“Hee hee hee hee hee…”

  Those insufferable giggles again, coming out of nowhere, from a place he couldn’t pinpoint. Children’s laughter.

  Children could be cruel, alright. How did he know? Maybe someone had told him, or like most of the things he’d learned, he picked it up from overhearing conversations or watching TV shows. But why were these kids laughing at him? Wasn’t laughing at adults considered rude?

  Because, even though some people treated him like a child, he was already an adult. Only adults grew hair on their faces, right? And the people taking care of him always had to… what was the word? Shave him?

  Besides, he was about to turn thirty. How many years was that? Who knew! No one had ever taught him how to count, but it had to be a lot—he’d heard it from a conversation between Hugo and Dimitri while they were bathing him. Those two old guys were the nurses who looked after him, and their conversations were always entertaining—usually ending with one throwing a tantrum and the other mocking him with a silly face.

  “And to think you bet he wouldn’t make it past the prime age!” Hugo had said—the scrawny nurse who was always smiling. “Just look at him! That was five years ago. He’s almost thirty now!”

  But Dimitri, the chubby, grouchy nurse, hadn’t looked nearly as happy.

  “Prime age?” he scoffed. “We could’ve saved ourselves a world of trouble if things had ended there.”

  “Oh, come on, Dimitri! A bit late to be complaining now, don’t you think? The plan fell apart long before our little buddy Brun here reached his prime age. Right, Brun?”

  Brun nodded, though he didn’t quite understand what they were talking about.

  “Yeah, yeah,” grumbled the cranky nurse. “I just can’t help thinking how much better our lives might’ve been if this guy’s brother hadn’t gotten out of here, you know? Damn kid—going off to freeze to death out in the open.”

  “Don’t blame the kid, Dimitri. That was Dr. Lucy’s fault.”

  Dimitri let out a rough laugh. “Sorry, but I can’t blame her. I liked that woman, you know? She really went out with a bang! Even loosened a few screws in the boss’s head before she left. Ha! Not gonna lie—some days I wish I’d seen that myself, especially on payday.”

  “Yeah? Well, I heard it was one of the other doctors who did it—with a tire iron,” added skinny Hugo, helping Brun out of the tub.

  Chubby Dimitri bent down to slip Brun’s rubber slippers on, then straightened up with a groan, one hand pressed against his lower back.

  “I don’t know if it was her or some other doctor,” he said, “but I do know it happened right here in the garage. Don’t know if I’ve told you this, but back then my brother was one of the guards in the guardhouse.”

  Hugo shook his head while drying Brun off with a towel.

  “Well, he was,” Dimitri said. “They fired him for not seeing the kid sneak out. Can you believe that? Lucky bastard! Now he’s living in Gondwana, lounging on the beach with his wife and my nephews, while I’m still stuck in this freezer, in the middle of nowhere, bathing this cripple.”

  “Oh, come on, Dimitri. Don’t call him that, will you?”

  “Why not? He has no idea what we’re saying, right, cripple?”

  Brun just looked at him. He wasn’t sure what ‘cripple’ meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it.

  “His head’s in outer space,” Dimitri went on. “Seriously, you’re the only one who actually likes the guy. Don’t you get it? We’re going to be stuck taking care of him until the day he decides to die. Can you imagine thirty more years of this place?”

  “Thirty years? What are you talking about, old man? You’re retiring in less than a year. What about me?”

  “Bah! The three years you’ve got left will fly by, Hugo—you’ll see. But I can’t wait to get out of this place. I’m sick of it. I hate it!”

  Scrawny Hugo shrugged. “Duane’s not that bad.”

  Dimitri, shorter than the other, had to tilt his head up to glare at him.

  “Duane may not be as much of an icebox as the rest of Columbia,” he said, “but it’s still an icebox. You’re fine with it—but me? My ass is frozen solid!”

  “Well, they just opened the tropical dome, old man. Why don’t you go soak your frozen ass in the hot springs on your day off?”

  “Nah. I’d rather be doing that on the Middle Equatorial beaches.”

  “Alright then,” Hugo nodded. “Then stop whining and request a transfer already.”

