SOUTHERN RAVINES, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF MARKABIA
TWENTY-TWO HOURS AGO
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High above their heads, the night sky had been obscured with clouds that promised to continue the bad weather. Another night of calm winds and no moon for the Southern Ravines.
“Do you believe in fate?” Detective Colonel Rigel Beta had asked when handing over the documents.
“No,” had been Juzo’s automatic response upon receiving them.
“So, you’ll have to believe that someone deliberately murdered some students so that my crew could investigate the crime and discover a secret bunker where a bunch of files were kept, knowing that I would have to go through them one by one and that I would find your name in this one.”
Faced with that argument, Juzo had done nothing more than shrug. “There are coincidences,” he had said then, and hidden between the rock walls, illuminated by the cold rod-shaped lamp that he had stuck into one of the cracks on his side, he began to review the folders.
Now, he had spent a little over fifteen minutes in complete silence, with Rigel in front of him, arms folded and attentive to his reactions. It was the third time he had gone from document to document and from beginning to end, but the battery in the lamp was new and the detective was in no hurry.
“According to our experts, the bunker we discovered in the Tropical Canyon has been forgotten for the past two years,” Rigel said. “There is no way to know what kind of research they were doing there, an electromagnetic blast wiped out their computer databanks, and the materials they used were so generic that they could have been purchased at any store in Pannotia, making it impossible to trace who occupied it. However, we found a storeroom filled with material stolen from other sites. Classified Army files on the development of the Grenadier program, reported missing years ago, blueprints of the first Cyclops that Marconi Labs has been looking for since the day they disappeared, and many other documents on the most diverse experiments, including the Project you are learning about now. Of course, no one has claimed this one in particular, and I doubt anyone wants to take responsibility for it.”
Juzo felt leaden in his head and weakness in his legs, his throat was dry and scratchy, and his blood hammered at his temple.
> Log BAP.0001.
>
> —BLACK BAR—thus starting the second ‘Binary’ class project, the BINARY ATAVISTIC PROJECT (BAP)—BLACK BAR—based on the development of the previous projects—BLACK BAR—TAG and PPB. In the first study, it was concluded that the genetic lineage of the twins of the population—BLACK BAR—located at the coordinates—BLACK BAR—corresponding to the southern sector of the Pannotia continent—BLACK BAR—have presented mutations, giving rise to their Binary proteins (R and C)—BLACK BAR—Reactor-type protein—BLACK BAR—Catalyst-type protein—BLACK BAR.
>
> Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
>
> Log BAP.0002.
>
> Test Subjects: Binary Twins.
>
> Quantity: Nine pairs.
>
> Project result: Transformation of the test subject into—BLACK BAR—and with secondary effects. Plasma projection and electromagnetic combustion at will. Alteration of the—BLACK BAR—with gravitational bubble effect at will.
What he was holding were recent copies of something that originally looked opaque and decades old, yet his hands were so sweaty from nerves that he had the feeling that if he looked at his fingertips, he would find them stained with the ink from the black marker they had used back then to trace those dark bars that ran from one side to the other, covering entire lines of information now lost. Even so, he went through every paragraph of every document, reading the records that were yet to be read.
> Log BAP.0003.
>
> Administration of Primary Plasma to test subjects. First dose (0.7 ml).
>
> Answer: Activation of its complementary proteins—BLACK BAR.
>
> Second dose (14 ml) scheduled for the completion of the Project—BLACK BAR.
He couldn’t believe it. But there were the copies of the photographs stapled to the edges of each document; old images, reprinted on smooth, glossy paper, explicit enough to illustrate what he wished was not true. Images of babies—about six or eight, depending on what the camera frame revealed—each one asleep inside a crystalline egg-shaped capsule, submerged in a thick whitish liquid—as revealed by some air bubbles floating around them—with an endless number of tiny needles attached to their little bodies, wrapped by wires that seemed to control their vital signs and send them to a small monitor attached to the base of that sort of infernal incubator. It was the most disturbing thing he had ever seen.
> Log BAP.0609.
>
> Death of the Binary-R group 6 three months after starting treatment.
>
> Cause: Collapse of vital organs produced by the Primary Plasma. We proceed to use the Binary-R of group 7.
>
> Log BAP.0610.
>
> Death of Binary-R group 7 two days after starting treatment.
>
> Cause: Allergic reaction to Primary Plasma. We proceed to make use of the Binary-R of group 8.
The photographs accompanying this report showed two huge, solid white ceramic rectangular tubs filled with a dark liquid that appeared to be blood, iodine, or both. And floating in that substance were human remains, small remains.
Though his eyes retained a shuddering hardness, Juzo felt a revolution in the pit of his stomach. What was floating there must be the remains of the babies that had not endured exposure to that Primary Plasma that the files spoke of. Disgusted, he closed that folder and opened another.
> Log BAP.1212.
>
> At eleven months and fifteen days of age, the surviving Binary-R is relocated to the eastern mainland island: Pannotia.
>
> Geographical destination: Alps Town, province of Markabia—BLACK BAR.
>
> Delivery of the Binary-R—BLACK BAR—to local hospital authorities: Satisfactory.
>
> Name given by the agency: Romita, Juzo.
How good it would have been if those documents spoke of another Juzo Romita, of a poor guy with whom he only shared the name and the city where he grew up. How good it would have been if it had all been a misunderstanding, a coincidence.
But there were this large number of copies of photographs, all documented with date and time, mocking his desire that those documents speak of some other Juzo Romita and not of him.