Adam woke up, waited for his senses to locate him in time and space, and left the bed.

He peed again without closing the bathroom door and stood in front of the mirror.

There were parts of his body that resisted forgetting what Kitten’s monstrous fists had caused him, parts like the left side of his hip, which still hurt when he hit it against the bathroom door frame, as he entered, all wobbling and dizzy. However, much to the joy of his vanity, only one vestige remained on his face, a tiny, dark, wedge-shaped spot under his left eye.

He touched his face; it was wet and cold, and it smelled like… chamomile tea? Malin had placed cloths soaked with chamomile tea on his face! At what point?

But no. Tea-bag compresses had little to do with that sudden improvement.

“It’s the black pill, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” Malin asked from afar. The sound of her heels was increasing.

“That my recovery is thanks to the pills you gave me.”

“Uh-huh. It’s a drug developed by the Empire. I brought two tablets.”

Adam saw her through the mirror, peeking into the bathroom. Malin had a kitchen rag in her hands; she was making breakfast.

“They call it the Black Pill,” she added; “very original, as you can see. It speeds up the healing process. You’ll heal three or four times faster than you would under normal circumstances. It depends on each body, but well… It’s the best way to remove the dreadful scars left by war wounds. How do you think I erased the burns Simon drew on my back?”

Amazed, Adam returned to his reflection and looked for what other marks on his body had disappeared. The bruise on the ribs, the one on the arm, the one on the pelvis; of all of them, only traces remained. His dislocated finger didn’t hurt anymore. What a pill!

“Hey…” he said while brushing his teeth. “Still have no idea what they will tell us tomorrow? I mean the Satellites.”

“None,” Malin said. “But if you want, we could make up reasons for the sole purpose of dialing down our anxiety as we have done yesterday... and the day before yesterday.”

Adam stopped. Yesterday? Had they talked about it yesterday? And the day before yesterday?

“One thing, though,” she added. “We’ll reach the same conclusion: Time will tell. Oh! I know. What a shocker!”

Adam chuckled. “Did you know that nine out of ten doctors recommend lowering the dose of sarcasm?” he said. “They say it’s bad for your health.”

“Really? And I thought you liked to have sarcasm for breakfast with toast and cheese.”

“I love it, but it tends to give me heartburn,” Adam said, and as he turned toward the bathroom door, he accidentally knocked over the spray deodorant in the medicine cabinet.

The small steel container fell to the floor, causing a metallic clatter in the bathroom, a clink, clink, which resonated until it was lost in a faint echo.

Clink, clink…

----------------------------------------

Clink, clink…

The sound was coming from afar. A repetitive blow, a metallic, piercing clink, clink, followed by a dull crack, crack.

You damn children, stop making noise, Brun protested. He wanted to continue sleeping. Much to his regret, though, he’d already opened his eyes. Or almost.

He woke up. Immersed in the Night Nebulae, he lowered his gaze; he was still barefoot and in the same green gown as before. He touched his head. Yes, he was still bald. Within the Night Nebulae, time behaved bizarrely; it wasn’t the same as outside.

So how long had he been sleeping? A few hours? A day? No, rather more than that; maybe a few years.

The clink, clink, crack, crack was so loud it cut through the fabric of space. The glittering dust of the Night Nebulae stirred in ripples, trampling one another, as when he threw a stone into a forest pond. A loud tremor.

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Enough already! Leave me alone! he growled.

“We’re not causing it, Brun,” the Duplicated Children answered, as always, without moving their lips.

It was true, that kind of noise was not like them. That meant...

Broga! he exclaimed, overjoyed. Broga has come home!

“What are you talking about, Brun?”

Those noises! That must be men working. They must be fixing the pipes. I heard the doctor say they needed to fix the plumbing. Broga went for them and now they’re here!

Brun shook off the cobwebs of mist that the Night Nebulae had spun around him and returned to the outside world. The darkness of the room soon fell on him, but luckily, he had the colorful Nebulae on his side, which soon brought with them the radiance that the stars gave.

What none of them could sweep away was that unpleasant smell, though. And how could that place not smell? Everything was dirty there; the walls, the floor, everything.

Floating among the Night Nebulae, avoiding touching the grimy floor with his bare feet, Brun moved away from there, trying to distance himself from that smell, and came across his brother’s monstrous computer, silent, almost dead.

