《The Cracks in the Labyrinth》Chapter 8 (Part 1)

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Fuck my life, Adam thought, arms crossed, leaning against the flaky wall in the tenth floor's dim hallway.

The vicious dog barks on the other side of the door that Lili was about to knock on were reason enough for Adam to refuse moving forward with the plan.

Getting close to that cursed beast had nearly cost him his fingers the night before, something that would have been a tragedy if it happened to anyone else, but if it happened to him, who made a living by playing video games—it would have been beyond devastating.

No. That's not it. Although the dog scared him, that wasn't the real reason he didn't want to be there. It's that boy in the middle-school uniform. In complete honesty, it wasn't like Adam wanted to seem him in the obituaries; he'd much rather not see him anywhere again. Not ever.

That cunning smile, that darkness behind his eyes—While Adam was not feeling proud about what he was thinking, he couldn't help but remember something he'd said one night, back in college, when booze had clouded his better judgment, "Those kids are the cancer of Caracas. My philosophy is that you don't save a disease; you kill it."

As he finished saying that, Claudia snatched his beer away from him and asked him to think twice before speaking of genocide so easily. Remembering that his friend's great-grandparents had been killed in a concentration camp during World War Two, Adam apologized to her, took back what he said, and never spoke or even thought about 'his philosophy' until this morning.

I'm sorry, Claud. Perhaps I was not so wrong after all, Adam admitted. He couldn't deny that kids like these were one of the primary reasons he'd sent his brother and sister to that little town in Mérida where nothing ever happened. I don't want them to get infected by this.

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"Lili, wait!" Adam grabbed her by the arm.

"What? Want your computer or not? Not one Bolívar gets lost in this dump without Papa Smurf knowing about it."

"Papa Smurf?"

"Well, yeah. What? Didn't people call the seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in your school 'The Smurfs'?"

Adam nodded. The last two years of high school came with a beige shirt that meant power. It was almost a military hierarchy. Wearing blue shirts, the Smurfs (or Bluebirds) were at the bottom of the food chain, and their upperclassmen never missed an opportunity to remind them of it.

"Right, but you call him that to his face? Doesn't it bother him?

"Naah!" Lili stopped to think about it. "He likes it."

High school was still fresh in Adam's mind. The problem was that the rules had changed a great deal since he graduated two decades ago, mostly because of how social media had brought a whole new power dynamic into play. Adam didn't understand this new culture of dick pics, nor did he want to. What he understood was power. If that boy, a Smurf in a blue shirt, overcame kids older than him, owning his weakness and transforming it into a strength, then he had to tread lightly.

In Venezuela, with the right upbringing, an eleven-year-old could be lethal, and it seemed like this boy was born knowing how to pull the trigger with a steady hand.

"Yes or no?" Lili's finger was close to pressing the button next to the gated door.

Adam nodded once more, and the doorbell rang. In the following minute, they heard someone moving inside, yelling at the dog to shut up. But no one came out.

"Maybe they didn't hear us?" said Adam.

"They're doing it on purpose," Lili explained.

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Of course! It's how they show who is in control, he thought. You've been on both ends of that stick, man. Besides, you enjoyed making people wait when you worked with Rafael in the Mission.

"It's your time that matters, Adam," his mentor used to tell him. "Not theirs."

When Lili pressed the button again, a loud bass song coming from the apartment drowned the doorbell.

"Hello," Lili banged at the door. "Hello!"

After another long minute of Vallenato at full volume, the door creaked open. Instead of Papa Smurf, a girl around fifteen years old appeared in the gap. It was hard to tell she was pregnant at first glance. Her body, barely covered by a Real Madrid t-shirt, would have made plenty of women jealous.

"He is not here," she said instead of greeting them.

"Hello. Good. Morning." Lili emphasized each word, trying, without a doubt, to teach the girl some manners. "Did you say Papa is not here?"

The dog started barking again.

"Shut your snout!" The girl threw her flip-flop at the animal before slamming the door in their faces.

"Bye," Lili shouted after a bit. "And Merry Christmas!"

"What a polite young woman," Adam joked.

"Bitch," Lili mumbled as she turned to smile at him. "Yeah. With those parents, that kid is going to go places." She walked to the elevator and pushed the button. "Come on! I think I know where to find Papa Smurf."

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