  “Oh yeah? Like it’s that easy! You know the Director doesn’t like those kinds of requests.”

  “What are you talking about? Scott asked and now he’s with him in Pannotia.”

  “Scott got it because he’s a twenty-five-year-old kid,” Dimitri grumbled. “He’s still got the stamina to handle the Director. I’m too old and fat for that…”

  “And bald,” added Hugo. “Old, fat, and bald, buddy. I’ve still got my looks,” he teased, running a hand through his full head of gray hair. “But sure, go transfer to the Director then. You two have the charm of a rabid hyena.”

  “The Director…” Brun said, so softly that no one heard.

  Out in the cold lab, everyone called old Bernardo ‘the Director.’ They talked about him often, even though he hadn’t visited in a long time—probably because he’d forgotten all about them.

  When had Brun last seen the old man? A long time ago, yeah—in the study room, with the glass wall between them. Like many others there, Bernardo no longer came close because he was afraid of the light coming from Brun’s body. The light that killed people.

  After his bath, as usual, the old nurses dressed him in his pajamas and walked him to his room. Once he was in bed, Hugo left the TV on so he could watch his favorite shows until he fell asleep.

  “Do we really have to lock him up in this decorated cell?” he asked his partner. Brun knew they were talking about him again.

  “At least he’s got something to watch,” the grump replied. “I’ve got hours ahead of me staring at a fixed camera, watching him watch TV, watching him sleep…”

  “I know, but… isn’t keeping him away from the world enough?”

  Dimitri let out another one of his heavy snorts.

  “You want to know if it’s enough? Go ask Pérez’s widow. She’ll tell you. His radiation was already dangerous—now it’s unstable. You heard the scientists.”

  “Yeah, I heard them all right,” said Hugo. “But aren’t they the ones who caused this in the first place? Those bastards don’t care if the treatments work or not, as long as they keep him locked away in the most godforsaken place on the planet, in case he ever blows.”

  “Most godforsaken place, huh? Thought Duane wasn’t ‘that bad’?”

  “Ah, shut up, Dimitri.”

  “Yeah, shut up, Dimitri,” Brun said, joining in—even though no one ever seemed to hear or understand what he said.

  The nurses closed the heavy glass door behind them and pressed the buttons outside in the hallway. That familiar puff sound followed—the one that meant the ‘airtight lock was sealed’ and that ‘everything was in order,’ as they liked to say.

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  In that place, not many people were kind to him. Hugo, the smiling nurse, was one of the few. He was the only one who, at night, would say, ‘Sleep well, Brun,’ before leaving.

  The other was one of those robot-men, one of those Cythlops androids—one that could talk, and every now and then, would drop by to give him his medicine.

  “Stay quiet, Brun, alright?” the robot-man would say whenever he entered the room, bringing a finger to his nonexistent mouth to signal him to keep silent. Then, the Cythlops would turn one of his fingers into a needle and prick his shoulder. “Good boy, Brun. That’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with more medicine. And remember, this will be our little secret. You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

  Of course, he wouldn’t tell anyone! He didn’t even flinch at the needle. The Cythlops needed silence to do his work, and since Brun wanted him to come back, he behaved himself.

  The medicine the android gave him made him feel better and stronger—not like the stuff the old doctors from Bernardo’s team gave him, which always made him sleepy.

  One night, one of those doctors almost caught the android in the act.

  It happened just as the Cythlops finished jabbing him. His robotic friend was about to leave when one of the doctors walked into the room.

  “What’s this A60 unit doing here?” the old doctor asked angrily.

  The hallway guard poked his head into the room. “What A60, sir?”

  “This one right here!” the doctor snapped, pointing.

  The Cythlops stood still, silent and unmoving, and Brun didn’t say a word either. He had promised the Cythlops he wouldn’t.

  “We don’t pay you to sleep on the job, but to keep watch,” the doctor scolded.

  “Sorry, sir. I don’t know how it got in. I—”

  “This is the second time I’ve caught you asleep this month. If you can’t handle the night shift, I’ll request a replacement.”

  “It won’t happen again, sir. I promise.”

