75°56'17.2"S 53°44'36.7"E – Near the Paseo, Nuevo Trujillo Spanish Antarctic Colonies

  21.05.2024- 21:00 UTC +03.00

  “How are you, kid?” Cecilia asked me.

  She was leaning against the doorframe of the room I was sitting in. From the surviving decoration, I guessed a teenager’s room. I did not care; the bed was comfortable enough. And the house had a functioning-enough heating system for everyone to not gradually freeze to death.

  Hani’s luck and Cecilia’s premonitions made looking for an appropriate abandoned house in an otherwise obliterated neighborhood possible. We were outside the domain now, in the northernmost areas of the Chinese District, next to the Paseo’s shadow.

  “Just great.”

  “At some point, we need to talk,” she said.

  I tightened my fists. It felt like I was grounded by my dad, and my mum came to have the talk. But no, that situation would have been simple; in this case, I had chosen a different room from the surviving Bermellón members: Cecilia, Hani, Orial, and Esteban. Especially Esteban, whose brother apparently I had somehow dealt the killing blow instead of saving him. While my consciousness was visiting Salva, leading the battle against agents of the Queen.

  I had explained everything to them already. All that I saw and all that I had done.

  Still, nothing made sense.

  “I know,” Cecilia said.

  I sat upright on the bed. “Please tell me you can’t read my mind, too.”

  “I don’t need to. I am as confused as you are.”

  “Did you also wake up elbow deep into a dead body?”

  “No, but I woke up driving in a car while people screamed.”

  I did not know how to answer that. She continued:

  “You met us only a few hours ago. I get what it means to have a messy first day.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Look. Hani needs to talk. I promise you don’t have to talk with Esteban if you are not ready yet.”

  I looked at her for the first time since she had approached me. Her eyes looked swollen, betraying what her voice did not so far; she was as distraught as I was, perhaps even more so. Perhaps Gabi was someone she knew well. And for all the brave and supportive talk, she did not dare step closer to me, as if I were something dangerous. I did not blame her.

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you, ángel,” Hani said as soon as I joined them around the dining table. The eerie absence of any remains in the house, combined with all the windows being open when we arrived, indicated that the family living here, so close to the collapse, had evaporated instantly. That’s all I could think of when I joined the other four at the table.

  Cecilia and Oriol looked at Hani and me; Esteban only looked down at the table

  “Salva and I have made a grave mistake, one we cannot now take back. We were dishonest. And before we proceed, I need to be upfront with you,” Hani said.

  I felt my muscles relax. I was prepared to be scolded, punished even for what I had done, but this was about something else. Oriol’s eyes turned thin as lines.

  “ángel is not simply a member of this team. He is our mission. We believed, and now I am sure, he can create a new Domain.”

  “As in…” Oriol said.

  “As in creating a new Domain, rival to the Queen’s. He is the reason they destroyed the Chinese District. The reason they hunted us down in our hideout. And the reason they will keep pursuing us.”

  Oriol and Cecilia looked at me, waiting to see if I would be shocked.

  “I did not want to believe this either,” I said, with all the energy I could muster.

  “We all have to find our way back to Nuevo Trujillo,” Hani continued, “once there, you can all choose to leave our mission. I will not ask questions, and neither will any of the other Escapadas. But for now, we need to stick together.”

  “You said that now you are sure,” Esteban said. Hanying sighed.

  “Virtus per mors. That’s Latin. Force through death. Few Cursed in history had such a tool in their arsenal, and it is only possible if you own a Domain. If you,” she hesitated, “own the lives in it. ángel. Your instincts kicked in: one of your people was dying, so you harvested all the power from him to fuel your Curse. Use it to land a victory somewhere far away in your domain.”

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  Oriol stood up. “Am I in his domain right now?” He asked and then turned to me. “Are you controlling me or something?”

  “No,” I answered, and I could not hide the desperation from my voice. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this Curse.”

  “That was another mistake. We believed we had a bit of time to teach the kid. But the Queen will not give him time. They are pulling all the stops. Domain collapses, conventional and psychic bombardments, whatever this day-to-night thing is supposed to do,” Hani said.

  I frowned. I knew Salva believed the Domain collapse could have been caused inadvertently by me, or at least he had alluded to that. And the day-to-night thing had started when I attacked the bearded man on the Santiago tower. Still, it did not feel like the right time to blame more things on me. I was sure Hani knew what she was talking about better than I did.

  “So what’s the plan now?” Cecilia asked.

  “We rest. Tomorrow, you and Oriol seek fuel for the car. ángel and I need to immediately start training him, before he does something like that again,” Hani said. There was judgment on the voice; not personal judgment, but more like a reality check. She openly declared I was a liability, and she would leave me no choice in what my part in all of this would be. “And you, Esteban, are on guard duty with us.”

