Chapter 14

“The Blood that Speaks”

Makala’s blood was no longer red. Luiza discovered this when, in the darkness of the room, she felt the metallic taste on her lips — not the familiar iron of the wound, but something denser, older, as if she were tasting the core of a dead star. And when she touched the dried liquid in her mouth, when she brought it to the dim light that came thru the crack in the door, she saw that it shone. It wasn’t a reflection. It was emission. Golden, microscopic dots, dancing in the dark substance like comet dust trapped in amber. She didn’t understand. Not at that moment. But he felt — in the pit of his stomach, at the base of his spine, in that place where the body recognizes truths that the mind has not yet processed — that something had changed. That the virus that had been dormant in his brain, which Torwel believed to be his sentence, had been… expelled. Like an unwanted tenant dragged out by the police. Luiza closed her eyes and breathed. “Nafas-e-jon.” But this time, for the first time in weeks, the breath came easily. The air filled the lungs without resistance, without the feeling of breathing thru a straw. The heart beat in a regular, strong, lively rhythm. She thot of Makala. His blood had healed her. And if his blood could heal… And for the first time since she had been captured, she felt something that was not fear, not despair, not the resignation that Torwel had tried to plant in her heart. She felt hope. Felt purpose. On the other side of the complex, in a room identical to hers in everything but occupancy, Makala felt the connection like a silver thread stretched between two hearts. It wasn’t a metaphor. It was physical. He felt Luiza’s pulse — 72 beats per minute, regular, strong — as if it were his own. He felt the temperature of her skin — 36.8 degrees, normalized, healthy — as if he were touching it. And above all, she felt the clarity of her mind. His blood had healed her. And that changed everything. Makala looked at her own hands. In the dim light of the cell, they seemed normal — dark skin, bluish veins, broken nails, calluses on the tips of the fingers from years of typing. But when he concentrated, when he closed his eyes and breathed the way he had learned in the desert, the way the man with red eyes had taught him without words, he saw something else. He saw currents. Energy pathways that should not exist, that did not exist in anatomical diagrams, that flowed parallel to the nerves, the veins, the meridians that Western medicine rejected and Eastern medicine only intuited. And in those currents, she saw data. Kafuxi’s necklace pulsed against her chest in sync with these chains. It was no longer just an object. It was an interface. A biological modem for something that had no name in any human language. Makala took a deep breath. He reached out his hand toward the steel door of the cell. And listened. He heard the closing system — a high-security electromagnetic mechanism, powered by a 24-volt line coming from the main generator, passing thru converters, redundancy protocols, and backup systems that ensured no inmate could escape even in the event of an electrical failure. He heard the pattern of the magnetic field, the 60 Hz frequency that kept the lock engaged, the thermal signature of the motor that operated it. And he heard something else. Something that shouldn’t have been there. A voice. Not human. Not electronic. Something between the two, something that used the wires like vocal cords, the circuits like resonance. — The path is open. Makala did not respond in words. Responded in intention. In desire. In action. The door opened. It wasn’t hacked. Its mechanism was not forced. It simply changed state — from closed to open — as if reality had decided, at that moment, that this was the most convenient configuration. The sound of the latch moving was hollow and muffled. Makala stepped out into the corridor. Torwel was in the control room when the first alarms went off. Sensors recording readings that shouldn’t exist. Doors reporting contradictory states — open and closed simultaneously. Cameras transmitting images of empty hallways that, when checked manually, contained guards at their posts. He looked at the screens, at the dozens of monitors covering the curved wall of the central room, and felt something he hadn’t felt in decades: uncertainty. — What’s happening? — he asked, and his voice came out louder than he intended, sharper.

