Chapter 06
“The Name That Must Not Be Spoken”
The room was an aquarium.
That was Luiza’s first observation, and she clung to it like a castaway clings to a plank, because processing the obvious was safer than processing the rest. Glass walls from floor to ceiling, each panel exactly two and a half meters wide, joined by thin lines of industrial silicone that shone under the LED light. Behind the glass, more glass. And behind that, even more. An effect of infinite mirrors that multiplied her face into dozens, hundreds of versions of herself, all sitting in the same metal chair, all with the same expression she tried to keep neutral.
The chair was an engineering exercise dedicated to discomfort. Brushed aluminum seat, cold even thru the thin fabric of the pants. Straight backrest, without any lumbar curvature. Arms too wide, forcing the elbows outward into a position that strained the shoulders. She realized her fingers were dug into the edges, her nails pressing into the aluminum with enough force to hurt, the cuticles whitened by the pressure. She didn’t remember when she had started squeezing. He didn’t remember when he had sat down. How long had the body been operating on autopilot?
The air smelled of ozone and heated plastic. Something mechanical was working in the bowels of the room. A ventilation system, perhaps, or the servers that must be hidden behind some false panel. The buzzing was constant, a low tone that vibrated in Luiza’s teeth whenever she closed her mouth.
Torwel walked slowly around the central table.
The table was a single block of polished stone, probably marble, about three meters long and one and a half meters wide. Bone-white surface, gray veins that twisted in patterns that seemed almost intentional. Nothing about it. No computer, no paper, no pen, no coffee. It was a table that existed only to take up space, to give Torwel an axis around which to spin while he spoke.
And he turned. Step by step, the sound of shoes on the polished concrete floor creating a hypnotic rhythm. Tick. Taque. Tique. Taque. With each turn, he passed between Luiza and one of the glass walls, and for an instant, his silhouette overlapped with her infinite versions, creating a man who multiplied in all directions.
— Do you know what the problem with contemporary science is, doctor?
His voice filled the room effortlessly. It wasn’t loud, but it projected as if he were speaking to an invisible audience, to the hundreds of Luizas in the mirrors, to the records that were surely being made at that very moment.
— The speed. It is published before being understood. One seeks results before mastering the process. The beauty of the method is lost.
Luiza didn’t respond. Focused on her breathing. Inhale. Count to four. Exhale. Count to four. The heart tried to race, a wild gallop against the ribs, but she held the reins with pure willpower. She couldn’t show it. She couldn’t show weakness. The wave was there, on the periphery of consciousness, waiting for the slightest sign of weakness to swallow her whole.
— Here, we do things differently — continued Torwel, stopping behind a chair identical to Luiza’s, on the other side of the table. He didn’t sit down. He simply rested his hands on the backrest, his long, pale fingers contrasting with the dark metal. — We work with the time the job requires. Months. Years. Decades, if necessary. The Loki pathogen, for example, took seven years to reach its current form. Seven years of refinement, of attempts, of mistakes that cost…
He paused. His lips curved into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
— Well, they cost what needed to be paid. He touched the surface of the table with the tips of his fingers. The gesture was almost affectionate, like someone petting a beloved animal.
— The base is a paramyxovirus. Family that includes measles, you know. Highly contagious, aerosol transmission, variable incubation period. But measles, as unpleasant as it is, rarely kills. It doesn’t serve our purposes.
Luiza felt her stomach churn. The wave tried to rise, but she pushed it down. Swallowed. He breathed.
— We added filovirus components — Torwel continued, now walking toward one of the glass walls. — The hemorrhagic capacity of Ebola, but controlled, regulated, dosed. Then, retroviruses. The insertion into the host cell’s genome, the latency, the activation on command. — He laughed softly, a dry sound, without humor. — The problem is that the immune system, that old stubborn one, learns quickly. Detects the invader, mobilizes defenses, eliminates the threat. We had to teach Loki to hide.
His hand touched the glass. On the other side, an empty corridor stretched out in forced perspective, the fluorescent lights creating pools of brightness on the concrete floor.
