Simon was unable to contain such a violent energetic reaction and got forced to drop his hold and step back, gaping.

What the hell was going on? Was he to blame for this transformation? What punishment would the android give him now that he had messed it up in a big way? Trying to understand what he had done, he watched Adam who had remained with his back to him, motionless, in the same spot where he had released him, although suspended in the air and with an electrical current in the form of white flames that went from his feet to the tips of his bristly hair.

And suddenly, without moving his legs, without touching the ground with his feet, Adam turned towards him, very slowly, and Simon found himself face to face with the perfect portrait of a human possessed by a god; an arrogant being who had freed himself from the ties that would hold a mere mortal, from the physical to the moral ones.

Adam/Juzo’s eyes opened in flashes of divine light and locked on Simon’s dark eyes, instantly paralyzing him. He grabbed him by the neck, reversing roles; and shocked him with electrical discharges. His power was such that both his Auriga bracelets and those of the mercenary exploded in a shower of sparks.

Simon tried to plead for his life, but only gibbering came out.

“What’s wrong, you little shit? Are you afraid I’m going to kill you?” Adam/Juzo said and shook Simon. In his hands, that bastard looked, felt, like a rag doll; someone so weak that to lift him, he didn’t need to make a greater effort than he would have done to lift a sheet of paper; someone so fragile that he couldn’t help but feel elated, knowing that with just a little too much pressure, he could be capable of causing a lot of damage. But like someone who remembers not taking out the garbage on time, the humor faded from his face. Gliding through the air—his feet inches from the ground—he dragged Simon by the neck through the burning living room. Passing under the platform of his bedroom, which would soon crumble under the weight of the flames, he moved him to the loft’s largest window, the one with the red-hot frame, glowing like a neon sign showing where he should throw the waste. The explosions had already taken care of breaking the glass; great, that made his job easier. He used the back of the mercenary as if it were a human rag to remove the remains of the crystal that had not yet fallen, then exposed him to the precipice. Adam/Juzo was ready to throw out the trash.

The wind blowing up there on the twelfth floor fanned the flames, and the noise of the all-consuming fire mingled with Simon’s screams.

The mercenary met Adam’s eyes; in there, there was no soul, only power. And, even so, he knew how to hold his gaze to that kind of godlike being. Not all was lost. He had an ace up his sleeve, or rather under his jacket.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that,” Adam/Juzo told him as if he had read his mind, and reaching under his jacket, that god of white fire ripped out the Daedalus thruster he was carrying on his back, the same one he had used to sneak into there. Like the Auriga, the small chrome rectangle belched sparks and smoke, shattering into slivers of light.

“N-no!” Simon panicked. “No, p-please!”

“Poor bastard”

Then Adam/Juzo imagined Simon smashed on the pavement, down there, bleeding; or sunk into the roof of a car, like a sack of meat wrapped between broken glass and bent sheet steel. The power that vibrated in his hands required him to bring to reality one of those images. The fury against Simon for everything he had done, for betraying Malin and hurting her, for humiliating Juzo in the park—for causing his death! For the blows he received and for the fire that was eating his house. That fury needed to be quenched, sated. And when he was about to open his hand and release him into the void, he regained some control and stopped. No, he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a murderer, a human scum like he was trying to get rid of. However, whatever he was going to do with him, he had to do it now before the desire to kill him was so big that the outcome was inevitable. He brought Simon close to his face, so close their noses touched, and he said, “If you survive, I don’t wanna see you ever again.” And with a stiff hand covered in white flames, he backhanded him hard, hurling him through the air to the other side of the street, out of his sight.

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Simon was thrown out, feeling how the sickle of death had just tested his chest, seeing how the electric flames of the blow opened his flesh and drew blood from there; until he slammed backward into something that first knocked the air out of his lungs and then gave way to receive him with a painful hug, a shrill sound, and a lot of darkness.

Adam/Juzo watched as Simon slammed his back into the windows of the building across the street and disappeared into a dark pit of broken glass. Well, it was done.

So, he went for Malin. Mindful of how dangerous the white flames that sprang from him and swam around him were, he dowsed them with his thoughts, and knowing that his strength at that moment was extreme, he lifted his partner from the floor with extreme delicacy. Moving away from the hell that was slowly taking his loft, he levitated back to the window he’d thrown Simon out of and shot up into the sky with the girl in his arms. Dusk covered their escape with a soft blanket of darkness and warm wind.

Slowly, he descended onto the roof of the first nearby skyscraper, ducked beneath the flickering red obstruction lamps on the tip of an antenna, and carefully lowered Malin against the outer tubes of the ventilation shaft.

And just as he felt it coming, quick as lightning, he also felt it go. He suffered a sudden decompensation and fell sitting on the hard concrete. More than a physical sensation, it had been a psychic puncture. Juzo’s personality had left his conscious part to hide again somewhere in his mind, taking with him all that load of divinity and leaving him in a fragile state of humanity.

His heart pounded so hard he had trouble breathing. His neck, where Simon had strangled him, burned wildly. His cut lip swelled, the taste of blood flooded his mouth, and a cascade of emotions overflowed him until he sobbed. While he was satisfied with the victory achieved, he was afraid that something like what he had just experienced would happen again. No. More than afraid, he was terrified, because he knew another confrontation like this awaited him just around the corner.

But now he had something more urgent to attend to.

Still choking on his emotions, he tried to gauge how badly hurt Malin was, though in the shadows, with the red light of the obstruction lamps pulsing over them like the beating of a desperate heart, there was little he could see; he made out only bloody bruises, scrapes gleaming through the torn and charred fabric of her T-shirt, and a few trickles of blood, on her forehead, on her cheek, on her ears and a little on her lips, even reaching to her neck. Malin was alive, that’s for sure; although he didn’t know how much longer she could hold out. He had to take her to a hospital; no matter how badly she wanted to avoid them.

He stood up, and upon staring up, he discovered how beautiful Proxima City looked from that height; an ethereal veil of lights, so vast that there was no horizon without buildings. Until he found a column of smoke rising not far from there, and he looked away like someone who doesn’t want to see a loved one suffer in their last moments of life.

No. He opened his eyes and forced himself to witness the end of what had been his home for so many years. He had to say goodbye.

There, his loft disappeared, his beloved refuge. There would be no more sacred spaces for him.

The time when he could enjoy his wonderful solitude was now completely gone.