A few minutes earlier, while the A60 fought against the Grenadiers, Juzo and Vicky slipped through a narrow passage hidden behind the galleries.

  The passage, less than three feet wide, was meant for technicians and maintenance personnel. Its walls were lined with electronic panels and other equipment that kept Bellatrix alive. Miles and miles of electrical cables, gas pipes, and cooling ducts ran through it.

  With the sound of explosions and the hum of thrusters vibrating behind the walls, Juzo and Vicky edged forward. He led the way, lighting their path with a small flashlight; she followed close behind, her large earrings transformed into glowing golden hoops that helped sweep away the shadows. They moved carefully, mindful not to trip over the bundles of cables on the floor or bump their heads against the fuse boxes jutting out from the ceiling.

  At the end of the tunnel, Juzo found a panel on the wall covered with microchips and switches. Following the plan he had worked out with Rigel, he stood before the panel—barely eight inches of space between his face and it—and studied it as thoroughly as he could with the flashlight. He found the two tiny keys he was looking for and flipped the first one.

  “Good. Alarms are off,” Vicky whispered. “What now?”

  “Redirect the security camera feeds from cameras three and five in this sector to a remote receiver,” Juzo replied. He pulled a microchip from his pocket and inserted it into a slot beneath the second key. Done.

  He crouched down, opened a vent near his knees, and climbed inside. Vicky followed.

  Both reached the chamber on Level Five ahead of their rival and switched on what little lighting there was. A faint blue glow revealed a shadowy storage room filled with lifeless machinery and old tower-style computers. In one corner, deactivated Cyclops androids stood silently, waiting for someone to claim them. Knowing they would soon face a similar one sent a chill down their spines, so they quickly pressed on with their mission.

  Watching the security camera’s lens, Vicky crossed her fingers, hoping the microchip was working.

  “How did the Cyclops know the exact location of this thing?” she wondered aloud.

  “Some kind of tracker, maybe. Or someone informed him,” Juzo ventured, moving to find the enormous machine. Spotting it among the clutter was the easy part. Its size and silhouette made it stand out from everything else.

  It looked just like the photos Rigel had shown—an upright assembly of outdated gadgets, consoles, and screens—though it was spotless now. Apart from a few rust stains here and there, the massive computer appeared intact, at least externally. The only thing left to do was see if there was anything valuable inside.

  Just as Rigel had promised, connected to the computer like a coma patient’s life-support system, was the power feeder the technicians had used to reactivate it and attempt to salvage what remained of its core memory.

  Juzo set his backpack on the floor, pulled out some tools, and focused on powering up the machine.

  Meanwhile, Vicky inspected the room and found their ticket to the other side of the ocean: a dark machine with a control panel in front, a frame the size and shape of a door on one side, and a monstrous generator at the back with horizontal drums that resembled old printing presses.

  “When you said Auriga, I thought you were talking about the new wrist cuffs models,” she remarked, “not a Mother Auriga that’s half a century old.”

  “Yeah, the cuffs were the plan, but we no longer have two hours to wait for their batteries to fully charge. This thing’s faster.”

  “Well, as long as this thing spits me out on the other side in one piece…”

  Even though Vicky wasn’t entirely sold on the plan, with the Military on high alert and the Cyclops right outside, escaping to another continent was the best chance she had to survive. Helping Juzo buy some time, she lifted the generator’s cables and plugged them into the Mother Auriga’s panel to ensure the capacitors had enough power when the moment came.

  Then, amidst the muffled gunfire and explosions echoing from the other side, something slammed against the wall near her. A fallen soldier, maybe? She dropped what she was doing and looked around for something to defend herself against the looming threat. There was nothing but old computer terminals and some expired fire extinguishers, hanging on the wall and covered in dust.

  “Hey…” she said to her partner, “have you thought that if the Cyclops comes for this machine, and you tell him you’re one of those Binaries, we might avoid a bad time?”

  Lying on his back beneath the main panel of the monster computer, Juzo was linking cables, following Rigel’s instructions.

  “I’m not risking getting torn apart,” he replied, wiping the sweat that anxiety had drawn to his fuzzy cheeks.

