“What’s your opinion on magazines, Adam?” asked the Doctor.

“Where are you going with this, Gabor?” Adam asked, though he knew perfectly well where the Doctor was heading to.

The Doctor made a nasty sound as he smacked his lips.

“I recently read the article they wrote about you in Loud magazine,” he said. “And I found it very… insightful, I’d say.”

Adam sharpened his gaze, trying to pierce the dark glass to see those hiding behind the window, but all he distinguished were blurry silhouettes: Gabor’s scientific team, presumably.

“I must tell you that in a way you and I are two of a kind, Adam,” the Doctor continued.

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m just a few years older than you. I’m not married, I don’t have a family, and I’ve never met my parents.”

Adam didn’t seem impressed at all. “The Proxima District is full of people in those same conditions,” he said.

“I’m not from the Proxima District, Adam, but I know what you mean. In any case, few of us have managed to get so far with so little. Look at yourself: A star in the business world, and you started with nothing. Of course, we’ve all received a little push at first, right? Yours was thanks to Lisandro Carinae when you used to model underwear for him, and then thanks to Mr. Homam.”

Adam scowled; he didn’t like where the conversation was going. His heart rate jumped up once again.

“You are a public figure, Adam. You’re not as much as a movie star, and you may not be stopped on the street for an autograph, but that doesn’t mean you lack some fame. Your friendship with Mr. Homam, and the buddy system you formed with the youngest of the Carinae, were well known long before you were Loud’s cover.”

“Yeah, I give you that,” Adam conceded. He had to divert the conversation to get off topic. “And what was your initial push, Gabor? What led an orphan like you, because I assume you’ve been an orphan based on what you said, to become such an outstanding biophysicist that even a top-secret agency has taken an interest in hiring you?”

Gabor giggled with that clucking sound one more time.

“Contacts,” he said. “It’s all about contacts, isn’t it?”

“Well, Gabor, now that we’re buddies, how about you tell me what to do so I can get out of here?”

“You must be very confused now that you have those powers, Adam. I assume you must find it very difficult to create a link between your previous life and the current one.”

Adam squeezed his lips. What do you care, Stuffy Nose?

“I speak about your social life, of course. Because your private life is almost as lonely as it was before,” Gabor pointed out. “I dare say you never had a lasting, loving partner and that you must be very protective of your privacy. Am I right?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. You talk like you know me better than I do.”

“Not so much. A lot of this is a simple deduction, y’know? Orphan stuff, we might say. I know you’ve taken a leave of absence from work, and you’ve disappeared from the city’s night scene. Your friends have stopped calling you. What is it like to discover that you never really had any real friends, that you never connected with anyone on an emotional level, and that the women you’ve been with only used you as a step to take a look at the world of high society?”

Adam’s heart rate rose again, and the device under his chair beeped again.

“How many girls had gotten a job through your contacts? Puff! Plenty, I’m sure!” Gabor went on. “You see? It all comes down to having good contacts in the right place. Surely, for a young aspiring model, it will have been useful for her to sleep with you, someone who has worked showing half-naked for the Carinae firm. Remember that time? That was when your abs were visible.”

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Another beep.

“But don’t get discouraged, Adam. You may not keep the impeccable figure you had in your youth, but from what I see from here, you’re still in shape. What you haven’t been able to keep, though, were the privileges of that life that I’m afraid you won’t have again. You let them get away.”

Another beep. And then another one.

“What happened? Are you no longer welcome at parties?” Gabor insisted. “Tell me, Adam, with your powers out of control, have you set any lover on fire?”

The equipment beeped incessantly.

Adam shifted in the uncomfortable wooden chair. His pulses were out of control. He knew that if he were to stand up, remove the electrodes and leave, eventually he would be forced to return to fulfill the operation. The point was to obey what these arrogant jerks asked of him or face the possibility of Malin’s deportation. What other reason could this human bull with mob boss’ demeanors named Thomas Hemdell have had to show him the recording of him using his powers? That was flat-out blackmail, all right!

