Clink, clink…

  The sound came from far away—a repetitive, piercing metallic cling, cling, followed by a muffled thud, thud.

  “Damn kids! Stop making noise!” Brun protested. He wanted to keep sleeping, although, much to his dismay, his eyes were already open. Well, almost.

  He woke up. Immersed in the Nocturnal Nebulae, he looked down. He was still barefoot and wearing the same green robe as before.

  How long had he been asleep? A few hours? A day? No, much longer than that—perhaps years.

  He touched his head. Still bald. Of course, inside the Nocturnal Nebulae, time worked differently.

  Cling, cling, thud, thud—it rang out, so loud it seemed to tear through the fabric of space. The shimmering dust of the Nocturnal Nebulae—reddish here, yellowish there—formed overlapping ripples, like the ones he used to make when tossing a stone into the pond. A trembling soundwave where other colors joined in—blues and violets blending at the edges.

  “Enough already! Leave me alone!” he growled.

  “We’re not the ones causing it, Brun,” replied the Duplicate Children, as always, without moving their lips.

  Yes, that kind of noise wasn’t their doing. That meant…

  “Broga!” he exclaimed, bursting with joy. “My brother has come home!”

  “What are you talking about, Brun?”

  “Those sounds! Don’t you hear them? It must be the teknishuns fixing the outer pipes. I overheard Dr. Clemente saying they needed repairs. Broga must have gone to fetch them, and now he’s here!”

  Overcome with happiness and excitement, Brun broke through the cocoon of dust and gas where he had been sleeping. The Nocturnal Nebulae mattress spilled under his feet, pulling him back into the Dunker’s operatin’ room.

  Darkness closed in on him, but the colorful trails of space illuminated his surroundings. Unfortunately, none of the space’s glowing streaks could erase that foul smell.

  That place… Ugh! It smelled awful!

  Everything was filthy—the walls, the floor, the entire operatin’ room was a disaster. When Broga saw it, he’d be furious.

  Hovering above the grimy floor to avoid touching it with his bare feet, Brun floated through the Nocturnal Nebulae, trying to get away from the stench. He moved past the operating bed and nearly smacked into the Totem. His brother’s massive machine stood there, silent and almost lifeless.

  “The potion, Brun…” the children whispered. “Now that you’re here, why not take it right now?”

  Brun reached out toward the Totem’s belly. The potion’s scent was… irresistible. He wanted to taste it. He needed it. But he stopped himself.

  “No! This is Broga’s potion!”

  “He gave it to you, Brun,” one of the children said. “Don’t you remember?”

  Brun looked the child in the eyes, confused.

  “When did Broga give it to me?”

  For a moment, he hesitated—until the cling, cling sound pulled his attention again, and he turned toward the exit.

  “Brun!” The children tried to stop him. “Where are you going?!”

  “To welcome my brother, where else?” he replied.

  “Come back, Brun! You can’t leave this place! If you go, the Nebulas will go with you, and without them here, he will smell the potion!”

  “What are you talking about, you wretched kids? Who’s that he?”

  “The Potion Seeker,” one of the children said.

  “Without Broga’s machines running, the Nebulas are the only thing keeping him away from this place,” said another. “If you take them with you, the Seeker will track the potion’s trail and come looking for it!”

  “Seeker? Who’s this Seeker you’re talking about?”

  “The hound of the unworthy people!” they replied.

  “Not this again! I’m so sick of hearing about unworthy people and—”

  Cling, cling, thud. The sound interrupted him, and Brun stopped arguing to search for his brother.

  He stepped out of the operatin’ room and into one of the Dunker’s long corridors. Everything was dark there, but at least it didn’t smell as bad.

  “Broga!” he called out for his brother. His response was a pulsating red light shining ahead of him.

  It didn’t take long for him to recognize it: the eye of one of the robot men—the Cythlops who always followed Broga everywhere. He remembered this one particularly well, with his big, funny mustache. Was his name Alfred?

  “Master Brun,” Alfred greeted him. “I will inform Master Broga of your awakening.” And, turning away, he left.

  “Wait! Take me with you!” Brun called after him.

  But the mustached android moved so quickly that, in the blink of an eye, he had crossed most of the long hallway and was already entering the next one, where shadows swallowed everything. Then, as if it were a carpet of fog and stars, the Nocturnal Nebulae stretched out in the same direction, carrying Brun with them so he could catch up.

  Without even touching the floor, Brun found himself less than three feet behind Alfred in the blink of an eye.

  “Hey, please take me to my brother!” he pleaded. But when he grabbed the Cythlops by the shoulder, a crackling flash erupted—terrifying, like lightning ripping through a stormy sky. His brother’s assistant exploded into pieces, scattering sparks of color.

