The cell phone screen went dark when the call ended.

“Rigel…” Malin whispered, with a storm of nostalgia flooding her heart and watering her eyes. The pain she had carried in her body since the fight against Broga, disappeared for a moment, at least from her mind.

Juzo, who had heard Rigel’s message, took the phone out of her hands, bringing her back to reality—that place where memories of old loves had no place to be.

Malin’s face hardened for an instant until the melodious echoes she’d felt while hearing Rigel’s voice succumbed to the importance of his message. Broga and a group of fugitives had crossed the portal ten minutes ago, which meant they had to be hot on their heels.

“Why a Code Red Eddanic would program an android to follow us?” Malin wondered.

Juzo took his cell phone and his friend’s, put them one on top of the other, contracted his fingers, and destroyed them with a slight burst of energy. The equipment cracked and disintegrated; then he brushed the charred remains from his hand.

“They won’t come for us,” he said. “They will go for O22.”

Malin folded her arms. She knew Juzo was withholding information from her. “Why are you so sure?”

Juzo kept walking.

“You were right,” was all he said as he walked away. “I should have forgotten about this project the moment I found out about it. I’m sorry.”

Malin froze and fear gnawed at her stomach. Juzo was rarely so honest about his regrets.

The hustle and bustle of the pedestrians and avenues had been left behind, now they were in a quiet neighborhood. The trees on the sidewalk covered the streets with their leafy crowns, and the light poles poured a yellow halo over the buildings.

“Malin, you must promise me something,” Juzo said.

Malin looked at him sideways. Juzo had softened his voice; whatever he was about to say would be a terrible thing.

“What is it?” she asked, begging him to speak bluntly. “Whatever you want me to promise you is related to what you saw on that machine, isn’t it? In that Totem.”

Juzo walked in silence.

“Isn’t it?” she insisted and stopped following him.

“Malin… If something happens to me, promise me you’ll take care of O22,” Juzo asked, turning his back to her; perhaps because it would have been too hard to have asked him head-on, perhaps because neither of them could have contained their emotions.

Malin let a nervous smile slip out. “Why should something happen to you?”

“Malin, you promise?”

“Fine, Juzo; sure, whatever.” Malin shrugged. “But you sound like you’re pretty sure something’s gonna happen to you. Why should anything happen to you?”

“Malin…” Juzo whispered and looked up at the building in front of him, across the street. There, on the twelfth floor, Uri O22 lived. “I doubt the Eddanic woman is commanding Broga,” he clarified. “I’ve been wrong about him—terribly wrong.”

Malin grew impatient. “Juzo! What are you talking about?”

Juzo stopped and lowered his head.

“In order for the project to end and the power awake,” he said, “the Binary-R will have to generate a large quantity of reactor-type proteins and deliver them to his Catalyst twin. As a result, the Binary-R will go into massive cardiac arrest… and die.”

Malin felt like someone had just ripped the spirit out of her. According to the files, Juzo was the Binary-R; he would be the sacrificed twin. Her friend had taken the first step into the slaughterhouse, and she had helped him to get in. Her eyes filled with tears.

“That doesn’t mean this has to end that way, does it?” she said. “Does it?”

Juzo reached into his jacket pocket and sighed, defeated.

“Having… opened the Totem, and with Broga there,” he said, “I thought the best thing would be to escape here. I thought I could slip away from him while buying time to think of something… But now he’s here and I’ve run out of alternatives.”

“Juzo, there are always alternatives! You took those Auriga, right? Let’s go home!”

Juzo shook his head.

“O22 is helpless, Broga will use him to get to me,” he assured. “I won’t leave my brother at the mercy of a psychopath.”

The upcoming death that Juzo had foreshadowed for himself still weighed like lead on Malin’s eyes, and would weigh from there on, for a long time; however, what she had just heard brought afloat a gesture of confusion on her face, swapping sorrow for bewilderment. I’ve been wrong about him, his partner had said about Broga.

“Juzo,” she said and grasped him tightly. “Tell me where you went wrong with the android. What is he looking for? What is he?”