In the operating room, Clemente adjusted his surgical mask.

  “You know, I still have reservations about what we’re about to do,” he said. “I know you know, and I know you don’t care, but I wanted to say it anyway.”

  “You’re right. I know, and I don’t care,” Broga replied.

  They were about to begin the procedure, and Broga sterilized his cybernetic hands in the steam chamber. A nurse offered him a plastic cap and a mask, but he waved them off. Pressing the device at the base of his neck, the silver helmet expanded to cover his head. That would suffice to maintain sterility, and its technology would also assist with the operation.

  “I trust the Primary Plasma spikes in your brother’s lymphatic system will remain under control,” Clemente said, covering his thick white hair with a disposable cap before scrubbing his hands. “You’ve run the studies yourself, and your calculations are always precise. And, of course, in front of you stands the best neurosurgeon in Pannotia. But beyond that, you should know there’s a risk that he…”

  “…could fall into a persistent vegetative state. I know,” Broga finished for him.

  Clemente raised his hands, allowing the nurse to slip gloves onto them.

  “I was going to say that he might not survive at all. But I think leaving him as a vegetable could be worse than killing him.”

  Broga stared at him, his eyes hidden behind the enormous red visor of his helmet. Clemente knew him well enough to recognize the expression lurking behind that cold Cyclops mask.

  “Nothing will go wrong if we stay within the time frame I specified,” Broga said. “Now, prove you’re a better neurosurgeon than Lucy Templeton—and faster—and I promise I won’t take your head off for being such an insolent brat.”

  Clemente winked.

  “Well, before you take my head off, at least invite me to dinner.”

  That would be the last friendly gesture the young doctor would ever make.

  Together, they entered the operating room.

  Brun lay on the surgical table, asleep. A nurse had just finished shaving his head. The old scar circling his skull, a thin, smooth line left by Lucy Templeton’s procedure, was faintly visible above his eyebrows. Another doctor, using a black marker, outlined where the laser saw needed to cut: one spot on his forehead and another above his temple, near the crown of his head.

  Mounted on tripods on either side of the patient were dark glass screens, reminiscent of sophisticated solar panels the size of small doors.

  Broga approached the technician operating them from a control panel.

  “Make sure the radiation inhibitors stay calibrated between one hundred seven and one hundred ten points,” he said. “If Brun’s emissions exceed that level, we suspend the operation until it stabilizes. Got it?”

  Steven, the oldest scientist on Broga’s team, emerged from the cryogenic chamber at the far end of the operating room, just behind the Totem. Wrapped in his white coat, the old man shuffled forward, hunched over as though his waist might snap at any moment. Manson, his young assistant, followed, dragging a utility cart with five cylindrical containers that were still smoking, fresh from their frozen storage.

  “Here. The last of the cloned stem cells we have in good condition: three Binary-C and two Binary-R,” Steven announced. His trembling voice matched the fragility of his gait. He nodded toward the cryogenic chamber. “What do we do with the containers back there? They take up too much space, and those children… are really creepy.”

  “I’ll deal with it later,” Broga replied.

  Steven looked at Broga as though debating whether to voice his thoughts. Ultimately, he chose not to and shuffled out of the operating room. Manson followed him, pulling notes from his coat pocket and murmuring something under his breath, presumably about the procedure. Neither the old man nor his assistant seemed very convinced, but…

  Broga turned toward Clemente and the rest of the medical team.

  “Alright,” he said. “We’re moving into the final stage of Project Brun. We’ll work first on the frontal lobe, then the motor cortex. Understood?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Proceed.”

  In silence, Clemente began working on Brun, and everything unfolded exactly as he had planned. The laser cut the frontal section of the skull that needed to be cut—a tiny circular incision exposing the area of the brain that needed to be exposed. From one of the vapor-shrouded containers, Broga retrieved the small vial he was supposed to retrieve and handed it to the person it was meant for. Clemente took the frozen stem cells from the vial and, using a thin needle and guided by an electronic magnifier, injected them precisely where they needed to be injected.

  Through the visor of his helmet, Broga watched the cloned cells enter his brother’s brain as though he were injecting them himself. He observed with satisfaction that, just as he had seen in the simulations he’d run hundreds of times while planning the procedure, Brun’s original cells welcomed them with the same eagerness as parched earth absorbing long-awaited rain. Tiny electrical storms, encased in transparent bubbles, darted back and forth. Blue sparks pulsed like miniature stars in a dark sky. A microscopic Big Bang from which new galaxies were born.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It truly was a process as rapid as it was extraordinary. Soon, new neurons would grow where the tissue had been damaged. His brother’s brain would return to normal. His brother would regain his mind, perhaps even sooner than his calculations had predicted.

  He couldn’t stop his lips from stretching into a smile beneath his mask, his chest swelling with excitement. He wanted to shout with joy, but he didn’t. It was still too soon to celebrate.

  A doctor sealed the hole in Brun’s forehead. Clemente prepared to drill the second marked point, this time near the crown of his head.

