PROXIMA CITY
10:03 P.M. (EASTERN TIME)
----------------------------------------
The phone screen went dark when the call ended.
“Rigel…” Malin whispered, with a storm of nostalgia flooding her heart and touching her eyes. The pain she had carried in her body since the fight against the android, disappeared for a moment, at least from her mind.
Juzo, who had heard Rigel’s message, took the phone out of her hands, bringing her back to reality: that place full of noise from avenues and people, where memories of old loves had no place to be.
Malin’s face hardened for an instant until the emotional echoes carried by Rigel’s voice succumbed to the importance of his message. The renegade Cyclops and a group of fugitives had crossed the Kappa Point ten minutes ago, which meant they must be hot on their heels.
“You knew that, right?” she said to Juzo; “that there was someone else besides the Cyclops, I mean.”
The vacant expression of those entranced soldiers that Juzo had seen in Bellatrix, their eyes lost in nothingness and blood peeking out of their nostrils, and the notion that there was something else behind Broga’s irruption into the barracks, the same one that he’d managed to get out of his mind at that moment, they returned to tell him that, unfortunately for him, he had been right and that perhaps it had been a mistake to have dismissed it so quickly.
“I figured. I wasn’t sure,” he said.
“Why a Tau-coded Eddanian would program an android to follow us?” she wondered.
Cupping the phones, his and Malin’s, in the palm of his hand, Juzo contracted his fingers twice, activating the trigger command, and destroyed them with a slight burst of energy. Both devices cracked and disintegrated; then he brushed the charred remains from his hand.
“They won’t come for us,” he assured. “They will go for Adam White.”
Malin folded her arms. She knew her partner was withholding information from her. “Why are you so sure? Or will you figure something out again and keep me in the dark?”
Juzo kept walking.
“You were right,” was all he said. “I should have forgotten about this project the moment I found out about it. I’m sorry.”
Malin froze, and fear gnawed at her stomach. Juzo was rarely so honest about his regrets.
They had left the hustle and bustle of the pedestrians and avenues behind. Now they were in a quiet neighborhood. The trees on the sidewalk covered the streets with their leafy crowns, and the light poles poured a yellow halo over the buildings.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Malin, you must promise me something.” Juzo had softened his voice; whatever he was about to say would be a terrible thing.
“What is it?” she asked and stopped following him.
“Malin…” Juzo stopped a little further ahead but kept his eyes straight ahead. “If something were to happen to me, promise me you’ll take care of White,” he asked, though he didn’t dare look at her face; perhaps because it would have been too hard to do so, perhaps because neither of them could have contained their emotions.
Malin gave a nervous, humorless smile. “Why should something happen to you?”
“Malin, you promise?”
“Fine, Juzo; sure, whatever.” Malin shrugged. “But you sound like you’re sure something’s gonna happen to you. Why should anything happen to you?”
“Malin…” Juzo whispered and looked up at the building across the street. Carter Building read the front plaque. There, on the twelfth floor, Adam White lived. “I doubt the Eddanian woman is commanding Broga,” he clarified.
“Broga? Is that the name of that android?”
Juzo nodded. “We’ve been wrong about him, dead wrong.”
Malin grew impatient. “Juzo! What are you talking about?”
Juzo stopped and lowered his head. “For the project to be complete,” he said, “the Reactor Binary will need to deliver his proteins to his Catalyst twin, and he may go into cardiac arrest as a result… and die.”
Malin’s spirit jumped away. According to the files, Juzo was the Binary-R, the Reactor.
“From me, only proteins matter. The rest… I’m disposable, but they need Adam White alive.”
“Well, for me you are not disposable, and you do not have to be the sacrificed twin,” she said, and despair began to seep into her voice. Juzo was the last person who would add extra drama to things just for the sake of it; if he spoke like that, it was because the chances of something like what he predicted happening were high. “Besides, you said it yourself, Juzo, that project has been on hold for years, and no one knows you know about it.”
Juzo reached into his jacket pocket and sighed in defeat. “Now Broga knows, and he has…”
“He has what, Juzo? Let me see those files...”
Juzo denied this with a gesture that asked, ‘What do you want them for?’
“I want to read the latest log,” she said. “There they talked about the loss of something important to culminate with the project, right? Some Primary Plasma?—Or something like that. Does Broga have it?”
Juzo nodded, albeit doubtfully. Or was it simply that he didn’t want to talk about it?
“Having opened the Totem, and with Broga there, fighting with you…” he said and cleared his throat. “I thought the best thing would be to escape here. I thought I could outwit him while I bought time to think of something… But now he’s here, and I’m out of options.”
“Juzo, there’s always an option! You took those Auriga bracelets, right? Let’s go home!”
Juzo shook his head. “Adam White is defenseless. Broga will use him to get to me,” he assured. “I won’t leave an innocent at the mercy of a… psychopath.”
The prediction of death Juzo had spelled for himself still weighed like lead in Malin’s eyes and would weigh heavily from then on, for a long time to come, yet what she had just heard brought more confusion than despair to her expression.
“Psychopath? Broga?” And taking his arm hard, she forced him to stop. “Juzo, tell me where you’ve gone wrong with Broga. What is he looking for? What is he?”
“No what,” he replied. “Who.”