In the cave full of shadows, in front of Brun, was a group of youngsters gaping at him as if he were a ghost, a reaction he hadn’t received in a long time. A group of people considerably younger than the doctors and nurses he knew and dressed—and even smelled—very different from them.

Were they his brother’s new assistants? Maybe they were going to take a break, and that’s why they gathered their things. They must have known where Broga was.

Brun took a step forward and introduced himself to the youngsters.

And the youngsters sighed in amazement.

“How—? Where the hell—?” asked a young man with wide eyes.

“Stevie! Don’t go near him!” a girl warned.

“It’s better to—” said another boy and, without finishing his sentence, he put the phone to his mouth. “U-University of Geology, this is a gro-group of students—” He stopped and looked at his phone, nervously. “I don’t have a signal.”

“Me-Me neither!” said the girl.

Where is my brother? Brun asked, but his response was a bunch of scared whimpers.

And, as he turned around in search of his brother, the cushion of dust and stars where he walked extended toward the youngsters and dove them. The moans of fear turned into sickening squeals and creaks.

What he hated to happen had happened; the same thing that happened whenever his light or his Night Nebulae touched someone.

He thought the silence would come back, but the Night Nebulae, acting once again as an infinite magical rug, guided him out to the exit. It turned out that one of those young men—the one they had called Stevie—had managed to get there despite how bad he was. And when Brun came up behind him, he saw that there was yet another boy, one waiting for them outside the cave.

Broga, is that you? he asked.

But the boy didn’t wait for him and walked away, running toward the forest.

Broga, wait! And he followed him. He did not want Broga to abandon him.

“Brun!” the children called him.

To hell with them! The Night Nebulae might finally be leading him to his brother. He wouldn’t stop now. Going into the forest, he crossed trees and plants, until finally the Nebulae left him in front of the boy.

It was not Broga. It was another one of those youngsters, and he was very upset.

Do you know where my brother is?

But the boy kept crying, almost as much as he had cried when he was lonely, wandering through the woods after escaping from the cold lab. He felt compassion for him. It was hard to be alone in the forest, so he hugged him, looking for giving him some comfort. The crying disappeared with another crack and a bit of light.

There was a moment of silence. The wind blew in the forest.

But his skin crawled. That legion of brats had surrounded him once again. Even in the woods, they didn’t leave him alone.

“You’ve abandoned your place and now it is too late, Brun,” said one of the Duplicated Children. “The Potion Seeker has arrived to steal the last one left. You will have to face him.”

Disheartened that he had not found Broga, Brun shrugged. Then let him steal it, he said. If Broga no longer wants it, let him drink it. Who cares?

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“Brun...” One of the children took him by the hand. Brun looked into his eyes; the kid really looked terrified. “Brun, we’ll tell you the truth.”

The Duplicated Children looked at each other as if in agreement before confessing something and then turned their attention back to him.

“The truth is that the unworthy people seek to sacrifice us to pay an old debt,” revealed the one holding his hand. “That’s why they use our potions to their advantage.”

“It’s true,” seconded another of the children. “You and your brother, and the rest of us, will all be in danger if they take the potion with them.”

And a third child joined the others. “Brun, if you won’t face the Seeker, or drink the potion, at least destroy it before he takes it away,” he pleaded.

Brun looked at them, a little alarmed, but also a little confused. It was the first time he had heard genuine terror in those children.

Okay, he agreed. Where is that Potion Seeker?

The child holding his hand pulled in the direction of the cliff, toward home. And then the forest started to spin around him, trees passing, then some rock walls, then more trees, until the world stopped, and he found himself back inside the dark, dirty, and smelly room where Broga’s monster computer was.

Had the Duplicated Children exerted their powers and dragged him back here, or had it been the Night Nebulae of their own free will? He didn’t know. What he knew was that, in front of the monster computer, other Night Nebulae had appeared, some very similar to his own, but at the same time, were very different. They moved like a bunch of violet and blue snakes coiled in a swirl of mist and dust. And while his Nebulae were silent, these new ones hummed, and they hummed so loudly that he even thought that Broga’s computer had come to life.

Those strange Nebulae brought someone. A young man.

Brun looked at his face and realized that this young man looked a lot like him, but it was not his brother. Broga didn’t have such a... funny-looking body.

“He’s the Potion Seeker, Brun,” one of the children said with revulsion.

“It’s an aberration, a being that should not have existed,” added another.

It was true. There was something about this young man that disturbed him. He was rude to begin with because he was naked and did nothing to cover himself. But also…

There was a word that old Bernardo used to describe this person’s body type. ‘Will you get that out of my sight please?!’ he remembered once hearing the old man say so to a nurse, referring to one of the babies—one of his little brothers—who slept in those glass jars. The appearance of that little sleeper was really weird; he himself had seen him. Every time one of the little ones looked like that after one of those baths, old Bernardo got angry. ‘Put him in the tubs, will you?’ Bernardo had ordered the nurse that time. ‘Just look at those malformations! What a… deformed creature!’

Deformed! That was the word!

And this naked guy was deformed; he looked as ugly as those little babies, even weirder. He was bald, just like he was now, but this guy’s head was drooping forward, and behind it, he had something sticking up from his back, a…hump? Was that the word? His eyes were scary too; they were white as if someone had erased them. And the most striking and strange thing: On one side he had an arm as thick as a trunk and so long that it touched his knees, and on the other side he had two arms, one very skinny and the other as small as the arm of one of the Duplicated Children. Also, he had something hanging from behind, peeking out between his legs. It wasn’t his thing. A tail maybe? No. It was just another leg, though as tiny as a baby’s.

And what about those supture scars, like the ones he had on his head? This young man had them all over his body! They crossed his chest from side to side, his giant arm, his waist, down his legs... There was no part of his body that didn’t have supture marks.

“He’s an impostor who wanted to be you and your brother at the same time, Brun,” one of the Duplicated Children pointed out.

What do you want? Brun asked this Seeker boy, but the Seeker didn’t answer; he just looked at him with those white, empty eyes, and moved in the direction of Broga’s monster computer, extending his enormous arm toward the belly of that thing, where his brother hid the potion.

The Duplicated Children had told the truth after all.

“The potion is ours by right, Brun,” the children said, their voices deepening, like adult voices, voices Brun recognized as identical to his own. “Protect the potion from this traitor! Protect what is ours!”

So, Brun thought of his brother and, deep inside—there, where he knew things that he didn’t know how he knew—he knew that this deformed young man, whoever he was, represented a real danger to him, to his brother, and to the others like him.

I’m sorry, but I can’t let you take that potion, he said and lunged at the deformed young man to protect what was theirs.

The different Night Nebulae—one reddish, the other bluish—collided with each other, producing a burst of light that scattered stardust everywhere, dragging both opponents into the void.

It all ended with a thunderclap that shook the very cliff.

A second later, the room was again dark and lonely, with no one but the monster computer and a pile of dirt as the only witnesses to the fight.