  Vicky reconsidered. Yeah, maybe putting themselves out there like that would’ve been stupid. She walked past an old Nemean armor for Grenadiers, assembled standing as if it were a relic in a wax museum, and gave the breastplate a few taps.

  “Would’ve been nice to wear one of these right about now,” she murmured.

  Still working with one hand, Juzo pulled his weapon from its holster with the other and offered it to her.

  “Here. If this makes you feel safer…”

  She waved it off. “There’s a hundred just like it lying out there, decorating corpses. Relax. I’ll be fine.”

  Then Juzo thought about the soldiers he’d seen in the hallway earlier—sitting, trance-like, oblivious to their surroundings—and the blood he’d noticed trickling from the young soldier’s nose.

  “Be careful,” he warned. “The Cyclops might not be alone.”

  “Why do you say that?” Vicky turned to him.

  Getting to his feet, Juzo shook his head. “Just… be careful.”

  He pulled a small module attached to a square monocle from his jacket pocket, clipped it to his left ear like an earpiece, adjusted the lens over his eye, and powered it on. The tiny screen flickered to life with the word: ‘Recording…’

  “At least Rigel will have front-row seats if anything happens to us,” she said. “Hope he enjoys the show.”

  “A deal’s a deal,” Juzo muttered. Once the power feeder was running, he stepped up to the control panel.

  Among the switches and commands was a cube-shaped capacitor, about the size of a fist, attached to the panel through tiny tubes. It resembled some kind of electronic tick. This was the Four-Frequency emitter Rigel had mentioned—the one that had prevented the circuits in that section of the computer from frying during the electromagnetic burst that ended operations in this bunker. Beside it was a large, square control panel with a life-sized handprint engraved in its center. This had to be the biometric energy reader the imperial technicians had been unable to activate.

  Logically, Juzo pressed his hand against the engraving and pushed. The button was stiff from years of disuse, but with some effort, it gave way.

  The machine whirred to life, its internal systems humming and its data processing with a sound that felt oddly familiar to Juzo, as if it had been locked away in his memory for as long as he could remember.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Two laser lines lit up on the control panel—one a purplish red, the other white. The purple laser scanned Juzo’s palm, paused, flickered, and turned off. Then the white laser took its turn. It paused, flickered, and this time emitted a beep. The white line had just confirmed him as one of the authorized users allowed to access the computer.

  An entire section of the panel, including the Four-Frequency emitter and the biometric control he had just activated, rotated one hundred eighty degrees, revealing a new panel on its reverse side. It featured a sleek screen and modern switches, starkly different from the rest of the device—spotless and untouched by time.

  The screen displayed:

  Identification: Binary-R

  Welcome to the Totem

  “Damn…” Vicky whispered, peering over Juzo’s shoulder. “I didn’t think it would actually work,” she admitted.

  But a muffled thud silenced them both. They felt it through their boots—a tremor that shook the floor, crawled up the walls, and rippled through the countless deactivated machines and computers in the room until it reached the concrete ceiling, from which dust rained down. The blue lights flickered.

  “That must’ve been a Grand Fotia,” Vicky whispered, wide-eyed.

  She hadn’t expected the conflict outside to escalate this much. Despite her burning curiosity to know what secrets this monstrous computer held, she backed away from Juzo and moved to guard the entrance. Whether it was the Cyclops or the Military, the enemy could arrive at any moment.

  Juzo turned to her.

  “No,” she stopped him. “You focus on that Totem and get what you need out of it—fast.”

  With blood pounding in his temples, Juzo returned his attention to the screen.

  PROJECT TIMELINE:

  — GENETIC ASSIMILATION THERAPY (GAT)

  Status: Successfully completed.

  Last Totem entry: Log GAT.95988.

  — BINARY PROTEINIC PROJECT (BPP)

  Status: Canceled.

  Last Totem entry: Log BPP.765.

  — BINARY ATAVISTIC PROJECT (BAP)

  Status: Canceled.

  Last Totem entry: Log BAP.8005.

  — BRUN

  Status: Active.