  “Keep that spark ready,” he said to Broga. “We’ll need it soon.”

  Broga walked over to the Totem, placing his right hand over the silhouette of the button on the console and activating its circuits. Inside the visor of his helmet, a white light blinked alongside the message: ‘Pulse activated. Radiation emitted.’ His robotic fingers had begun channeling energy from his body, transmitting it to the biometric reader on the button.

  The hatch opened, and the small cylinder emerged to the surface. The moment he removed it, the console’s defense mechanism would activate—the trap designed by Sebastián’s father, the original owner of the console. A blast of Tau radiation would leap from the screen and attempt to reach his brain.

  ‘Inhibitor: Activated,’ flashed on the inside of his helmet.

  He took a deep breath. He was ready to withstand the hypnotic radiation.

  “Um… Doctor…?” But then Robinson, one of the male nurses, said, and before Clemente could turn, the man announced, “He’s opening his eyes.”

  Brun? Was Brun opening his eyes? Impossible! He had calculated the exact dosage of sedatives that should have kept him under. Besides…

  He turned toward the dark glass panels. “The radiation inhibitors?”

  “They’re working, sir!” the technician said nervously, his eyes fixed on the console readings. “They’re at one hundred and eight points!”

  Clemente, holding the laser saw, saw his patient’s pupils contract under the lamp. He paused, glancing up at Broga.

  “He detected the Plasma?” he asked, his voice muffled behind the mask.

  “It could just be an automatic reflex,” Broga ventured. “Don’t get distracted—make the cut!”

  “Are you sure? Because we—”

  “Just do it!” Broga ordered and turned back to the Totem, ready to remove the containment syringe from the hatch. It was now or never; there was no time to waste.

  But an explosive wave struck him from behind, throwing him against the computer console.

  A deafening crack seemed to split reality itself in two, like a lightning bolt had struck right there. A blackout plunged the operating room into darkness as thousands of sparks rained down from the ceiling.

  An overload! One so powerful that even Broga’s artificial limbs short-circuited.

  The system in his helmet rebooted. Everything in front of him went black, and for a few seconds, his arms and legs froze. None of his limbs responded. His body was locked in place, and all he could hear was the screeching of metal and the interrupted scream of one of the nurses.

  When his vision returned, he saw that the Totem’s Four-Frequency emitter had activated automatically to protect the console from the electromagnetic burst, sealing the hatch and sending the containment syringe with the Primary Plasma back inside the machine. He tried to reactivate the biometric reader, but as he glanced over his shoulder…

  The operating room had descended into chaos, filled with the acrid stench of burnt wires and… charred flesh.

  Clemente and the other doctors and nurses were gone. In the blink of an eye, his team had been replaced by stains on the walls and body parts scattered across the floor. Only Brun remained, standing beside the operating table—motionless, eyes half-open, lips trembling, drenched in sweat as if he had just emerged from a sauna, yet shrouded in an icy mist. His disposable gown hung loosely around him.

  Broga turned his gaze from his brother. Near the utility table and the now-charred cryogenic containers, there was a bloodstained sneaker. He recognized it—it was Clemente’s. He had given it to him as a gift just a few months earlier. That meant… that dark, smoldering mass beside the sneaker was…

  A sharp pain pierced his chest. Clemente was gone. And in the most horrific way imaginable. But Broga didn’t even have time to grieve.

  The faint, ghostly voices of children echoed around him—taunting giggles that turned into an unbearable murmur pressing against his temples, even through the helmet.

  The entire room was engulfed in a mysterious gas—a dark cloud streaked with multicolored patches: reds, blues… even yellows and greens. Scattered among them were glowing dots that pulsed like a beating heart, like a cluster of stars.

  The fantastic image he had seen just moments ago during the surgery—the cells crackling in his brother’s brain, those newly born galaxies—was now out there.

  The operating room had become a perfect replica of outer space.

  The pressure squeezing his head intensified. According to the helmet’s sensors—and his own lungs—the oxygen levels in the room were plummeting. It didn’t just look like space; it was starting to feel like it. He couldn’t breathe.

  And there was Brun, standing in the middle of the nebula, his eyes darting beneath his eyelids and his lips murmuring incomprehensibly, as if trapped in some kind of supernatural sleepwalking state.

  The Primary Plasma! Broga reached for the control board. If the biometric energy reader wouldn’t work, he would smash the hatch and pull the dose out by force. It didn’t matter—this was the last one left, and he couldn’t lose it.

  But the pressure from the strange gas in the air was so immense that his robotic fingers crumpled and disintegrated. His arms creaked. The device attached to the back of his neck, which deployed the helmet, sparked violently. His visor showered him with sparks. If he didn’t get out of there soon, he would lose his limbs—or maybe even his head.

  “Go away, Broga. We don’t want you here,” said the voices of the children, echoing directly into his mind.

  “Brun, stop!” he shouted with all his strength. “Brun, go back to sleep!”

  The same force that had begun to crush him expelled him from the room, throwing him into the hallway, just in time to witness his brother wrap himself in that swirling cloud of galaxies.