  But the following week, when his friend Cythlops came back to jab him, the guard fell asleep again, and this time, the old doctor—who was with the guard—fell asleep too. Through the glass door of his room, he saw them lie down in the hallway, right before Cythlops appeared from behind. It was always the same: a strange beeping sound, the men fell asleep instantly, and the robot man showed up.

  “Hee hee hee hee hee…”

  Those cursed giggles! There they were again, ringing in his ears!

  That was the only downside to Cythlops’s medicine. Every time the android injected it, he would hear those awful laughs, and they grew louder and louder with each shot.

  “Shut up! Stop laughing at me!” he snapped.

  “Hee hee hee hee hee…”

  “If you keep laughing at me, I’ll tell my friend Cythlops to stop giving me medicine—then I won’t have to hear you anymore!”

  “We’re not laughing at you,” said one of the giggling voices. “We’re laughing because we’re happy.”

  Startled, Brun looked up. It was the first time those giggles turned into words.

  “Who said that?”

  “We did. Who else?” they replied casually. “We’re happy because now you can finally see us.”

  Then, before his eyes, a mist materialized out of nowhere and mixed with clouds of dust that hadn’t been there moments ago. Together, they formed a dark sky full of stars and reddish clouds—a sky deeper than the one he could see through his window at night, a sky that came from far beyond.

  Out of that night, opening like a dark flower, emerged small figures that approached him, taking human shapes until they became a group of children.

  Children. Children born from the stars torn out of the night. And together, they surrounded Brun.

  There were almost as many of them as the fingers on his hands.

  Curious, he looked back through the glass wall of his room and saw the guard still there in the hallway, wide awake and talking to one of the men-nurses.

  “If they see you here, they’ll get mad at you,” he warned the children. “It’s not allowed to come in here.”

  “Don’t worry, Brun. No one can see us but you,” replied one of them, though he spoke without moving his mouth.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “We know lots of things,” another answered, also without opening his mouth.

  “What are your names?”

  “We don’t have names, Brun.”

  Then Brun realized something. He looked at one child, then another, then the next, and those grouped in the shadows and the starlit clouds. They all had golden eyes like his—large and bright—along with soft brown hair, almost red, but not as messy as his. They were barefoot like him, but instead of wearing pajamas, they had loose white gowns similar to the ones he wore during medical studies, the kind that left his butt exposed.

  Yes, there were many children, but they all looked like exact duplicates of one another.

  “You’re duplicate children,” he declared. “Oh, I know! Since you don’t have names, I’ll call you that—the Duplicate Children.”

  Duplicate was a word he’d learned from hearing the nurses say it repeatedly. ‘How am I supposed to tell which is which? These duplicates all look identical!’ Duplicate meant identical, and these children all looked identical.

  Wait a minute! Now he remembered. He’d also had a duplicate—or something like that. Someone who’d shared his face. A brother who’d been born with him. But where was that brother now?

  Dimitri, the grouchy old nurse, had once spoken of a boy who escaped. That boy was his brother! He had to find him! It was freezing outside—he couldn’t leave his brother out there alone.

  “Do you know where my brother is?” he asked the Duplicate Children.

  “No, but we know something that might help you find him,” one of them replied.

  “What is it?”

  “Our potions,” the child answered. “Have you heard of them?”

  He had no idea what they were talking about.

  “If you drink them, they’ll make you stronger than you already are,” the child said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah! So strong that you won’t need anyone anymore. You’ll be able to leave these people who don’t care about you.”

  “Wow, that sounds interesting!” He liked the idea. He was sick of this cold, gray place where everyone talked behind his back. “Hey! If I leave this place, can I go find my brother?”

  The children fell silent for a second, exchanging glances.

  “Of course you can, Brun!” they finally said in unison, their amber eyes wide and glowing like gold, their mouths set in hard smiles.

  “You’ll grow so strong that finding your brother will be a piece of cake,” one of them said. “You’ll see, Brun!”

  “Exactly, Brun,” said another. “But you must hurry—there are unworthy people wasting our potions, and only a few are left now.”

  “Unworthy people? What does unworthy mean?”

