Rigel’s dangerous game as a double agent was over, finished.
Colonel Rigel Beta had just been unmasked, and who had done it was none other than one of the highest figures among his superiors. He wasn’t sure how his life would continue from then on; in truth, he didn’t even know if he would still have a life to go on in the next few hours.
All that he had fought for over the past few years, all the effort his companions had made to cover the holes during his brief absences when he met with the Rowdy Ones to provide them with information; all of that was gone.
There was a whole world crashing down on him, and he needed at least five minutes to think of his next move. And yet, at that moment, as he walked away from Benetnash’s office and destroyed the phone given by the General, it was this last call to Malin Marie that was going through his mind. He had been so preoccupied with asking her to take care of herself that it had never crossed his mind to ask Juzo about what he had found out on that computer, as had been the deal with him. Well, now none of that was relevant; surely, for him, there would be no more cases to investigate.
“There you are!” A voice sounded in the corridor; an exclamation in a low voice that sought to go unnoticed.
The Detective heard it, though he didn’t bother to raise his head.
“Rigel!” the voice insisted, and he reacted. It was Henderson, one of his trusted men from the System Department.
Henderson moved closer, too intent on appearing calm to the other officers passing in the corridor, to notice how pale Detective Colonel Beta was.
Rigel, for his part, considered telling him that Benetnash had discovered him, but did not. First, because he was still obfuscated with so many conflicting sensations, and second, because it was likely that the movements of Henderson and the others were still unknown to the General, and he didn’t want to alarm him with no reason.
“I have news,” Henderson announced in a near whisper. “Patrick sent the results of the tests done on the five bodies you found in that bunker.”
Just remembering those children inside those crystalline containers, floating in that whitish liquid as if they were asleep, produced a strong revulsion in Rigel.
“I thought—” he said and cleared his throat. “I thought the decomposition of the tissues had been...”
“Extremely fast, yes,” Henderson said. “But we managed to save some samples by freezing them, and now we know that four of the five children were nothing more but two sets of twins.”
Hearing twins, Rigel was puzzled and the first thing that came to mind was Juzo and his brother, and the twins that had been experimented on for the ‘Binary’ class projects, according to the old documents.
“I know!” Henderson hastened to say. “It was hard to tell with the naked eye from the state they were in, but DNA doesn’t lie. Well, guess who the missing pair of the fifth child is. Yes, Patrick compared their DNA to results from a previous case, and it turned out that the bones of the child found in that cave last year were a perfect match.” Anxiously, he licked his lips and announced, “And there’s more. According to the results, they all share an identical genetic base. Identical, Rigel! Do you know what that means?”
Rigel turned to his comrade with an expression that said, ‘Are you hinting at what I think you’re hinting at?’
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PROXIMA CITY
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“With someone known as Dr. T. as director, the first ‘Binary’ class project, the Protein one, was started,” Juzo explained in the shadows, away from the streetlamps. His gaze, lost somewhere in the Carter Building that loomed in front of them. Malin, at his side, listening intently. “He experimented with a pair of newborn twins who carried the mutant proteins in their blood. Proteins originated from previous experiments. As mentioned in his notes, the goal was to mix the proteins and use the Catalyst Binary as a container for the resulting power, achieving a higher state of being. Four years into the project, however, Dr. T. canceled it. In his logs, he only mentioned the loss of the Catalyst Binary as the main reason. But he sought to restart his work, now under the name of Atavistic, and resorted to clones of the original pair. The copies turned out to be failures, except for a couple that managed to survive.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Juzo looked down at his partner and his eyes said it all.
“You and that Adam White…” she said. “You two are those copies.”
Juzo confirmed it.
“Until, according to what Dr. T. wrote in his resignation letter, the original Reactor Binary, sidelined since the previous project had been canceled, returned, and botched the last remaining doses of a substance needed to complete that second attempt, stopping everything. Until today.” Juzo gave a humorless chuckle, a chuckle charged with irony and bitterness. “Today, I discover not only this but also that the original Catalyst Binary, the twin that Dr. T. had given up for lost, still lives.”
Malin took a step back, her eyes wide.
“Do not tell me that…”
“The name of the original Binary-R,” Juzo said, “who ruined Dr. T.’s plans, saving my life and Adam White’s in the process, is Brun. And his brother’s name is… Broga.”
