ANDROMEDA SKYSCRAPER, TEMPORARY RESIDENCE OF ADAM WHITE

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They returned from the hospital after 10:30 p.m.

Malin helped a sore—and quite drugged—Adam into bed, slowly and carefully. He succeeded in holding back his whining, and he even apologized for the inconvenience he was causing.

“I’ve promised I’d take care of you,” she said and left the table lamp on. “I won’t leave you now.”

“Thands,” he whispered.

As he lay on the mattress, exhaustion removed a heavy burden from him, giving him over to sleep. Drugs were working. He was still wearing the tracksuit, torn and dirty after the fight; he didn’t want to take it out, though. He was afraid he would make a wrong move and earn a shock of pain.

Malin snapped her fingers as if she had remembered something and hurried out of the room.

Alone, between the shadows and the dim light, Adam remained with his eyes ajar, waiting for her to return. He heard her stirring things in the living room; delving into a handbag or something like that; and after a while, a period that he couldn’t define if it’d been a minute or half an hour, she came back with a glass of water and a black pill.

“The anthibiozic?” Adam was disoriented, but not so much. He felt his pocket and discovered that the bottle with the medicines prescribed by the doctor was still there.

“Drink it,” Malin said. It was an order rather than a request. She put the black pill in his mouth and, resting the edge of the glass on his lips, she helped him drink.

“Whad—?”

“What is it?” she finished. “Something I’d saved for an emergency.”

Adam swallowed the pill and then fell sound asleep.

Twelve hours later, he woke up.

Malin made vegetable puree and took it to bed. He ate it slowly and silently. He barely differentiated tastes, so it didn’t matter whether it was tasty or not. He drank plenty of water, plus some fruit juice, then went to the bathroom. The simple act of moving hurt him, but he made it.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Malin waited for him outside with a glass of water in hand and the meds.

He took the antibiotic prescribed by the doctor and another one of those black pills. He went back to bed and fell asleep for another twelve hours.

Everything around him moved in slow motion. Malin was just a blurry silhouette and her voice sounded very far away, as if he were hearing it submerged in a tub of water. Sometimes he felt hot, sometimes cold. He looked and found himself on the bed, dressed in his torn tracksuit; he closed his eyes, reopened them, and he was wearing only his underpants; and then he was in his pajamas. At what point had he changed his clothes, or had Malin done it for him?

Malin, I’m cold, he said. Or did he think about saying it? Was he running a fever?

Juzo, you’re here.

I’m here.

The room spun as if it were on a disk spinning on an imaginary axis, a disc that stopped when he closed his eyes. The desperate need to turn to unconsciousness was big; it was the only thing that soothed his ills. And in his dreams, the Satellite agents appeared, the doctor who attended him in emergencies, Kitten, Malin, the subpoena, the days of the week, the bruises, and the pain; the agents and Kitten, Malin, the subpoena, the agents, the paramedics, the park’s nature reserve, and sometimes Broga and Juzo appeared; or Juzo, who was actually Broga, or Broga, who was actually Juzo; everything was very confusing. And, when he opened his eyes, his surroundings were erased, and nothing was left. Tabula rasa.

“So, what are you doing?” he asked Tony. It was daytime, and he was in his office at Homam Enterprises. How? He hadn’t moved. Next to him was Tony, the computer whiz from the company’s systems department, working on his computer.

“I’m transferring the data from your mother-drive to mine,” Tony replied on that occasion. On the screen, there was a nice animation in which a cartoon little worm dragged a box, taking it from one door to another, over and over again. “It’ll take a few minutes. You have a lot of junk files on your computer, Adam.”

“It’s those damn malware, Tony. They filled my system with crap,” he’d defended himself.

“And the malware comes from dirty sites you visit, Adam.”

“I know, but turn the volume down, will you? If Trevor hears you, he’s gonna freak out! You know what a snooty he is.”

Tony had continued his job, and Adam, marveling like a child, continued to watch the little worm dragging a box, stuffing it into one of the doors, going back to the other door, and getting a new box.

“I’m transferring my data to your hard drive,” Tony said.

But Tony had now become Juzo.

And then…

“Don’t you think we’re going too fast?”

At his question, Malin pushed off the sheet with her feet and turned to him—Her hair loose and somewhat disheveled. She looked beautiful, even when she had just woken up.