Slowly and gasping for breath, Juzo revealed the cigar-shaped metal object he had taken from the Totem.

Just as the computer had shown him, he pressed his thumb against the cylinder’s surface, and the metal casing retracted to the sides revealing a long needle at each end, exposing a crystalline drum in the center filled with a fluorescent white liquid.

“The Primary Plasma,” Broga named it. “The original spark.”

Juzo looked down. What he held in his hands, inside the container, was a white fire in a liquid state. There was no better way to describe it.

“I thought that—” he said but had to take a deep breath to continue. It was as if, suddenly, the so-called Primary Plasma had stolen all the air around him. “—I thought your brother had wasted all the samples, and that’s why Dr. T. canceled the Project.”

“The Order,” Broga bobbed. “It was the Order that ran out of their reserves, but I had that last dose saved. I tried to use it, but I ran with the same fate: nothing but accidents and losses.” And as if he wanted to see the radiant substance with his own eyes and not through the visor of the mask, the pieces of that electronic puzzle that made up his helmet retracted, returning to the device on the back of his neck, revealing his true face. “It’s a living organism, y’know?” he said. “Something so unique that Templeton and so many others tried to reproduce it for years and failed.”

Juzo’s gaze hardened, not so much at Broga’s words, but at the shock of seeing him. It was like looking at himself in the mirror.

Broga’s emerald eyes, however, steadfast behind deep circles, were far away from Juzo, far away. His gaze had fallen spellbound at the contents of that strange syringe. Attracted by the white glow of the liquid, he walked toward it, until a beep coming from his cybernetic prosthetics made him aware of his movements and he stopped. He shook his head to wake up.

“I imagine how much you’d like to get rid of it,” he said to Juzo.

With the same enchantment as Broga, Juzo gazed at the Primary Plasma through the container. It was true. Ever since he’d removed the cylinder from the Totem, he’d wanted nothing but to destroy it with a Photia or leave it there, at Bellatrix Level 5 before jumping into the Kappa Point. He’d also wanted to dump it down on a city sewer, or at least hand it over to Malin for her to do it for him. And yet it was still there, intact in his hands. Since his arrival on Proxima, how many times had he reached into his pocket for it, but pulled his hand out, empty? So many he’d already lost count. As Broga described it, that milky and shiny liquid evoked in him a feeling so eloquent and at the same time dissonant, like the morbid impulse to pry into something grotesque.

“I couldn’t,” he confessed and squeezed the syringe hatefully. “I couldn’t even confess to my partner that I had it.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“And you pushed her aside so she wouldn’t interfere,” Broga finished. “The bombardment of Tau energy from the machine did its job, but so did the Plasma. I told you, it’s a living organism, and it seeks to protect itself by speaking directly to your genes. See, we the Binaries have received a dose of the Plasma at birth. Templeton’s logs claimed that this would put us in a position to withstand the maximum dose at the end of the project; I think they did it to put us in check, though. Once it’s in our system, we can’t reject it.”

Juzo swallowed, his own saliva scratching his throat. For crying out loud, what Broga was saying was discouraging, but it was the truth. He pursed his lips. In his hands, he had the key to break the circle of the project that had given him life, and that now would possibly deliver him to death, and even so, he couldn’t do anything.

“No, I…” he tried to deny it, but it was useless.

And for a few seconds, the distant noise from the street, the muffled murmur of people running to watch the car crash, the wind scraping the trees in the park, and the hum of the mercenaries’ thrusters, were all Juzo heard. But as the grass crunched under Broga’s chrome foot, he looked down to see Adam lying there, unconscious, and he woke from that sort of trance.

“In Bellatrix, you talked about ending the Project.” Juzo took a step forward. “Why right now? You are the Binary-C. Do you want my proteins or just keep Adam’s power?”

“If I had wanted something from you two, I would have claimed it earlier.”

“And then?”

Broga pointed at Simon and Kitten. “What’s under the noses of these two idiots should have given you an idea of the threat we face,” he said.

Juzo frowned. “Eddanians?”

“I’ve been hiding from the Order all this time,” Broga said; “but they discovered the existence of the dose that I kept, the one that you now have there, and the raid of my bunker by the military ended up complicating things. It’s all over for us Binaries. If White does not receive your blood, that Eddanian woman will not leave me alone and I will have to receive it, and I won’t become anyone’s useful idiot.”

“Adam White won’t become anyone’s useful idiot either,” Juzo said. He retracted the needles from the container, put it back in his pocket, and picking Adam up in his arms, started to leave.

“You won’t leave here without having completed the cycle of the project,” Broga pointed the barrel of his hand at him. The pieces of the helmet snapped back together around his head, and his voice got once again synthesized and eerie. “You’re surrounded. Save yourself the humiliation and do what I order, or I’ll blow your head off and I’ll collect the proteins from your corpse myself with these things,” he threatened, showing the surgical instruments that came out of his left hand. “Don’t think I won’t. I don’t need you alive.”

Juzo bared his teeth. He held out his hand and let out a faint bluish luminescence; he didn’t keep power even to create a Photia. What Broga said was true; he was lost. If even with his capacity at one hundred percent it would have been difficult to get out of a situation like that, in the current conditions, it would be impossible. Sweat dripped down his face, through the hairs of his stubble, and ran under his arms, moistening his neck and blurring his vision. Then, after a quick blink, it dawned on him that he had subconsciously lowered Adam back to the ground and withdrew the container from his pocket. His senses had been so distracted by sweat and other ailments that it took them a while to realize that his muscles were actually obeying Broga.

No. Not to Broga, obeying something else... Again, the smell of blood in his nose grew strong.