Adam screamed in terror, jumped back, and knocked over his chair. He tripped over its legs before regaining his balance.

  Out of thin air, Juzo had created a plasma-like lamp—just like the ones in school science labs or museums—but made of pure energy so raw it burned like fire.

  Juzo relaxed his fingers, and the swarm of sparks dissolved.

  Adam froze, unable to blink, his heart racing. His rational mind told him it had to be a trick, but his fear outweighed any logic.

  “How-how did you do-do that?”

  The soldier repeated the display, this time with his other hand, letting the glowing arcs spread across his fingers. The blue flames twirled over his palm, apparently causing him no harm.

  “We call it Fotia,” he said, extinguishing the light.

  Adam’s amber eyes darted from Juzo’s hand to his own and back again. Moments ago, he’d been debating whether to believe what he’d heard. Now, he wasn’t sure if he could believe what he’d seen. He mimicked the movement, but, of course, nothing happened.

  “Why can’t I do it?”

  “Because that has nothing to do with the project you two were part of,” Vicky interjected. “It was just to shut you up for a while.”

  To further drive the point home, Vicky conjured matching spheres of electric fire in both her hands. Identical to Juzo’s, the crackling lights vanished after a moment when she flexed her fingers. Then, extending her arm toward Adam, she revealed the inside of her wrist. Beneath her skin, just before the joint, was a flat, microchip-like object.

  Adam grabbed her arm to get a closer look. There it was, a small scar left by the implant’s insertion. “An implant? But how…? Who developed this? Do you know if it was Morris & Co.?”

  “It’s part of a military program,” Vicky explained. “Grenadiers, elite soldiers.”

  “Incredible! How have I never heard of this? Why wouldn’t your superiors make something like this public?”

  “First, because it’s a classified program,” she emphasized. “And second, because out of twenty soldiers who attempt to become Grenadiers, only one survives the treatment.” She gestured to the veins in her arm. “The implant is just the trigger. The real power comes from a chemical serum, but not all bodies can handle it.”

  “Uh, right…” Adam’s entrepreneurial enthusiasm fizzled. “Deaths are bad for business, huh?”

  “The Grenadier program has been active for maybe four years,” Vicky continued. “But military technology has been advancing behind the scenes for much longer than that. Hundreds of projects like this exist, and dismissing them just because they sound fantastical isn’t wise.”

  Adam shook his head.

  “I get it… Your name’s Vicky, right? But there’s a big difference between an adult voluntarily undergoing treatment with a serum and an implant, and putting a baby in a steroid-infused incubator. That’s crossing some serious moral lines. Who in their right mind would authorize something like this… Binary Atalistic?”

  Vicky glared at him.

  “The Binary Atavistic Project was obviously illegal… and secret,” she said.

  Adam raised his hands in a gesture of truce. “Alright, glad that’s clear! And come on, don’t look at me like that! It very well could’ve been one of those military-scientific programs run by your… bosses. And I say that because their projects always have the dumbest names. I mean, Atavistic? What even is that? But hey, who knows what they’re up to behind closed doors, right? I work in tech, and you wouldn’t believe how many protocols we have to follow, while some clients don’t give a single—”

  Suddenly, he fell silent. Everyone fell silent.

  A trickle of blood started dripping from Adam’s nose.

  “Oh, come on! Not again!” he grumbled as the warm blood touched his lips. His already stained white shirt gained another red splotch.

  He pinched his nose and tilted his head back, those two watching him with concern.

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” he said, heading to the bathroom to rinse off. Just like last time, the bleeding stopped as fast as it had started.

  Juzo and Vicky watched as he passed by, taking off his shirt and heading to the laundry room behind the kitchen.

  “Hope these bloodstains come out,” he muttered, as if they cared. He sprayed stain remover on the shirt and tossed it into the washing machine. “Now, tell me more about this project. Are those implants and the serum somehow related to…?”

  “When else did you bleed?” Juzo asked.

  “Come again?”

  “You said, ‘not again,’” Juzo repeated. “When else did you have a nosebleed tonight?”

  “Hah! So you do ask questions!” Adam laughed, but when he turned around, he noticed a strange look of alert on both their faces. “What’s going on now?”

  Juzo took a step forward, his face tense with barely-contained panic. “When did you bleed?!”

  Adam shrugged. “At the club, right after you caught me off guard in the restroom. Why?”