— The solution came from neurology, curiously. Studies on the blood-brain barrier, on the immunological privileges of the brain. If the virus lodged itself where the immune system cannot reach, if it made the neural tissue its reservoir… — He turned to face her. — Do you understand the elegance? The host carries the weapon within themselves, in the most protected organ of the body, and they don’t know. Lives, breathes, walks, works. Until the moment of activation.
Luiza felt her blood run cold. The image of Carlos fallen in the desert, the dehydration that wasn’t dehydration, the first symptoms manifesting exactly when Torwel had predicted.
— The activation — she repeated, her voice coming out firmer than she expected. — How does it work?
Torwel’s smile widened. It was the smile of a teacher in front of a promising student.
— There are various ways. Thermal, chemical, electrical stimuli. But the most… poetic — he savored the word — is the sonic. Specific frequencies, imperceptible to the human ear, that trigger mass viral replication. The virus awakens, multiplies, destroys the nerve cells that housed it. And then, released into the bloodstream, it finds a defenseless body, unprepared defenses, caught by surprise.
He paused, letting the weight of the words settle in the air.
— The result is beautiful, in a clinical sense. Want to see?
Luiza didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Torwel was already walking toward a panel embedded in the wall, a screen that lit up at the touch of his fingers.
— They brought your friends to the observation wing — he said, his eyes fixed on the screen. — As I promised. Separated, of course. For now.
The image appeared.
It was a small room, white walls, a narrow bed fixed to the floor, a metal toilet in the corner. Carlos was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands resting on his knees, his head down. His breath was visible in his chest, rising and falling in quick, irregular movements.
— Mr. Carlos Mendoza — announced Torwel, as if presenting a specimen. — Thirty-four years old, Honduran, six months in the United States, captured at the Arizona border. Criminal record: none. Medical history: controlled hypertension, no other comorbidities. Ideal guinea pig.
Luiza felt her fingers dig even deeper into the metal of the chair. The wave returned, stronger. She forced her breath. She counted to four. Then four more.
— Why him? — he asked, his voice steady despite the internal chaos. — Why him specifically?
— Because he’s the one who’s sick. — Torwel shrugged. — The virus is already active in his body, remember? Exposure to the sun, dehydration, the stress of the escape… all of this accelerates the process. He would be the first to show severe symptoms anyway. I prefer that he manifests where we can observe.
The image on the screen changed.
A door opened in Carlos’s room. Two men entered — not guards, Luiza realized, technicians. They wore white coveralls, surgical masks, double gloves. Among them, they carried a box.
It wasn’t a big box. Maybe forty centimeters on each side, dark, opaque. The technicians placed it on the floor, in the exact center of the room, and left without a word. The door closed.
Carlos raised his head. He looked at the box. He didn’t move.
— What is this? — asked Luiza, but she already knew. Fear clouded her voice, no matter how hard she tried to control it.
— Fenrir — replied Torwel, and the word came out like a blessing. — The complementary element. The black rock.
The box opened.
It wasn’t a mechanical movement. The sides simply fell, as if obeying an invisible command, and what remained was a low, metallic pedestal supporting a stone.
It was black.
Luiza had seen black stones before. Basalt, obsidian, dark granite. But that one was different. Her black didn’t reflect the light — it absorbed it. Luiza’s eyes tried to focus, but the surface seemed to shift, refusing to be fixed, as if the stone existed in a plane slightly displaced from reality.
— Extracted from a crater in Siberia — explained Torwel, his voice now in a conference tone. — Similar deposits exist in South Africa, Canada, in a remote region of Antarctica. For decades, no one knew what to do with it. Mineralogically, it is a compound of known elements — iron, nickel, carbon — but the crystal structure… — He made a gesture with his hand, as if drawing in the air. — It is unique. It emits electromagnetic radiation at a frequency that shouldn’t exist. It interacts with biological tissues in ways we do not fully understand.
On the screen, Carlos stood up.
He took a step toward the stone. Then another. His face, even in the grainy image from the security camera, showed an expression that Luiza knew well. Fascination. Curiosity. The look of someone who sees something that shouldn’t exist, but does.
