Coming to his senses, Adam recognized he was under the influence of narcotics and tranquilizers while remaining in a limited state of consciousness.

The feeling was odd; a physical numbness mixed with a mental lethargy that was enough to let him know that something was wrong, but not enough to make him react. The beep of the medical equipment came to his ears, and among clouds, he saw an IV bag hanging beside him. A hospital.

What had happened? The last thing he remembered was him in the park and the android coming closer with a bundle of discharges. Juzo must have saved him.

Juzo! He looked for his twin and didn’t find him.

Adam was alone in the room, so he feared the worst. A pain shot through his chest. He had fuzzy images of himself and his twin in adjoining beds, spreading their arms, trying to reach each other. Was that a dream?

He raised his head a little; his neck was stiff. The room’s door was in front of him. Tried to call someone to clarify what was happening, but his tongue was numb, and he was so stunned he couldn’t utter a word. He returned his head to the pillow. Groped at his sides, found the button to call the nurse, and before pressing it, the door opened. For an instant, he feared that the android would appear on the threshold. Unprecedented relief flooded over him when he saw that it was a friend.

“Welcome back,” Dr. Sarah Lanen greeted him.

“Where is he?” Adam asked, his throat hurting as he spoke.

Sarah fell silent, looked him in the eye, and Adam knew his fears were correct.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “We did everything we could.”

“It’s okay,” he said with a lifeless gaze.

No, it wasn’t okay. Juzo was dead… because of him.

There, in his memory, he was running in the park, desperate, wanting to run away from what he couldn’t run away from; and there was his brother, on his knees, wounded for having tried to protect him. He felt guilty. He felt like a coward, a wretch.

Sarah took a seat next to him and wrapped her hand around his.

“You too... You were gone for a moment,” she told him.

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Adam knew very well that he had come close to not coming back.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

“It’s your third day. This morning you got out of the intensive care unit. You’ll be under observation for a few days and then… home.”

One, two, three days; a considerable time. If the Cyclops hadn’t come back to finish him off, it was because Juzo had blown him to pieces, or because he had already taken from him the proteins that he needed to reactivate the Binary project; perhaps a small sample of blood was enough to do it, and that was why he was still alive. Would the android leave him alone if that was the case?

Between thoughts and nausea, he had a hell of a time thinking and formulating the questions, but the urgency to satiate his intrigue was strong.

“How did we get here?”

“A technician from the park informed the paramedics who were treating the injured on the avenue,” Sarah said.

Adam remembered the multiple-car crash caused by Broga’s shot, the same one that almost left Juzo headless.

“In the park... My brother and I—Were we the only ones there?”

Sarah adjusted her glasses, intrigued.

“Yes. Should anyone else have been there?”

“No. Not someone,” Adam said quickly, not wanting to complicate matters by making a rash comment when even he himself didn’t understand what was going on. “An android?”

Sarah recalled the insinuation her colleague, Dr. Cabrera, had made about Adam and his brother committing an act of vandalism.

“The Cyclops park ranger, destroyed,” she nodded and crossed her arms. “What happened to him, Adam?”

Adam asked her to forget about it. It wasn’t the Cyclops he was interested in.

“Adam, you and your brother—you two were in a coma,” Sarah continued. “In a medically impossible coma, but…” She showed him the small scar, now almost imperceptible, that he had next to his heart; then her expression turned into a scolding look. “Did you and your brother were...?”

Adam looked down at the tiny mark on his chest, a look of curiosity, and then he looked up in confusion, almost horror. He didn’t need to be a doctor to know that this was a puncture mark. The proteins!

—By removing them from one heart and putting them into the other, Juzo had said while they were in the car. So, the Cyclops has fulfilled his mission! Had he taken those damned proteins? Or he had put them into Juzo’s heart, maybe, and that’s why his brother had died. Or had he put them into his heart? All of them ended up… consumed by raw energy, reduced to fire and ashes, his brother had stated. What the hell would happen to him now?

Sarah noted how upset her friend had become and she felt foolish for having considered that Cabrera’s comment might have had any validity. She trusted that Adam would tell her about everything at the right time, so she postponed her questions—At least, those related to the reason for his admission to the hospital.

“I kept your brother’s body in the morgue,” she said then. “I thought you’d want to—I dunno, give him a proper burial.”

“Thank you,” Adam nodded. “His name was Juzo Romita.”

Sarah waited for him to tell her where that twin brother had come from. Curiosity was eating her alive.

“How did you guys—?” She didn’t know how to ask. “I mean—for people like us, this is a huge deal and…”

But it was more than clear that Adam didn’t want to talk about it, not right now, so she didn’t push it.

“Later,” was all he said, and rubbing the small puncture mark on his heart, he averted his gaze and fell silent.