After a long, loud yawn, Christine checked her phone and an involuntary frown formed once she saw the time. It had been fifteen minutes since Sara engaged in a conversation with the doctor in charge of the eastern girl, an important matter to be discussed only in the incomprehensible babble that was the Portuguese language. A dreadful hour was gone since they had first arrived at the hospital. Christine was starting to enjoy the idea of exposing herself to the sick people strolling with their nurses in the hospital’s garden just to get away from that sterile scent, when Sara thanked the good doctor for the last time and let him leave.

“Finally.”

“They say she’s in a coma, but they have no idea how or why,” Sara said stopping next to her and crossing her arms.

“And he needed fifteen minutes to tell you that much.”

“He was telling me about other cases, that sometimes they take a long time figuring out the causes and when they do it’ll be easier for her to recover, but… what he told me, essentially, is that there are two parts of the nervous system that can cause coma if they are damaged, and she has no problem with either of them.”

“So she shouldn’t be in a coma in the first place. Great,” Christine said as Sara nodded her head.

“I have to call my mom. I think her mom’s with them, walking around Cascais,” Sara said producing her phone from her purse.

“Enjoying their holiday,” Christine answered bitterly.

“There’s no way we could predict this would happen.”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I knew I had to play chauffer for some kid.”

Ignoring her, Sara started talking impossibly fast over the device in her ear. Signalling Christine to follow her, Sara opened the door to the girl’s room, and both took refuge there from the beeping noises and scrubs determinately rushing around. Christine stopped by the open window and her sickness dissipated with the warm breeze of a spring afternoon. In a few minutes, if her bodyguards did their job swiftly, she’d be able to use her holiday in a bit of a more pro-active manner.

***

“They’re coming over here right now,” said a distant voice. Yana turned from the embalmed dinosaur she had been examining and looked for its source.

“Are you sure your cousins didn’t feed her something funny? Like poison?” said another voice. That made it clear to her that they weren’t coming from anywhere except from inside of her own mind.

“Come on, Christine,” said the first voice, with a familiar ring to it that Yana struggled to remember.

“Come on what? Oh, Carl, you’re here at the perfect time. Do you have it?”

“Right here, miss Lonergan,” a third voice answered, an adult man.

“Awesome!”

“Wait, is that my guitar?”

“Your sister was home. What, you didn’t just expect me to sit here and wait for things to happen. I might have money, but I don’t have time.”

“Oh, I see what’s going on.”

“Well? For old times’ sake, Sara?”

The conversation paused for a moment, and Yana finally linked that first voice to Sara, the older girl that had been with her that morning. She had left with the small siblings to meet someone right before she passed out. Perhaps whomever she was talking to? Although she had also heard it before, Yana could not place the second voice as easily as Sara’s. It sounded like a British girl, so she could be David’s sister, which meant both of them were talking right next to her comatose body in a hospital somewhere back in Portugal.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let me see if I can find it… Here, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago. The album is going to be called “Perchance.”

“Perchance?”

“Perchance.”

“Perchance.”

They kept repeating the word with growing loftiness until they both suddenly burst laughing.

“You do love fancy words for album names.”

“Yeah, you know. It’s kinda funny.”

“Resplendent.”

“Just like me.”

No way, that’s O’Claire she’s talking to? Right next to me?

“And what’s this song going to be called?”

“Fighter. I don’t have a melody for it yet, just the lyrics.”

Without being prompted by anything, Sara read the barren song aloud. She read most of it for herself, so she couldn’t understand it, but Yana did catch a few complete sentences from the budding work.

“… Ran not from sin but from guilt… Broken heart and broken mind… On hunting grounds standing tall… Against the world and even the law… Take my heart and hold it tighter, for you’ll always be my fighter. Ok, I love it. This is pretty deep.”

“I know, right? I don’t want the album to be this like, but I do want this to be contrast for the rest. Which is why I’m having trouble with it.”

“Right. A dangerous, forbidden relationship… I think you need deep chords for this.”

“A and B chords?”

“Maybe something like this…”

Just as Sara started strumming her guitar, the sound of a door opening, coming from outside of her head, made Yana snap out of her stupor.