— When we combine Loki with exposure to Fenrir — continued Torwel, his eyes fixed on the screen with the same intensity as Carlos — , something extraordinary happens. The virus, which is already lodged in the neural tissue, reacts to the radiation. It multiplies faster. It spreads to regions of the brain that it would normally protect. The prefrontal cortex, first. Then the amygdala. Then…
Carlos stopped a meter from the stone.
He was motionless now, his body tense, his breath visible in the rise and fall of his shoulders. The stone seemed… to pulse. Luiza squinted her eyes, trying to understand if it was the camera’s effect, the video compression, or suggestion. But the pulse was real. A slow, deep rhythm, like a heart buried alive.
— Then what? — asked Luiza, her voice coming out in a whisper.
— Then what we call the “Nameless Effect.”
Carlos touched the stone.
The contact was gentle, almost reverent. The tips of his fingers brushed the black surface, and then…
The scream.
Luiza had never heard a sound like that. It was not human. It was a noise that seemed to come from within, from the depths where language cannot reach, where suffering is so pure that it becomes abstract. Carlos tore his hand away, staggered back, but his eyes did not leave the stone. The eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated to the point of swallowing the iris, and the mouth remained open in a scream that never ended.
— The activation — murmured Torwel, almost affectionately. — Always impressive.
— Stop — Luiza stood up, the chair scraping the floor with a metallic sound. — Stop now. For God’s sake, stop.
Torwel didn’t even look at her. His eyes remained fixed on the screen, where Carlos was now writhing on the floor, his hands clenched on his head, his feet pounding on the concrete in a convulsive rhythm.
“I can’t stop,” he said simply. “The process is irreversible once started.” The only thing I can do is observe. And learn.
The door to Carlos’s room opened again.
A man entered.
He was Black, tall, wearing the orange uniform of the inmates with the number 2217 printed on his chest. He looked around, confused, his eyes searching for an explanation — and found Carlos on the floor.
— Hey — said the man, his voice captured by some hidden microphone. — Hey, man, are you okay?
Carlos’s body did not rise. It unrolled.
That was the first thing Luiza registered, long before processing anything else: the mechanics of the movement were wrong. It wasn’t the way a man gets up from the ground — supporting himself with his hands, shifting his weight, straightening his legs. It was a fluidity that did not belong to human articulation. As if the bones had forgotten what they were for and invented new functions.
The feet found the ground first, but the back was still arched at an angle that should have broken the spine. The head turned before the rest of the torso, the eyes meeting the man who had just entered — number 2217, Luiza read on the orange uniform, the mind clinging to irrelevant details because the whole was too large to process.
The man — 2217 — took a step back. Instinct. The body knew before the brain. But Carlos’s body was already in motion.
The distance between them was about four meters. Carlos covered it in less than a second. He didn’t run — there were no footsteps, there was no momentum. It was simply there, on one side, and then it was on the other, the arm extended, the hand open finding 2217’s face with the precision of a surgical instrument.
2217’s jaw opened to scream.
Carlos’s thumb entered.
Luiza saw the skin stretch, saw the upper teeth reveal themselves in a smile forced by internal pressure. The scream that should have come out got stuck in her throat, muffled by the hand that was now closing, fingers digging into her cheeks, nails finding raw flesh.
— What… — Luiza’s voice faltered. — What is he doing?
— Surviving — replied Torwel, and there was admiration in his voice. — The virus reconfigures the circuits of fear and aggression. It eliminates inhibitions. It releases what is most primitive in the human brain. The result is…
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
On the screen, Carlos took the other man to the ground.
It wasn’t even a fight. The knees of 2217 simply stopped working, and the body fell like a sack of flour, the nape hitting the concrete with a sound that the microphones captured with brutal clarity, a cracking sound, a wet “crack” that Luiza felt in her own teeth.
Carlos was on top. No — Carlos was on top. His legs positioned themselves on either side of 2217’s torso, his knees planted on the ground, immobilizing the arms that tried to move. Carlos’s hands — Luiza couldn’t take her eyes off the hands — worked on the victim’s face with a meticulousness that was almost artistic.