  “It means they’re doing things they shouldn’t with something that doesn’t belong to them—like our potions.”

  “The potions belong to our kind, Brun! Those people shouldn’t even touch them!”

  “Ah, I get it… And where do I find those potions?”

  “We’ll show you,” the children said.

  His excitement, however, didn’t last long. Defeated, Brun let out a small huff. “Yeah, that’d be nice, but… I can’t leave the lab, y’know? Bernardo won’t let me.”

  “Well, he won’t be a problem if you travel with our Nocturnal Nebulae, Brun,” one of the children said, taking his hand and leading him toward the colorful, star-filled clouds from which they had emerged. “The Nocturnal Nebulae will take you wherever you need to go.”

  “No, wait! It’s freezing outside! In Columdia, the ground is made of ice, don’t you know that? If you don’t believe me, ask Dimitri.”

  “Don’t worry, Brun. Inside the Nocturnal Nebulae, nothing can reach you—not even time or space.”

  Brun didn’t quite understand, but he trusted the children and followed them.

  A few minutes later, as a snowstorm raged outside the lab, the alarm blared inside. Brun had vanished from his room without a trace.

  Silence. Darkness.

  And every so often, the Nocturnal Nebulae unfolded before his eyes, and he found himself in a different place.

  Sometimes he appeared in a room that looked like the one where they’d lay him down for tests in the cold lab. Other times, it was a grand and elegant hall filled with statues. Once, he appeared in the sea, floating among enormous fish. Some places were cold; others were warm. Sometimes it was night, and sometimes it was day.

  One time, the Nebulas opened inside a dark cave where he got a small fright upon stumbling across a skeleton man trapped in cobwebs and surrounded by rats. The skeleton man wore an old, dusty robe and was lying on a stone table with a knife lodged between his ribs.

  No matter where he ended up, though, there was always a gift waiting for him: a tiny jar of potion—a liquid that swirled and shimmered, something that reminded him of the goo that erupted from those mountains, those… volcanoes? Was that what they called them? He’d seen them on TV. Lava, right? Yes, but this was white lava. And glowing. And alive.

  Sometimes the potion was in enormous cups covered with signs and crystals, like the one he found in the cave with the skeleton man. Other times, it was in those slender tiny jars that looked like fingers, the kind the old Bernardo kept in his lab. All it took was breaking the tiny jar for the potion to seep into his skin. Then the white light burst from his body, and he’d hear screams and see flashes of lightning.

  Each time, he felt stronger, even smarter. And hungrier.

  He also encountered some strange men who tried to stop him.

  It happened in a science room, where a bald man with very pale skin and red eyes, dressed in a long black robe and violet cape, attempted to hold him back. Later, in a beautiful hall with high ceilings, tall stained-glass windows depicting people, and walls lit by fiery torches, another bald man with violet eyes, dressed just like the first, tried to persuade him not to take the potion with words he couldn’t understand.

  These strange men gave him a weird feeling in his stomach, like when he ate something bad and got sick. Afterward, his nose bled a little, just like it had long ago in the cold lab in Columdia, when the bald woman with very pale skin—who occasionally visited with the old Bernardo—had grabbed his arm.

  None of these strange men could do much to stop him from absorbing the potions. When he appeared, he always caught them off guard.

  Truth be told, though, it was always the Duplicate Children who took care of keeping those strange bald men away from him.

  With their gaze, the Children commanded the Nocturnal Nebulae to swallow the bald men, making them vanish into starlight and swirling red gases.

  The Duplicate Children didn’t like people like Bernardo or the nurses—the unworthy ones—but they hated those pale, bald people even more. Maybe those people were even less worthy than the others! Who knew? The Children didn’t need to tell him; their expressions when they saw what those people were doing with the potions were enough for him to understand how they felt.

  But the real fun came afterward, when the Children made him play a game.

  Each time they entered a lab, he had to find the computer hiding the treasure, place his hand on the big hand-shaped button, press down, and wait for the tiny jar with the potion to pop out, endure the violet lights that made him feel strange—though not as much as before—and then drink it. It was fun.