Flying in the sky, Adam turned around and descended toward Malin.

She fell, awaiting rescue with her arms outstretched, though with her hands… closed? What the hell?! Adam had to bid harder to fight air resistance; and just a few feet before the ground, he caught her, holding her forearms. Then she raised her face and looked at him with a smile of satisfaction. Had that been her plan from the beginning? To create a dangerous situation to force him to react quickly?

“Next time you do something stupid like that, wait for me with open hands, will you?” he reproached her. “It’ll be easier for me to save you.”

“And risk breaking my wrists or a finger with your grip? Don’t even think about it! I was in freefall! I prefer a bruise to a broken bone.”

At the ease of that answer, Adam couldn’t help but smile.

And as they descended on solid ground, he remembered it. Something similar had happened long ago, in the woods, on the outskirts of Markabia, only that time the roles had been reversed, Malin having been the one who had saved him from hitting the ground. And, of course, the cause of the fall had not been Kappa radiation and its strange effects, but a malfunction in the gravitational system of its portable wings.

“Do you ever hear me, Juzo?” Malin had said, coming down from the sky, between the trees, with him clinging to her arms. She was an angel with chrome wings, helping another angel with damaged wings. The hiss of the turbines mingled with the wind. “How many times did I tell you? Don’t buy thrusters on the black market. That old man buys the crap the military threw away and resells you with a coat of paint.”

“Oh! How did I not think of that before?!” Juzo had replied without an ounce of real enthusiasm. “I’ll change providers tomorrow. Surely yours sells his stuff at the same price as mine, right?”

“Hey! Who gave you permission to use sarcasm?”

“You said so yourself, Malin. I’m a simple vegetable delivery guy. How much money do you think I make per month?”

“Well, if you need more money... You know, we could agree to an exchange, something between you and me,” she had answered then, and with a naughty smile, she winked at him. “What do you say?”

How much he would have given to hug her and kiss her that time! Why had he let that opportunity go? Who knows? Surely because at that time he’d been a fool who preferred to get angry with himself for his poor decisions, from economic to personal, rather than expressing his feelings and enjoying the person he loved.

But now he had time to correct his mistake.

He brought her to him and kissed her.

And she reciprocated.

And for an instant, their lips held together in the middle of the desert.

Until she rejected him and pushed him back, she covered her mouth. No. Worse, she wiped her lips. Then she backed away, still with the thruster wings spread out on her back, confused and even with fury in her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

And there, Adam realized he could no longer make up for the lost time, because those past regrets belonged to Juzo, and as far as Malin was concerned, whether he liked it or not, the time Juzo had had to make amends for his mistakes was over a few weeks ago when he passed away. Adam would remain as Juzo as himself for the rest of his life; that didn’t mean Malin considered him that way.

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Shame covered him with its warm cloak. It was as if the sun itself had melted just above his head.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m so sorry.”

Malin managed to nod, accepting the apology; she even managed to draw a smile, fleeting and very uncomfortable, to try not to make him feel so bad. She blushed, and a lump in her throat prevented her from swallowing and dragging the moment away from her lips. Because, at least for the first few seconds of the kiss, she had not only granted it to him, but she had also returned it. Yes, for an instant, Malin had hugged Juzo himself.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know that… sometimes you’re not entirely yourself.”

Adam lowered his head and took advantage of the fact that he had to pick up his T-shirt, which had been thrown on the ground, not far from there, to delay the moment when he would have to look up and meet her eyes. The shame he felt was immense.

First, the bitter moment in the White Box of Surprises, hearing Dr. Gabor’s ridiculous accusations, all as inappropriate as painfully true; and now this. A grand finale to close a day full of humiliation.

He lifted his T-shirt, shook it off the dirt, then draped it over his shoulders.

“Hey, I mean it,” she tried to cheer him up. “It’s okay.”

Adam responded with a hint of a smile and started to walk east, where they had left the car.

“Let’s go, shall we?” he said.

The sun beat down on his bare back. The scrapes that the many falls had caused on the back of the neck, on the shoulder blades, and in many other places, mixed with the sweat and the grit, began to burn. He scrubbed them with his T-shirt to ease the itch a bit and continued. His shadow walked ahead of him, reeling like a dejected specter, his dirty sneakers creaking on the parched floor.

How much he would have given for having a smart car that came to him at the push of a button as if it were a faithful dog responding to his master’s whistle, his own mechanical and wheeled dog. That was a good idea to pass on to Trevor once he got back to work. Homam Enterprises could be the first to bring such a wonder to the automotive industry. The dream of every scatterbrained who forgets where he parked the car, or of any lazy person who doesn’t feel like walking to get there. It would be enough to put a radar, a remote command on the key, and—

The key! He felt his short pants pocket. Nothing. The car key was gone! Had it been hurled out of his shorts while he was flying?

“Chill. I have them,” Malin said, feeling in the small pocket of her miniskirt.

Adam breathed easy and continued to ramble on about what he could do if he had a pet-vehicle; he didn’t want to think he had almost a mile of the desert to go before they reached the car. How to fill the void with a silly conversation so as not to let the silence remind them of their little slip?

As she walked, Malin pressed the small buckle that the elastic straps had in the center, unfolding the wings of the thruster. Silver sparkles gleamed out of the wings, but there was no hum. A few steps later, she tried again, and this time it worked. Like the turbines of a small plane preparing its engines for take-off, the hum became a hiss, announcing that everything was ready to return to the sky.

“Go ahead if you want,” Adam told her.

“No, that’s fine,” she replied, and although she continued walking, she kept the wings open and the thruster on, perhaps as an alternative in case the other’s presence became embarrassing.

Until an electrical crackling arose from inside the Daedalus, eventually silencing the engine and extinguishing the silver glow. Malin removed it from her back, folded the wings manually, opened a compartment in the center box, removed a small, totally burned-out crystal capacitor, and showed it to him.

“This time it didn’t just run out of power like last time,” she said and carried the device back onto her back.

“Yeah. You know, the electrical charge from my radiation…” Adam commented. He needed to talk about whatever, so his discomfort wasn’t so obvious—as obvious as Malin’s attempts to act natural as she tried to keep her gaze away from him.

“Well, now if you want to…” Malin made a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

Adam thought about it for a moment, and while he got tempted by the offer to get away from her as quickly as possible, he refused. Of course, there was an alternative, to fly to the car carrying her in his arms, but after what had just happened, for the moment, it was better to avoid any kind of contact.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Let’s walk.”