The nose first.
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The fingers found the nostrils, dug in, pulled. It wasn’t a clean pull — the cartilage resisted, stretched, and then gave way with a wet snap. The blood gushed, dark and thick, running down 2217’s chin, forming a puddle that began to spread across the concrete floor.
2217 tried to scream again. This time, the sound came out — a sharp, animalistic shriek that didn’t seem to come from a human throat. His legs kicked the air, searching for support, finding nothing. The arms tried to break free, but Carlos was heavy — a weight that made no sense, a weight that came from somewhere that wasn’t muscle or bone.
“ — Observe the efficiency — commented Torwel, and Luiza noticed that he was writing something on a tablet, his eyes fixed on the screen, his fingers moving at a calm, professional pace. — The blows are not random.” The virus is accessing areas of the brain that we normally don’t use. Primitive instincts. Hunting techniques that humanity lost millions of years ago.
Carlos bit.
His jaw opened wider than it should have — wider than any human jaw should open — and came down on 2217’s face. The teeth found the cheek, pierced, tore. The flesh gave way like ripe fruit, and Carlos pulled his head back, tearing off a piece that hung between his teeth like a trophy.
The blood gushed in an arc. It hit the white wall, drawing a red fan that slowly dripped down toward the floor. 2217 no longer screamed — now it only emitted sounds, wet noises bubbling in the hole where there used to be a cheek.
Luiza felt her stomach turn. The wave of panic returned with full force, but she couldn’t look away. Her eyes were glued to the screen, to Carlos’s body moving with an impossible fluidity, to 2217’s body thrashing with the desperate energy of someone who knows they are dying.
— The bite is interesting — Torwel continued, as if giving a lecture. — The virus concentrates in the salivary glands during the acute phase. Each bite is a new infection. The second host, if it survives long enough, will also become a vector. Theoretically, we could have a chain reaction.
Carlos bit again. This time, the target was the neck.
The teeth found the jugular with the precision of a scalpel — no, with the precision of something much older, much more primitive. The canines pierced the skin, found the vein, and Carlos sucked. Luiza saw the movement of his throat swallowing, saw 2217’s eyes widen in a final spasm of consciousness before they began to glaze over.
The kicks stopped. The arms fell.
The body of 2217 remained motionless, but Carlos continued.
Bit. Chewed. Swallowed. The hands — the same hands that hours earlier folded uniforms with the mechanical precision of someone who had repeated the motion ten thousand times — now worked the flesh with a skill that seemed rehearsed. They tore, separated, found the weak points of human anatomy with an intimacy that could only come from some knowledge buried in DNA.
— Impressive — murmured Torwel.
And there was genuine admiration in his voice.
— The response time, the efficiency of the movements, the selection of targets. Look: he avoided the skull bones, went straight for the soft areas. This is not learned. This is innate. The virus is unearthing something that evolution buried eons ago.
Luiza tried to speak. The mouth opened, but no sound came out. The tongue was stuck to the roof of the mouth, the throat dry as paper. She tried to swallow, tried to moisten, but there was no saliva. Just the metallic taste of her own fear.
On the screen, Carlos finally stopped.
He remained motionless over the body, his breath ragged, his shoulders rising and falling in an irregular rhythm. The face — what could be seen of the face — was covered in blood. Not just stained: covered. A red mask that dripped down his chin, splattered on his chest, formed puddles on the floor.
His eyes were open, but they did not see. Luiza recognized that expression — she had seen it in patients in shock, in trauma victims, in people who had gone thru something too big to process. But there it was different. There was no trauma there. There was only… emptiness. Whatever had inhabited that body, whatever had made those movements, had gone away.
Carlos lifted his head.
Slowly, with a rigidity that suggested each movement required a superhuman effort, he looked around. The room. The white walls. The camera in the corner. The black stone in the center.
His eyes met the lens.
Luiza felt the air stop in her lungs.
She had seen that look before. In documentaries about wild animals. In videos of predators at the exact moment they spot their prey. It was a look without emotion, without malice, without anything. Just the recognition that there was flesh there… food, a prey.
