In a lonely corridor of a clinic, arms crossed, Malin waited for the paramedics to finish tending to his partner.

She went around in circles with a shudder in her stomach and a thousand worries prowling her head like flies over a corpse: The Satellites, the summons, and Uri’s condition. The poor guy had courageously endured such trashing, but to see him in those conditions…

Did the fear of what the Satellites might worry her so much it had sensitized her more than it should? Or was it the memory of Juzo, which was still too present? Seeing Uri in those conditions was like seeing Juzo and…

The paramedics left the room, and behind them, a doctor with abundant black hair and gray mustaches, very thin and with baggy scrubs, came out. The man presented himself as the doctor in charge of the night shift.

“Your…” he said and stopped, not knowing what relationship she had with the wounded. Malin didn’t clarify it. “Well, I must tell you, he was very lucky. Some people are hospitalized due to a beating like that, while he isn’t only conscious, he even had the luxury of rejecting the wheelchair we offered him.

“The patient can walk, although I would recommend him a few days of rest. If he faints or vomits, please visit a hospital immediately. Don’t let him stop taking the antibiotics I prescribed, one every twelve hours, during…” While talking, the doctor was nodding without taking off his eyes from Malin’s, as if he were asking her if she got what he was saying or not, perhaps because he noted she was kind of absent. “…Cooling patches and chamomile tea could help the swelling,” he said in a moment. Malin did hear that part and would remember it later. “Do you understand, miss?”

Malin nodded, and the doctor stepped away so she could enter the room to see the patient.

In the small white room, the smell of disinfectant was more penetrating than in the corridor, so much so it almost made her sneeze.

Sitting on the gurney, Uri finished zipping off his battered tracksuit jacket. He moved his arms gently, his muscles ached as if he had soaked them in acid. He had a mark under his left eye that had quickly taken a violet hue, and a pink one on his right cheekbone, which was partially covered with a patch. Another patch was covering the already stitched-up cut on his forehead. The punches in the ribs, hips, and legs were now covered by the clothes and they weren’t visible to the unaided eye, but there they were, and they hurt.

Fortunately, and to his surprise, Uri had received no serious injuries or fractures whatsoever.

“When will the bruises on my face wear off?” had been his first question to the doctor. He’d just come out of something that could have cost him his physical integrity permanently, and his greatest fear was the bruises on his face? Really?

“About fifteen to twenty days from now,” the mustached doctor had responded, showing him an X-ray of his skull. “It helped you not to have received cuts in your facial bones. The only thing damaged was your skin and a thin layer of muscle. The truth is you’ve been a very lucky dude. If I were you, I’d stay away from parks at night.”

But Uri was too sore to be grateful to have come out with only scratches. He had a constant ringing in his ears and slight dizziness that prompted him to close his eyes and lie down right there. Meanwhile, his mind went from Kitten to the mysterious men in gray, and from them to the message that the millionaire playboy Lisandro Carinae had texted him shortly before the attack—the message that implied that he and Malin shared a relationship—and then returned to the pain that gritted him.

Hell! He couldn’t think straight when even breathing caused horrible pains under his ribs.

And his face… It was a mess! And his smile, spoiled! He had several loose teeth and couldn’t stop touching them with the tip of his tongue. The subtle swing he perceived in the canine tooth and on the front one was horrible. He had to go to the dentist as soon as possible.

That freaking giant did screw it up! He wished he’d killed him. Those kinds of monsters should be rotting in hell to learn that hurting someone like him was a capital sin.

Malin came in and they both shared a long look.

“Mah mouth’s-numb-cause-da-medicadion,” he said. His voice was a babbling full of Z’s and no R’s. He could barely open his mouth without his jaw hurting, or without the cuts on his lips reopening. Either way, he tried a smile to break his own nervousness. Malin didn’t respond, she was very serious and a kind of pale. “Whoz-wehe-those guys in-ghay? Whad-says-da-note they-gave you? Is id-a thicked? Must be serious if you-hade-da gdim face.”

“Now I understand how Juzo felt when I went on and on talking,” Malin said and handed him the letter.

It was a subpoena. What the agent had overwritten with his pen was the date and time the meeting would take place.

Proxima City. October, 11 of the current year.

Dear Miss Malin Marie Viveka

Dear Mister Uri O22

We approach you to officially send a mandatory appearance to our offices, located in the Orbit II tower (intersection of the sixth and ninth avenue of this city) on October 15 at 0800 hours. Please announce yourselves at our front desk.

Cordially, T.H., district chief.

As Uri read it, Malin got close to him and personally observed the conditions he was in. One thing was what the doctor said, and another thing was the verdict of a soldier who had seen hundreds of wounded during her short but intense military career. Just because she didn’t wear a uniform—and not have worn one for years—it didn’t mean she’d lost her experience.

Malin touched him here and there, opened his eyes, and looked at them carefully. To her surprise, he endured the discomfort without a single groan. The Uri who a few hours ago had left the apartment to go to the gym and the Uri she was in front of now were two different people… almost.

“Ocdobed 15? A liddle impaziend, don’-you dhink?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” she said. “When it comes to Satellites, few have the luxury of an extension date.”

She finished inspecting her partner and gave him air so he could stand up. Uri looked better than she would have imagined.

“I’ve waited for them since we first crossed the dimensional Geyser with Juzo,” she continued, tucking her hair behind her ear. “What surprises me is that they’ve taken so long to say hello.”

