On that occasion, Malin had awoken with intense pain in her left breast. A hot stitch that pierced her flesh and reached her heart. Each throbbing was a hammer blow on the head. Swallowing saliva was like feeling gravel in the throat. To breathe was to spray acid on the lungs.

“Not again…” she had sobbed.

Trembling, she tried to stand, but firm hands brought her back to the chair.

“No… Please don’t again…”

The first part of the treatment was over. She’d survived. There was still a second one to go, though.

Someone tried to calm her, saying, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. Relax.”

Who had told her that? The doctor in charge of the treatment? Or Rigel Beta, who was her fiancé at the time? The pain had stirred her senses.

Oh, for goodness’ sake! The pain! Her body was burning. Her skin seemed to fry in oil.

Until, finally, the torture ended. And then, nothing.

She woke up amid blurry spots and so much light—several hours later, as she would learn later—in a room surrounded by many people looking at her as if she were a chimpanzee who had just overcome the effect of a tranquilizer dart. She was so dizzy she’d lost track of what had happened.

“She survived,” she heard a voice say, so muffled it seemed to come from beyond. “She has your genes, Ulf.”

“And you doubted Ulf had Ecuadorian blood!” said another voice.

Ulf? Was that Ulf her—?

“You blame me? How many Ecuadorians have blue eyes?” someone said, and they all laughed.

Someone took her arm.

“I knew you’d survive,” said a voice, so close and clear she recognized it immediately. It was the voice of Ulfric K. Viveka—Ulf to the comrades, General Benetnash to the rest of the world, according to his rank and military name. The voice of her father.

Her eyesight pierced the fog of dizziness. The old man was beside her. General Stone-face’s eyes were sparkling. There was pride in those blocks of ice. There was satisfaction in that wide, taut mouth.

Of course! Now she remembered! The Grenadier treatment. They had subjected her to—

So, from the depths of her heart, very close to where the needle had pierced, a fury sprang up and propelled her muscles. And there, in front of everyone—old military men, doctors, Rigel, and other guards—she slapped her father.

Malin, Lieutenant Alioth, had just slapped the respected and highly feared General of the Markabian Imperial Army. And the silence fell into the room with the weight of a block of steel.

“You bastard…” she’d called him, or at least that’s what she intended to do. Chances were, with so many drugs on her, she had barely been able to pronounce a couple of syllables before she choked. “I didn’t want to… And you…”

That day had marked a before and after in their relationship; a relationship that was to end during the following afternoon.

“I’m your damn daughter and you didn’t give a crap what could have happened to me!” she had told him then, as she went from here to there in what had been her room, gathering her things in a suitcase. “It doesn’t matter how likely I was to survive; it was a new treatment, and it could have failed.”

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Her father watched her silently, standing in the room’s doorway.

“How many times have we been through this?” he asked finally.

And she stopped, forcing herself not to look at him, squeezing the blouse she was putting in her suitcase.

Ulfric Viveka crossed his arms.

“Could it be like the time you left because I refused to sign the petition for Midori’s independence?” he questioned her. “Or will it be like the time you got mad at me because, according to you, I didn’t do enough to convince the Council to open the Empire’s borders? How long did it take you to realize that decisions of that magnitude are not made overnight? How long did it take you to get back home that time?”

And yet, unlike those occasions, that afternoon, Malin didn’t feel like a dramatic teenager. Her pain was deeper than ever, and her disappointment, suffocating.

“This time it’s different,” she said. “This time you didn’t sacrifice the illusion of a poor silly girl who thought her father had more power than he actually does. This time you offered your only daughter as a sacrifice to gain the upper hand against your comrades, to show off that you will have a Grenadier in your family. Well—now you can find another person to take that space. I won’t be your bodyguard or one of your trophies.”

Malin had tucked in her blouse, closed her suitcase, and left, and since that day she had never returned to that house or seen her father face to face ever again.

And today, a few years later, it was Juzo who received the treatment; it was Juzo who would become a Grenadier, and it was she who had pressured him to submit to it.

The situation was quite different, all right; or at least that’s how she saw it.

Malin was the only Grenadier in Juzo’s group, and the physical stress was killing her. But for some reason, as she watched Juzo being intervened, she couldn’t help but think that, in a way, she was doing what her father had done with her. And if she looked at the place where they were doing it, she felt even worse.

She’d been treated in the operating room of a military barracks, while here… Well, the conditions here couldn’t be more deplorable.

They couldn’t ask for more, though. The Doctor, that man prematurely aged from living in hiding, was the most remarkable thing paramilitary medicine had, and he was the only man capable of performing the complex procedure, thanks to his knowledge, his skill, and because he was the only one—as far as she knew—that possessed the machine to do so. No one knew his real name, only his nickname; was it Gami? She wasn’t sure. The Rowdy Ones knew him simply as The Doctor; they knew he was originally from Neo Asia and that he had arrived in the Markabian territory a few years ago, escaping from who knows what. And, of course, they knew he always smelled of cheap liquor.

Malin watched him working on Juzo.

Every so often, without getting up from his chair, The Doctor took a drag on his cigarette, then put it on the steel tray next to the medical instruments and went on with his work. Like a drummer in a rock band, he moved his limbs with surprising skill, performing different tasks at the same time. With his feet, he drove pedals that put in motion the circuit power generators, and with gauntlets, he led a series of mechanical arms that moved like an octopus, holding syringes of various sizes that went back and forth, sinking their needles into Juzo and unloading their contents: a thick fluorescent liquid of intense pink color.

Malin observed the substance through the drums of the syringes. “This Ambrosia is—”

“It’s the same one the military uses!” The Doctor answered reluctantly.

“I know,” she said in the same tone. “I was gonna ask you where you got it. Just out of curiosity.”

The Doctor looked at her as if to say, Are you stupid?

“I wouldn’t reveal my supplier because I’d be ruining my own business,” he said. “Be sure to know this is the real deal, though. The same one that runs through the veins of all Grenadiers. I know others do the same as me, but with cheap reproductions. But I told you that—”

Malin held out her hand, announcing that she had gotten the point, and walked away again.

The Doctor continued with the procedure. The first shot—and the strongest one, given with the largest syringe—went to Juzo’s heart. The second one, to his throat, right into the thyroid gland. The third one, to the middle of his chest, straight into the thymus. The fourth one was to the solar plexus, touching the pancreas. And the fifth one, under the navel.

Meanwhile, Juzo slept under the anesthesia as if nothing happened. And judging from the calm expression on his face, Malin dared to think that he was not only sleeping but resting placidly. Her friend was experiencing perhaps the deepest sleep he had had in months. Juzo never slept well.

Enjoy the break, dear. There will be a lot of pain waiting for you when you wake up.