  The scraps of Alfred’s black suit, engulfed in rings of fire, rained down on a bewildered Brun, who watched as the poor android’s head fell to the ground, bouncing like a metal ball down the hallway.

  Brun stood there, staring at the scattered remains, confused. Why had that happened? Didn’t the mustached android have that cube-shaped hat on his head? Had he gotten too close? Or was his light growing even stronger?

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  Broga! His brother would know how to fix Alfred.

  “Go back to the room, Brun!” the Duplicate Children shouted angrily.

  Brun glanced back over his shoulder: there they were, that swarm of little monsters, right behind him. He sometimes forgot that they, too, could swim through the Nocturnal Nebulae. No matter how far or fast he went, he could never shake them off.

  “The Potion Seeker,” the children pointed. “He’s already found the potion’s trail and is coming. We can feel it!”

  Brun hesitated. Maybe they were telling the truth. Then again, they could be lying. He knew the children weren’t always honest and often played dirty tricks on him—especially when it came to something involving Broga.

  Cling, thud…

  “Broga!” called Brun, turning toward the sound and locking his gaze on a point in the hallway. Behind that wall, behind those stones, was…

  “Brun, come back!”

  “Leave me alone!” he snapped angrily.

  The Nocturnal Nebulae stretched out once more, this time toward the point his eyes were fixed on. With a single step, he found himself in another corridor—gray and rocky, shrouded in shadows, with gaps in the walls.

  But it wasn’t a corridor. It was one of the caves within the Canyon Cliff—the cave that ran behind his room in the Dunker. There were things scattered on the ground: boxes, a ladder, and objects like the ones men used when they needed to open a hole in a wall or fix the house’s pipes. Tools, that’s what they were called.

  There were lights too, though not the kind that filled his Nebulas. With a sweep of his hand, he cleared away the stardust haze and saw where the lights were coming from… helmets? Yes, and phones held in the hands of a bunch of… young people.

  A group of twentysomethings, wearing helmets with lamps, gathered their tools, folded up a ladder, and packed shiny rocks into small boxes.

  In the shadow-filled cave, the young ones stopped what they were doing and stared at Brun with their mouths agape, as if he were a ghost—a reaction he hadn’t received in a long time.

  Were they his brother’s new assistants? Maybe they were taking a break, which was why they were packing up their things. Surely, they’d know where Broga was.

  The youngsters gasped in amazement.

  “How…? Where the hell did…?” one of them stammered, his eyes wide.

  “Stevie! Don’t go near him!” a girl warned.

  Another boy brought his phone up to his mouth.

  “Uh—University of Geo-Geology? Here, group of-of students…” he stammered but froze when he looked at his phone.

  “No signal!” he cried.

  “Me neither!” the girl yelled.

  “Where’s my brother?” Brun asked, but his question was answered with frightened whimpers. As he turned to search for his brother, the stardust carpet he walked on stretched out toward the teenagers and engulfed them. Their whimpers turned into shrieks and sickening crunches.

  What he hated most had happened—the same thing that always happened whenever his white light or his reddish Nocturnal Nebulae touched someone.

  He waited for the silence to return, but the Nebulas, acting once again like an endless magic carpet, guided him toward the cave’s exit. One of the teenagers, barely able to limp along, had managed to reach it, despite his injuries.

  Brun approached him from behind, intending to ask him to stop, to warn him it wasn’t a good idea to move in that condition. But then he saw there was someone else outside the Canyon Cliff, waiting for them.

  “Broga, is that you?” he asked.

  But the figure turned around and bolted toward the forest.

  “Broga, wait!” Brun called after him. “Don’t leave me!”

  “Brun!” shouted the children.

  To hell with them! The Nocturnal Nebulae were finally leading him to his brother; he wasn’t about to stop now.

  Plunging into the forest, he passed through trees and bushes until the Nebulas left him standing in front of…

  Broga? No. It wasn’t Broga. It was another one of those twenty-somethings, and he looked quite shaken.

  “Do you know where my brother is?”

  “Brun, stop playing games with these kids and listen to us,” said the children.

  There they were again, that legion of little brats surrounding him. Not even in the forest could he escape them.

  “This boy…” Brun said to them. “If they were fixing the pipes, maybe he knows where Broga is or if he’ll be long…”

  The Duplicate Children extended the Nocturnal Nebulae toward the young man, erasing him from existence with another sickening crunch and a burst of sparks.

  “Why did you do that?!”

  “Because they were distracting you from what’s important,” one of the children replied. “You’ve left your post, and now it’s too late, Brun. The Potion Seeker is here to steal the last one. You’ll have to face him.”

