Dr. Kara Lieven had left Proxima Central Hospital nearly two hours ago, just as the clock struck midnight, marking the start of Saturday. Having finished her shift, she was set on not stepping foot in that place again until Monday morning.

  Yet here she was, climbing the entry stairs, passing the massive columns that held up the stone fa?ade, ignoring the gaze of those revered figures of medicine sculpted above, who seemed to watch her return.

  A nurse friend had messaged her, and the news didn’t just shatter any thoughts of sleep; it had propelled her back through nine entire neighborhoods, from her home in the Green District all the way to the White District at the heart of the metropolis, where the hospital towered.

  Fortunately, Kara was young and could afford to postpone sleep, ready to keep her eyes wide open and her pulse steady enough to hold a scalpel. She had to be prepared for anything!

  Proxima Central was one of the oldest and most important health centers, a place that never knew emptiness. Even on a weekend night, often hectic with victims of fights or drunk drivers—a big reason why she hadn’t planned on coming back until Monday—there were more people around than usual this time.

  In the lobby, some people were talking about a truck’s trailer and how terrible the explosion had been, while others were mourning someone’s death. Kara just hoped the reason that had brought her back wasn’t related to any of that.

  Dodging wandering patients and the bustling staff, she entered her office, not even bothering to turn on the light. She grabbed her green coat and threw it over her blouse. Adjusting her glasses, she headed straight to the Emergency Room.

  In her seven years as a doctor there, Kara had gotten used to seeing horrible things and treating terrifying cases. But when the patient was someone she knew, it was different.

  Her face flushed. She felt a churning in her stomach, which she figured could be due to three things: hunger, lack of sleep, or, more likely, nerves.

  As she was tying up her reddish hair with a rubber band she found in her pocket, another doctor, a tall, broad-shouldered woman, approached with such a determined stride that even some nurses stepped aside. She didn’t blame them; Dr. Cabrera could intimidate anyone, not just because of her formidable size but because her temper could shake the entire hospital.

  Cabrera pulled down her mask, her cheeks glistening under the hallway lights, and removed her surgical cap with the same gesture a disgusted rookie nurse might use to pull off bloody gloves. The cap’s elastic snagged on her thick black curls.

  Kara smoothed down her coat, hoping it didn’t look like she’d just thrown it on in a rush, and took a deep breath, wanting to hide how rattled she felt. She knew Cabrera wouldn’t welcome her presence, and showing just how emotionally invested she was would only cause her problems.

  “What are you doing here, Lieven?” Cabrera said. “You know this hospital has a strict policy about respecting shifts, and yours is over.”

  Kara knew the hospital’s policies. But she also knew that Cabrera’s annoyance wasn’t really about her breaking them—it was about Kara having mistakenly handled one of Cabrera’s patients last week. Cabrera had raised hell, complained to the board, and since then, the tension between them had gone from professional to personal.

  “We have enough staff, Lieven. I don’t want you snooping around my patients again.”

  “I told you that was a mistake!” Kara retorted, looking away from Cabrera to avoid letting the argument escalate. She had a reason to be here, and getting into a fight wasn’t going to help, especially not with the head of the current medical shift.

  Cabrera, knowing how stubborn Kara could be despite her calm demeanor, didn’t bother to stop her and followed behind.

  “So why are you here, then?”

  “I was told Adam White was admitted,” Kara explained, her voice faltering a bit. “He’s a friend, and I want to see him.”

  

  Hey, sweetie, you’re friends with Adam White, right? Listen… um… I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he was just admitted to the ER, y’know? As soon as I have more details, I’ll let you know, okay?

  Kara had found the voicemail from Lisa, her nurse friend, right after stepping out of the shower. By then, over ten minutes had passed since she’d received it, along with a missed call she hadn’t heard. When she tried calling Lisa back for more details, there was no response; Lisa must have been busy with a patient.

  So, she’d tried calling a few other colleagues, even the hospital reception, but no one could tell her Adam’s exact condition. To make matters worse, Adam’s own phone was dead.

  “If you’re here about White,” said Cabrera, “then you can ask me. I’m handling his case.”

  They both passed through the door marked ‘Emergency’ and entered another corridor filled with doctors and nurses.

  “Where is he?” Kara asked. “What happened?”

  Cabrera took a second to answer.

  “Coma… Your friend is in a coma.”

  Kara went pale, her steps slowing down noticeably. Adam was in a coma.

  She remembered the last time she’d seen him, the previous weekend at the Central Hospital charity gala. There, her friend had been treated like a celebrity due to his work with Homam Enterprises, one of the top companies supporting the city’s hospitals with donations of equipment and machinery. A sharp pain hit her chest. Nothing bad should happen to someone as cheerful as Adam—not to him!

  Just as she was about to ask for more details, both she and Cabrera had to step aside for two nurses wheeling a patient on a stretcher. The poor guy looked pretty bad, with what seemed to be burn injuries. Cabrera then remarked, “Multi-vehicle crash at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Thirteenth Street.”

