SOUTHERN TROPICAL CANYON
FRIDAY, MAIDEN 21 (MARKABIAN CALENDAR)
1610 HOURS
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It was cold. The winds descended the high walls of the canyon and ran freely through the wild landscape. The weather in that area, normally humid and hot, that afternoon had taken a 180-degree turn; a turnaround as big as the one his fate had just given.
Under a sky that was torn between breaking its clouds and making them cry or blowing them out of the way, Broga descended from the heights to the foot of one of the many cliffs in the area. Overlapped by the chilly winds that swam between his legs, he walked across the clearing. The black jumpsuit he wore made him part of that gray environment, and the sunlight licked his chrome helmet, highlighting the reddish glow of his only eye.
In front of him, the cave’s entrance opened like the black mouth of a stone monster, and behind him, the forest shuddered with the air currents.
No. Those murders had not been just a dream. And if there had been any doubt, now he had the proof before his eyes: The perimeter around the cave was fenced with a laser net, green and fluorescent. It was the net used by the military to preserve a crime scene. And there was that hideous crimson crest with the image of the winged white horse with laurel leaves, attached to a pole, flying in the wind, announcing to nobody that place was now under investigation by the Empire.
The man hidden under a Cyclops android mask, who had ignored the warning signs forbidding the entry of any unauthorized person, leaped past the electric fences. It wasn’t a big deal to do it with cybernetic legs.
Of course, it wasn’t a big deal to put the sentinels guarding the crime scene to sleep either with an ultrasonic stunner. Better to knock them out before they noticed his presence. There was no need to make a fuss.
Now, in the sector within the fence, his footsteps creaked once again on the ground. That crackle, crackle, crackle, which sounded when advancing on gravel and tree leaves, let him know he would no longer find anything of value there, that the imperialists had done their raking and had taken everything.
His pulse quickened; the small marker that followed his heart rate, projected on the corner of his helmet’s inner screen, showed him so.
He entered the cave that smelled musty. The whistling of the wind sounded just like the wailing of a lone wolf.
His throat felt rough. Now he was short of breath.
He went through the crime scene, and following the signs left by the forensics, came to a hole in the wall, the same hole that had appeared in his dream. Through this, he got into the facility that lay inside the canyon and walked through the corridors. Now the whistling of the wind, which was passing through the abandoned nooks of the bunker, sounded like a sad moan.
He knew what had happened, but it was too late to grumble about it. He knew what he would find, or rather, what he would not find, but it was too late to think about that too.
What the hell had happened to Alfred? He had left the android there precisely to avoid this type of situation, but there was no trace of him. Most likely, he was taken out of service by the military. Or worse, by Brun himself.
His blood pressure rose, and he didn’t even have to check it on the gauge on the helmet’s inner display; he could feel his heart beating fast. Had to calm down. Had to be careful.
What was in the building had been confiscated. Corridors, rooms, and operating rooms: all empty. They had taken from the furniture to the autopsy tables, and from the smallest computer to the largest refrigeration machinery, although these things had been broken and not working for a long time. The Army’s forensics team should have organized such looting; there was no other explanation for such a large and abrupt mobilization, not when a little less than a week had passed since he had received Alfred’s last report where the android had confirmed, as usual, that everything was the same.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
And there, in the tapestry of dust that covered the floor, were the marks that betrayed the dragging of things, marks that crossed the galleries until they reached the desolate hangar, where they became vehicle tracks, vehicle tracks that then disappeared below a metal gate, a sliding gate that led to the outside and through which, long ago, he had let in the same things that had now been taken.
In the company of darkness and silence, Broga watched the hatch and went back to just a few years ago, to the time when that hatch had been opened relatively frequently to receive equipment and other supplies, to the time when he had counted on a group of professionals who worked in those facilities.
Scientists, neurosurgeons, and nurses. Twelve minds focused on the same goal: his brother Brun.
And among them had been Clemente.
Broga remembered the time he had found the young scientist waiting for him on the opposite side of that same hatch, barely open, on an afternoon as cloudy as the one that was now vibrating outside.
The outer façade of the gate was covered with rocks and plants that blended in with the surroundings. Once it was closed, if one looked at it from the outside, there was no way to recognize it as such; even for someone who knew its secret, it was difficult to distinguish it from the other cliffs of the canyon.
On that occasion, Broga had descended from a gray sky on the verge of crumbling. According to wind measurements on his helmet’s internal holographic display, the downpour was coming. In his arms was his brother Brun, carried as if he were a child rescued from the jaws of helplessness. A child of almost thirty years old, of course.
And Clemente was waiting for him down there; an albino guy, thin and with an angular face, a radiant beard, and tousled white hair that shone like a beacon, contrasting with the dirt on the ground and the green of the surrounding forest.
“I’ve been trying to contact you,” Clemente said. No sooner had his voice left his lips than it was scattered in the wind and among the trees.
However, Broga was equipped with acute hearing receptors in his helmet and was able to hear the question as well as if it had been whispered in his ear.
“I had to keep the radio channel closed,” he answered. “Brun’s electromagnetic waves boosted it so much that they were interfering with the circuitry in my arms.”
Clemente sighed, annoyed, and patted one of the pockets of his long, loose white lab coat as if to make sure he was still carrying something in there. Then he noticed that Brun was not dressed in his pajamas but wrapped in a lab coat, Broga’s. Surely, Brun had lost his clothes again, or perhaps he’d inadvertently incinerated them; who knows?
“Where did you find him?” he asked.
“Wandering near the swamp,” Broga replied, stepping onto solid ground with his brother. “I lost his tracker chip signal after the trees, so I followed the trail of charred branches.”
Clement nodded. “I guess we’ll have to put another chip in him.”
“You guess right.”
“Heellooo-Cleemennteee,” Brun greeted in a stammer.
“Hello, Brun. We’re glad to have you back,” Clemente replied with a polite smile, albeit with no real joy behind his glasses. His purple eyes, decorated with long white lashes, could rarely camouflage what he really thought and felt.
The gray sky overhead roared. Clemente saw the first drops of rain fall on the rocky soil and snorted. “Get ready to discover new leaks,” he commented.
Broga’s big red eye pulsed once. “The drains in the cryogenic room; have they been repaired?”
“They are on it. It’ll take a few days, though,” the scientist shrugged. “You know, we’re understaffed, and this place has so many structural flaws it’s hard to cover them all.”
“We’re stuck in a mountain within a tropical terrain. There will always be structural flaws,” Broga said, although he knew that this was nothing more than an excuse to avoid touching on certain topics; even his own tone of voice, distorted by the helmet’s voice synthesizer, had given away his pretext.
Clemente, for his part, had he been in a good mood that day, would have played dumb and ignored the comment, but the cause of his worries was right there, walking along with them, and he was tired of continuing to pretend that everything was fine.
“Structural flaws that have arisen since escaping from here became a frequent thing,” he said then, and Broga’s lack of immediate response confirmed that they both knew what the problem was, even if one of them refused to accept it.