The sun said goodbye to the city, tinting the sky with a sea of ​​reds and violets, and turned the buildings into endless black silhouettes on the horizon, like irregular steps on a staircase that aspired to the sky.

The temperature had dropped subtly without Uri noticing. As he went out of the gym, the cool wind stroked his still wet hair from the shower he had taken before leaving. He zipped up his tracksuit jacket to keep from catching a cold and kept walking. An hour of working out with weights and another with the stationary bike had made him sweat buckets, but now he felt refreshed.

Uri wore a blue sports tracksuit; he had a small gym bag in his hand, headphones in his ears, and a happy smile on his face.

He was coming home, listening to the best music he could hear for a day like this; a theme full of joy, full of spicy bliss, and a lot of sensuality. That was it! Exercising and getting away from Malin and the apartment for a while had restored his batteries. He felt alive, as he hadn’t felt in recent weeks; even sexier than before. He felt he could conquer any woman he wanted; that he could look into anyone’s eyes, and just by opening his mouth, get anything.

Uri felt powerful, but with a power simpler and more mundane than the power most people lately reminded him that he had: Juzo, just by being alive inside his consciousness; Malin, with her preaching about responsibility and training; Trevor, with his obsession with keeping him away from the company; and even his friend and doctor, Sarah, with her understandable, if sometimes uncomfortable, questioning about all the medical checkups he had asked for because of his fear of being poisoning himself with so many energy emissions. And of course, Broga with his remote surveillance, who knows from where, and the thugs who followed him.

All of them were constant reminders that one way or another, with or without intention, his sacred privacy no longer existed.

But today, at that moment, everything seemed to be different. Everything seemed nice and promising.

Was that the beginning of a new life? Winds of change for a new beginning? Or it was just the cruel mirage in the desert, designed to deceive the thirsty traveler? Because one thing was certain, he was heading home—or rather, his transient lodging—and there, Malin was waiting for him to get on the subject once again. What new beginning could he hope for, then?

The faster you do what she wants, the sooner you’ll see her going back to her own place, Juzo told him. Or were those his own thoughts?

He turned up the music; he didn’t want to hear certain truths for the time being, neither coming from his twin’s mouth, nor coming from his mouth, nor anyone else’s. It was best to keep traveling with his mind and feel what he didn’t feel for a long time: freedom; an immense space where only he existed, where there were no scientific projects or android lookouts.

He walked carefree along the pedestrian path, took a detour through the park, and entered the immense nature reserve, humming the music aloud. He didn’t care if people were listening to him, or what they might think of him. Oh, for goodness’ sake! Did he miss nightclubs! He missed light bombs, movement, noise, artificial smoke, getting lost in the crowds and darkness, dancing.

Well, for now, getting lost in the gloom of that little wilderness would do.

First, he saw the huge red eye of the Park Ranger Cyclops shining in the distance, submerged in a sea of ​​trees and plants; then he recognized the android’s silhouette—it was a bit difficult to do so. Aside from the fact that it was starting to get dark, the Cyclops’ jumpsuit was green and camouflaged quite well. Fortunately, the light in his eye was still a beacon wherever he was.

The red light was moving away. Good. The automaton made his rounds and was heading towards the north end of the park which meant that Uri had a free pass to go towards the south sector, the usual place where he could discharge the extra energy the gym had not been able to remove.

He made his way through the thick plants and bushes and came to the beautiful, huge pond that opened like a heart in the middle of the reserve. He looked around to make sure no one was around and took off his headphones to hear if anyone was coming. The chorus of frogs, crickets, and other insects joined the beat of the song.

He left his bag on the floor, and when he was going to pull the splint out of his finger, to avoid burning it when throwing his flames into the pond, his cell chimed. Someone had texted him.

“Please, don’t let it be Malin. Please!” he murmured, but when he saw the sender, he couldn’t help but smile.

Uri wasn’t one to believe in fate or coincidences like, ‘I was just thinking about you, and now you call me,’ but he found the moment to be quite funny. Lisandro Carinae had texted him, saying:

I heard you’re dating a very pretty blonde! I’ve got a bottle of champagne ready for when you get back. And bring your new friend. We miss you in B-Crush.

Uri didn’t know if he had to blush over the message or be bothered about the dating part. What would Malin say if she read the text? On the other hand, since when did Lisandro write softy, cheesy messages? He was a dirty-minded, demanding guy. A few weeks ago, that message would have said something like, ‘We know about the blonde chick, champ! What are you waiting for? Bring her white butt over here so we can check it out!’ Or something even raunchier. Perhaps being kind was Lisandro’s way of catching his attention again; since Juzo, he’d ignored every invitation the wealthy playboy had made.

He was going to reply to the message, but he remembered what Trevor had told him at the disco that Friday: “You are not like them. What do you do with these people?” And he stopped. Did he need to appear on Lisandro and his circle’s radar again? He missed B-Crush, of course; and he even missed Little John, the bouncer; but with so many emotional shakes in the last few days, these people had lost their charm, if they ever had it.

“What’s the difference between you and them?” Trevor had said that night, and although the phrase hadn’t been meant to be a real question, Uri had an answer for it: That I can do without them and I’ll still be someone.

