6:45 P.M.
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The sunset filtered through the windows printing its scarlet light here and there, inside the loft; the picture of Adam walking on the rocks by the sea, the armchairs in the living room, while the rest fell into the hands of darkness and its geometric networks of shadows impossible to decipher.
Adam and Malin entered the dark. The crackle of energy reached their ears.
A flash exploded behind the girl and pierced the semidarkness.
Something splashed in Adam’s face. Dazed, he ran his fingers down his cheek to see what had hit him: it was red, and not because it was lit by sunset; it was blood.
Malin’s face was blurred with pain, and she was about to collapse. A shock grenade had just hit her right in the wound.
Adam tried to help her, but he was so stunned that he couldn’t move.
“That was for the kick in the balls,” a man said.
Malin recognized the voice, and surprise overcame the pain. “How…?” She didn’t understand.
“And you thought you bought time by stealing my Auriga!” Her attacker was in the dark, sitting on the kitchen counter. “Sinister bitch! Or did you think that because you were with him”—he nodded toward Adam—“the android would tell me, ‘Don’t go after her’?”
Malin managed to stay on her feet, and with anger and tears in her eyes, finished removing what was left of the bandage on her shoulder after the attack. Why hadn’t she finished off that bastard when she had the chance? This was the third time she had been ambushed from behind; twice on the same day and at the hands of the same bastard. The contempt for her enemy and the frustration of feeling like an idiot, however, helped her overcome the burning sensation that bit her back. She took Adam by the hand and stepped in front of him, getting into a defensive position.
Winding through the shadows, Adam found a man with a bushy mustache and tousled hair, with his dirty ass on the kitchen counter and his legs dangling, the heel of his boots touching the refined wooden doors of the under-counter cabinet. For some reason, he wasn’t surprised the stranger was wearing the infantry uniform of the Markabian Empire, one identical to the one Juzo had worn. And that’s when he recognized him.
“You!” he called him, pointing him out to Malin. “He was one of the mercenaries that attacked us in the park!”
“Guilty!” declared the mustache man, and with a small jump, he stood up, out of the shadows, and entered into the reddish glow of sunset and the patches of darkness. “A piece of advice, Juzo’s brother,” he added; “you should close the windows before going out.” He pushed the sides of his unbuttoned jacket aside, revealing, through his chest hairs, elasticized X-shaped suspenders. Beneath his jacket, he carried one of the portable thrusters on his back. “Remember, with this, there is no floor in the heights where you can be safe.”
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Simon had not only gotten a Daedalus thruster, as Malin could see, but he had also gotten himself a new pair of Auriga bracelets. It hadn’t been two hours since she had taken them off. Where the hell had he gotten these new ones?
“Adam, meet Simon,” she nodded. “Believe it or not, there was a time when we were comrades.”
Simon laughed and waved his arms, hands balled into fists, like a boxer ready to start a new round. His scent of perspiration rose like agitated dust.
“Luckily, Malin, you’re one of those who easily find a new heartthrob,” he said. “Are you a hopeless whore, Malin, huh? Your boyfriend hasn’t been dead for over two weeks and you’re already wanting to get under his brother’s sheets.”
“Simon, listen to me,” Malin warned. “If you happen to cause him any harm, not just me, Broga will knock your head off.”
“Malin, Malin! If people change their minds all the time, why the hell can’t androids do it as well? The orders were to keep us away from him, but I think the Cyclops took pity on my pain, y’know? Go after her and say hello to that wimpy kid for me, he told me.”
“I highly doubt he said that.”
Adam took a step back; he was the wimpy kid that mercenary spoke of. What would happen to him?
Simon sensed the fear he caused in Adam and felt like a wild animal cornering its prey. He laughed outrageously and ended up turning it into a howl. His entire body went into a slight spasm, like a drug addict undergoing withdrawal, and when the sweat began to run down his hairy cheeks, his face took on a sickly vigor. His footsteps were in Malin’s direction, but his gaze fell on Adam. ‘Don’t worry, after her, it’s your turn,’ warned those eyes that shone like spheres of dark marble. He shook his left hand, wrapping it around tightly, revealing a crackling Photia that he tossed like a baseball.
Malin countered the grenade with another of the same kind, and she did it so quickly that Adam still didn’t finish taking cover when the attacks had already canceled each other out, exploding in the middle of the adversaries and spraying blue sparks through the living room.
“Stop!” Adam yelled, and without a second thought, he launched himself at Simon. The guy punched him in the cheek, but he resisted; the pain would come later; so, he tried to hit him back.
“Adam, get away from him!” Malin yelled as she watched them struggle. Simon wouldn’t hurt Adam to death, she knew Broga wouldn’t let him do so, or so she thought, however, Simon could take him hostage, and if he did, the situation would reach a level of complexity that she, in the pitiful state she found herself in, wasn’t sure she could handle. “Adam, move away!”
“Listen to your little girlfriend, you sissy kid!” Simon broke away from Adam and pushed him against the couches.
Adam hit the leg of the low table and fell to the floor.
Malin activated her implants with the trigger motion of her fingers and fired her Photias. Simon disintegrated the first one, colliding it with his own grenade, and dodged the next one, which ended up hitting the stairs leading up to the bedroom, blowing the wooden steps to pieces.
They fired at each other again. But covering himself in the flashes and the shower of sparks, Simon stepped forward and landed Malin a blow to the face, then another, and then a hook to the stomach that sent her to her knees, on the brink of collapse for the second time in the same fight. And as if that hadn’t been humiliation enough, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his hand, and with a shake, flung it at her.
“Women like you love this, don’t they?” he told her between giggles.
Malin was too hurt and disgusted for words to affect her. You can’t give up against this human waste, dear. Not now, she told herself, and managed to get to her feet once more. This time, it wouldn’t do to irritate his enemy and wait for him to get distracted before she could attack. Because of the way that bastard was laughing, she could tell he had already passed the limit of sanity. She needed to do something more… drastic.