Because of the bad weather, the dirt road that skirted the facility was one huge mire, and Malin was crossing it with her SUV, bouncing like crazy.

She peeped through the darkness and the water smashing against the windshield. She saw columns of fire rising from Bellatrix, and took the bigger and brighter one as a beacon; a blurry pillar of red light in the blackness.

They were near the end of the road, and the doubts about what she was doing and what she was going to do, made her shiver in the same way the cold in the motel’s shed had done before. She didn’t want to question Juzo again because she knew that after that, ‘Malin, I’ll go! Like it or not!’ that he’d told her, his next answer would be indifference.

It was too late to go back; they were in the enemy territory, and soon they would face another enemy and a very powerful one as it seemed.

Juzo held on to the dashboard as the vehicle jolted, and he glanced at his friend who was struggling with the wheel. He didn’t question how good Malin’s driving skills were; either way, there was uneasiness in his eyes; as if he were afraid the muddy road would play a tricky trick on them making the car skate and overturn.

Easy there, he thought. If we got knocked down, you’ll figure it out soon enough.

Maybe it would have been better to come on the motorcycle.

“Oh, my God! This whole mess has been caused by a single android?!” she was surprised.

“The Order,” he pointed out; “they must have modified their Cyclopes in case of conflict.”

Juzo looked out the window and focused on the row of posts they were passing by. There was another row on the opposite side of the car which could be seen behind Malin’s face, covered by the curtains of water; and another one beyond that, lost in the darkness. But the one he was interested in was the one on the right. Those long metal rods were radio and radar antennas; the so-called outer antenna circuit. Fortunately for Juzo, the android had blown off the energy source that activated it, leaving the barracks isolated, without communication, and exposed to anyone who came from the outside. If the android had done it by chance, in a strange twist of fate, he had made it easier for them to enter. If he had done it on purpose… Well, maybe his circuits weren’t as damaged as Rigel thought, and there was a logical pattern in his behavior beyond a simple malfunction. One thing was to get to Bellatrix, guided by some kind of tracking chip or something, and claim the Totem as part of programming; another thing was to study the enemy’s defense system and sabotage it to make the entry easier. The same purpose, very different processes.

Now he was afraid Broga would beat him to it and take the machine, or destroy it before he had a chance to access the encrypted data.

The infiltration in Bellatrix had been simplified, true; he would no longer need the false ID Rigel had given him. However, in addition to his plan—entering level 5, getting into the protected Totem’s hardware, finding the Auriga, and crossing to the other side of the world—now he had the difficult task of dodging a dangerous enemy like Broga.

They could hear rumbles, dragged by the wind and the rain; although neither of them ventured to ensure whether it was explosions or thunders.

About two hundred yards from the barracks’ perimeter wall, Juzo ordered his partner to pull over. “It’s here!”

Malin stepped on the brake and the SUV skidded a little. Juzo’s fear, that the car would spin and tip over, almost became a fact. The vehicle roared.

Juzo got out of it seconds before it stopped completely; and the SUV’s body, which was still rocking in the mud, almost hit him from behind.

“Follow me!” he told Malin.

Testing the strength of his legs and his balance, Juzo ran in the rain with the backpack on his back, trying not to slip; his boots sinking into the mud. He stopped in front of one of the posts, next to a smoke vent, and waved his arm for Malin. “Hurry!” he shouted.

No more shots were heard, only a howling alarm; the android must have entered the base already. There was no time to lose.

Worried and having second thoughts, Malin left the car, and the storm greeted her with water slaps. She put the hood on and rushed toward Juzo, who was waiting for her. She looked back and said goodbye to her beautiful SUV, stranded in the storm, on the side of that sort of road delimited by the rows of antennas. She turned to Juzo and found a gesture of reproach written all over his face that said: ‘Save it. Now, just save it.’ Her partner couldn’t stand hesitations.

Juzo entered the electronic code in the hatch handle and opened it. He took his backpack off his back and, putting it over his head, he got into the vent and started to descend. It was so narrow he barely fit in. The rainwater swirled around the vent’s edges and fell inside as if it were the precipice of a waterfall.

Just by thinking she had to sneak in through such a small space, Malin was attacked by a desperate feeling of claustrophobia.

“What are you waiting for?!” Juzo called her from the inside.

She gave one last glance at the car she was leaving behind, knowing that, once the attack was over and the experts start doing their job, it would be confiscated and dismantled. She took a deep breath and followed Juzo; if she had waited for one more second, she would have stayed.