Despite being immersed in a sprawling metropolis, the abundance of vegetation in that spot made the night feel deeper than it actually was.

  Inside the small nature reserve of the park, Vicky inspected Adam’s wounds while he, leaning against a tree, remained stoic, fighting the urge to close his eyes and pass out for a while.

  Kitty, the massive and muscular mercenary, lay sprawled on the ground not far from them, defeated and motionless.

  Adam was battered and bruised. Goodbye to his pristine charm, at least for a few days. His eyes were bloodshot, one more swollen shut than the other, and he sported a couple of cuts—on his lips and cheeks. The one on his right cheek was deep and would swell enough to further restrict his vision soon. His hair was a tangled mess, full of dust, tree splinters, and leaves. Half his face was caked in dirt, while the other half was streaked with blood from a gash on his forehead. And those were just the injuries on his head. As for the rest of his body…

  Vicky decided to deal with those concerns later. Right now, there was another problem to address: the gray-suited men standing behind her—the Satellite agents.

  “What do you want with Mr. White?” she asked.

  “For him to come with us,” one of them replied.

  “In his condition, my protégé is going nowhere but to a hospital.”

  Protégé? Adam tried to speak, but Vicky silenced him with a gesture.

  “In fact, you’re also summoned, Miss Viveka,” said the other man in gray.

  Vicky glanced over her shoulder at them. “That will have to wait. I have an injured man to take care of.”

  One of the agents stepped away to make a phone call, deliberately out of earshot.

  From different parts of the brush, six more agents emerged, revealing that they had been hiding all along.

  Adam wondered how many of them had enjoyed secretly watching the beatdown unfold. A mix of rage and helplessness brought tears to his eyes. Bastards!

  He watched as some agents meticulously gathered every piece of the shattered park keeper Cyclops, while others loaded Kitty onto a metal stretcher, strapping him down with laser restraints. Of course, taking that gorilla away was easy now—Adam had taken the brunt of it. The brute was unconscious, so those gray-clad men only had to deal with his limp, hulking body. None of them had faced him head-on, let alone endured one of his bone-crushing punches. They made it look so easy!

  In the blink of an eye, the agents had cleaned up the scene and were disappearing into the trees and fading light, taking their prisoner with them.

  The same gray-suited man returned from his phone call. “Due to this unforeseen setback, we’ve rescheduled the summons for next week,” he announced.

  “If you’d stepped in when you had the chance, I wouldn’t be in this state, and I’d have gladly gone with you,” Adam retorted. Despite his spinning head and a jaw that felt like it was on fire, he wasn’t about to stay silent.

  “We had a specific task, sir, and we fulfilled it,” the agent replied.

  Adam and Vicky’s phones buzzed simultaneously, notifying them of a new message.

  “What you just received is an official summons,” the other agent said. “There will be serious consequences if you choose to ignore it. You know what we mean, Miss Viveka.” Then, turning on their heels, the agents disappeared into the surrounding underbrush and darkness, as abruptly as they had appeared.

  Minutes later, an ambulance pulled up to the park’s curb.

  Vicky stepped out of the reserve to meet them, then led the paramedics to Adam. Night had fallen, and the area was so poorly lit that the medics had to use their flashlights to navigate the terrain.

  Explaining his injuries, Adam told the paramedics he’d been assaulted by thugs. He feared they might say something like, ‘Man, your face will never be the same,’ but they said nothing. Either they were seasoned professionals who had seen dozens of patients in similar states, or maybe his condition wasn’t as bad as it felt.

  Eventually, exhaustion overtook him. His eyes began to close, and time seemed to slip away.

  He had a hazy impression of lying on a stretcher and being loaded into the ambulance, surrounded by the flashing red lights of medical equipment. Throughout it all, Vicky stayed by his side.

  

  Standing with her arms crossed in an empty hospital hallway, Vicky waited for the doctors to finish treating Adam.

  She paced in circles, a knot in her stomach and a thousand worries swarming her mind like flies over a corpse: the Satellites, the summons, and Adam’s condition.

  Adam had endured the beating bravely, but seeing him so injured reopened the wound left by Juzo’s death. Adding to that was the anxiety about what the Satellites might do to them…

  The paramedics exited the room, followed by a gaunt, gray-mustached doctor in oversized scrubs. The man introduced himself as the attending physician on the night shift.