  Juzo took another step toward him. “Listen—Adam, tell me everything unusual that happened at that club.”

  Adam sighed. “Unusual? How about ‘everything’? I argued with my best friend, I ran into you, and I ran into a crazy woman—or rather, she ran into me… And while we’re at it, what was that nonsense about showing up in the restroom just to leave right after?”

  “No… I…” Juzo hesitated for a moment, then dismissed it, “It’s a long story.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Yeah? Alright, so why don’t you make the time?”

  Vicky stepped in between the brothers. “Adam, that woman—did she do something to you?”

  Adam’s eyes widened. How did she know what had happened?

  “Yeah… um… she… dug her nails into me,” he said, showing the marks on his arm. “Here, see?”

  Vicky and Juzo exchanged glances.

  “They didn’t need to come here because they’ve already found him,” she said.

  “That means they could be on their way,” Juzo concluded. “We’d better leave.”

  Adam held up his hand, signaling for time. “What are you talking about? Who’s ‘found me’? Go where?”

  Juzo pulled out another set of objects from his bag; this time, they were chrome rectangles about the size and thickness of a medium-sized book. Both Vicky and he strapped one to their backs like small metallic backpacks, fastening them with thick elastic straps crisscrossed over their chests and clipped in the center.

  “And what are those?” Adam asked.

  “The woman from the club,” Juzo said. “Tell me more about her. Did you know her? Do you remember what she looked like?”

  “You kidding? How could I forget? Bald, no eyebrows, with skin… I dunno, almost translucent? Maybe around sixty? Dressed like she’d just come from some kind of ceremony. Don’t remember seeing her before.”

  Vicky turned to Juzo. “I know,” she said, anticipating what he was going to ask. “I’ll head to that club. I’ll look for her.”

  “Thanks,” Juzo replied. “I doubt she’s still there, but it’s our only lead.”

  Vicky turned back to Adam. “Remind me of the address for that club, dear.”

  “Fifth Avenue and Tenth, Magenta District.”

  “Got it.”

  Juzo unplugged the chargers he’d connected to the outlets, and the light on the lamp returned to normal. He grabbed a pair of those cuffs and slipped them on.

  Vicky did the same with the other set, and sliding her fingers along one cuff, she activated a small holographic screen projected over its surface.

  “They’re low on power,” she said, “but it’ll be enough to keep the communication channel open.”

  “A wrist communicator?” Adam scoffed, disappointed; he’d expected them to be something else. “Not even Morris & Co. would dare produce something that gaudy and power-hungry.”

  Vicky walked over to a window by the laundry room, which faced the side of the building. She opened it, sat on the ledge, leaned halfway out, and leapt into the air.

  Horrified, Adam rushed over to see where she’d fallen. Grabbing the frame, he poked his head out the window.

  Down in the alley, there was no one. No one splattered on the pavement twelve stories down, no one on top of the dumpster, and no one on the roof of the building next door. It was night, and the lighting in that area was dim, but he should have been able to spot her.

  Then he heard it: amid the city’s noises, the faint whirring sound of what sounded like airplane turbines but much softer. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something hovering beside him. A pair of black boots. High-heeled boots.

  “No way…”

  Vicky was suspended in mid-air; two rectangular thrusters had unfolded from the chrome device on her back, like metallic wings. They emitted no hot combustion or air currents, just a faint whir and a silvery glow. Anti-gravity jetpacks. Adam had seen similar prototypes at work demos, though none as impressive as these.

  With her black hair blowing in the wind, her hoop earrings shining like gold, and her bronze cheeks painted by the moonlight, the girl’s gaze filled with deep concern.

  “Are you sure this is…?” she started, but her voice trailed off.

  Adam thought she was talking to him, but those blue eyes were actually fixed on Juzo, who was beside him.

  “Don’t worry,” the soldier said to his partner, attempting a reassuring smile. “Everything will be fine.”

  Not fully convinced, Vicky nodded back at Juzo and took off, flying southeast, disappearing among the buildings, fading into the city lights and shadows of the night.

  Adam was at a loss for words. The girl’s sorrowful gaze and her brother’s feigned confidence were unsettling, yet the technological marvels he was witnessing vied for his attention.

  “Where did you get those jetpacks?” he asked.

