and the eye bags, he was just fine physically. At least, for the time being.

He visited his loft to see how the repairs continued, although he went during the day, so he couldn’t see Ruben N43, the caretaker during the night shift. It was better that way. He didn’t want to hear himself babbling again without knowing what to say about ‘the horrible fire because of that domestic accident.’

The sun had been gone for a few hours when Uri returned to the apartment, after his daily session of energy discharge at the sea. The first thing he did was to go to the bathroom, take off the scorched bandages that covered his left hand’s index finger, wipe it off, re-arrange the splint holding it, and cover it again with new bandages. He no longer felt pain in moving it, just minor discomfort.

He took off his T-shirt in front of the mirror and watched the bruise kissing his rib area.

“See what happens when you want to please everyone, Uri-boy?” he questioned himself.

He went back to the room he’d chosen to sleep during his stay, and without taking off his pants or shoes—another exhibit that place didn’t feel like home—he fell into bed, looking at the ceiling. That was his fifth night there, and he still didn’t get used to it.

His cell phone chimed. A text from a girl named Grace. Who the hell was Grace?

I knew what happened to your loft. Awful! My friend Tiffany says that…

Oh, Grace! He remembered her; the girl he’d woken up with, that Friday morning. He didn’t even finish reading the message.

Then he realized that in his message box there were many unread texts, all from the last few days. Five from the Mint and Strawberry sisters. One from some Carol person. Three from this Grace girl, and even one from her friend Tiffany! Two from the B-Crush guys; one from Ruben, the other building’s super; and four from his secretary, Rita. At what point had so many messages arrived? How could he not have seen them before?

He intended to answer Rita’s message, the only one that really deserved his attention, but left it for later. There were more urgent things to do with his phone now, such as looking for news about recent strange phenomena spotted in the city; something he’d been doing every night.

He was afraid he’d find a video of his loft on fire recorded by some neighbor of his, where he’d be seen flying away from there with Malin in his arms. He feared there could be recordings of him shooting fireballs at the sea or the reserve’s pond. He always took the precautions before beginning his ritual, but there could have been a snooper hanging around, who had known how to outwit his attention, right?

So far, he found nothing on the web that could put him in the storm’s eye, besides a couple of shaky recordings taken from an avenue—where a crash just had occurred—that showed a pair of blurry silhouettes flying up in the night sky. Fortunately, there wasn’t zoom powerful enough to focus on those figures, though Uri knew who they belong to: That was him and Juzo, escaping from Broga the android, that Friday, before getting ambushed in Liberty Park.

The surprise was not to have found any recording of the security cameras of the avenue where he had stopped the car that night, at the moment in which Broga showed up in front of them. Recordings of unusual street events were leaking every so often; how was it possible that there wasn’t a video circulating, showing Juzo and him jumping into the sky, using the thrusters to escape the android? Then, he remembered Trevor’s words about avoiding international matters with the authorities of the eastern continent. So, he took his phone and wrote:

The security cameras on Fifteenth Avenue. That was you?

After a while, he received Trevor’s reply:

Yes.

He answered:

Thank you. I owe you thousands.

Feeling grateful and very ashamed, Uri dropped his phone on the nightstand, took the remote, and switched on the TV. He channel-surfed until finding a movie. He watched it for a while, but tiredness put weight on his eyelids, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Nothingness.

Suddenly, he felt needles sticking in his eyeballs: someone had rolled up the window blinds and the sun was bursting into the room.

“Time to wake up!” Malin said holding the bead chain in her hand.

She, again.