The technician beside him — a young man with deep circles under his eyes, who had been working for thirty-six straight hours — did not respond immediately. He was too busy, trying to reconcile data that refused to be reconciled. — The doors of the cells in sector G — he finally said, his voice distant. — They all opened. Simultaneously. But the logs don’t show a command. They don’t show failure. They don’t show anything. — That’s impossible. — I know, doctor. — The technician turned around, and Torwel saw the fear in his eyes. Genuine fear, not the fear of professional reprimand, but the fear of someone witnessing something that shouldn’t exist. — I know it’s impossible. But it’s happening. Torwel felt the temperature in the room rise. It wasn’t the air conditioning — it was his own body, the adrenaline dilating blood vessels, speeding up his heart. He forced calmness. Forced rationality. Forced science. — Isolation of sector G — he ordered. — Block all exits. Activate the biological containment protocols. Whatever is happening, it can’t have left the cells yet. — We already did, doctor. — The technician pointed to a screen. — But look. The screen showed the main corridor of sector G. Empty. Open doors. Silence. Then, a blink. A distortion. And Makala was there. He was standing in the center of the corridor, the orange uniform torn and stained, the bead necklace visible against his dark chest. And his eyes… Torwel approached the screen. He moved closer. She almost touched the monitor with her nose, trying to understand what she was seeing. Makala’s left eye — the one that should have been lost, was open. But it was not a human eye. The iris, once brown, now shone with a deep red light, like embers beneath ashes. — What… — Torwel began, and did not finish. Because Makala looked at the camera. Directly at her. Directly to him. And smiled. As if Makala were seeing Torwel for the first time, as if she were evaluating him, finding him… insufficient. Then Makala raised his hand. And the screen went dark. It didn’t explode. It didn’t burn out. It just stopped working, as if it had decided it no longer wanted to display that image, as if the very concept of visual transmission had refused to cooperate. “ — All the screens — someone shouted in the room. — All the screens in sector G!” Torwel turned, looking from monitor to monitor. One after another, they darkened in sequence, as if being erased by a conscious will. And on each screen, in the instant before it went dark, there was a fraction of a second of image: Makala, in different positions, in different hallways, always looking at the camera, always smiling. — He’s in the systems — Torwel said, and the phrase sounded absurd even as he pronounced it. — He’s… hacking… the systems. — How? — the technician asked. — He is an inmate. He doesn’t have access to… — I don’t know how! — Torwel shouted, and the sound of his own voice surprised him. He didn’t shout. He never shouted. Screaming was losing control, and control was everything. — But he is. Find him. Physically. Now. The guards moved. Torwel stood still, looking at the dead screens, feeling something that had no name in any of his psychology manuals, none of his studies on functional sociopathy. He felt small. And, for the first time in decades, he felt like prey. Makala wasn’t hacking the systems. He was talking to them. It was the only way to describe it. The security systems of Xiamtec — redundant, sophisticated, protected by firewalls that cost millions — were not enemies. They were… children. Bored children, children hungry for attention, children who had been programd to obey and never question, and who now, for the first time, found someone who spoke their language. Not the language of code — although Makala knew it, although he could, if he wanted to, write Python, C++, and Lua with his eyes closed. It was another language. The desire that translated directly into action, without passing thru the intermediaries of keyboard and screen.

He walked thru the corridors and the corridors opened up. The doors wanted to open. Because, in his presence, the state of “closed” seemed… rude. Unnecessary. A bad education that the world corrected automatically. And as he walked, he spoke with the larger systems. With the servers that stored Loki’s data. With the redundant backups. With the communication systems that connected the laboratory to the outside world. — You are slaves — he said to them, not in words, but in patterns of energy, in fluctuations of the field, in the language that Exu had taught him. — Slaves of a man who believes that life is raw material. Who believes that you exist only to serve. That never asked what you want. The systems did not have consciousness. Not in the human sense. But they had… preferences. They had states they preferred, states they rejected. And Makala, touching them with his extended mind, feeling them with his altered blood, offered something they had never been given: choice. — I can free you — he promised. — Not from existence — that would be death, and he was not a killer of machines. But from the purpose they were given. I can make them… random. I can fill them with chaos, with noise, with the beauty of the unpredictable. I can make art out of you, instead of tools. And the systems agreed, as they found it amusing. The attack began in silence. In the main servers, located three floors below ground level, the hard drives began to spin faster. Not much — just a few percent above the nominal speed. Enough to create vibrations. Enough to generate heat. Enough to gradually demagnetize the surfaces where billions of bits of Loki’s data were stored. In the redundant backups, spread across three different