  “Your…” he began, hesitating as he tried to define her relationship to the injured man. Vicky didn’t clarify. “Well, I have to say, he’s very lucky. Some people end up hospitalized after taking hits like that, but not only is he conscious—he even had the nerve to refuse the wheelchair we offered him.

  “The patient can walk, though I’d recommend a few days of rest. If he faints or experiences vomiting, please take him to a hospital. He must not miss the antibiotics I prescribed—one every twelve hours, for…” The doctor tilted his head as he spoke, his gaze locked on Vicky’s, as if checking whether she understood. Perhaps he noticed her distracted air. “…Cold compresses and chamomile tea might also help with the swelling…” he added at one point. “Understood, miss?”

  Vicky nodded, and the doctor stepped aside to let her enter the room.

  Sitting on the examination bed, Adam was zipping up his battered green track jacket. He moved his arms carefully—his muscles ached as if they’d been soaked in acid.

  A bruise under his left eye had darkened to a deep purple, and a pinkish mark on his right cheek was partially covered by a bandage. Another bandage covered the freshly stitched gash on his forehead. The injuries to his ribs, hips, and legs were hidden beneath his clothes but were there, throbbing.

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  “You’re one lucky man,” the mustached doctor had told him. “If I were you, I’d stay away from parks at night. You might not get so lucky next time.”

  Adam, however, was too upset by everything to feel grateful. A constant ringing in his ears and a slight dizziness tempted him to close his eyes and fall asleep right there. His face was a wreck. One of his front teeth was loose. Even breathing sent sharp pains stabbing under his ribs. Meanwhile, his thoughts bounced between Kitty, the mysterious men in gray, and the pain that kept pulling him back.

  Vicky entered. The disinfectant smell in the small room was even stronger than in the hallway, sharp enough to make her want to sneeze.

  After a long, shared look, Adam said, “I cad’t feel by bouth because of the bedication.”

  His voice was a jumble of slurred words, with no ‘r’ sounds and full of ‘z’s.’ He could barely open his mouth without aggravating his jaw or reopening the cuts on his lips. Still, he attempted a smile to ease his own nerves. Vicky didn’t return it; her expression remained serious, and she looked slightly pale.

  “Who are thoze guydz? Did you read the mezzage? Because I…”

  Vicky handed him her phone so he could read the summons.

  Proxima City, October 10 of the current year.

  Victoria Marie Viveka

  Adam White O22

  PRESENT.

  This letter serves as an official summons of MANDATORY nature to our offices, located in the Orbit II tower (intersection of Sixth and Ninth Avenues in this city), on October 15 at 8 a.m. Please announce yourselves at reception.

  Sincerely, the Division Chief.

  As Adam read it, Vicky leaned closer, tucking her hair behind her ear as she examined her partner’s condition. The doctor’s prognosis was one thing; her trained eye, honed by years of skirmishes and tending to the wounded, was another.

  She touched him here and there, opened his eyes to check them, and he endured the discomfort without a word of complaint. The Adam who had left the apartment earlier that day to go to the gym and the Adam now sitting before her were two very different people—or almost.

  “October 15th?” he read. “A bid impadient, don’d you think?”

  “Impatient?” she repeated. “Consider yourself lucky. When it comes to the Satellites, few are given the luxury of a postponement.”

  She finished her inspection and stepped back to let him stand. Adam might not have looked as good as usual, but he was in better shape than she had imagined, no doubt about it.

  “I’ve been expecting them since the first time Juzo and I crossed the Kappa Point,” she said. “What surprises me is how long it’s taken them to say hello.”

  “Whad’s their deal?”

  “They’re with the Satellite Agency, a secret investigative branch of Chiron. They’re very focused on international threats—like anything that comes out of my country.”

  Adam understood what that meant. “‘Anyding that comez out’? You mean like…?”

  “Like Juzo, me, and the enemy,” Vicky finished. “I suppose they’re conducting an investigation into what happened that Friday night, and they want us to fill in the blanks.” She helped him to his feet. “Let’s head home. I’ll explain the rest on the way.”

  They walked down the nearly empty hospital corridor toward the exit. It seemed there hadn’t been many accidents or emergencies that night in that part of the city—Adam appeared to be the only injured person there.

  The gray-mustached doctor, dressed in his oversized scrubs, sat outside with a colleague, waiting for his next patient.

  “Don’t forget the chamomile tea,” he reminded them. “It’ll help with the swelling.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  As they reached the street, Vicky flagged down a taxi.

  “We’re living in an age where science has given people the ability to throw energy grenades from their hands, and yet some still swear by chamomile tea for swelling,” she whispered to Adam with a smirk.