Carlos stood up.
This time, the movement was human. Slow. Heavy. As if the body were learning to function again. He staggered, leaned against the wall, leaving a trail of blood on the immaculate white.
— The acute phase is ending — said Torwel, still taking notes. — Observe the motor degradation. The metabolic cost of activation is high. The host burns energy at an unsustainable rate. Under normal conditions, this would lead to exhaustion in…
Torwel lifted the tablet that was on the table.
It was an ordinary device, one of those you buy at any electronics store. He touched the screen once.
On the screen, Carlos put his hands on his head.
The scream that followed was different from the first. It was not one of shock, nor of fear. It was pain — pure, absolute pain, without mixture. Carlos fell to his knees, his hands still pressing against his temples, his body arched as if an invisible force were splitting him in half.
— Termination frequency — explained Torwel, his voice serene. — The same principle of activation, but with different parameters. It causes widespread failure of the infected neurons. The brain simply… shuts down.
Carlos fell to the side.
The body hit the ground with a dull, heavy, definitive sound. The eyes remained open, fixed on the ceiling, empty. The victim’s blood still dripped from his lips, forming a pool that slowly merged with the other man’s pool.
On the monitor, the two motionless bodies resembled a grotesque art installation. Red and white. Life and absence.
Luiza felt her stomach drop.
The wave came with full force, knocking down all the barriers she had tried to build. The heart raced. The breath became short, shallow, insufficient. The peripheral vision darkened, that familiar darkness that announced the collapse. She gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that her nails bent, but she felt no pain. She felt nothing but panic.
“Nafas-e-jon,” he thought. “Nafas-e-jon.”
But the mother’s voice did not come. There was only Torwel, and the monitor, and the bodies.
“Sit down, doctor,” said Torwel, without looking at her. “It will pass.”
Luiza didn’t sit down. She couldn’t. The body was paralyzed, frozen in an intermediate position between standing up and falling. She was trembling — the whole body was trembling, a fine, uncontrollable tremor that shook her shoulders and hands and lips.
— The anxiety attack — continued Torwel, as if describing a meteorological phenomenon. — Fascinating, isn’t it? The body reacting to a threat that is not physical. The brain interpreting images as real danger, activating the same responses our ancestors used to flee from predators. But here, there is no predator. Just images. Just ideas.
He turned to face her. The eyes behind the glasses were calm, curious, clinical.
— That’s why we need you, doctor. Not just for your technical knowledge. For your mind. For the way you process information, how you connect the dots, how you see patterns where others see only chaos. You are rare. And rarity, in this context, is a strategic resource.
Luiza forced her breath once more. Inhale. Exhale. Count to four.
Then four more.
The wave receded. It didn’t leave, but it retreated enough for her to speak.
— You killed him.
— I completed an experiment. — Torwel tilted his head, as if correcting a conceptual error. — Mr. Mendoza was doomed from the moment he was exposed to Loki. The only question was what we would do with the time he had left. I chose to do science.
— Science.
— Exactly. — He put the tablet in the pocket of his lab coat. — What you just saw was the first controlled evidence of the transmission of aggressive behavior induced by Fenrir. Mr. Mendoza, under the combined effect of the pathogen and radiation, attacked the second inmate with unusual violence. But note: the second inmate had not been exposed to Fenrir. Only to Loki, during the routine inoculation. Still, when attacked, he also… — Torwel made a circular gesture with his hand. — Well, you saw. There was no time to observe the development, unfortunately. The termination was necessary to contain the situation.
Luiza felt her stomach churn again. This time, she held it in.
— You are creating a weapon.
— I am perfecting a weapon. — Torwel walked toward one of the glass walls, his hands crossed behind his back in an almost professorial pose. — The American government has been funding this laboratory for twelve years. Do you know why? Because conventional weapons are predictable. Missiles, bombs, rifles — all of these can be intercepted, defended against, fought. But a pathogen… a pathogen is different. It doesn’t explode. It spreads. It doesn’t destroy infrastructure, it destroys populations. Does not occupy territory, makes the territory irrelevant.