  Disheartened and hurt, Brun wiped away the tears welling in his eyes and slumped his shoulders. “Then let him steal it,” he said. “If Broga doesn’t want it anymore, let that Seeker drink it. Who cares?”

  “Brun…” One of the kids grabbed his hand, looking truly terrified. “Brun, we’ll tell you the truth.”

  The children exchanged glances, as if debating whether to confess something or not, and then turned their attention back to him.

  “The truth is that the unworthy people are trying to sacrifice us to rid themselves of a shame they’ve carried for a very long time,” revealed the one holding his hand. “That’s why they use our potions for their own gain.”

  “Huh? What the hell are you talking about, you evil children?”

  “If they take that last potion,” another child said, “you, your brother, and the rest of us… we’ll all be in danger.”

  “Alright. But you’re all capable of moving the Nocturnal Nebulae. You can defend that last potion on your own.”

  “The Nebulas aren’t enough, Brun. We need your light.”

  A third child joined the others, pleading, “Brun, if you won’t face the Seeker, and you won’t drink the potion either, then at least destroy it before he gets his hands on it.”

  Brun looked at them, both alarmed and confused. It was the first time he’d heard genuine fear in the children’s voices.

  “Fine,” he agreed. “Where is this Potion Seeker?”

  The child holding his hand pulled him toward the cliffs, toward home. Then the forest began to whirl around him: trees blurred past, then rocky walls, then more trees, until the world came to a stop and he found himself back in Broga’s foul-smelling operating room.

  In front of his brother’s Totem, new Nocturnal Nebulae began to swirl into existence. They were similar to his own, yet distinctly different—a swirling mist and dust of violet and blue, moving like a mass of coiled serpents but buzzing like a swarm of bees.

  These strange Nebulas opened up, just like his did, and brought someone forth—a young man.

  Brun looked at his face and realized this figure resembled him, but it wasn’t his brother. Broga didn’t have such a… peculiar body.

  “He’s the Potion Seeker, Brun,” one of the children said with disgust.

  “He’s an aberration—a being that should never have existed,” added another.

  It was true. There was something deeply unsettling about this figure, and not just because he was naked and made no effort to cover himself.

  There was a word old Bernardo used to describe bodies like his. ‘Can you get that out of my sight, please?!’ Brun remembered hearing the old man shout once at a nurse, referring to one of the babies—one of his little brothers—sleeping in those glass jars. The appearance of that tiny sleeper had indeed been strange; Brun had seen it himself. Every time one of them looked like that, old Bernardo would get angry. ‘Keep it in the vats, will you? Just look at those malformations! What a… deformed creature!’

  Deformed! That was the word!

  And this naked figure was definitely deformed; as grotesque as those little babies had been. He was bald, just like Brun was now, but his head tilted forward, and something rose behind it on his back—a… hump?

  On one side, he had an arm as thick as a tree trunk and so long it reached his knees. On the other side, there were two arms: one scrawny and another as small as a child’s. Something dangled behind him, peeking out between his legs. A tail, perhaps? No. It was another leg, but one so tiny it looked like it belonged to a baby.

  He had supture scars, similar to Brun’s, but not just on his head—they crisscrossed his entire body, slicing through his chest, his massive arm, his waist, his legs…

  And his eyes! They were terrifying—completely white, as though someone had erased them.

  “He’s an impostor who tried to be you and your brother at the same time, Brun,” one of the Duplicate Children pointed out.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” Brun asked the so-called Seeker, but the Seeker didn’t respond; he just stared at him with those blank, empty eyes.

  Then, that distorted version of him took a deep breath, as if sniffing something out, and moved toward Broga’s Totem. When Brun saw him extend that massive arm toward the belly of the computer, where his brother had hidden the potion, he held his breath. The Duplicate Children had been right all along.

  “The potion is ours by right, Brun,” the children said. “Protect the potion from this traitor! Protect what belongs to us!”

  Brun thought of his brother, and deep within himself—in that place where he knew things without knowing how he knew them—he understood that this deformed young man, whoever he was, posed a threat to him, to his brother, and to others like them.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you take that potion,” he said, and, expanding his light, lunged at the deformed boy to protect what was theirs.

  The different Nocturnal Nebulae—one reddish, the other bluish—collided, triggering an explosion of light that scattered stardust everywhere, dragging both combatants into the void.

  Everything ended with a crack that shook the very cliffs themselves.

  Brun saw himself vanish along with the deformed young man, leaving behind the Dunker’s filthy operatin’ room and the Totem, abandoned, with the potion still inside.

  His hidden home in the Canyon Cliff was now truly deserted.