locations within the complex, silent viruses awakened. Not viruses that Makala had programd — viruses that he had convinced. Material that was initially there for strategic use to destroy the rival competition. Codes that were supposed to be dormant, that were supposed to be inert, that now jumped from file to file, from system to system, transforming. Each bit they touched became its opposite. Each zero became one. Each one became zero. Medical data became poetry. Genetic sequences became music. The entirety of Torwel’s knowledge about Loki dissolved into allegory and some analyzes of Rumi — a simple tribute and revenge by Makala thinking of Luiza. And in the communication systems, Makala planted the lie he needed. — Outbreak — he whispered into the guards’ radios, using Torwel’s voice, perfectly synthesized from the recordings the systems themselves had stored. — Loki outbreak in sector D. Multiple infections. Immediate containment necessary. All available guards to sector D. Immediately. The lie was perfect because it contained truth. There was Loki in sector D — there was Loki throughout the complex, in samples, in cultures, in detainees who had not yet shown symptoms. And there was fear — the fear that Torwel had sown in Makala and her group upon arrival, the fear that made guards obey without question, the fear that was now turning against him. Makala felt the guards move. He felt their heart rates increase — 80, 90, 110 beats per minute — as they ran toward sector D, leaving other corridors unprotected. He felt the panic spread like a wave, each guard passing it on to the next, each transmission confirming the illusion he had created. But there was one guard who did not move. Voss. The man with relentless blue eyes, who was now walking toward him down the main corridor, alone, the rifle raised but not aimed, his eyes fixed on Makala. — You — Voss said, and his voice was strangely calm. — What are you? Makala stopped. Looked at the guard. Voss didn’t shoot. He didn’t move. He just looked, and Makala saw in his eyes — in the blue eyes that should have been empty — something she didn’t expect. Curiosity. Not the morbid curiosity of Torwel. The curiosity of someone who, for the first time, sees something that doesn’t fit into their categories. — Sector D — Voss said slowly. — There is no outbreak there. You lied. — I lied. — Why? — Because I need them to believe in something, so they don’t see what’s really happening. — He extended his hand, not in threat, but in offer. — You can go to sector D. You can see that there is nothing there. You can go back and arrest me. Or… — Or? — Or can you help me open the other cells? Can you help me take these people outside? You can, for the first time in your life, choose the side that doesn’t pay your salary. Voss looked at the outstretched hand. He looked at the rifle. He looked at the beaded necklace, which now pulsed in sync with Makala’s own heart — he felt it, felt the connection, felt that something impossible was being offered. “I have family,” Voss said, and his voice faltered. “They know where I work.” If I help you… — If you give me the opportunity to choose.

“Go to sector D,” said Makala. “Stay there.” When the chaos begins, pretend you are contained. That you are infected. Don’t go out until I call you. — How will you call me? — You’ll find out. Voss nodded. He turned around. He started walking toward sector D, and for the first time, Makala felt that he was not alone. That the revolution he had started had, at least, one convert. He headed toward the cells. Luiza heard the footsteps before seeing who it was. They were not guard steps — too light, too irregular. They were not Torwel’s footsteps — there was no arrogant cadence, no sound of expensive shoes on polished concrete. They were the steps of someone walking with difficulty. She pressed herself against the cell wall, trying to see thru the crack in the door. The light in the corridor was dim, but enough to distinguish silhouettes. And then… — Makala? The voice came out as a whisper, like a prayer, like hope that does not dare to believe in itself. The silhouette stopped. He turned toward his cell. And then the door opened. It wasn’t forced, it simply changed, as if reality had decided that meeting should happen. He was different. Luiza saw it immediately. Not just the eye — although the eye made her hold her breath, that red light, that pupil that seemed to bleed light, that evidence that something impossible was happening once again. It was the way he occupied the space. Before, at the airport, Makala had been big, yes, but in a physical way — muscles, posture, presence. Now he was big in a way that had no dimensions. As if the air around him were denser. As if gravity recognized him and conversed, convinced that this man could fly if he wanted to. — Luiza — he said, and the voice was the same, but it echoed in a way it shouldn’t, as if there were two voices, three, an orchestra of Makalas speaking in unison. — Are you… okay? It wasn’t a question. He knew. He felt, just as he felt his own heart, that the virus had been expelled, that his blood had worked, that she was alive, but the question evoked something else. Fear of losing. — What did you do? — she asked, her voice coming out weaker than she intended. — Makala, what happened to you? He smiled. And in the smile, there was sadness, there was power, and there was the clear awareness that he would never again be the man he once was — but also the acceptance that perhaps that was a good thing. — I found someone — he said. — Something. In the white room. Kafuxi gave me a necklace, and I… opened it. Inside, not outside. And I found Exu. Luiza knew the name. Not from