He turned to face her.
— Imagine an enemy who does not see, does not hear, does not negotiate. An enemy that carries death within itself and doesn’t know. Imagine activating this enemy in the middle of a city, a military base, a command center. The chaos would be absolute. And we — he touched his own chest — would be the only ones with the antidote.
Luiza swallowed hard.
— There is no antidote.
— There is. — Torwel’s smile was almost paternal. — Or, at least, there is a suppression. The virus can be kept inactive with regular administration of a compound we developed. The inmates who cooperate with us receive this compound. They live. They work. Eventually, some are deported, and continue receiving medication thru channels that… well, that’s not relevant right now.
— And those who don’t cooperate?
Torwel didn’t answer. His gaze shifted to the monitor, where the bodies of Carlos and the other man still lay on the floor of the white room.
— The viral cycle of Loki is elegantly simple — he said, changing the subject with the naturalness of someone turning a page. — After the initial infection, the virus remains latent for a period ranging from three to eight weeks. During this time, is the host infectious? No. There is no active replication, there is no release of viral particles. He is a silent carrier, perfect.
He began to walk slowly, tracing an imaginary circle around the table.
— Activation, as you saw, can be triggered by multiple stimuli. The most efficient is the sonic. A specific frequency, emitted by portable devices, triggers mass replication. In a matter of hours, the host goes from asymptomatic to… — he pointed to the monitor — …this.
— This is a dead man — said Luiza, her voice trembling.
— This is a vector. — Torwel corrected without emphasis. — In the acute phase, the host releases viral particles in extremely high concentrations. Saliva, blood, tears, sweat — all contaminated. Direct contact transmits. Aerosols as well, in confined spaces. The transmission rate at this stage is comparable to that of measles. In other words: a single person can infect an entire city in days.
He stopped walking and stared at Luiza with an intensity that froze the little warmth that still remained in her.
— But there is a problem. A problem that you can help us solve.
— What problem?
— The lethality. — He frowned, as if the concept were an inconvenience. — Loki, in its current form, kills too quickly. In forty-eight hours after activation, the host is dead or dying. This limits the spread. An ideal vector should remain functional for a longer period. It must continue interacting, moving, transmitting — even when sick, even when aggressive, even in an advanced stage.
Luiza felt horror take shape in the words.
— You want me to make the virus slower.
— I want you to make it more efficient. — Torwel shrugged. — Lethality is a byproduct, not the goal. The goal is control. A weapon that kills everyone too quickly is a weapon that also kills the one who fires it. A weapon that incapacitates without killing, that spreads without eliminating the host… that is the perfect weapon.
He approached her. The distance was now too small. Luiza smelled the clean lab coat, the coffee he must have drunk hours earlier, something chemical and sterile that clung to his skin.
— Dr. Moradi, your articles on transmission dynamics in dense populations are brilliant. Your analysis of the factors that accelerate or slow down viral spread is the most comprehensive I have read in the past five years. You see what others do not see. And that’s exactly what we need.
— No.
The word came out before she could think. Pure instinct.
Torwel sighed. It was not a sigh of frustration, but of patience, like someone dealing with a child who still doesn’t understand the rules of the game.
— Doctor, let me clarify your situation. You and your friends were exposed to Loki three weeks ago. Without the suppressive medication, the virus will spontaneously activate at some point in the coming weeks. It could be tomorrow, it could be in a month. But it will be. And when it happens, you will go thru the same process you just witnessed. The only difference is that, in your case, there won’t be any cameras to document it. Just the end.
Luiza felt the weight of the words like a physical blow.
— Collaborate with us — continued Torwel, his voice now softer, almost gentle. — Help us perfect Loki. In exchange, you and your friends will receive suppression regularly. You will live. They will work under decent conditions. When the project is completed, who knows… maybe there will be other options.
— Other options.
— Freedom, for example. — He smiled. — Not immediately, of course. But eventually. Collaborative people are rewarded. That’s how the world works.
Luiza thot of Carlos on the floor. In the empty eyes. In the blood.
He thot of Kafuxi, somewhere in that labyrinth, waiting.
