The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

The image of Bernardo awaiting them in the garage appeared in front of Lucy.

It was a hallucination. Bernardo wasn’t there. The only reception she had was a slap of icy air filled with snow particles and a chilling howl.

The blizzard that ran outside sneaked into the garage through the vent, and it sounded just like a woman’s cry. The agonizing crying of a mother, Lucy thought, and as she pushed her hair away from her forehead, she found out she was sweating despite the cold.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

The garage was a big shoebox made of concrete. The light coming from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling wasn’t enough; much of the place was left in the dark. There were a few vehicles scattered here and there, plunged into a sepulchral silence, between vans and tractors; each one equipped with tire chains for snow, and others with triangle track wheels. At first glance, there wasn’t a soul around.

The exit, which also worked as the entrance, was about sixty hundred feet away from them. It was a wide metal gate, with a thin slit at the top that let the wind and snow in. Next to it was a door: the back door of an outward-facing security booth.

Lucy knew that, at that moment, even when she didn’t see them, there had to be one or two guards wrapped up warm inside that booth, watching the snow loops the wind drew outside. She crossed her fingers for them to be too cold and too focused on the boring landscape to get out of there, at least until she could hide Broga in the car.

She charted in her mind the path she should take once she crossed that gate. She just hoped the road would be clear, and there would be no predicted snowstorms; otherwise, the moment she lifted the gate with the remote, the guards from the booth would stop her to recommend her not to leave, and she would waste time trying to persuade them to let her go. After all, the lab was at the northern end of the world, where the rawness of the winter weather could make the difference between life and death.

I take it back. This place is more horrendous than the Duane archipelago.

She held Broga tightly and hid him between two tractors.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

The child looked at her with his eyes wide open. He didn’t talk, but it was obvious he was scared. He trembled. He was pale, his lips had darkened; the wind had shaken his hair, and he had snow all over him. Damn! It was really cold in there! Lucy was so nervous and scared she practically didn’t feel it, but her cheeks had gathered frost, and her hands were so cold she struggled to move her fingers.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be safe with me,” she told Broga. And then, she noticed the little boy was captivated by the condensation of her breath. That simple, natural equation of water vapor was quite a spectacle for him. Such innocence!

There will be no other Major Surgery! There will be no more Major Surgeries!

A wave of icy wind pulled her out of it, and her jaw rattled. Lucy glanced back; the elevator doors remained open, which meant that, for now, no one had asked to go there. Unfortunately, the instant she turned her head to the front to study the escape route, the doors closed and she couldn’t see it.

Without releasing the child, she walked crouched down among the few vehicles, and reached her car; a gray sedan parked next to Bernardo’s.

Bernardo! Was it possible he had discovered her absence by now? Quick. She had to get away fast. Otherwise…

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump… Her heart was about to explode.

The security booth’s door was still closed.

Oh, Lucy! What kind of mess have you got yourself into? Those guards are armed and ready to shoot any intruder. Or any traitor.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

She felt something wet and cold on her lips. Her nose was running, so she wiped it with a finger. She discovered poor Broga was also bunged up; he had snot oozing out of his nostrils; his cheeks were red because of the cold wind, but the rest of his skin was white as his pajamas. Hurry! They had to take shelter in the car before one of them sneezes. A sneeze inside that huge concrete shoebox would become quite a rumble.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

She opened her car’s trunk; she tried to carry Broga and put him inside. It took her a great deal to do it. The child wasn’t heavy, but she wasn’t strong; she had weak arms. Besides, she was so nervous her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Haven’t you ever carried a little boy? You won’t be a good mother if you don’t know how to do it.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

“Come on. Help me with this, will you?” she whispered. The strength was about to leave her, and she attempted to bear the weight of the little one and not fall flat on her butt.

Broga understood her intentions and helped her. He stepped on the back fender of the car and got into the trunk.

Lucy rewarded him with a nervous smile and he replied with another, a little more pleasant, albeit with traces of fear. That was the first gesture of intimacy they shared since they began their strange relationship, and it would be one of the last.

“Don’t take your blanket off,” Lucy warned him. She lowered the trunk cover but didn’t close it completely. The next step in her plan might take a couple of minutes, and she didn’t want the child to spend a lot of time locked up; she feared he would panic and scream.

Quick! Do it fast!

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

Her throat felt scratchy already. The cold was like an invisible grip squeezing her neck. With the back of her hand, she wiped her nose which kept dripping. She removed from her trouser pocket the artifact she’d taken out of her room. She switched it on, and the screen lit up with a green halo.

“What’s that?” Broga wanted to know, peeking his little head over the edge of the trunk. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d left the nursery.