  The truck trailer and the explosion! Kara shuddered, as if her stomach had tightened. If Adam was in a medically induced coma because of the accident, he could have been fatally injured, and…

  “Your friend wasn’t in the crash,” Cabrera reassured her. “The paramedics found him and the other one just a few yards away, in Liberty Park.”

  Kara’s stomach settled, mostly. It was still too soon to feel relieved.

  “Are you saying they found Adam and someone else?”

  Cabrera headed toward Room Seven. “Him and his twin,” she said.

  “His twin?” Kara stopped in her tracks, and her glasses slipped down her nose. “Adam doesn’t have a twin!”

  With a grumpy look that seemed to say, ‘Don’t waste my time,’ Cabrera pushed open the door and pointed to the patients inside.

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  Kara’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my…”

  When she came back to the hospital, Kara had imagined all kinds of scenarios for what could have happened to her friend—from him lying in bed with tubes down his throat from a case of food poisoning to being injured and bandaged from some reckless accident. What she saw now hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  In the room were two beds; in one lay Adam White, covered to the waist with a sheet, and in the other, lying in the same way, was Adam White again. Two identical people, each with an IV stand beside the bed, a drip in their arms, and monitors tracking their vitals. Apart from the fact that one had a beard and the other didn’t, it was almost impossible to tell who was who.

  “Your friend is on the left,” said Cabrera, standing by the foot of the bed on the right. “We’ve admitted this one as White X00. Based on his clothing, we assume he was a soldier from… I don’t remember the name—one of those foreign regimes; we’ve filed the report, but we haven’t received any notification from the police yet. He didn’t have any ID on him either, but it’s not hard to guess there’s a relationship between the two, don’t you think?”

  Kara’s eyes darted between the two patients, and Cabrera understood her colleague’s reaction was genuine.

  “Some friend you turned out to be, Lieven! You didn’t even know Adam had a brother, did you?”

  Kara hated having her word questioned.

  “Adam and I grew up together in the same orphanage,” she replied. “I’ve known him as long as I can remember. If anyone besides him had known about a sibling, it would have been me!”

  Cabrera huffed in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t know you were an orphan!”

  Kara went quiet. How foolish—she’d just given Cabrera new gossip material for the hospital staff for the whole week.

  “Yes, yes. I was lucky enough to be adopted by the Lievens, okay? Now, can I focus on what actually matters? Thanks.”

  She leaned over Adam, gently stroking his cheek.

  Remember, he’s not your friend right now, she thought. He’s a patient. A patient needs a doctor, not a friend.

  This was no place or time to act like one of those rookies who fell apart every time they lost a patient, especially with Cabrera standing right there, watching her every move.

  She released Adam’s hand and, picking up the glass tablet by his bed, activated it with a touch. The medical report projected in front of her, displaying a series of holographic records filled with X-rays and various test results.

  “No brain injury, no strokes…” she said, scanning each test. “Infections, tumors, blood glucose levels, toxins…” She turned off the holographic report, puzzled. “Nothing. Everything looks normal.”

  Cabrera nodded. “Exactly. In theory, your friend should be awake.”

  Kara turned her attention to the other patient: White X00, the man who looked just like Adam, though unshaven with shorter hair.

  Who was he, and where had he been all these years? How long had Adam known about him, and why hadn’t he ever told her? Those were questions for later. She set aside her amazement, picked up his tablet, and activated the medical report, as Cabrera uncovered him.

  “This one does have head trauma, leg injuries, a burn wound on his back… and some other strange things,” she said, showing White X00’s arm, where a small wound was visible on the inner wrist along with reddened skin. “Look at this cut here,” she pointed out. “There’s a matching one on the other arm; neither is deep, barely a scrape, though the tendons are damaged. Something had been removed from there just before the paramedics arrived. And look at this erythema on the skin; he must have been wearing wristbands or… maybe he was handcuffed. I mean, since he was dressed like a soldier… I dunno.”

  Kara’s gaze slowly lifted until it met her colleague’s. “Luckily, doctor, figuring that out is the police’s job now, not ours, right?”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Cabrera replied, blushing. “Well, as I was saying, according to our scans, none of these injuries show significant damage that could have put him into a coma.”

  “So, what then?”

  Cabrera indicated a small spot between White X00’s nipples, just over his heart. There was a tiny puncture mark surrounded by a faint bruise.

  “It’s almost invisible—see it? Your friend Adam has the same mark.”

  Kara pressed her lips together. “Were they…?”

  Cabrera shook her head. “The toxicology report came back clean. No drugs in their systems, at least none that we know of. But something got in there, y’know? I’d bet if we knew what, we’d have the answer to this… phantom coma.”

  Kara reread the results. “How were they found?”