  Last Totem entry: Log BRUN.445.

  It was a list of projects stored in the machine’s secret memory. Beside each name, a glowing cursor blinked, inviting him to select one.

  There were the answers.

  He was about to choose the first one, Genetic Assimilation Therapy, the only project marked as successfully completed. But knowing the enemy could burst through the door at any moment, he decided to cut to the chase. Assuming the second project, Binary Proteinic, referred to the experimental stage that had resulted in the deaths of those infants, he skipped ahead to the third, Binary Atavistic Project, which both he and that White O22 guy had been a part of.

  He selected the third glowing cursor, and a lengthy new list appeared on the screen.

  It didn’t take long to recognize what it was: the project logs, starting from BAP.0001. BAP.0002, BAP.0003, BAP.0004… He opened the first log and read it.

  His first disappointment: while the logs were uncensored, the project’s lead scientist wasn’t named. Only their title appeared: The Director. Perhaps Rigel could later shed some light on who the Director might have been.

  ‘Recording…’ the word continued blinking in the lens of his monocle. He just hoped he would make it out alive to hand the footage over to the Detective.

  He moved on to the second log, then skipped to the fifth, and from there to the seventh. There were too many, and time was running out.

  Full-body 3D images of himself and his twin appeared, showing how they had been documented over the years. The logs included data ranging from height and weight to biometric readings and heart conditions, along with a flood of incomprehensible information.

  As the data scrolled past, Juzo’s eyes widened.

  He opened the final entry, BAP.8005: the Director’s resignation letter. He read it but found no revealing data behind what happened with those doses. However, a name caught his attention, so he pressed the glowing BACK button in the corner of the screen and switched to the previous project: Binary Proteinic. He needed answers.

  His breathing grew heavier with every passing second.

  He wished he could freeze time to analyze every piece of data in detail—not just to understand what he was reading but to accept it. But there was no time. The sounds of combat in the dome behind the walls reminded him that everything could end at any moment.

  His teeth ground together. He was clenching his jaw so tightly that Vicky could hear it from across the room.

  “What does it say?” she asked. How bad could it be for someone as stoic as Juzo to react like this? She wanted to run to his side and see for herself, but she stayed in place.

  Juzo returned to the Atavistic Project directory and pressed the glowing button labeled CULMINATION. There, he recognized a text he’d seen before in the project files, mentioning the twins’ reunion:

  …scheduled for: Monday, Maiden’s Month 2nd, Year 585 of the Imperial Era.

  But the Totem had more to reveal. It displayed a series of illustrations resembling instruction manuals. His throat went so dry it took him a moment to swallow. What he was looking at now was exactly that—the instructions for completing the Project’s circuit.

  A small hatch opened beside the monitor, revealing a cigar-sized metal cylinder. The Totem was offering it to him. He recognized it thanks to the diagrams, but he didn’t take it. To do so would have been to accept his fate.

  With a trembling hand, he continued his frantic investigation.

  He exited the Binary Atavistic Project directory and, pressing the fourth glowing cursor, entered the last directory: BRUN. Before accessing the logs of this still-active project, a 3D image of the Cyclops A60-R8 appeared, accompanied by detailed technical specifications. In that moment, everything clicked.

  “What does it say!?” Vicky shouted from across the room. “Juzo! What—?!”

  But an abrupt silence fell behind the door, signaling that the battle in the dome was over. She heard footsteps—just one pair, approaching. Her former comrades had fallen; she knew it. Soon, she would face the one who had defeated them, and, strangely enough, she felt that beyond protecting Juzo, she had to avenge them.

  “Hope you’re done...” she said to her friend, and feeling a lightness in her legs, she dropped her arms to her sides, tensed her muscles, and stretched out her hands, ready to draw whatever she had to defend herself. She curled her fingers, and crackling threads of light wove orbs of energy around them.

  Becoming a Grenadier had been a horrific experience—one she hated remembering—but the saying ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’ fit here. The Fotias would help her face what was coming… for a while, at least.

  When the door burst open, she fired straight at the A60’s face.

  “Sorry,” she said. “No androids allowed in here.”