After leaving the Coliseum, she and Jack had wandered the side streets of Bulgarl until they had come across an electronics shop. Most of the devices on display were old looking and uninteresting, at least those Yana could see as she followed Jack from one end of the store to the other, with but a nod to the thick haired mulatto behind the counter after telling him his made-up name. They crossed through a hidden passage behind a refrigerator and climbed down a set of stairs that led them to a small hall, covered with a rich carpet, a coffee table sporting a miniature rifle pointing upwards in its stand and an open wooden case containing an exquisite golden and blue feather. Guarding the table stood an embalmed red raptor, still with a glint in its eyes that could make you think that it would move and tear someone’s arm should the fated day come.

Jack knocked on one of the doors branching from the hall, and ventured inside without waiting for an answer, revealing a claustrophobic room lit only by three large computer monitors and a powerful desktop lamp. The shade of a panel filled with a complex map of images, texts, codes and pins was the only thing decorating the only visible wall. In front of them, sunk in a tall hide chair, was a bald dark-skinned man with the smile of a ten-year-old that had just played his first prank.

Without a word, he raised an eyebrow.

“I got your money and your Bugs,” Jack said. “It wasn’t hard, but I should have taken it easier with the Champion.”

The man nodded, as if it had been a valid point, at then bobbed his head towards Yana.

“Oh, her? I picked her up in the city before I went to the Coliseum. She can see the bugged weapons.”

“I’m Yana, mister…” she said to the man. He nodded courteously at her then turned back to Jack and rolled his eyes.

“What? I’m not some pervert, Vandro.”

The man made a strange sound, as if he had tried a chuckle but failed to make the appropriate noise.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yana asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Girls aren’t supposed to understand man issues,” Jack answered.

“You aren’t a man, you’re just a cocky kid.”

“But you’re way worse than me, right Vandro? She just keeps yelling all the time, it’s annoying. Makes my ears hurt.”

Meanwhile the adult had half-turned his chair to reveal a keyboard where he punched in a text, impossible for Yana to read as it materialized on the middle screen, but that a computer-generated voice was quick to translate for her.

“Hello, Yana. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Most people know me as The Hunter, but you may call me Vandro. I’m sorry I cannot speak with you directly, but as you can see, I’m mute. I’ve seen you fight at the venatio a while ago, and I must say I was quite impressed by your skill.”

“Thank you,” she answered, without holding back a slight blush, invisible in the shadow.

“Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t allow anyone to know about this place, but Jack is by no means a normal client, and he seems to trust you a bit.”

“Were you the one who gave him the bombs to blow up Team Steel’s base?” she asked.

Vandro turned to Jack, looking for an explanation.

“Master Pretorius mentioned it,” he told him. “She’s pissed because of the bombs you put in his Coliseum, too,” he continued pointing with his head outside.

“I heard the tale of hypocrisy Jack told me, although that alone isn’t enough to stand up against Okah Kuchinja. The leader of Team Steel is a formidable opponent. That being said, I have my reasons to have him and his Summoners out of commission for a couple of months, so I decided to do Jack’s bidding. As for the Coliseum, I don’t have the heart to destroy that thing. I’d be doing this city a favour, and God knows it doesn’t need any. However, Pretorius stole a meguro that’s rightfully mine, and I want to see him squirm. Now it’s my turn to ask you a question, Yana. Why can you see which weapons have the Bugs?”

“I don’t know, it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this. I’d rather not be able to, to be honest.”

“Have you ever had any encounter with a Neal-Hidanna?”

“Neal-Hidanna? No, I don’t think so.”

“I see. Miss Yana, Jack and I have some details left to discuss. I do not wish to sound rude, but could you wait outside? We won’t take long.”

“Oh… Yes, of course.”

Being left out of important conversations was anything but okay, especially after cutting something short so abruptly, but Vandro’s well mannerisms helped to swallow it somehow. She could extort the information out of Jack after he came back.

Left alone in the rich hall, Yana wandered about, watching the items from a distance, touching them lightly to know their feel, and she tried to find the remote for a television perfectly fit in a hole on the wall, but short of almost breaking a golden dragon figurine, her quest was for naught. Suddenly the voices hushed in her head, and she lost herself in the thought that O’Claire had been the one to bring her to the hospital and the person that knew everything that was going on was none other than her shady brother.

Finally, Jack emerged alone from the computer room, silencing the noise in Yana’s head.

“What? Is there something wrong?” he asked looking behind his shoulder.