  “From what I’ve been told,” Cabrera explained, “Central Monitoring reported that the park keeper android and the park’s surveillance system had gone offline, so they sent out a technician to check on it. That’s when they stumbled upon them and called the paramedics working nearby at the accident. One of them mentioned that part of the park looked like a war zone, filled with craters, and the android was blown to bits. Your friend and his brother really went wild there.”

  Once again, Kara shot her a glare; the last thing she wanted to hear right now were wild theories linking her friend to vandalism, especially without proof.

  Cabrera realized she might have gone too far and cleared her throat. “I also heard something odd, y’know?”

  “What?” Kara asked.

  “Roberto, the ambulance driver…” Cabrera lowered her voice, as if embarrassed by what she was about to say. “Roberto says he saw a video filmed by a girl near the accident scene, showing some guys… Well, he says you could see two guys flying. Then he said one of them had a red light on his face, y’know, like those Cyclops.”

  Kara brushed it off. “They were probably testing a new flying android, who knows.”

  “Could be, sure,” Cabrera said. “But it’s strange that two men were seen flying so close to where these two were later found—that’s all.”

  Kara gave her another hard stare. “Susana, Adam doesn’t fly, and he doesn’t do test flights for new robot models—especially not on a Friday night.”

  Cabrera shrugged. “Right, right. I was just saying it was strange that—”

  The monitor tracking Adam’s condition beeped. On the screen, his vitals flashed before returning to normal.

  The doctors moved away from White X00 and went to check on Adam. Not trusting the machine, Kara checked her friend’s carotid pulse. Everything seemed fine at first.

  Then, the alarms on the monitors went off.

  As impossible as it seemed, as if it had been coordinated, the twin brothers had both gone into ventricular fibrillation at the same time—a complete breakdown in their heart rhythms that would soon lead to death.

  Adam and Juzo convulsed, and as if one monitor mirrored the other, both of their electrocardiograms turned into a violent series of spikes. Each doctor grabbed a defibrillator from the shelf.

  Three paramedics burst into the room, drawn by the alarms. One of them grabbed the gel bottle, while another slipped on latex gloves.

  Kara turned to Adam and raised the defibrillator paddles. A paramedic applied gel to Cabrera’s paddles, and she pressed them to White X00’s chest.

  “Charge to 300! Clear!”

  The machine beeped, and she delivered the electric shock.

  The monitors showed no improvement. A continuous tone indicated that the patients had flatlined.

  “No response!”

  Kara activated the charge, and Adam’s body arched from the artificial shock.

  The monitor lines stayed flat. Adam was slipping away.

  “He’s coding! Get an amp of epinephrine and charge to 360! Now!”

  The paramedic plunged a long needle into the man’s heart, injected the contents, and withdrew it. Kara placed the paddles; the machine beeped, and once again, the electric shock jolted Adam.

  Neither twin was responding.

  Sweating profusely, Cabrera stepped away from White X00.

  “There’s nothing more we can do,” she said.

  Kara’s voice grew desperate. “You can’t just give up now!”

  The larger doctor turned toward her. The rivalry in her expression was back. “Lieven, this is my watch! Things are done my way, and I say we’ve done everything possible!”

  “No, you haven’t!” Kara addressed both her team and those working on White X00. “Another round of epi and shock them again!”

  The paramedics didn’t know who to obey.

  “Are you insane?” Cabrera snapped. “If the fibrillation doesn’t cause irreversible brain damage, you will!”

  “So what?! They’d be dead either way! I’ll take full responsibility, but I’m not leaving without trying. Do it! Epinephrine! 360! Now!”

  Once more, the needles sank into the twins’ hearts. The defibrillators beeped one last time, then discharged with a loud whump.

  The deathly tones on the monitors continued.

  The brothers were gone.

  Letting out a sigh, Dr. Lieven and Dr. Cabrera stepped back and moved away from their patients. There was nothing more to be done. Death had won.

  As Kara turned away to avoid looking at her friend lying lifeless, one of the monitors suddenly shifted to a slow, rhythmic beep… beep… beep…

  The vitals they’d fought so hard for had returned, but on only one monitor. Death had shown mercy to the doctors and, as if respecting their tenacity, had returned life—but only to one patient.

  Lieven and Cabrera exchanged glances.

  Adam White had come back. His twin had not.

  Later, Kara Lieven felt a strange sense of loss standing over the man lying lifeless on the gurney, ready to be taken to the morgue. He looked so identical to her friend that she couldn’t shake the thought that maybe it was Adam lying there, not the one sleeping in the left wing of the room.

  Nonsense, she told herself.

  Only when the hospital staff took the body, covered in a sheet with a tag labeled ‘White X00’ hanging from his foot, was she able to look away.

  With a tightness in her chest and an overwhelming urge to cry, Kara lifted her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She deserved a rest, though she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  She stroked Adam’s cheek, wondering what she would say when he woke up and asked about his twin.

  Act 1!

  Thanks a ton to everyone who’s been reading along—it really means a lot.

  Act 2 starts this Monday, with new chapters every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.