  Everyone nodded at the same time. Except for me. Cecilia almost stood up, but Hanying slightly raised her hand.

  “ángel Vázquez Ramos, do you understand?”

  “I…” I did not know what to say. “Do I have another choice?”

  Esteban’s expression turned sour as his nose shriveled, and his tongue quickly wet his lips.

  “You are my mission,” Hani said, her cryptic words implying there was something more to her mission than just teaching me how to be Cursed. “Cecilia and Oriol keep us alive. But Esteban is here to reap you the moment you prove to be more dangerous than beneficial to us and the people of Nuevo Trujillo.”

  I was never released from my captivity after all. At no point did I have an option since Oriol had brought me to the Escapadas. No, since the moment I had stepped out of the collapsed domain.

  I looked at their faces, lit as they were by candlelight in the absence of electricity. Esteban seemed somehow satisfied with the outcome of the conversation, while Oriol and Cecilia revealed varying degrees of awkwardness with the situation. Hanying looked at me with anticipation, her hand still raised.

  “I guess I understand then.”

  When I woke up the next day at nine in the morning, I realized I had not understood how literal Hani’s commands were. Cecilia and Oriol were already gone, leaving me to start Hani’s demanding schedule under Esteban’s watch.

  “Coffee would help,” I said, to no one’s response. I could see in their eyes that they both agreed, but without electricity or ground coffee, and sparse water, that felt like a luxury.

  So first, we started with a combination of yoga and stretching. For a grueling half an hour, I contorted and twisted in a way I had never done before. Physical education was never my strong suit in school, and not only did I always try to find ways to skip any kind of fitness course, but my body also did not have the genetics for anything more than a scrawny build.

  I was huffing so bad by the end of the session that I felt more in danger than when I ran away from bombs the previous day.

  “His body is definitely not enhanced,” Esteban commented at the end. Hani agreed:

  “It still needs to be nourished. But let’s avoid over-exertion. Who knows when we will need to run again from here?”

  “So what’s next?”

  “Meditation,” Hani said nonchalantly. “Esteban, can you lead it if you want? You are better than me.”

  He looked at her and then at me.

  “Gabi was better. He could take anything,” he responded.

  Hani nodded. “He was.”

  Esteban tilted his head. “Okay then.”

  By the end of the meditation session, and a long one at that, I could admit I felt refreshed. Not calmer, as it was often advertised, but confident. It reminded me of the feeling I had when I was by Salva’s side, or at the top of the Santiago Towers. I tried not to comment on it, afraid they would focus more on the physical workout if they realized that was a much weaker spot.

  “So, you are calling it visiting,” Hani said eventually. Esteban, as if on cue, left the room, but looked me in the eyes before doing so.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you were visiting Salva. And then you even talked with him, and guided him.”

  “Oh, yes. I am not actually there, but I am somehow, kind of floating there.” I waved my arms around me as if I were swimming, before realizing how stupid I looked. I retracted my hands, although Hani did not say anything.

  “Can you visit Esteban outside? He is just out of this room.”

  “Eh,” I hesitated, “I guess I can try.”

  “I will guide you. Close your eyes.”

  I obeyed.

  “Picture Este-

  I was thrown out of my body. I was visiting Esteban, as he was standing next to the window in the room next to ours. The moon was the only source of light outside, as no sun had risen this day either.

  “Esteban? Can you hear me?”

  Esteban slowly raised his head. “Fuck, did you make it at the first go, kid?”

  I walked closer to him. I felt different. More confident, more capable than before. I was ready to have a conversation with him in a way I would never have been able to.

  “Listen, Esteban. I never meant for Gabi to get hurt, and I would do everything to bring him back. But the reality is, this is bigger than what I or you would want.”

  Esteban looked in my direction. “Entertaining,” he said bluntly.

  That kind of stumbled my confidence, and I would have answered him if the view out the window had not changed.

  “Esteban, do you see this too, outside?”

  He turned around, and for a moment I thought he saw it too.

  “The night? It is also entertaining, I guess.”

  “No,” I said, struggling to explain. Where the moon and the night sky stood before, now a piece of the sky had been replaced by a sky sunlit by summer sun. It was as if someone was restoring a broken mirror. “Piece by piece.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Invisible hands slowly moved immense pieces of glass in the dome of the sky, replacing and fixing the scenery, creating a mix of pieces of night and day. And only I could see the broken shards of glass, all being designed and repurposed to frame the sky as day.

  “They are mending the domain again,” I said, not knowing what I was talking about. “And if they mend it while we are out, we are not going to get in again.”