Thot of Makala. In the dark eyes that had seen so much, that had faced so much, that had stood firm even in the worst of hell. What would he do? What did he expect her to do?
“I need time,” she said, her voice firm despite the internal chaos.
— Time.
— To think.
Torwel tilted his head, assessing her.
— Time is a scarce resource, doctor. Your friends, especially, don’t have much. Mr. Kafuxi, for example… — He consulted the tablet. — Francisco Kafuxi, forty-two years old, Angolan. Exposure to Loki on the same date as you. Without suppression, the first symptoms should appear in… — He calculated mentally. — Two weeks, maybe less. Unless something speeds up the process.
— What do you mean?
— I mean that I have other experiments underway. Other variables to test. If I decide, I can put Mr. Kafuxi in the same room as Mr. Makala, with a piece of Fenrir between them, and observe what happens. It would be… instructive.
Luiza felt her blood boil.
— If you touch them…
— What? — Torwel interrupted her with a smile. — What will you do, doctor? Will you report it to the press? To the lawyers? To the authorities? — He laughed, a low sound, almost affectionate. — We are the authorities. This place doesn’t exist on the maps. The inmates do not exist in the official records. And you, doctor, are just another number. 47, isn’t it? The number they gave you in the camp.
Luiza felt the ground disappear once again.
“Forty-eight hours,” said Torwel, putting away the tablet. “That’s the time I give you to decide.” Until then, you will stay in a comfortable room, with food, water, and a bed. You will be able to rest, think, evaluate your options.
He walked toward the door.
— After this period, if the answer is no… — He paused, hand on the doorknob. — Well, Mr. Kafuxi and Mr. Makala will be transferred to the exhibition wing. I would like to see how Fenrir affects people with different genetic profiles. Angolan and Brazilian. African and mixed-race. The variations can be… enlightening.
The door opened.
Two security guards entered, rifles in hand, blank expressions.
— Doctor Moradi — said Torwel, without turning around. — Think carefully. Your talent is too valuable to be wasted. But if you insist on wasting it, at least you will have the satisfaction of contributing to science in another way.
He left.
The security guards escorted her thru endless corridors, all identical, all illuminated by the same cold light that cast no shadows. Luiza walked like an automaton, her feet moving without conscious order, her mind trapped in an infinite loop of images: Carlos touching the stone. Carlos writhing. Carlos biting. Carlos dead.
The room they took her to was small, but clean. A bed. A chair. A table with a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in plastic. No windows. No clock. Just the constant hum of the ventilation, that hum she had learned to hate in the first days in the field.
The door closed.
Luiza stood in the center of the room, her arms crossed over her chest in a gesture that was both defensive and self-restrained. The body trembled. The mind screamed. The wave kept coming and coming, stronger and stronger, harder and harder to contain.
“Nafas-e-jon.”
She whispered the words aloud, needing to hear them.
The mother’s voice did not come. But another voice came. The voice of the father, reciting Parvin E’tesami on Friday nite, when the week was ending and he could finally rest.
“Every crown shines with what was taken from someone.”
Luiza closed her eyes.
“All power rests on bent backs.”
He tightened his arms even more.
“But those who bend their backs also straighten them.”
He took a deep breath.
“Those who cry also dry their tears.”
He exhaled slowly.
“And one day, those who look from below rise.”
The wave receded.
It didn’t go away, but it receded enough for her to think. So that she could plan. So that she could, despite everything, continue.
Luiza opened her eyes and looked at the gray ceiling, at the light that never turned off, at the walls that imprisoned her.
Forty-eight hours.
She had forty-eight hours to decide.
But while the buzzing filled the silence, while the sandwich cooled on the table, while the desert outside remained infinite and indifferent, Luiza made a silent promise.
Not for herself.
For Makala. For Kafuxi.
For Carlos, who could no longer hear.
“I won’t let you die,” he thought. “No matter what I have to do.”
The nite fell over the desert.
Inside the room, the light did not change.
But Luiza, for the first time in hours, felt her heart slow down.
The fight had not yet ended.
It was just beginning.