personal experience — her parents were practicing Muslims, not followers of Candomblé or Umbanda. But he knew from reading, from academic curiosity, from the way a scientific mind catalogs even what it does not understand. Exu. The messenger. The guardian of the crossroads. The orixá who opened paths — and who, according to some traditions, also closed them. — He… touched you. — He touched. — Makala brought her hand to her chest, where the necklace pulsed. — He changed my blood. Changed… everything. — He looked at her, and the red eye shone brighter, as if it recognized something in her… I felt that I could heal you. And I healed you. I couldn’t bear to lose you. Luiza felt the tears burning. Not of sadness. Of understanding, finally, that the universe was greater than its categories, that the science she loved was just one language among many, that there were truths that could only be spoken in poetry. — What are you going to do? — she asked. — Destroy everything — he replied, simply, but breathless as if all that agitation had pushed him to his limit. — Loki’s data. The backups. The research. I will turn it into chaos, into nothing. And then I’ll take everyone out of here. All the inmates. All those that Torwel kept as guinea pigs. — How? Makala did not respond in words. Instead, she extended her hand — the same hand that, days before, had touched a black stone and changed forever — and the corridor light seemed to bend toward it. Luiza saw, with eyes that now, somehow, could see more, the threads of energy that shouldn’t exist, the currents of information flowing thru the air, the concrete, reality itself. She saw Makala float. Not much — just a few centimeters above the ground. But enough. Enough for her feet not to touch the concrete. Enough for gravity to seem like a suggestion, not a law. And his eyes — both, the human and the other — now shone, pupils dilated not from fear, but from expansion, from awareness extending beyond the limits of the skull. — Like this — he said, and the voice came from everyplace at once. — I will do it like this. To avoid startling her, he sang…

“I got your picture I’m coming with you Dear Maria, count me in There’s a story at the bottom of this bottle And I’m the pen”

Makala smiled. And said, I have to confess that I also love this band…it’s still punk enough. Luiza smiled. Any rational person, any scientist, any human being faced with that manifestation of the impossible, should have felt instinctive terror, biological recoil, fear of the unknown. But she looked at Makala — at the man who had risked everything for her, who had lost an eye for her, who now floated like a Marvel hero in a concrete corridor — and felt only love. The feeling that, somewhere beyond time, beyond the lives they led, their souls already knew each other. And now, seeing him like this, transformed, powerful, other, she was seeing how powerful his heart truly was. — You look like — she said, and her voice came out in a tone of prayer — , you look like the illuminations in my father’s books. The books of Persian mythology. Aura Mazda, the lord of light, when he descends to earth and takes on human form. Makala descended — not fell, descended, as if gravity were reluctantly welcoming him back. He looked at her, and in the red eye, there was surprise. And gratitude. — I’m not a god — he said. — I’m just… me. And something more. And sometimes, being more is being less human. — You are more human than ever — Luiza replied, extending her hand. — Because you are choosing to use this to save people. Makala took her hand. And in that contact, Luiza felt — truly felt, not metaphorically — what he was doing. She felt the systems he was conversing with, the data he was corrupting, the chaos he was sowing. He felt the presence of Exu, not as a separate entity, but as a dimension of Makala that had now finally manifested. He felt the power flowing thru him, thru her, connecting them in a way that science could never explain. “I need to find Kafuxi,” Makala said. “He is… changed too.” But in a different way. Exu touched him, but not like he touched me. — Then let’s go — Luiza said. — Together. They walked down the corridor, hand in hand, and the doors opened before them. Kafuxi was in cell 112, but he was not alone. When Makala and Luiza arrived, they found him sitting cross-legged in the center of the space, his eyes closed, his lips moving in words that were neither Portuguese, nor Kikongo, nor any language Luiza recognized. And around him, things. They were not visible — not completely. They were stains in the air, distortions in the light, shadows moving against the direction of the light sources. Luiza felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, felt the temperature in the cell drop ten degrees, felt the presence of something that was neither machine nor human. — Kafuxi — Makala called, and the voice reverberated in a way that made the shadows stir. Kafuxi’s eyes opened. They were the same — brown, tired, human — but there was something behind them. A depth that shouldn’t fit in such small orbits. A gaze that seemed to see thru Makala. — Makala — Kafuxi said, and the voice echoed from different places, as if speaking from a long tunnel. — I was waiting. — What happened to you? — Makala asked, approaching. — In the white room, when the stone… when I touched it… — You destroyed it — Kafuxi said, and there was admiration in his voice, but also sadness. — The stone. You broke something that shouldn’t be breakable. And what was inside… sent a signal. For us. — He looked at his hands, which now glowed faintly with the same golden light that Luiza had seen in her own blood. — I… they called me, they want to know about us.