She asked for silence with a gesture.

“What is it?” the little one insisted though this time he spoke softly.

“A co-cloaking de-device. A fri-friend invented it,” Lucy replied to calm the little boy’s curiosity. She didn’t know if she’d stuttered because of the cold or because of fear.

As she waited for the device to start running, she looked up towards the exit and saw the booth’s door was still closed; no guard had peeked over there. It was a shame she didn’t look where she should have looked: over her shoulder, at the elevator.

On the inhibitor’s screen appeared the image of a radar, and after a few seconds, a red light flickered along with a series of numeric codes. Come on! Do it faster! Lucy waved her legs as if she were about to run. She felt cold, and she was very, very scared. How long could it take this freaking device to decode the electronic systems of the parking lot and change them?

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

“Loaking delvice?” Broga asked.

“Yes,” Lucy was quick to respond before he spoke again. “It’s a gift for you, y’know? It’ll make you invisible so that the bad men on the way out can’t see you.”

On the device’s screen appeared a line that said: Infrared detectors neutralized. Protection area: 1 yd2.

“Take,” Lucy handed the device to Broga and asked him to keep it in his hands; she hardly felt hers. “Hold it tight, okay? Don’t drop it because it could break, alright?”

Broga nodded, alerted.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

Alright! Now they could get out of the lab with no problems. The car would pass by next to the booth, the soldiers would see only Dr. Templeton behind the wheel, and the infrared scanners that would take a sounding of the vehicle before it moves on wound detect only one person inside of it: her. Her stowaway would go unnoticed. For the sensors, Broga would be nothing but a bag; a lump in the trunk.

THUMP, thump… THUMP, thump…

“We going to get Brun with this?” the little boy asked, shaking the device.

Lucy grabbed him by the wrist to make him stop moving it.

“Yes, yes,” she lied, and with a trembling finger to her lips, she asked him not to make a noise. Then she gave him a knowing smile and a wink to put him at ease; she was going to close the trunk and leave him in the dark for a moment; she didn’t want him to freak out.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The voice broke behind them and stuck thorns of terror into Lucy’s neck. The wind howled louder.

It was Bernardo. He was behind her. He’d found them.

Breath was taken from her, and a stabbing pain colder than the freezing wind got buried in her chest like an ice harpoon.

Lucy felt that the floor disappeared under her feet and that she was falling flat on her face as if she had been standing on a mat someone had just pulled from. Her heart, held by the heavy hand of confusion, seemed to stop pumping blood. True terror had scratched her with its sharp claws, and it was preparing to slice her lean flesh.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP…

She spun around and saw her husband coming out of the elevator with a hellish grimace on his face. He was heading straight to her; his white lab coat, shaking with his strides. He’d found out! How?! The elevator! At what point had the doors been shut?!

Bernardo had come down to the always cold garage without an overcoat; his anger must have been something else to have done it in those conditions.

“No,” Lucy groaned. And her world fell apart and crashed into the concrete floor.

All was finished in a fraction of a few seconds: her fussy escape plan, her abrupt burst of bravery, and her absurd illusion of thinking she would atone for her guilt by saving someone she herself had condemned. At that moment, Lucy realized how much she wanted to leave that desolate, cold place, and how foolish she’d been letting things get this far. She had to lose her fifth pregnancy and feel like the most miserable person on the face of the planet, for her maternal instinct to awaken, and act based on her own free will for the first time in her life, and not because of her husband told her what to do. It was a pity that such an epiphany had come when it was no longer of any use when she was already lost.

THUMP, THUMP…

Goodbye, freedom. Goodbye, Broga. Forgive me, Brun.

THUMP, THUMP…

Everything occurred too quickly; for her though, time seemed to stretch out. Lucy witnessed the moment as if she were seeing it through a blurry lens, full of white dots waving in the air, and with her ears covered by a hiss mistaken for a cry.

She had the image of Bernardo shaking his arms, pointing at the car’s trunk, pointing at the child, and screaming. And suddenly, as if waking from a hypnotic trance, the wind and rage pushed her against him, and she started punching him in the face, in the chest, in the arms. She scratched him, but he fought back, taking her off by force.

Bernardo was speaking; he said something. No, he wasn’t speaking; he was yelling at her. He showed his teeth and barked like the dog he was. But Lucy didn’t understand. The only thing she understood was something she told herself, but she heard as if someone else had said it: “I won’t let you take the child, you son of a bitch! It’s mine! It’s mine!”

Bernardo answered. Maybe he’d said, It’s not yours! He’s not your son, you lunatic! Or maybe something more hurtful. Bernardo was very hurtful with his words.

