SATELLITE AGENCY HEADQUARTERS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16
9:12 A.M.
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That morning, Adam and Malin repeated what they had done the previous morning: They arrived at the Orbit II tower, went to the twentieth floor, and showed up at the lavish front desk, where a man in gray, the same man who had attended them a day ago, asked them who they were looking for.
“I’m Adam White. Your boss asked me to come to run some tests,” he said moodily.
He was starting to hate that place, the varnished wooden décor, the smell of flavoring; everything. And above all else, he hated the Satellites and their damn institution.
“Over here,” the agent said, and when Malin set out to accompany Adam, two other men in gray intercepted her.
“Sorry. The only one allowed to pass is Mr. White. You can wait for him here.”
Malin had fire in her eyes. “Tell your boss that—”
“It’s all right, Malin,” Adam cut her off, pissed, albeit calmly. “Let’s not complicate things even more. If I don’t come back in half an hour, set this damn building on fire.”
Malin stood with her arms on her hips, watching from the front desk as the agents led his partner to the elevators.
After going up several floors, the agents led Adam to a second, smaller reception and almost hidden among the intricate passages of the building, the Satellite Agency’s official front desk. They reminded him of the confidentiality agreement about everything he saw or heard there and made him wait in a long corridor that had an immense skylight in the ceiling.
At least I’m not in that horrible waiting room, he thought and took a seat on a comfortable couch. This time he tried not to get impatient, getting the idea that it would be about an hour before someone showed their face.
However, the wait was brief. Ten minutes after he settled on the couch, a man in gray arrived.
“This way, please.”
All the same. These bastards all look the same! he thought.
The agent took him to a door at the end of the corridor; the infirmary. It was a small room with medical furniture, a cabinet with the red cross, a small refrigerator, and an exam table. The smell of disinfectant was mild, but he found it unbearable.
“The doctor will be here soon,” the agent said, closed the door, and again left him alone.
Adam sat on the exam table, and anticipating what the doctor would surely ask to perform the tests—Sit there, roll up your sleeves, take a deep breath as we draw blood, and all those things—he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbow.
It was horrible to feel how quickly he was getting used to these kinds of things. Visiting a medical room was beginning to be as normal as going to the nightclubs and ordering a drink.
“Good morning, Mr. White!” the Doctor greeted him as he entered, in a tone so jovial that it aroused his surprise.
It was an old man, short and sturdy, who must have been treading retirement. He moved slowly, and even though he was all smiles, Adam assumed that walking was an effort. The little hair he had left on the sides of his head was white. He wore huge, thick glasses and a white lab coat highlighting his massive belly and big butt. He looked like a coated barrel.
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“And I thought around here it wasn’t allowed to wear something that wasn’t gray,” Adam pointed out.
“It’s because I’m a very special person, young man,” the friendly old man nodded. “See, I’m the boss! Nobody knows, but I’m the one who calls the shots around here, and that’s why I dress as I please,” he said and smiled, showing a long line of teeth too perfect to be real at that age. “One of these days I’ll come in my flowered shirt and my slippers, y’know? And Snooty Quiroga will have to greet me as if nothing were happening. You’ll see.”
Adam stared at him. It was clear the old man was joking, wasn’t it? He was too cheerful of a person for such a serious environment. Besides, who the hell was this Quiroga guy? The man who had led him there? Or the one at the front desk?
The Doctor read the bewilderment on his face and shook his hand like a grandpa telling his grandson to forget what he had just said, telling him that it had all been a joke.
“My name is Pedro Masami, but here everyone knows me as Larry,” he said and greeted Adam with a handshake. “By the way, the Larry thing is real,” he clarified. “If you ask about Dr. Masami, no one will know who you’re talking about. Instead, if you say, ‘I’m looking for Larry,’ then everyone will know.”
For goodness’ sake! Who was this old man? Adam had the impression that he’d just moved to another dimension without noticing it, where the people in the Orbit II tower weren’t those guys in gray with the social skills of a fridge, but quite the opposite.
Larry took latex gloves from a cabinet and put them on. He applied a tourniquet on Adam’s left arm, moistened it with gauze with alcohol, and inserted the needle.
“I see you were ready for this,” the old man said.
Adam nodded; his blood filling the syringe.
“I practice blood draws five days a week here,” the old man said. “There are agents I regularly take samples to, y’know, because of the kind of work they do. You know what kind of work I mean.”
‘No. I don’t know what kind of work you mean,’ Adam was going to say, but kept quiet.
“The thing is that every time those agents come here, I have to explain the procedure as if it were the first time. Can you believe it?” Larry said, and with a falsetto, he impersonated himself, “‘Take off your suit, unbutton your tie, roll up your sleeves.’ Oh! You don’t know how tedious it is to work here. The only one who behaves as he should be is Snooty Quiroga. The only one! Oh, and of course, the District Chief! They’re the only ones who know what to do as soon as they enter this room.”
Adam faked a smile.
With the chin, Dr. Masami pointed at his chest.
“And that wound?” he asked.
Adam looked down, and through the open lapels of his shirt, he looked down at his chest. That’s weird! He had almost forgotten he had it, but there it was: a little higher up the left nipple, toward the center of the chest, above the heart. It was tiny, and it was almost covered by his brown chest hair. It wasn’t a deep mark, but rather a small circle of wrinkled skin, a—
“Burn wound,” Masami said. “You know? Three or four years ago, I don’t remember well—y’know, the age—I visited the Markabian Empire to witness the launch of the new military program. ‘The Grenadiers, the greatest weapons achievement in history, and blah, blah, blah,’—You know how those guys like to show off. Anyway, all Grenadiers had a similar burn scar on their chests. And in other parts of the body, besides the scars on their wrists because of the implants, of course. But I remember well the burn on their chest.”
Adam’s mind wandered, trying to find its origin. According to Sarah Lanen, both he and Juzo had that same scar when the paramedics…
“Primary Plasma,” he whispered then. Like other times, the word had appeared in his mind.
“Well, young man, we’re done.”
The doctor withdrew the syringe, sealed the container with the blood sample, put it in his coat pocket, and then felt it as if to say, ‘It’ll be safe here.’ The lower part of his body, especially his belly and butt, was prominent. And because of the way he had just patted himself, Adam had a mental image of a winemaker testing the level of wine in a vat.
“They’ll soon take you to the practice room,” Larry continued, and his narrow eyes stuffed behind his thick glasses, laid on Adam’s. “I know Dr. Gabor wants to study the extent of your powers. Gabor is a funny guy, you’ll see, but I recommend you do only what he asks you to do. Gabor is new around here, but he has already proven to have quite a temper. Mamma Mia!”
Dr. Gabor? Quiroga? Why did this man speak as if he knew all those people?
The same agent from a while ago peeked out the door. Pedro Larry Masami made a gesture at him announcing: It’s done, with a smile that exposed his alarmingly white and perfect teeth, along with the wrinkles on his pale face.
How can he smile so joyfully, having to endure those huge glasses? Adam wondered.
“Well, Mr. White. They’ve come for you,” the old man said and dismissed him with a handshake.
Adam answered the farewell with an awkward smile. He buttoned up his shirt sleeve again, got off the exam table, and followed the man in gray.