“It was very irresponsible of you to have left an android alone here as a housekeeper,” a voice accused him.

Alerted, Broga looked up. Something moved up ahead, where the shadows erased the last stretch of the corridor.

He wasn’t alone in the bunker.

Even with the advanced sensors of his helmet, Broga struggled to identify who was there in the corridor. A strange interference prevented him from doing so.

He switched the light spectra on his visor system, but even with the infrared filter, he had problems. It was as if the person who was talking to him didn’t emit any heat, as if it were a holographic projection; and yet, according to his sonar, there was actually someone there. The night-vision filter was best suited for his purpose. It was difficult to find her at first until two amethysts seemed to shine in the blackness. Her eyes.

After that, it was easy. The pale skin of her head, completely bald, stood out suddenly. Her enormous crystal earrings, shining in the shadows.

She was an Eddanian, for sure, and those people meant only one thing: trouble.

The air grew stale. Had the woman changed something in the atmosphere? Broga looked at the sensors on his helmet’s internal display; the little dot of purple light hadn’t turned on; there were no significant levels of Tau radiation around him. That sensation was his own nerves.

“When little Broga’s body was found in the snow a few miles from the lab in Columbia,” she said, “no one doubted that the original Binary-C had died of hypothermia. I myself was present when the doctors dissected your corpse to see what they could get out of it. You were so frozen it took them hours to remove the blanket you were wrapped in. Hikaru Templeton had chosen the wrong time to have a conscience.” The woman slid her fingers over the dusty gray plates on the wall and then, with some revulsion, wiped them clean. “I’m disappointed in you, yes, but I must also congratulate you. You’ve known how to keep a group of people deceived, a group of people who would never have believed they could be deceived.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “You must be…”

“Please,” she interrupted him, “don’t say confused. I already know the truth. Our bloodhound gave you away.”

Broga was silent. There was no use playing the fool now.

‘Brun! How the hell did you get there?!’ he had asked during that strange delirium, to which his brother, who was being carried away by a tornado of dust and stars in outer space, had replied, ‘Well, y’know, it was the Seeker.’

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“The bloodhound told us about you,” added the woman; “about your brother and about the dose you were hiding here. Unfortunately, the poor thing returned in terrible condition from his… walk. For now, he won’t be able to guide us to where the Plasma is, and by the time he recovers his health, it may be too late.”

‘And where is that Seeker now?’

‘He has returned to the world. It’s there,’ Brun had said, pointing to the ocean of stars overhead.

Taking a moment to process what was happening, Broga looked the woman over from head to toe. It took him a while to realize she was wearing a miniskirt. If it was weird to see one of those Eddanians face to face, it was even weirder to see them wearing something so casual and provocative.

“You are one of the Vicars of the Order, or am I wrong?” he pointed out, “one of the few Original Eddanians still out there. I thought yours were barely showing their face. What are you doing outside your hole?”

“We only go out for important events,” she said, “like coming to offer you a deal.”

“I decline it.”

“You haven’t heard it yet.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You will if you want the traitor who has protected you all these years to continue to breathe,” the woman said.

—Sebastian! And, once again, Broga had to bite his tongue behind his mask.

“Very well, I hear your proposal,” he said.

“Your brother became somewhat… uncontrollable after tasting the Plasma,” she said. “But I see you managed to deal with him, at least for a while, and a ‘while’ is all we need. Help us keep him at bay in case we run into him while we recover the Plasma dose. In return, we promise to forget about you two... and that other traitor.”

Broga snorted, mocking her. “You must be terrified of Brun to stoop to offering me such a deal,” he said.

“True,” she admitted. “We are no longer capable of hurting the flesh of He who does not forgive. He can still hurt ours, though.” And, passing her hand over her face, as if she were removing a veil, the woman exposed scars that marked her pale right cheek, slits that ran from her chin to where her right eye should have been, which was nothing more than a black smudge surrounded by folds of skin. Slowly, with a sensuality contrasting with the horror that her disfigured half showed, she passed her hand over it again, restoring the illusion with which she covered her scars.

“So, tell me, woman, who assures us that some Markabian hasn’t already taken the Plasma by now?” Broga questioned. “Or Brun himself after his awakening, for that matter.”

The woman shook her head. “Our bloodhound would have known,” she said.

Broga paused with thousands of equations and possible outcomes spinning in his head. “Who assures me that this is not a trick to use the Plasma later on me?” he asked.

The woman took a step forward. “Your distrust is charming.”

Broga took a step back. “My distrust is reasonable.”

“I’ll make it very clear,” she said. “Now that we know there is still one last dose out there, we can complete our project. As long as your clone, the one we already had as a candidate before your brother decided to mess everything up, is alive. You have nothing to fear.”

Broga did not answer. The offer was tempting, but he needed more. The Vicar knew it, and that’s why she doubled down.

“Did I mention we’re willing to offer you the necessary resources to complete your own project?” she proposed. “You know, the same one you started here and miserably failed to deliver. Deal?”

The huge red eye in Broga’s mask, the visor behind which he hid his true face, pulsed intensely.

“I take that as a ‘yes,’” the woman said, her violet eyes shining as brightly as her long crystal earrings.