“No, no,” she quickly said, erasing her daydreaming face.

“Let’s go, then. We have a border to cross.”

“Border?” she asked, following him upstairs and back into the electronics shop.

“We’re going to Lado, the country north of here.”

“Oh, yeah, they talked about it in the venatio, but they didn’t seem to like it very much.”

“They don’t,” Jack answered as they walked out to the street. “But they’re dumbasses.”

“And how are we going to cross the border without passports, or-”

“Vandro took care of that problem for me,” he answered pointing to his rucksack. “And you’ll be fine. You look like a ladensse that comes here often. Her name’s Meri Balsemina. If you pretend to be her and say… I dunno, that you went to Ellage to visit your family or something, they’ll let you through.”

Going with Jack’s plan with no more information than that was something Yana would not buy a second time, but before she could open her mouth and ask who exactly that girl was, the strange experience during which she had seen the bugged weapons for the first time suddenly came to mind, and she refrained from pushing the subject any further.

“What about you?” she asked instead, as she followed Jack towards the exit to the city.

“What about me?”

“What if you have records from crossing the border? Stuff from before you were ten.”

“If it happens, we’ll just deal with it,” Jack answered after a moment of silence. “I don’t think that’s possible, though.”

“How come?”

“Dunno,” he said. “Just a feeling.”

“You don’t want to get your memories back?” Yana asked raising her eyebrow.

“They said the boss found me almost dead in Rex’s Pass, one of the most remote areas of the desert. Really badly injured. They said I was shot at. Something pretty messed up must have happened for me to turn up like that in such a place, don’t you think?” he said with such an unconcerned face, if not for a rare tone of sincerity in it, Yana would not think twice about dismissing it as a lie. “Would you want to find out what happened to me if you were in my place?”

“… Not really.”

“Oh, we have something in common. If you drop your temper, maybe you’ll even become somewhat tolerable.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to be put on the same level as a hopeless backstabber.”

Something in her words made him laugh wholeheartedly for the short time it took them to take a turn and see the desert rise beyond the buildings of Bulgarl, a sight that made Yana forget Jack was even there to begin with. Infinity drew itself in rocks and dirt, splitting from a pure, unforgiving desert sky and the canyons that embraced the plateau of the city. Hundreds of vehicles were parked below, close to a road that tied the plateau with the ground below, as if the city was too dangerous – or too mighty – to be ventured by anything other than the bravest of Hidanna.

“You’ve never seen this before, right?” asked Jack after letting her watch the scenery for a while.

“No, I’ve already been to the desert, but it wasn’t anything like this,” she answered.

“Then enjoy the sights while you can. Lado’s a whole lot different.”

***

Sneaking into the kitchen had never been one of Sofia’s specialties. She was always discovered one way or another, no matter how silently she tried to take cookies from the cupboard. Whenever her mind was elsewhere, for example, in a video game that had turned into a movie starring a girl she knew, people only realized she was there when the job was halfway done, and she dropped something in her aloofness.

“Oh, it’s you, Sofia,” said the housekeep with a sigh, laughing a bit once she saw her with a tray right in front of the cupboard. “Stealing cookies again? You’re going to lose your teeth.”

“Tania…” she answered nervously, looking down to her feet in embarrassment for being caught again. “I’m taking some for Ricardo and David.”

“That chubby boy?” Sofia looked back at her as if the housekeeper was seeing things and David had been handsome all along. “What are you doing downstairs?”

“We’re watching a movie,” she said turning back to the tins and jars, trying to remember where the ones she liked the most were hidden. “It’s about a girl that gets trapped in another planet and there’s a guy that says he’ll help her. But it’s been boring for a while.”

“Oi, what about that red-haired girl that was here before? Is she okay?”

“Yana? I don’t know. But she’ll be fine,” Sofia said with unusual confidence.

Even if Jack was anything but a normal hero, he had been a fairly good hero so far. He wasn’t handsome, but he was the strongest, and he had powers no one else had. Most of what he said turned out to be misleading, and maybe he lied once or twice, but he had also told the truth. They even had an ally with bombs and computers. No matter how much Sofia worked her brain, she could not understand why David kept his phone clutched in his hand. If the main character said he was going to bring Yana home, he unquestionably would. Why was he so worried?