  “We stole them,” Juzo replied, heading back to the living area to grab the files from the table and stuff them into his backpack. “Now we need to go. I’m guessing you’ve got a vehicle.”

  Adam nodded, patting the car keys in his pants pocket. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain on the way,” Juzo promised, swung his backpack over the small, folded jetpack on his back, and guided Adam toward the apartment door, checking the hallway was empty.

  “Hold on, let me grab a shirt, and…” Adam started to turn back, but a faint clinking sound came from his bedroom upstairs; one of the windows must have banged against the wall.

  Juzo motioned for silence and nudged him into the hallway. There was no time to grab a shirt.

  “I usually leave the windows open,” Adam whispered. “It’s just the wind.”

  But Juzo didn’t respond.

  Leaving his house shirtless was something Adam used to do without a second thought, a habit formed from years of modeling half-naked.

  Mr. Quintana, his only neighbor on the floor, had seen him countless times in his underwear, taking out the trash or saying goodbye to one of his lovers.

  Mrs. Mellini, who lived a few floors below, had also caught him shirtless in the elevator on a couple of occasions as he returned from the beach. ‘You’re not modeling anymore, young man. Would you mind covering up, please?’ she had said to him once.

  Tonight, however, stepping outside without a shirt stirred a feeling close to shame. It wasn’t modesty but nerves, with Juzo right behind him, forcing him to move forward. His brother’s exaggerated reaction unsettled him more than the clinking of the window and what that might mean.

  “I’m telling you, it was probably just the wind, man,” he insisted, still whispering, just in case. “We’re on the twelfth floor, y’know? The air currents are strong up here.”

  “Maybe, but we can’t take any chances,” Juzo replied, glancing back over his shoulder.

  “All this fuss over a nosebleed?” Adam muttered, demanding answers as they neared the elevators, but Juzo motioned him toward the stairwell at the end of the hall instead.

  When Adam tried to turn on the lights to illuminate the long descent, Juzo stopped him, and they began their way down in semi-darkness, guided by the faint glow seeping through the small side windows.

  Whether it was the anxiety, the lack of a shirt, or the cold draft filling the deep stairwell, Adam shivered, his teeth chattering as he panted for air. Hearing his footsteps louder than he could see the steps only heightened the sense of dread.

  A loud slam echoed through the stairwell. One of the doors connecting the stairs to the building’s hallways had opened and shut abruptly, though the noise made it hard to tell if it had come from a floor above or below them.

  Juzo looked up, Adam looked down. They were only two or three floors from the ground level, so they sped up.

  Juzo peered through the door from the stairwell into the lobby, confirming the coast was clear, and gestured for Adam to follow him.

  As he exited, Adam found himself facing the mirrored wall of the reception area, and he felt as if he’d stumbled into a carnival funhouse. There, the reflection revealed one Adam with messy hair, bare chest, jeans and sneakers, next to another Adam with short hair, a beard, and a military uniform. Which one of them was the real doppelg?nger?

  “Hurry up,” Juzo whispered, giving him a push.

  Adam moved toward the building’s entrance, hoping Rubén, the doorman, was somewhere else and wouldn’t see him with Juzo. Any awkward questions were best avoided. Approaching the glass doors, he saw the older man outside, leaning against a pillar, flipping through Loud, the holo-magazine Adam had given him.

  Alerted by the sound of the door opening, Rubén turned to them.

  “Came back to change, and now you’re leaving half-dressed?” he remarked to Adam, but at the sight of Juzo, he dropped the holo-magazine card, and the projection went dark. “White O… 23?” he whispered, mouth agape.

  Adam barely gave a parting nod before hurrying to his car. Juzo stuck close to his shoulder, and Adam didn’t want to risk another one of those annoying shoves just for looking at Rubén too long. For now, it was better to play along until he knew what was going on and who they were running from.

  Adam unlocked the car and got behind the wheel. Juzo, without removing the backpack from his back, climbed into the passenger seat and issued a clear, if not particularly informative, order, “Drive.”

  The engine purred quietly, and the headlights gleamed like a cat’s eyes in the dark. The small blue car rolled forward, scattering the reddish leaves that had fallen from the trees onto the windshield.

  With a gnawing sense that he was leaving behind the peace of his neighborhood—maybe for good—Adam turned the corner at Whedon and headed down Thirty-Seventh, driving without a clear destination, afraid to ask where they were going.