About an hour later, in the darkness of the park, Juzo suffered on his knees the wear of his forces.

He was short of breath and the wound on his shoulder burned as if it were being stitched with a red-hot iron. But he had survived worse, and the adrenaline that ran through his veins would not let him fall so easily.

Broga’s thugs circled around him with their thruster cannons ready to fire. One move would be enough for them to let energy discs rain on top of him. He knew Simon was a merciless rat who loved his opponent to be in a position of disadvantage like that. The other mercenary, the giant one; he didn’t know him, though it wasn’t necessary to do so to know both mercenaries were two of a kind.

It was then that he noticed that both of them had their eyes half-closed, a blank stare, and a trickle of blood peeking from their nostrils. The Eddanic woman! Where was she, though? Did she—? Malin!

No. There was no time for that. Broga had already knocked Uri unconscious and seemed ready to dissect him; a long needle, a scalpel, and three surgical tweezers had emerged from the left palm, and a barrel bursting with energy from the right one.

Juzo needed to distract the two mercenaries and break out of their vigilance to get between Uri and Broga. So, he prepared to throw a Fotia at them; that would give him the margin he needed. But he had to act fast. He reached into his jacket pocket and grasped the cylindrical object he’d removed from the Totem a few hours earlier. He must use it; he had no choice. If he didn’t want Broga to get away with it, he had to do it himself.

Holding his breath, he ignored the pain and the stitches that held the muscles in his arms and stood up. He contracted his fingers and let the electric shocks run through them.

On the count of three, he told himself. One two—

“What are you waiting for?” Broga asked, ending the momentum Juzo had managed to achieve. With a wave, he motioned for him to come closer and ordered his mercenaries to retract their thruster weapons and clear the way. Both crooks complied with the order, although neither seemed fully aware of what they were doing.

Slowly, Juzo walked in the direction of his adversary and towards Uri, who was lying on the ground.

“I really thought you were an android,” he said.

“In part, I am,” Broga replied, showing the instruments that emerged from his cybernetic arms.

Then, trying to understand what was ahead, Juzo laid things out as he understood them.

“The log entries to the lab and the Totem mentioned Broga and Brun,” he said; “although none of those entries specified what purpose they served in the project. By posing as a Cyclops and putting another there, like that android with the painted mustaches, you diverted attention and concealed your true identity and that of your brother Brun. With the scientists dead, only someone with a genetic makeup equal to yours could enter the protected logs of the Totem and discover the truth. Broga and Brun, the original Binary twins the Order used for their experiments.”

Broga confirmed it.

“The twins you, him,” he said, and pointed to Uri at his feet; “and all the failed clones descend.”

Nerves had dried Juzo’s throat and beaded his face with sweat.

“What I don’t understand is why you keep the Cyclops facade when you’ve finished with those behind the project,” he said. “You are a Catalyst Binary like Uri. I understand that you may have wanted to postpone the project to prevent your brother Brun, being a Binary Reactor, from paying for it with his life; it’s preferable to use me for that. But if you knew my whereabouts all this time, why didn’t you claim my proteins sooner? Why did you murder those students? Why attract the attention of the military? To put on a big show?”

Broga was silent.

“Answer me, damn it!” Juzo demanded.

“It’s clear there are things you got right, and others you got all wrong,” Broga replied and pointed at Simon and Kitten. “But the reason why I do it now is in the noses of these two idiots. It’s all over for us, the Binaries. If O22 doesn’t receive your blood, that Eddanic won’t leave me alone and I will have to receive it. And I won’t become anyone’s weapon.”

“O22 won’t become anyone’s weapon either,” Juzo said, and carried Uri in his arms, ready to leave.

Broga aimed the cannon in his hand at him.

“You will not go,” he warned, the huge red eye of his mask blazing almost as bright as the energy vibrating in his cannon’s muzzle. “Since you entered the Totem, you have known that this is your only choice,” he said. “That’s why you pushed your partner away so she wouldn’t interfere; am I wrong? Because Uri is the only one of us who does not have special resources, and you will not always be there to save him. If you complete the project, at least he will have something to defend himself with.”

Juzo gulped, and his own saliva scraped down his throat. Sweat trickled down his face and between his stubble, blurring his vision and wetting his neck and under his arms. For crying out loud! What Broga said was discouraging, but it was the truth. Then, keeping an eye out for Simon and the other big guy trying something, he obeyed Broga. With thrusters buzzing behind him, he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small metal cylinder; it no longer made sense to keep hiding it.

Just as the Totem’s screen had shown him, he pressed the cylinder with his thumb, revealing a long needle at each end, as well as the contents of the drum through a tiny window: a white fluorescent liquid.

“The Primary Plasma, the original spark,” Broga named it. Then, as if he wanted to see it with his own eyes and not through the mask’s visor, the electronic pieces of that puzzle that formed his helmet retracted and got into the device he had on the back of his neck. His true face was revealed.

Juzo’s gaze hardened; it was as if he was looking at himself in the mirror, and putting a few more years on that reflection.

Broga’s emerald eyes, steady behind deep dark circles, fell spellbound by the glittering liquid.

“I imagine how much you’d like to get rid of it,” he said to Juzo.

With the same enchantment, Juzo observed the Primary Plasma through the tiny window. It was true. Ever since he’d seen it, upon taking it from the Totem, he’d never wanted to do anything but evaporate it with a Fotia or throw it into the drain, or at least, hand it over to Malin for her to do it for him. And yet, it was still there: intact in his hands.