He’d needed no one to be his own man. From a young age, he had built himself, studying, paying admission to the University with his modeling work, and being competent in what he did. To be someone, he didn’t need to appear in a magazine, though it had been a curious experience, nor be the friend of an arrogant, millionaire boy; a little brat who, by the way, hadn’t even visited him when he was in the hospital and his twin passed away.

He was Uri, and though now he was also—kind of—Juzo, he was still him. It didn’t matter if he let his hair grow, or if he didn’t shave, if Malin was waiting for him at home, or if Trevor looked at him warily. After weeks of darkness, Uri felt like himself once again, and no one could change that.

That had to be celebrated, and as funny as it seemed, the first person who came to his mind to join his celebration, was Malin.

His cell phone rang again, and this time it was a call. He recognized the tone and rolled his eyes. Did he awaken the new power to invoke the person who crossed his mind at that moment?

“Detective…” he greeted her as he picked up the call. The animosity he felt against Malin had dropped a few degrees.

“First, let me tell you, your secretary’s amazing,” he heard Malin’s voice on the other end. “She deserves the best Christmas bonus in the whole world.”

“Rita is the best.”

“Now, I’ll tell you what I found out. The old Rodolfo died of heart failure in his sleep, and he might have had a thousand reasons to justify the grumpy face which he appears in the photo with, but I doubt the economic factor would have been one of them. You see, before his home was reduced to a room in the elderly care home, he lived in a beautiful house in the suburbs, in a very nice neighborhood full of gardens, south of the city.”

“The Flower Quarter,” Uri said. “It’s a neighborhood of old people with a lot of money.”

“There you go! Early this afternoon, I saw the deceased’s house; it’s beautiful. Now, the new widow can spend what’s left of her life in that house, accompanied by her entourage of cats. Aida’s an elegant and very active old lady, y’know? Although her housekeepers should learn to cover windows better with those cute curtains; you never know who might be snooping around from the outside.”

“I see you were very, very busy.”

“Pretty much. Your secretary told me Rodolfo was a real estate broker. As I understand it, Homam Enterprises work or has some kind of contact with the law firm in charge of Rodolfo’s papers. And you’ll think, as a real estate agent, he’ll have had several properties under his name…”

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that Rodolfo Gutiérrez had nothing but his own house, two very old cars and—listen to this: A wrecked car warehouse on the outskirts of Proxima City he bought at auction, to which he never conditioned, nor gave it a more productive use than that of being a junk deposit.”

“Malin, I don’t know what business transactions are like in your country, but I’m telling you that not all businesses here thrive the way one would like. I know! What a surprise, isn’t it?”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“And rightly so. Buying a wrecked building and letting it rot under the sun is not an eccentricity, Malin; it’s the result of bad business. Some people still cannot get out of the hole they fell into during the great economic collapse of Proxima—which happened fifty years ago!”

“Surely. But what do you say if I tell you that, in his will, Rodolfo asked not to sell the lot where the warehouse is?”

“Okay, that could be considered an eccentricity.”

“Of course, the widow could never talk about the subject with her husband, because, by the time she knew about it, Rodolfo’s head was traveling the unknown paths of senility.”

“Knowing you, I don’t have to ask if you…”

“If I went to check out the warehouse? Let me remind you: military intelligence soldier with free time.”

Uri couldn’t help but smile. “I’m seriously reconsidering training with you,” he said. “I can’t stand you being so wasted. Going after the trail of a stupid newspaper clipping! What a waste of time! Anyway, what did you find in that place?”

“In addition to the accumulated grime, whole families of rats, and a carpet of dust thicker than your room’s mat? A pile of junk and a bunch of pressed cars piled up in a corner, nothing more. From its condition, I could tell you that place has not received visitors in more than a decade, except for some homeless man or a lost drunk from time to time; there were some footprints on the floor, plus dry remains of—Well, you know; too big to be a dog thing. I checked the place inch by inch, but the only relevant thing about my intrusion was that a pigeon deposited his poop on my shoulder.”

“One very productive day,” he said. But in that instant, he heard crackles: footsteps.

Even when the natural lighting was almost extinct in the sky, and the park’s artificial lights didn’t reach that area, so crammed with trees, he sensed a shadow behind him. A giant shadow that covered him completely.

There was a burst behind him, a dark liquid splattered by his feet, and a trail of sparks arced above his head and ended on the ground in front of him. What it had just fallen was the severed head of a Cyclops still holding long sparkling wiring as part of its spinal column.

Uri stepped back and stepped on something gelatinous. Pieces of solid silicone coated with oil. And right behind him, a torn robotic torso dressed in a green jumpsuit. Wide-eyed, he turned, and out of the corner of his eye, he detected something dark reaching his face, too close already to dodge it.

He felt an immense weight leaning on his right cheek, and then so much pain.

In a blink of an eye, he found himself on the ground, lying in the bushes; his face numbed and with no cell phone in his hand.

He’d been hammered. A son of a bitch had hit him with a hammer! Thieves with mallets!

But no, it hadn’t been a hammer. It had been a punch.