“The potion, Brun…” the children whispered. “Why don’t you take it right now?”

Brun reached for the belly of that gigantic computer with many heads. The smell of the potion was… overpowering. He wanted to taste it. He needed it. But he stopped.

No, this is Broga’s potion!

“He gave it to you, Brun. Don’t you remember?”

When had Broga given it to him?

Clink, clink, he heard and turned toward the exit.

“Brun!” the children called. “Where are you going?!”

To receive my brother, he answered as if asking them, ‘Where else?’

“Come back, Brun! You must not leave this place!” one of the children ordered.

“If you leave, the Nebulae will leave with you, and without them here, he’ll sniff out the potion!” said another.

What are you talking about, you damn children?

“Without Broga’s machines running, the Nebulae are the only ones that have kept him away from this place,” another child explained. “You’ll take the Nebulae and he’ll come to get the potion!”

Who is this he that you’re talking about? Brun asked.

“The Potion Seeker!” they answered. “The bloodhound of the unworthy people.”

You’re at it again?! he got upset, and when he heard the clink, clink, crack again, he forgot everything and went in search of his brother.

“Stop!”

Brun took a step out of the room and entered one of those long corridors. The whole place was dark, although it didn’t smell so bad there.

Broga! he called. His only response was a pulsing red light that flashed in front of him.

It didn’t take long for him to recognize what it was: the eye of one of the robot men, the Cytlops that always followed Broga everywhere; he remembered him well because this robot man had big funny mustaches on his face.

“Master Brun,” the mustachioed android greeted him. “I will inform Master Broga of your awakening.” And, turning around, he left.

Wait! Take me with you! asked Brun and followed him.

But the android walked so fast that, in no time at all, he had covered almost the entire length of that long corridor and was ready to enter the next one, where the shadows ate everything. Then, like a carpet of mist and stars, the Night Nebulae spread out in that same direction, taking Brun with them so he could reach him.

Without even touching the ground with his feet, in the blink of an eye, Brun had the robot man just a few feet away.

Hey, take me to my brother, please! he begged, but as he grabbed the android by the shoulder, there was a crackling flash, as terrifying as the ones that scratch the sky when there was a storm, and his brother’s helper burst into pieces and colored sparks.

The pieces of the black suit that the poor robot had worn, wrapped in rings of fire, rained down on a confused Brun, who watched as its head fell to the floor, bouncing like a metal ball, and went down the hallway until it disappeared in the dark.

Brun stood there, looking at the remains scattered on the floor, confused. Why had that happened if the mustachioed android had that bucket hat on his head? Had he gotten too close? Or was it that his light had grown even stronger?

Broga! His brother would know how to fix the robot man. Of course, deep inside, he knew that the one who needed to be fixed was not the robot man, but him.

“Go back to the room, Brun!” the Duplicated Children yelled, furious.

Brun glanced back over his shoulder. There were that bunch of wights; right behind him. Sometimes he forgot that they too could swim in the Night Nebulae. It didn’t matter how far he went or how fast he moved; they were always going to be glued to him.

“The Potion Seeker,” the children pointed out. “He’s already found the trail of our potion and he’s coming. We can feel it!”

Brun hesitated. Maybe what they said was true. Although it could also be a lie. He knew, deep down, that sometimes those kids weren’t completely honest, right?

Clink, crack…

Broga! Brun called, and following the sound, turned to stare down the corridor. He knew that behind that wall, behind those stones was…

“Brun, come back!”

Leave me alone! he raged.

The Night Nebulae spread again, this time where his eyes were pointing, and taking a step, he found himself in another corridor, a gray and rocky one, licked by shadows and with holes in the wall.

It wasn’t a corridor. It was one of the caves on the surface, the cave that passed from the other side of his bedroom. Here, there were things on the floor, boxes, a ladder, and things like the ones men used when they had to cut a hole in the wall or repair the pipes in the house on the cliff. Tools, they called them?

There were lights, too, though different lights than the stars that populated his Nebulae. With a slap of his hand, he brushed away the luminous mists of his Night Nebulae and discovered that the lights were the lamps of... some helmets? Yes, and some phones that were in the hands of a lot of…

Youngsters.

Young people with lights on their helmets picking up those tools, folding the ladder and packing some shiny stones in small boxes.