She saw him raise a hand, and lower it. Lucy understood she had just received a slap, but she didn’t feel it; her face was too numb because of the cold to feel something; the icy wind had cushioned the pain. However, the blow pushed her back, and she lost her balance. The vehicles, her husband, her car, the child, and the concrete walls; everything spun around her. Then the floor came forward and greeted her with a rough smack.

Falling on the floor—or perhaps standing on her feet; she couldn’t tell—she saw Bernardo open the trunk and pull the beautiful little Broga out. The poor child was terrified; he was about to break down and cry. The blue blanket she’d taken from her closet, and with which she had covered the child, fell to the ground and it was dragged by the wind. The blanket flew away like a dark bird.

The cloaking device she gave Broga! Where was it? Was it still in the child’s hands, or had he left it in the trunk?

You may not be a mother, but at least you can act like one.

She tried to knock her husband down using the weight of her own body. Didn’t make it. She was so lightweight that a simple wind blow against her was enough to minimize the impact of her punch. Bernardo was also skinny, yet he outperformed her in physical strength; if not, how else had he managed to get Broga out of the trunk with a single tug, when it had taken her a lot to get him in?

She screamed. They screamed and struggled. Bernardo said something about The Order and that they wouldn’t forget something like this; he said something about a medical board and that they would declare her insane. He didn’t speak of the betrayal she was committing, nor that she would be thrown into a ditch with a shot in the back of her head, but some things didn’t need to be clarified. That they would get rid of her was almost a fact.

She didn’t think the fuss of their fight had attracted the attention of the guards from the booth.

And all of a sudden, Bernardo scowled, hard. The wrinkles that the years and the chilling weather had marked on his face were exposed; his glasses slipped down his hooked nose, and his mouth opened to let out a cry of pain.

In a heartbeat, Bernardo went from struggling with Lucy to being slumped on the floor. A sturdy figure had appeared behind him: Dr. Rosa Tyler.

With her hair messed up, and a cut on her lips that bled, that she didn’t remember having—perhaps when she had fallen to the floor—Lucy looked at Rosa. And Rosa looked back at Lucy. Both surrounded by thousands of restless snow particles; their eyes wide open; worried and spitting clouds of water vapor.

Rosa’s dark skin faded into the gloom and the fluorescent lights; her broad silhouette stood out thanks to her pink scrubs. And in her hands, there was a shaking pipe.

“I saw you coming down, and I… I followed you, and then I saw him, and I…” Rosa said.

But Lucy didn’t hear her; terror and adrenaline had taken away most of her senses. The only thing that caught her attention was the way Rosa trembled. And how could she not tremble if they were in the garage where temperatures were very, very low, and she wasn’t wearing an overcoat? Lucy would have gladly given hers, but—

No. There was no time to think about that.

She assumed Rosa was apologizing for what she had just done because of the way she was babbling. The poor thing was in shock. Lucy nodded; she wanted to thank her for having taken down her husband and asked her to help her with the boy that was standing next to the gray sedan. Her voice didn’t come out though. And then, she saw herself getting down on her knees in front of the little one.

Broga had his brown hair all shaken up and covered with snow; his eyes were red, his little nose was dripping, his skin had a worrying blue tinge, and he was shaking. He would freeze to death. The blanket! Lucy recalled and looked for it. Where was the blanket? Broga needed the blanket!

The pipe she had seen in Rosa’s hands fell to her side, and the cracking of the metal against the concrete pulled her out of her thoughts. It wasn’t just a pipe; it was a lug wrench, and it had blood on the tip; Bernardo’s blood.

Was Bernardo dead? She felt the need to attend to her fallen husband, but she stopped. The blanket was more important, Broga needed it.

And as if she brought it to her by merely thinking of it, the blue blanket, full of snow particles that shone just like diamonds, appeared before her eyes. Rosa had picked it up from the floor, and she was handing it over to her. Lucy thought she had thanked her though her voice didn’t come out of her mouth, only a rough groan from the depths of her throat that, by the way, hurt quite a lot.

Shivering in the cold, Broga stretched his little hands, asking for the thermal blanket. Lucy wrapped him in it, and he held it desperately as if it were the most precious thing in life. She rubbed his arms to keep him warm, and gladly, she discovered he still had the cloaking device in his left hand.

He’s left-handed, she recalled and rewarded him for his bravery with a smile.

The corners of Broga’s mouth curved upwards. Was that a smile of gratitude? Yes. A strange warmth flooded Lucy’s heart; she’d just done something a mother would have done: take care of her child.

She heard quick steps along with the wind: rubber sole boots scraping the concrete. The guards from the booth! They were coming for them!