“I couldn’t,” he confessed. “I couldn’t even reveal its existence to my partner.”

“It’s because the Plasma is a living organism,” Broga said; “it knows how to protect itself. I’ve felt it too. A voice that speaks directly to your genes; a sensation so eloquent… like the curiosity to see something grotesque.”

Juzo pursed his lips; it was just as Broga described it. In his hands, he held the key to breaking the circle of the project that had given him life, and that now would possibly hand him over to death, and yet he could do nothing.

Broga had taken a few steps forward, drawn by that whitish glow, when a beep from his cybernetic prosthetics made him aware of his movements and he stopped.

“We, the Binaries, got a dose of the Plasma at birth,” he said. “The Totem entries ensured that this would put us in a position to withstand the maximum dose at the end of the project, although I think The Order did it to put us in check. Once it’s in our system, it becomes a liability. To watch over something unique; so unique that The Order tried to reproduce it for years and couldn’t.”

Juzo nodded.

“And this is the last dose there is,” he said. He didn’t know how, but he did.

“The Imperialists cleaned up the lab and unknowingly took it away along with the Totem,” said Broga. “I needed to get it back before my brother Brun took it. Brun is… complicated.”

Finally, they both managed to look away from the Plasma and detach themselves from that strange state of contemplation.

Broga pointed the cannon at Juzo again.

“You’re surrounded. Save yourself the humiliation and do as I say,” he warned, and the pieces of the helmet reassembled around his head, and his voice sounded synthesized and chilling again. “You do it now, or I’ll blow your head off and pick up the proteins from your corpse with these things myself,” he threatened, showing the surgical instruments sticking out of his left hand.

Juzo bared his teeth. He tightened his hand and let out a faint bluish luminescence; he had no power left even to create a Fotia. What Broga said was true; he was lost. If even with his capacity at one hundred percent it had been difficult for him to get out of a situation like that, under the current conditions, it would be impossible.

He looked at the small cylindrical container and the needles that were exposed on the sides. All he had to do was to stick one end into Uri’s heart and the other into his heart, to get the complex system into operation, just as the Totem had shown him. His blood’s proteins had to be removed directly from the heart, where the impulse was more powerful. Then, that mysterious, shiny white liquid would do the rest.

Both twins would suffer a cardiogenic shock. But while Uri would put up with it, thanks to the genetic type of his protein, Juzo wouldn’t be so lucky. There was no way around it.

Juzo bowed his head and accepted his sentence. At least Uri would survive that night. Juzo was sure Broga wouldn’t let his twin die; after all, he needed him alive to test the powers once they woke up. He then wondered how long it would take them to wake up and how they would. Surely, it wouldn’t be easy, nor pleasant for Uri.

He knelt on one knee in front of him, and taking him from behind, sat him down. Uri’s head tilted back, exposing his face. Uri’s eyes were closed and his expression was serene, very different from the one he had had before falling unconscious.

Juzo removed the dirt the blasts had thrown into Uri’s face, and leaning him back, he exposed his brother’s chest to the night sky. With his fingers, he looked for the spot where he had to stick the needle in. And buried it to the bottom. Knowing he wouldn’t go on if he stopped to think about it—even when Broga was threatening him with a weapon—he got close to his brother and let the other pointy end of the container sink into his heart.

Oddly enough, there was no pain. He sensed the pumping of his hot blood fluctuating through the small cylinder and mixing with that strange white liquid. Then he felt his skin curl and the energy flowing, energy that beat like a truly living organism.

Invaded by a deep sense of surrender and a slight sting in his chest, he seemed to hear the crackling of flames. Was it the sound of the fire consuming the car crash on the other side of the park?

No. The sound didn’t come from there. The sound came from the Primary Plasma. It was the sound of power.

The Binary project had reached its final phase, for better or worse, and Juzo surrendered to it.

His life ended, and not in the way he had imagined. Everything was wrapping up far from the strife of his country; and not even on a battlefield, surrounded by an army of enemies, but in a city park, surrounded by two miserable thugs and a scientist who hid a face that looked just like his behind an android mask.

Juzo was dying with the greatest defeat that could have fallen upon him; a defeat that, nonetheless, felt like a strange triumph.

“Will you watch… over Uri?” Juzo asked; his voice broke between sighs.

Broga clicked his tongue once again as if to say, ‘Do you still not know who you’re talking to?’

“I bet one of my arms that you made that bitch friend of yours promise you that same nonsense,” he said.

“Malin…” Juzo called her.

It would have been nice to have her by his side, to tell her how happy he’d been with her company, and to apologize for pushing her away at the last minute; at the most key moment of his life and when he needed her the most. But he no longer had a way to send his message, but to dedicate her a farewell smile from the distance and wait for her to receive it in her soul, wherever she might be.

“Malin,” he sighed one last time, and his heart stopped.

And it was all over.

Broga retracted the laser cannon and the sharp instruments from his hands, and separated the twins, leaving them lying on the grass; he didn’t do it gently, but he didn’t do it rudely either. He knelt, withdrew the metal cylinder that was stuck in Uri’s chest, contracted the needles, and put it in his trench coat pocket. Then he closed Juzo’s eyes.

“Easy,” he said. “If my theory is correct, this has not been a definitive ending for you.”