LIBERTY PARK

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Juzo and Malin had approached Adam White at the entrance to his loft, after he returned from the B-Crush nightclub, and talked to him about the project. Afterward, Malin had gone in search of the Eddanian woman at Juzo’s request, while he and Adam tried to distance themselves from the enemy by driving around in the car. Broga had not taken long to find them, thus beginning a chase through the skies of the city that led the brothers to take refuge in a park. The calm had not lasted long, though. Broga had found them again, and this time, he had brought two mercenaries with him. The confrontation had begun.

Now, in the darkness of that park, among the trees, the destroyed walking paths, and the potholes in the grass caused by the attacks, Adam lay unconscious, after a clumsy escape attempt, while Juzo was on his knees from a shot he received on his back after getting distracted.

He was short of breath and the wound behind his shoulder burned as if it were being sutured with a red-hot iron. Juzo suffered from the wear and tear of his strength, but he had survived worse things, and the adrenaline coursing through his veins wouldn’t let him go down so easily.

Broga’s thugs orbited around him; their thruster cannons ready to fire. A movement on his part would be enough for energy discs to rain down on him. He knew Simon was a merciless rat who loved to have his opponent at such a disadvantage, while the other guy, the giant one, he knew him only by reputation as a murderer, although it was enough to be aware of his record to know they were two of a kind.

It was then that he noticed that the mercenaries had their eyes narrowed, their gaze lost, and a trickle of blood peeking out of their noses. The Eddanian woman. But where was she? He put his hand to his nose; there was blood there too. Had the woman reached him too? But when—?

It no longer mattered; whatever the answer was, it was already too late; both he and his twin were there, alone at the hands of the enemy. Broga stood next to an unconscious Adam with an arsenal of surgical instruments that he had deployed from his left palm—a long needle, scalpel, and three tweezers—and a cannon brimming with energy from his right palm. He doubted his enemy meant to dissect Adam with that, but there were gaps in his knowledge, in his memory, and it was wise not to rule out any possibility.

He needed to get between the two of them, and for that, he first had to distract the mercenaries. He prepared to throw a Photia at them; that would give him the margin he needed. Holding his breath, he ignored the pain and the twinges that held his arms’ muscles and rose to his feet. He contracted his fingers and let the electric discharges run through them.

On the count of three, he thought. One, two…

“What are you waiting for?” Broga spoke, ending Juzo’s momentum. “Come.” And with a wave of his hand, he ordered his mercenaries to retract their thruster weapons and clear the way. Both thugs complied with the order, although neither seemed fully aware of what they were doing.

Keeping alert in case Simon and the other big man tried something, Juzo walked, slowly, toward his adversary, and Adam, who was lying on the ground.

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The hand-to-hand combat he had engaged in with Broga in Bellatrix, just a few hours ago, flashed in his memory, as violent as the lightning bolts of the rainy night that he and Malin had navigated to get to that barracks.

There was his partner, defeated on the floor of Level 5, and he was lunging at the rain-coated enemy to avenge her. With his knuckles wrapped in threads of energy, he had struck him over and over and over again, until he had not only punched him back but also ripped the scarlet crystal out of his eye and dislodged one of the pieces that formed his head.

It was at that moment when part of a human face peeked through the gap that had been left in that chrome head; the same face that Juzo had seen portrayed on the console monitor a moment ago while researching the Broga Project in the Totem’s database. There were those green eyes identical to his own—a little more slanted, perhaps—a nose just as pronounced as his, and a cheek covered with a copper beard similar to the one he wore, although longer.

“Broga, right?” he had made sure then.

“Broga,” his enemy had confirmed, defiantly moving closer for him to get a closer look, to remove any remaining doubt of his identity before resetting the loose pieces of his helmet and covering his face once again; a face that, until now, hours after that moment and half a world away from that military depot, was still hidden behind that glowing red eye.

Juzo stopped; the grass stopped creaking under his boots.

In the shadows of the park, the man dressed as a soldier confronted the man dressed as a Cyclops.

“You really fooled everyone by pretending to be an android,” he said.

“In part, I am,” Broga replied, showing off his cybernetic arms. “I’m technically a cyborg, though.” He looked down at Adam. “Did you tell him about me?”

Juzo shook his head. “It would have been too confusing for him,” he said, and then his gaze narrowed as if trying to pierce through Broga’s helmet and reach his face. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked and, with a nod, indicated the robotic limbs of his enemy. “Was that what led Dr. T. to write you off?”

At the sound of Dr. T., Broga let out a snort that sounded strangely human despite coming from a voice modifier. “Templeton?” he asked.

At last, Juzo had a name for the initial.

“If you wanted information, you should have read the Totem’s files before blowing it to pieces,” Broga admonished. “Assembling the Order’s computers with mine and making them work as a single unit was an engineering job that took me years to complete, and you shot it all.”

“The computers you stole from that Order, whatever that is,” Juzo corrected.

“A very powerful lodge,” Broga clarified; “those who sponsored Templeton’s project and many others. And I’m sorry I didn’t ask them for permission to use their machines, but I don’t remember them asking for permission to use my body. Hell! You are stupider than I thought. But I can’t blame you either. Pulling the trigger was more their will than yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The computer I used to create the Totem’s console board came with a defense mechanism designed by its… original owner—do you like that term better? The Binary that opened it in search of what you now have in hand, would receive a bombardment of Tau radiation that would write an order in his brain: Fulfill his purpose under any circumstances and prevent that machine from being in hands other than theirs.”

Juzo remembered those intermittent purple flashes that jumped from the Totem’s screen the moment he removed the small object from the computer, and brought his fingers to his nose, moistening them with his blood. That blood said that he had not been in complete control of himself for a few hours now.

“I avoided the trap for years thanks to this,” Broga pointed to the helmet that protected him. “That’s why I was able to keep it for so long. But you, how could you have known?”