Just about the only thing that was worrying was the fact that things had gotten so boring. Jack and Yana walked all the way down a barren road towards the bottom of the plateau of the big city, and she had asked about the Neal-Hidanna, which was an interesting story to listen to, but then they stopped in front of the old motorbike Jack had escaped Team Steel’s headquarters with. Yana protested it was too small, he said she could walk if she wanted to, and she climbed on behind him.

At the time, they were taking a long time crossing the desert towards the border with the other country. So, saying she needed to go to the toilet, Sofia climbed up the stairs, scavenged all the cookies her heart desired, and some more for the boys in the living room, and made a quick stop in her room to check up on Linvios.

“Who?”

Her bed was made, but that was Tania's work and Sofia didn't bother with it. However, some wrinkles on the mattress were left, that moved slightly as she closed the door and turned to the little snake, restless for attention.

“C'mere, Linvios.”

Before her eyes a white snake materialized, curled up on the mattress. It slid out of the bed, opened its blue stripes into a pair of spectral wings and glided towards Sofia's extended arm, curling up around it and looking curiously to the girl's smiling face.

It had appeared one day, when Sofia reached for her backpack to pretend she was going to do her homework like any good twelve-year-old. The creature was inside, snuggling between her pen case and her History notebook, and she screamed, waking it up. There was no one else home except for her brother, who was glued to a PC screen on the basement and the other side of the house and didn’t bother to hear anything else. Well, Foxy, the family’s pet fox, did initially trot into the room to see what was happening, but quickly left as she saw a little white reptilian head poking out of the backpack, its ruby eyes open and looking about to find what had disturbed its sleep. When it met the terrified young girl, it slithered to the top of the backpack, and several blue protrusions suddenly erupted from the middle of its body, almost as tall as it was. The snake flew and curled itself to Sofia’s arm, as naturally as if it was a tree branch, and stared into her brown eyes from up close. Its scales felt slimy and cold, but it seemed curious more than anything else.

Slowly, she put out a hand in front of its head. It looked at it briefly, and Sofia put out a finger. It still didn’t move so she tried touching the top of its head. The creature let her pet it without a fuss, and without ever taking its eyes off her.

Since that day, Linvios, which was the name Sofia ended up giving it, hadn’t ventured far from that bedroom, and Sofia never figured out why. Sometimes during the night, when she woke up to go to the bathroom, she’d notice it wasn’t on the room, but in the morning when she woke up it was always back in the little box she got for it on her desk, curled up in a perfect little circle with an eye half open, making sure it was her gazing upon it. It never showed itself to anyone else, not even Ricardo, and eventually she gave up trying to bring attention to it. It seemed to enjoy her company somewhat, even if she didn’t feel like she was doing much to gain its favour. It would frequently roll itself on her arm, especially if she was wearing t-shirts or other clothes that exposed her skin, and made itself invisible to be able to spend the day with her without being spotted by anyone else. Sofia hardly ever tried to command it, but whenever she did it seemed to listen to what she had to say and obey.

A few weeks after she found it, Sofia stumbled upon an image of it while navigating the Internet. The website called it an “ice glider”, a special unlockable for a relatively old video game called “Hidan Battle.” She begged her father to order it and, as befitting the role of the spoiling parent, he complied with a smile and without asking too many questions.

What would have happened if Linvios hadn’t shown up on her backpack, or if she hadn’t found that particular image on the Internet? They would all be playing Specter’s Night Kart together instead of running amok in a single player game where no one could hardly have any fun.

Looking into the snake’s playful ruby eyes made those thoughts dissipate from the cuteness. After petting its white head and giving it a small piece of hazel cookie, Sofia let it become invisible, curled up on her arm, and ventured down the stairs.

“But why?”

I just shrugged like I know but that’s a good question, I still have no idea why that ice glider is so attached to her. I know it’s looking for someone else, just never figured out who that someone is.

***

They had driven through the cliffs for a few minutes, but the ground had finally flattened, and the rocky desert spread into the horizon beyond. Far ahead, intangible as a mirage, the green contour of woods could be seen, backed by slight elevations that could very well be distant mountaintops. The green mass approached much faster than Yana had first thought, and, thanks to a pair of goggles that magically appeared on Jack’s hand when they were closing in on the gigantic parking lot at the base of Bulgarl, soon she was distinguishing trunks, branches and leaves drifting on top of husky trees, cuddling together to form a forest she never expected to find in such a wasteland.

