ADAM WHITE’S LOFT
5:17 P.M.
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Adam had opened the door, and there she was, standing in the corridor. The blonde girl, Juzo’s partner.
It was the same girl who that Friday night had thrown herself out of the window and flew off with the thrusters, never to return. She even dressed similarly to that time, in blue jeans and knee-high boots. Although, her attitude was different now. She didn’t radiate the beauty that had dazzled him in the elevator when he’d first seen her, nor did she radiate the determination she’d shown as she moved inside the loft, doing her reconnaissance round with Juzo. The pain on her face said it all.
Her attempt to hide the wound on her shoulder using her hair might have fooled someone like Ruben Blue, the doorman, but it never would have fooled Adam. What better than a former underwear model to know how to hide physical defects using other parts of the body or standing in a certain way? Also, the strap of her T-shirt was dirty with blood.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Who let you in?”
She responded with a gasp. Not only was she hurt but also exhausted.
“As you guys say here, it’s not my first rodeo, dear,” she said, and they stared for a while. “Aren’t you gonna invite this girl in?”
Adam snapped out of the trance he was in and stepped aside.
“Where have you been?” he asked. The girl didn’t answer; she went into the loft and went straight to the bathroom. “Hey, you! Answer me!”
He followed her. He would have bet that her injury was related to a certain old android gifted with an armory; although he couldn’t trust that either; everything related to what he experienced the first hours of that Saturday warranted his mistrust. Unfortunately, because of the mental gaps that he’d been suffering from, he didn’t trust his own sanity either.
“If you’re looking for something to disinfect that with—” he said, but before finishing the sentence, she opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and got some gauze and surgical tape.
“Name’s Malin, not Hey-you,” she corrected. “Where do you have the—?” Adam took the alcohol from another drawer and passed it to her. “Thank you.”
In front of the mirror, Malin pulled her hair away and exposed the blow to her shoulder, a red circle with scratches and bright traces of blood. With one hand, she lifted the strap of the bloody T-shirt, with the other she moistened the gauze with alcohol and wiped that red circle on her skin that burned like hell.
Adam expected to hear her shriek, but she barely winced. She disinfected the wound and covered it with a bandage made of several gauze cloths, secured with adhesive paper bands.
“What happened?”
“I was attacked,” she said.
Adam put his arms on his hips. “—And I thought you did it by playing dodgeball! Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Malin looked at her patched shoulder in the reflection. Not bad for a job done in a hurry.
“What happened to you?” Adam insisted, but she just waved her hand, inviting him to forget it. “What? You’ll ignore me like you ignored your partner when he needed you most?”
Malin pursed her lips. And when she wanted to leave the bathroom, Adam didn’t move out of the way.
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“Juzo faced that Cyclops alone, and you turned your back on him,” he accused her with a lump in his throat and his eyes boiling with rage; rage at Juzo’s death and rage at his cowardice. He hated being responsible for his brother’s defeat, and he hated her for leaving his brother alone. “Where were you hiding, bitch? Why didn’t you come back to help him?”
Malin bared her teeth. “You call me a bitch one more time, and I’ll rip your balls out, you prick.” She shoved him aside. “I already did it with one idiot today, and I can do it again with another.”
Adam swallowed hard and stared at her, trying to compose himself, trying to regulate his breathing. He glanced at the shelf, at the urn with Juzo’s ashes, and doubted whether to show it to her or leave it for another time. In front of him was who had been his brother’s partner. He must confess his guilt; he needed to.
But his shame was more powerful. Not now, maybe later, he thought. What would he gain if he did, though? Besides, if he talked about it, he was in danger of choking on his emotions.
Slowly, Malin walked around the table Juzo had used to show the project files and slid her fingers across the surface as if seeking to pick up the trail of a sensation, something Juzo might have left printed on the wood.
“Juzo…” she said, looking up to reveal tears in her eyes. “What happened to him?”
There was nothing more to say. She knew what the outcome had been. Adam tried not to catch the sadness, but the memory of Juzo was stronger.
“That night, the android and other guys ambushed us, and…” he started to say, but anguish tied his throat and stopped his words. “Well, I tried to escape, and Juzo… Sorry. It was all my fault.”
Malin’s expression hardened. She took a deep breath; her eyes widened, and her lips pursed again. Adam thought he was going to receive a slap; no, not a slap, a punch. But that punishment didn’t come.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” she said and walked away from the table, putting her gaze elsewhere, as far away from Adam as she could get. “Juzo was a true soldier. He knew the risks in coming here.”
And while she held her breath, Adam was releasing it.
“It’s funny,” he confessed. “I didn’t even have time to know him well, but I’m still a wreck.”
“That was Juzo’s secret power,” Malin said, “to make one feel sympathy for him despite his great smugness.”
They both smiled and when they realized they had just shared a gesture, they felt uncomfortable. Malin adjusted the bandage on her shoulder to avoid Adam.
“Hey, why don’t you go to a hospital?” he asked.
“No need. This will teach me not to lower my guard.”
“And the Cyclops? It’s still out there, isn’t it?”
“Broga? Sure,” Malin said. “Out there and with his red eye well lit.”
“Was he the one who did that to you?”
Malin shook her head. She went to the kitchen and asked permission to open the fridge. With Adam’s go-ahead, she poured herself a glass of cold water and gulped it down.
“That night at the club,” she said, “the woman you told us about, the same one who hurt your arm? She… I felt a tingle here,” Malin touched the back of her neck, “and then everything went dark.”
The memory of the pale woman, without a hair on her head and with violet eyes, exploded in Adam. That look that had absorbed him, that intimidating smile…
“I woke up today in a hospital, in a town near Markabia,” she continued. “Last night, someone left me there, without witnesses, without surveillance cameras to detect anything… Where was I these last two weeks?” She shook his head. “Here,” she touched her temple, “there’s a void. A nurse told me they found me with traces of blood on my nose, though; I suppose Juzo told you what that might mean.”
Adam nodded. “Tau radiation. The Eddanian woman,” he said, and maybe because his memory was fresh after his conversation with Mirtha at the Orphanage’s front desk, he couldn’t help but compare Malin’s story with the way he had appeared in the hospital as a baby, from one moment to the next and without anyone noticing. Similar modus operandi, no doubt about it. Perhaps, as far as the organizational logistics of the project were concerned, Broga had not been the first to use the help of a mercenary from the Edda Peninsula.
“I escaped from the hospital before the authorities arrived,” Malin said. “I couldn’t afford to spend time in a cell. I needed to come back here to find out what happened to you and Juzo. And then, this happened.” She showed the wound on her shoulder. “A few blocks from the hospital, one of the bastards who works with Broga took me by surprise. They put him there to watch me. I’m positive. The good thing was it saved me from having to think about how to get here.”
Adam took a step back with a huge look of doubt printed on his face.
“And how did you get here so fast? You said you woke up in the hospital today, but there is an entire ocean of distance between us, and let’s agree that buying a plane ticket should not be easy for you people.”
She smiled, enigmatic. “I’ll show you if you show me what you can do,” she said.