CITY’S RED AREA
FRIDAY, 11:53 P.M.
Alright, enough with this nonsense, Adam thought, and after crossing the traffic light, he cleared his throat and glanced at Juzo.
“Not the first time my nose has bled, y’know?” he said, “and it was never a reason for making such a big deal out of it.”
“Today is different,” Juzo said. “Repeated nosebleeds are an immune response to exposure to Tau radiation.”
Eyes wide with terror, Adam glanced at his brother. “Radiation? What-what radiation?” The thought of mortality darkened his mind; nothing good came from having bled with having received radiation. He neglected his driving and ran a red light. A horn blast brought him back to reality, and in the rearview mirror, a car resumed its journey down the street they had just crossed. “How was that I—? When I—?”
With a sullen gesture, Juzo told him to calm down. “Tau radiation tends to cause erratic behavior, nothing more,” he said.
“How erratic? What is it—?”
“Easy!” Juzo interrupted. “It’s hard to understand how it works, but trust me, for your body, it just means a nosebleed.”
Adam took a deep breath. “If it’s so insignificant, why the fuss?”
“Because it means the enemy had contact with you.”
“Enemy?!” Each revelation freaked Adam out more than the previous one.
“Tau radiation is an aura that some natives of the Edda Peninsula can emit,” Juzo explained then. “We have reason to believe that a Tau code Eddanian woman is looking for us. From your epistaxis and the description that you gave of the woman in the club, I’m sure it’s her.”
“An Eddanian?”
And suddenly, Adam’s mind forgot all fears for the moment and stopped, not on the fact that they had someone stalking them, which was almost a no-brainer from the rush which they had left the loft with, nor on the fact that there were people capable of giving off some mysterious radiation, tonight he had seen some pretty wild things that he would never have thought possible, his mind had stopped at the geographical origin of this person.
“Hold on a second. The Edda Peninsula…” he said, and a tall, dark-skinned, handsome young man came to his mind, a young man whom he had shared some underwear photo sessions with, a long time ago. “I knew a guy, a model. Of course, he had hair and, y’know, a non-dying skin tone, but I remember he said that his grandparents were from there. That’s on the eastern mainland island, in Pannotia.” He looked at his brother and did the math; “You guys come from there, right?”
“From the territory next to the Edda Peninsula,” Juzo confessed. “From Markabia.”
Adam nodded, tight-lipped. “The capital of the Markabian Empire.”
Of course. The strange accent, the arrogant attitude… The foolish association he had made earlier between his brother and the island’s fascists had ended up being correct. The sorry state of Juzo’s uniform, the mud stains that both he and the girl had on their boots... everything fit.
“You and your girlfriend are fugitives from the regime. That’s why you stole those thrusters and stuff. We’re not only escaping from an Eddanian woman; we’re escaping from your empire, right?”
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Juzo showed a part of his jacket pocket, next to his heart; the fabric was torn as if something had been ripped out there. From the same pocket, Juzo withdrew a scarlet diamond-shaped medal, with the image of a white Pegasus with wings in the form of laurel wreaths. The emblem of the Markabian Empire, the missing piece to make his presumption accurate.
Adam gritted his teeth. A fugitive in the passenger seat was a problem. A fugitive with a face identical to his that was making him an accessory to a crime that could spit on him a cataract of international troubles, it was too much.
“Please don’t tell me that you and your girlfriend made up the project story to buy my sympathy and help you escape.”
“Malin is not my girlfriend, she is my partner,” Juzo clarified. “And the project is real. We escaped from Pannotia to tell you about it because I thought you had as much right as I to know what they did to us. However, the military…” He opened the window and tossed the little Markabian medal out into the street. “…They have no idea we’re here.”
“And then who are we running from? A bald, magical Eddanian woman who just happened to be tasting the honey of the free world today in a nightclub? I don’t believe it. If she was the enemy, as you say, what was her game in letting us walk away from there? Giving us the upper hand before hunting us down? Or will the erratic behavior caused by that radiation cause me to crash the car into a wall so she can pick us up into little pieces?”
“I already told you. The effect of Tau radiation is difficult to define.”
“Like almost everything you’ve told me so far.” Adam clicked his tongue. “Hey, I see that you’re not one of those guys who find it easy to share information, but you have a backpack full of files there, and the truth is that now it would be nice if you told me something about what they say. You know, it would help us understand each other better.”
“You’ve already seen them; they are incomplete.”
“I’ve seen the photos and the censor bars; I couldn’t read the little that remains to be read. Do they mention the name of any company? I mean, those who developed the project had to have bought supplies, right? And the company I work for makes products, and our customers are…”
Juzo held up a hand for Adam to be silent. It was obvious that he felt pressured to speak and that he didn’t like it, but it was also obvious that Adam had a right to demand clarity in the situation and he knew it. “Fine,” he said; “You should know, though, that much of what I will tell you might—”
“—Be conjectures?”
Juzo stared at him. ‘I thought I asked you to be quiet,’ said that look. “—Might not be all the facts,” he clarified, paused, and then told the story, “Three decades ago, studying the genetic lineage of a population native to southern Pannotia, a group of scientists discovered mutant proteins in identical twins.” At the sound of mutant proteins, Adam gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Each protein could combine with that of his partner and create a chemical burst that released vast amounts of energy. Binary proteins, they called them. Tests were done mixing the blood of the twins, joining their genetic codes, but...”
“None of them survived, right?” Adam clenched his jaw. “Those are the other babies that Malin girl was talking about.”
Juzo nodded, looking ahead. “All of them ended up… consumed by raw energy, reduced to fire and ashes,” he said. “Until you and I came in, and we survived the first instances of the Project. Physical maturity had turned out to be an essential factor in withstanding the bombardment of energy caused by the binding of proteins, so those responsible for the experiment decided to postpone it and distanced us to prevent us from coming into contact before time. That’s how you ended up on this side of the world. These people were planning to join us when we turned twenty-five. Everything would have ended at that moment, five years ago, if it hadn’t been for a setback that forced them to suspend everything.”
“That would have been quite a setback!” Adam exclaimed.
“According to the files, what got lost was a supply of vital importance to complete the Project.”
“Do you know what supply we’re talking about?”
Juzo shook his head.
“Ten to one that it wouldn’t have been gauze and bandages,” Adam added and remained silent for a while, absorbing what he had just heard. “Well, thanks for having… elaborated so much,” he said and sighed. “So, I come from the south of Pannotia.”
He would never have thought that the first accurate information about his origin would reach him and would be immediately overshadowed by other, even more shocking, revelations, and the promise of a fate as discouraging as it was brief.