“How come there’s a forest there?” Ricardo asked, surveying the area as they approached. “Is that like Egypt?”

“Could be, there could be a river there,” David answered. Since there was nothing too troublesome happening, he had allowed himself to drop his phone on the coffee table, lean back on the sofa and enjoy the scenery that Yana’s eyes presented them. “The trees are probably different there.”

Their theory proved right - the road curved by the edge of a slim thicket that preceded the riverbed, a broad sheet of crystal-clear water drifting lazily towards the sea. Boats populated the water, ruled by curves instead of edges like we are used to seeing, like nutshells with sails, waiting for a breeze to take them in its wake. A few minutes later Yana was squinting against the sun, trying to see a settlement by the bank further ahead, a mix of tall buildings and rudimentary cottages, framed by a colossal structure, doused in a pure, marbled white stone. The other side of the river had its own, different city, slowly fusing together with the thicket to form a unique singularity. The bridge that connected both sides of the river was a structure akin to both, elegant but sturdy and functional, crossed by busy, circling vehicles with familiar shapes and sizes, but half of them floated on the pavement with no wheels.

“Is that Ellage?” shouted Yana.

Jack nodded back and pointed to the prominent white structure. “That's the Coliseum.”

“What’s on the other side?”

“Wald. That's already Lado. Mto River’s the border.”

Soon, several columns were already distinguishable in the Coliseum, keeping the structure together.

“Are we going to the bridge?” Yana asked.

“We'll cross further down the river, it’s easier,” Jack answered.

Slightly before a crossroad, where Jack took a turn towards the back of the Coliseum, the road changed from a scrubbed pavement to a makeshift asphalt road that momentarily erased all bumps from their drive, turning the luggage box where Yana had been forced to sit on somewhat comfortable.

“It kinda looks like the Coliseum in Rome, doesn't it?” Sofia said once the structure was close enough to be witnessed in its full glory.

The same thought was crossing through Yana’s mind as she watched it. It was about the same size as the one she had already seen on television, since she had never travelled beyond the Italian Alps, but unspolied and with more of a Greek style than Roman. It was supported by columns instead of arches, revealing a great hall inside that shielded a handful of people from the sun. A pediment made the top, the shapes it described far too high to be recognized by the people below. And, between the columns and the pediment, framed in marbled stone, statues of all kinds looked upon the horizon, holding out their hands, protecting treasure of all kinds, wearing rich outfits or complicated sets of armour, and all of them with their respective weapon faithfully by their side.

“Are they Summoners?”

“Probably,” Jack answered, shrugging.

It didn’t take long before they plunged into the woods that grew outward into the desert as the river widened, providing more water to the nearby plant life. Small creatures, mostly the insects we are all were too familiar with, emerged from the sides of the read and, more often than not, a bug of some kind splattered against Yana's goggles. She shouted in disgust the first time, but after a handful more made their way into her line of sight it hardly seemed justified to bother with them anymore. A different sort of wildlife rarely sprang across the road, as distinguishable as a blur, making the Fonseca siblings shout out to each other and wonder what it was.

Further on, the road forked directly towards the river and, as they took it, they found the path ahead blocked by a single man aiming a hunting rifle towards them.

In a split-second Jack turned the handlebar of the bike almost to the point of breaking it. A gunshot sounded and Yana couldn’t hold back a scream as the bike became close to kissing the floor. They didn’t fall and their vehicle regained its balance and stood upright, but didn’t move any further, as several men in dark shorts and red tunics emerged from the woods, blocking the way back.

Extremely calm for the nature of the situation, Jack pulled a feathered dart from his arm and turned around on his seat to stare at the man behind them. For a moment his eyes flashed with the anger of a rabid dog before it dissipated under a powerful dizzy spell.

“Get off…”

The strength from his legs crumbled and the bike tumbled to the side. Yana jumped from it and pulled a passing out Jack from under its weight.

“Get away from him, girl,” demanded the voice of a thunder when she tried to wake him up. “I don’t want to spend another tranquilizer.”

Holding up her hands, Yana stood up slowly and turned around to face the leader of Team Steel. His stare was untroubled, focused, magnified by his greying beard, burdened with the experience of someone who has anyone he needed under his thumb whether they wanted to or not.

If you’re gonna call someone, David, now would be a proper time.