  Adam nodded.

  She gave him a pointed look. “You’re going to try it, right?”

  Adam nodded again. “You bed. Anyding to ged rid of theze horribul marks ASAP.”

  Midnight had fallen, and a cool breeze swept through the buildings.

  Adam’s eyes darted around—the only part of his body not numb—searching for men in gray suits and dark glasses who might seem familiar. The street was sparsely populated, and no one matched that description. The one man in a suit was a chubby fellow who looked more like an office worker than an agent.

  Vicky scanned the area too, as if expecting to catch someone peering out a window or watching from a nearby rooftop. The Satellites could be anywhere. They could be right under their noses without them realizing it.

  “I know you think nothing out of the ordinary happens here—energy grenade attacks and all the other things you’ve been caught up in these past weeks,” Vicky said. “Here’s some news for you: they do happen. You just don’t see them because these people make sure you don’t. Just like they took Kitty, they’ve taken plenty of others.”

  For Adam, the idea of such an intelligence agency wasn’t abstract at all. It was just a lot to process so quickly—not to mention the implications of being involved in the investigation of his brother’s murder. Still, there were more pressing matters, like the sharp pain he felt as he settled into the taxi.

  “Andromeda Skyscraper,” Vicky said.

  The autonomous taxi’s computer registered the request, and the map of the city appeared on the screen near the steering wheel—which moved as though an invisible driver were guiding it.

  The taxi began to move, the amber streetlights casting shadows across their faces.

  “There’s another issue,” Vicky continued.

  Adam wasn’t eager to hear about more issues, but he had no choice but to listen.

  “See, the Satellites don’t like the Imperial Army. No one in the world does,” she said. “That’s why they usually turn a blind eye to people fleeing from Markabian territory and settling here—as long as they keep a low profile. The problem is, if for any reason it’s inconvenient for them to have an undocumented fugitive roaming Proxima or any of Chiron’s other states, they can deport them. And you know Juzo and I came here illegally, using private Military equipment. If the Satellites see me as a threat, they’ll hand me over to the Army, and there…” Vicky mimed a hanging gesture.

  Adam felt a lump in his throat.

  “They’d depodt you?”

  Vicky shrugged.

  “I don’t know. If they wanted to, they’d have done it by now, but…”

  “They wodden’t think I’b Juzo Romita and that I changed my name to Adam White to dodgde them, woudld they?”

  “No—They know exactly who’s who, and I’d bet every strand of hair on my head that they’re aware of the circumstances surrounding Juzo’s death,” Vicky said. Adam wore the expression she’d come to know so well—a blend of curiosity and dread that said he wanted to know everything, yet not everything, because everything scared him. She considered holding back but decided against it. Adam needed to know, whether he liked it or not. “The Satellites know where you live, where you work—they know everything about everyone. Our informant found you through them.”

  Adam felt a wave of relief. They wouldn’t mistake him for his twin or deport him by accident. Before Vicky spoke, he’d seen a familiar look in her eyes—a warning that whatever she was about to say would hit him hard.

  But contrary to her belief, the thought of people knowing about his life didn’t make him feel threatened. After all, every time he entered his code to pay for something or called his phone provider for assistance, he was broadcasting his movements to anyone with access to corporate and banking networks. Not to mention, he was a purchasing manager for one of the biggest companies in Proxima—and all of Chiron, for that matter. Hell, he’d even been on the cover of Loud magazine! If there was an intelligence agency out there that didn’t know who Adam White was, they should quit their job and find a new line of work.

  Now that he thought about it, fearing they’d confuse him with Juzo had been pretty silly.

  The taxi entered a quiet tunnel, and the orange lighting shifted to blue. According to the map on the screen, they were just a few blocks from home.

  “Vicky, I godda ask you somethin’. If everyding goes well wid the Satellites, I want you do train me.”

  She nodded with a smile.

  “After chasing down an obituary lead and wasting an entire day on buses trying to find some dumb warehouse,” she said, “I think my spirit as an intelligence officer might be permanently broken. Being an instructor sounds much more appealing now.”

  “Good. And after thad, we can go ged you zome new clodhez, how ‘bout thad?”

  Vicky smiled again. “Done with the ex-girlfriend hand-me-downs, huh?”

  Adam nodded. No more beatings, he thought then as the lump returned to his throat. His pride was in shambles, but he was ready to rebuild it.

  No more beatings. It was a promise.