Everything was done to make him scream, to get him desperate and run away.

That place was designed to obfuscate him, those words were said to upset him; that position was deliberately intended for him to be uncomfortable. Maybe the Satellite Agency’s ultimate goal was to drive him crazy. That way, they’d have a legitimate reason to lock him up in a real asylum, and not on that basketball court that pretended to be a cell for crazy people.

There, at that moment, there were no tools of torture or restrictions on his physical freedom beyond the white walls that surrounded him. And yet he felt trapped and with no choice. Condemned.

Keeping him seated was a part of the torture. There was no scientific motive behind that request. Not letting him stretch his legs to roam the room was a simple torture tactic.

On top of that, he had to add the irreverence of the hateful Gabor.

The Doctor’s words were hurtful, and Adam was convinced he did so on purpose. Was the goal of the experiment to know how many stupid things he was able to hear before bursting out with rage? They said they wanted to study his heart rate. Maybe they were shaking him to see how he reacted to the pressure of the comments. Because damn it! Beyond the malice that Gabor’s words contained, the son of a bitch was right: Trevor had distanced himself from him? Yes. But he had distanced himself from Trevor, from Lisandro, and even from his countless lady friends.

Taking distance from his social circle was something he had been dealing with since Juzo’s death, but the fact that a guy like Gabor—who must have been a hideous-looking person, with a gangly face with acne scars who would surely spend his free time locked in his house’s basement, in front of a computer—told him how painful it was to be away from society and without sex, it was a bad joke.

Adam wanted to send them all to hell, starting with District Chief Hemdell. He wanted to ask him to bury that head, solid as a hammer, in the smelliest latrine in the building, and incidentally, send his circle of employees down the same path, from his secretary—that young woman with a charisma as cold as stepping on marble with bare feet—to those evil and homogeneous men in gray, and to Gabor, who spoke to him through a speaker and protected behind a window, as if he were a recluse no one should approach. He even felt like telling the kind Dr. Larry from the infirmary to take his fat ass and move away as far as he could along with that life-is-beautiful-and-everything-smiles-at-me attitude of his; and if that Quiroga guy—of whom the old man had not stopped talking about—wanted to go with him, well, let him do so!

You want to read what my heartbeat says? Well, look at how they spell: S-c-r-e-w-y-o-u!

But no.

Adam decided to sit still and endure whatever he had to endure. It was better not to send anyone to hell or kick any ass. Better to do what he had been asked to do, so he could leave as soon as possible and forget that the Satellite Agency existed, at least until the next day when he had to return to fulfill the mission in Black Plateau.

Think that by Friday, all this will be part of the past.

“I’m sorry for my comment, Adam,” Gabor apologized. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

Yeah. Sure.

“No problem, Doc.”

“Mr. White.” Thomas Hemdell’s voice sounded omnipresent in the immense white hall, as if it were the voice of God himself. Adam recognized him immediately. “Thank you for your patience.”

“You’re welcome,” Adam replied with clear disgust and looked up at the black window. Behind it were Gabor and his scientists, and from what he heard, the District Chief had now joined them. “You know what, Hemdell?” he said. “You’re like a genie who fulfills my wishes. I was dying to know how it would feel to have my privacy invaded and to have my social life threatened by the possible exposure of my secret through, for example, an indiscreet recording. And you came and made it real. Then, I wanted to know what it would feel like to be locked in a madhouse cell, and now, thanks to you, I know.”

“Calm down, Adam. You’re here so we can measure your power levels,” Gabor replied.

“I’ve been sitting here like an idiot for almost an hour, Doc. The only thing you could have measured is my very generous patience.”

“You can stand up,” Gabor told him.

Yes. They kept me sitting just to annoy me. Getting angry is part of the test, Adam thought, but he wouldn’t waste his chance to stand up.

Wow! Was that wooden chair uncomfortable! His buttocks were numb, so he rubbed them.

It was cold. Careful not to remove the electrodes unintentionally, he took the sides of his unbuttoned shirt and protected his chest. Had the air conditioning temperature lowered?