A FEW WEEKS AGO
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The transition between drizzle and rain and between rain and storm was so abrupt that few saw it coming. The transition between waking up from a three-day trip between quantum dimensions, discovering his bunker had been ransacked, and forming an alliance with the Order was more than just an abrupt thing for Broga. It was an alarmingly logical and necessary step.
Hemmed in by darkness and lightning, bathed in the downpour that tinkled against his chrome helmet, Broga tossed the last of the Cyclopes he had just destroyed on top of the others, leaving a pile of smoking robotic bodies next to one of the many poles that rose up around him. The red light in his eye pulsed to make sure the job was done, and he looked ahead, where the flashes of the storm every now and then revealed the massive wall that awaited them at the end of the road, beyond the countless masts that formed the outer antenna circuit. There was the entrance to the Bellatrix barracks.
Turning around, Broga returned to the black limousine that waited for him with the lights off. The lavish vehicle surely belonged to one of the powerful members of the Order, so he had no qualms about getting into the back seat and wetting the delicate upholstery with his completely drenched body. After all, going out into the open to do what he’d just done hadn’t been his idea either.
“Radar system jammed,” he announced. “Cyclops that could repair it, destroyed.”
The huge eye on his mask opened to reveal his true eyes back there. The Vicar, who was sitting in the wide seat opposite him with her back to the cab of the limousine, took the full blow of that look, though her response was yet another of those enigmatic smiles, and with a snap of her fingers, she ordered the driver to get back on the road.
“You’ve eased them in big time,” Broga pointed out.
“That’s only if my hunch is right and the Binary-R decides to come,” she replied. “Her friend, the Rowdy One, was spotted at tollbooth 12 an hour ago. He shouldn’t be far from here.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to go for him and bring him with us, then?”
“It would be if I had any idea of his whereabouts. His tracker went down when he injected that damn pink serum into his blood, and this storm makes it difficult for our drones to circulate.”
Broga snorted. “You people… You drive limousines, and you don’t have money to pay someone to follow twenty-four-seven a vegetable delivery man who is playing revolutionary?”
“We had someone, but it didn’t work out,” she said. “He will come, though. It’s his fate.”
“Fate…” Broga repeated with a hint of mockery. “I think you people give a lot of credit to that.”
“Fine, call it ‘the Primary Plasma in his blood’ if you like, but whatever, he’s coming here today for that dose. I’m positive.”
“It would be more useful if you told me where to wait for him,” Broga said. “That way we don’t waste resources and we make sure Brun doesn’t… screw everything up before one of us takes the Plasma.”
With the pass of her hand, the Vicar broke the illusion that covered her face for a moment, showing once again her disfigured part. “If I knew in advance where and when I should be...” she said, “trust me, this would never have happened.”
The limo stopped.
Broga covered his eyes again with the red visor of his mask and, with the help of his visual amplifiers, he pushed through the darkness and rain ahead, past the windshield. They had reached the huge gate of the equally huge wall that surrounded the barracks, while an armed soldier approached them as if there was not a storm falling on him.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Broga prepared to go out, but the Vicar stopped him.
“No need to be conspicuous,” the woman said, and as if the limo’s automated system obeyed her, the window next to her opened just a few inches, just enough for her to stick her hand out, without letting enter the rain. “Come,” she called to the soldier, and against all odds, the young man in uniform approached the window. Reaching out a little, she took his arm. “Good boy,” she told him. “Go back to your booth, it’s raining here, and please, deactivate the alarms and open the door for us. We need to get through and we’re in a hurry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the soldier said, and turning around, went back the way he had come.
“I don’t understand why, with so much power, you people still haven’t achieved your goal,” Broga said.
“Me neither,” she sighed. “I suppose it’s because there are processes that we cannot speed up. The mutation of some proteins in our blood so that offspring like you can be born can be a good example.”
The gate finished opening, but before the limo could move on, searchlights came on in front of them.
The pale woman looked over her shoulder, calm. “They’ll probably want to inspect the vehicle,” she said. “They must know that their alarm system has stopped working.”
Broga raised his hands as if to say, ‘Okay, I won’t do anything. You take care of this.’
And when she lowered the window again to greet the first soldier to appear, she let out a moan of terror.
“What’s wrong?” Broga asked.
The Vicar raised her hand, asking for a second to catch her breath. “The time to show why I brought you here has come,” she said, and a roar cracked the air, one more powerful than any the storm could have released, piercing everyone’s ears, leaving a ringing in their eardrums that would take a while to go away.
Broga knew. Brun had arrived.
And right between the limousine and the searchlights, a ball of colored gases and small stellar flashes appeared, as if a piece of outer space had detached itself from the firmament, passing through the black clouds of the sky to appear there.
Here was Brun, in the middle of that cyclone of water, just as Broga had seen him that last time, in the bunker’s operating room, dressed in the green gown, bald and barefoot, standing in midair, squinting as if he were sleepwalking.
Clemente… Broga remembered, and the pain struck a chord in his heart. He couldn’t let things get as out of control as they had that day.
The Vicar, for her part, was mute, still with her back to the cab of the limousine, with her eyes, large and slanted, open wide beneath her hairless brow; the violet of her irises shining in the center. She didn’t need to look back; she knew who was there.
“The Plasma—” she said, almost whispering. “The smell of the Plasma brought him here... Or your smell did.”
Broga hurried out of the limo. The gauges on his helmet’s internal display went haywire, displaying random figures and suffering from interference. The atmosphere was so charged with static electricity that even the raindrops, stirred by the wind, crackled.
And Brun was there, standing still, staring somewhere between the open rear door of the vehicle and the rain blurring the background, as if he hadn’t yet realized that Broga was already outside, walking toward him. Behind him, the searchlights blazed, and the guards stood as stiff as the Vicar in the seat of the limousine, perhaps startled by the apparition, perhaps petrified by the terror and energy that surrounded them.
Broga opened the front pieces of his helmet, exposing his face for Brun to see.
“Brun, go back!” he ordered loudly so that his voice would carry the storm. “You hear me, Brun?! Go back! I’ll call you when everything is ready! Okay?”
Okay, brother, Brun answered directly into his mind, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone from reality as if nothing had ever been there in the first place, as if none of that had ever happened.
And perhaps for the rest that could never have happened, although for Broga, who was now returning to the limousine covering his face again, and for the Vicar, who was waiting for him inside, not only had it happened, but it had just brought a result that neither of them would have wanted.
“My charm has faded,” she said, almost apologetically. “You’ll have to endure the attack and break in while I regain my concentration. It’ll take a few minutes.”
“What attack?” he asked, and at that moment, the alarm at the Bellatrix barracks began to sound.
The soldiers raised their weapons against him. The cannons atop the towers of the wall swung toward them, and a tank, which had been hidden behind the dazzling searchlights, revealed itself in front of the limousine.
Things had gotten tough.