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B-CRUSH NIGHTCLUB
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Adam White was at B-Crush where everything should have been fun and partying all night long; where he should be having a good time with his friends, drinking, laughing, and flirting with every woman he came across with. However, he was alone and away from the VIP area of the nightclub, dived into a universe of people dancing between darkness and multicolored flashes, in search of his doppelgänger, in search of someone who, just a few minutes ago, had ambushed him in the restroom, opening the door of the stall where he was peeing.
Adam was looking in all directions. There were so many people around him. Too many. And it was too dark to identify their faces.
I must have seen wrong, he thought, assuming what he had seen in the restroom—or rather, what he believed he had seen—would remain in his memory as a simple, funny anecdote. Whoever that guy was, it must have been someone who looked just like him; that’s all.
Those dim lights can confuse anyone. Did you really think you have a twin brother?
Without Adam noticing, an exotic bald woman with bluish skin approached him from behind, while the person he was looking for, the person he was beginning to doubt was real, was hiding in the crowd, watching him from not far away.
Having escaped from the restroom and left the VIP platform, down the stairs to the disco’s center dancefloor, the man Adam was looking for had managed to slip past him simply by hiding behind a pillar. In a place like that, dark and so crowded, slipping away from someone was the easiest thing.
The man was identical to Adam, although his countenance was so dark, he gave the impression of carrying a couple of years more on him. His green eyes were cold, and around them, dark circles that attested to the fatigue of someone who has been embracing a strenuous enterprise for a long time. His face was covered by a bushy copper beard, and his hair was somewhat long, although tied back. He was wearing a ragged purple raincoat that had lost its left sleeve and part of the right, and underneath, a black jumpsuit torn at the legs; garments that revealed part of his cybernetic limbs.
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In the shadows of the nightclub, after having finished her task, the bald woman with violet eyes, as bright as the long earrings that dangled from her sides, met the man in the purple raincoat. The sensuality that she gave off when moving through the crowd was unique, almost magical.
“Whatever you did in that restroom, it worked,” she said, her voice carrying clearly over the volume of the music. “The poor thing was so vulnerable I was able to create the link without problems.”
And together, plunging into the people, they watched Adam White walking away from them.
“I still think it would be better to take him with us right now,” he said.
“Oh, Broga!” she called him, resigned. “I thought I had made myself clear. If this Juzo Romita guy suspects that we have his brother and finds himself cornered, he could flee or take a more… extreme decision, and we can’t allow that. Remember what he has in his power.”
He looked at her apprehensively.
“Let the brothers meet,” she insisted. “Both have received the charm, but we need time for the link to finish taking shape.”
Broga looked down at his robotic hands and opened and closed them, testing if they were working properly now. Although he’d already sealed the leaks in the plastic veins of his arms, and they no longer dripped oil, he could still see metal filaments exposed on his wrists and other broken circuits. The Grenadiers’ Great Photia in the dome, plus the fight against that damn bitch with black boots, and then against Romita, hadn’t left him in the best conditions.
From a distance, he took one last look at White, who was still searching for him in the crowd, then turned and headed off into the darkness. What they had come to do was already done; it was time to get out of there; all the noise and flashes of light were driving him crazy.
He pressed a small disc-shaped device attached to the nape of his neck, hidden behind his hair, and hundreds of gleaming silver pieces erupted from it, fitting together like puzzle pieces around his head, reconstructing a helmet that emulated the head of a Cyclops A60-R8. His face, conflicted and full of shadows, got hidden again behind the blank expression of an android with a red, almond-shaped eye and with that sort of iris engraved in the center. With so much hubbub around him, no one noticed the change.
“It’s ridiculous you continue to disguise yourself,” she questioned him. “You’ve blown your cover by now.”
“My face will stay in here,” Broga said, tapping his mask; “until I’m sure I’m not in danger with you.”
The woman chuckled. “As long as White is breathing, you are in no danger,” she said. “Don’t worry, the fruit won’t fall far from the tree.”
“I don’t trust you people,” Broga said, and clearing the surrounding crowd, he moved. “Now that Romita had access to the Totem, he’ll look for a way to be alone with his twin. I’ll take care of them.” And behind the mask, he gritted his teeth. “You just make sure that bitch friend of his doesn’t interfere.”