Rosa was looking toward the exit gate, startled, and waved her arms to get her attention.

Lucy grabbed Broga by the shoulders, and with a slight push, hid him between the sedan and a tractor. She couldn’t ask him to be quiet, but she knew he was a smart child; he would get what was happening. Then she joined Rosa.

Two soldiers dressed in black polar parkas came running with their rifles aloft, ordering them to stand still. Lucy looked at Rosa out of the corner of her eye and found her, pale, and with her hands up. Rosa’s lips were shaking. Were they in big trouble!

How much of the fray the soldiers had witnessed? Lucy didn’t know, but having Bernardo on the floor next to them, unconscious or dead, the guards had caught them at the scene of what could be a crime, and not of an ordinary one, but the crime of the Project Director himself. If the guards hadn’t seen Broga, it was only a matter of seconds for them to do it.

Everything had failed: the escape plan, everything. They’d put her in jail or they’d shoot her as a traitor. Whatever. Her life was ruined. Broga would be returned to the nursery, which was a nice way of saying cell. The Order would not allow the lack of a qualified neurosurgeon to perform another Major Surgery to put years of research and a lot of money at risk; they would operate on Broga with or without her, with or without Bernardo, and they’d leave the kid in the same state as his brother’s, or worse.

“Hands up, doctor! Up!” One soldier was aiming at her.

A rush of adrenaline overwhelmed Lucy. Her pupils grew bigger; she heard her breathing and saw it exposed in the form of steam. The howling wind was truly chilling; it was the singing of the dead. She glanced at Rosa, and Rosa glanced at her; and without quite understanding how, they both knew what each had in mind.

With this exchange of looks, another plan as desperate and improvised as the one that had just failed was born. Having let things get this far, there was no alternative. It was for the best.

They were two. The guards were also two. They were no match for them; the guards had arms; they had not. The disaster was inevitable. But among those present, there was a third person who deserved a little more than an operating room, eager to have him at its mercy, and a sorry cell camouflaged as a nursery room; a little person who, so far, it seemed to go unnoticed by the eyes of the guards. Neither woman would come out safe and sound from there; however, if they chose to go against the men, one of them could make it.

Rosa, who had one guard less than three feet away from her, jumped against him, trying to snatch the gun with her big, thick arms. Surprised by the abrupt reaction, the other soldier turned to her, ready to open fire. Lucy took advantage of the distraction and jumped against him. The skinny woman slapped the man in black; and while the slapping caused her more pain than it did to him, it was enough to make him lose the shooting angle before he pulled the trigger.

“Lucy, run!” Rosa shouted.

Lucy kicked the guard in the crotch and turned to where she’d left Broga, ready to hold his hand and put him in the car. But the kid was gone.

Where did he go?! Was it possible he had been taken by a third soldier they hadn’t seen? No! He had surely fled, scared.

She stretched her neck and saw the little one in the distance, running toward the exit gate. He was wrapped up in the blue blanket; the poor thing looked like a blond leprechaun. The image of Broga’s little white slippers moving rapidly was etched in Lucy’s mind like a snapshot.

But then, Broga sneaked into the booth through the door the guards had left ajar.

Don’t go that way! Lucy wanted to shout to stop him, but terror had suppressed her voice again. Inside the booth was a passage to the outside; if Broga went through it, he would leave the facility and he would find himself at the mercy of the raw weather.

What have you done? She reproached herself. Outside, that poor little boy will face the biting cold. That blanket won’t keep him warm, no matter how thermal it is. You didn’t save him, Lucy. You’ve condemned him to die of hypothermia.

And suddenly, she lost sight of him. I’m sorry, Broga, she apologized then.

In the end, she couldn’t behave like a mother. She had only spawned death and violence, and two little brothers had paid the price. She would have liked the boy to live and for her to see him grow up so much!

But none of those things would be possible.

Seconds ago, she’d heard a blast, and even when she still didn’t feel pain, something hot was oozing out of her. A shot had pierced her stomach. Who had fired? She didn’t know. She didn’t see it. Was one of the guards? Bernardo, perhaps? Bernardo might not have been dead after all, and he had a license to carry a weapon.

That didn’t matter now though. She was already face down on the cold concrete floor, and she was bleeding to death.

Lucy heard another blast, and she knew. They had just shot Rosa.

The only person with feelings in that forgotten place, the only one whom she’d called a friend and with whom she’d shared more things than with her own husband, fell next to her, with her eyes open and her chubby face splattered with blood and snow.

“Rosa…” Lucy sighed, covered in tears, and apologized to her.

Broga, please, live! she thought afterward, and with the squeal of the wind getting lost in the distance, she closed her eyes forever.