“Whad do-dey-do?”

“They are with the Satellite Agency, a secret international investigation agency with their eyes fixed on everything that comes out of my country,” Malin said.

Uri understood what that meant, and the dizziness that haunted him disappeared in a heartbeat.

“Whad comes out? Things like…?”

“Things like Juzo, me, Broga, Kitten and so many others,” Malin finished. “I assume they’re conducting an investigation into what happened that Friday night, and they want us to fill in the blanks.” She helped him to his feet. “Let’s go home. I’ll tell you the rest on the way.”

They walked slowly down the uncrowded corridor of the clinic to the exit. That night, there apparently hadn’t been any accidents or emergencies in that sector of the city; the only one really hurt had been Uri.

“Don’t forget chamomile tea,” reminded them of the mustached doctor with the baggy scrubs, sitting with a colleague beside the door, waiting for the next patient to come. “It’ll help reduce the swelling.”

They got to the street, and Malin looked for a taxi.

“We are in an era where science has given people the power to throw energy grenades through their hands,” she whispered to Uri, smiling, “and there’re still people who recommend chamomile tea for a swollen face.”

Uri nodded.

She looked at him.

“You’ll try it, won’t you?” she said, and Uri nodded again. “Anything to erase those horrible marks from your beautiful face as soon as possible, right?”

Midnight had fallen, and a cool wind ran between the buildings.

Uri moved his eyes—the only part of his body that didn’t feel numb—looking for men who wore gray suits and dark glasses, who might look familiar, but saw only a few people walking down the street, but no one with those characteristics. The only one in a suit was a fat man who looked more like an office worker than an agent.

Malin also observed the few passers-by, and then gazed up, looking around as if waiting to find someone peeking out a window or watching them from a nearby rooftop. Satellites could be anywhere. They could be right under their noses without them noticing.

“I know you think that unusual things never happen here; attacks with energy grenades and other things like the ones you’ve experienced in recent weeks,” Malin said. “I have news for you, they do happen, you just don’t see them because these people make sure you don’t. Just as they’ve taken Kitten away, they’ve taken many others.”

To Uri, the idea of an intelligence agency was not abstract at all. It was such a huge idea to digest so quickly, that was all, besides what it meant to be involved in the investigation into the murder of his brother. However, there were more urgent issues to attend to for the time being; like the pain he had just discovered by putting his ass in the taxi seat, for example.

“High Neighborhood, avenue ten and twenty-eight, please,” Malin said.

The taxi moved forward, and the orange lights of the streets painted its silhouette.

“There’s another problem,” she added.

Uri didn’t want to know anything about problems. He had no choice but to hear, though.

“You see, the Satellites don’t sympathize with the Imperial Army, no one in the world does,” she said; “that’s why they tend to turn a blind eye to the people who escape from the Markabian territory and settle elsewhere, all right; as long as they keep a low profile. The problem is that, if for some reason it is not convenient for them to have undocumented fugitives swarming foreign territory, they can deport them. And you know that Juzo and I have come clandestinely, using private military equipment. If the Satellites see me as a threat, they’ll hand me over to the Army, and there…” Malin made a motion as if hanging by the rope.

Uri had a lump in his throat.

“Ade you-goind-do-be depodted?”

Malin shrugged.

“I don’t know. If they had wanted to, they’d have done it by now, but—”

“Hey, they don’d-think I’m Juzo Romita, and I jusd changed-mah name to Uri O22 to throw them off, do they?”

“They know perfectly well who is who, and I bet every strand of my hair they’re aware of the circumstances in which Juzo died,” Malin said, and saw in Uri that gesture that was beginning to be familiar to her; that gesture that asked to be told everything, but not everything, because everything frightened him. She was about to say nothing, but she decided not to. Uri needed to know whether he wanted it or not. “The Satellites know where you live, where you work; they know everything about everyone. Through them, our informant located your whereabouts.”

Uri felt relief. He wouldn’t be confused with his twin and deported by mistake. Before Malin had spoken, he’d seen in her a gesture that he began to know; a gesture announcing that whatever she was about to tell him would have a terrible impact on him. But, contrary to what the girl thought, the fact that there were people aware of his life did not make him feel threatened at all. After all, every time he used his credit card, or every time he contacted the telephone company to request whatever, what he did in a way, was to announce his movements to anyone who had access to the networks of corporations and city banks. Not to mention, of course, that he was the purchasing manager of one of the biggest companies in the country. God, he’d even appeared on the cover of Loud magazine! If there was an intelligence agency that didn’t know who Uri O22 was, they had to quit their job and pursue something else.

All right, now that he thought it out, he’d been a fool for thinking he could be mistaken for Juzo.

The taxi got into a not-so-busy tunnel, and the orange-toned lighting changed to a blue one. The driver was quiet. Was he listening to their conversation? Probably. Did they care? No.

“Malin, I wandda azk you zomezhing. If everydhing goes well with da-Sadellites, I wandda you to-train me.”

The girl nodded with a smile.

“Following a lead on an obituary,” she said, “and wasting my entire day in a bus, touring this damn city in search of a damn warehouse, slapped my spirit as an intelligence soldier, maybe forever. I’m much more tempted by working as a drill instructor now.”

No more beatings, Uri thought and felt a lump in his throat once again. His pride had gone to the trash, but he was ready to pull it back out.

No more beatings. It was a promise.