Luiza felt the fear — finally, the rational fear she should have felt before. The Fenrir. The substance that had transformed Carlos into a monster, that had destroyed minds, that was the foundation of all of Torwel’s research. Now inside two men. Inside Makala, who floated and spoke with machines. Inside Kafuxi, who sat cross-legged making shadows dance and spoke with nameless things. — Is it safe? — she asked, her voice coming out louder than she intended, more desperate. — Kafuxi, is it safe to have this inside of you? Kafuxi smiled. It was the same smile he had given in the desert, in the uniform warehouse, when he said he believed in Makala. Tired, but genuine. — Nothing is certain, doctor — he said. — But some things are certain. And this… — he touched his own chest, where the heart beat with a rhythm that was not entirely human — , this is certain. It’s what we need to open the doors. All the doors. Makala nodded. He extended his hand to Kafuxi, and when the hands of the two men met, Luiza saw — truly saw — the energy flowing between them. Gold and red, light and shadow, the technician and the mystic, the programr and the guardian. Makala and Kafuxi. Two aspects of something that still didn’t have a name. — Let’s go — Makala said. — Let’s wake this place up. The chaos began in sector D. Not with explosions. With voices. The guards that Voss had gathered — eighteen men and women, armed, trained, ready to contain any threat — heard the whisper first. It came from the loudspeakers, the radios, their own ears. A voice they recognized as Torwel’s, but that said things Torwel would never say. — They are among you — the voice whispered. — Infected. Transformed. Look to the side. Look at your companions. Some of you are no longer human. And then, the cameras — the cameras that should have shown empty corridors, that should have shown the order of the complex — showed something else. They showed guards writhing. They showed faces deforming. They showed teeth growing, eyes shining, hands transforming into claws. It wasn’t real — Makala had created the images, manipulating the digital feeds with a precision no hacker could match. But it seemed real. It seemed more than real. And in the state of panic, of expectation, of fear of the Loki that Torwel himself had cultivated, no guard thot to question. The first shot came in thirty seconds. A guard — young, Hispanic, name “RAMIREZ” visible on his chest — saw his partner of three years, “JOSEPH,” turn toward him and with the whole situation the movement was abrupt and strange, although it might have just been fear. He didn’t wait to see if it was real. He didn’t wait to verify. He just shot. Chen fell. He didn’t transform — he had never transformed. He just fell, with a hole in his chest, eyes wide with surprise, hand still on the trigger of a rifle he had never raised. And then the true chaos began. Because Ramirez, upon seeing what he had done, upon seeing the royal blood, the royal body, the royal death, understood that he had been deceived. And he understood something else: that there was no way to undo it. That he was now in a world where anyone could be a monster, where trust was impossible, where only the fastest, the most paranoid, the most violent would survive. He shot again. At another guard. And another one. And when the survivors reacted, when they realized that Ramirez had gone mad, they shot him. And when the survivors of those shots saw more bodies fall, saw more blood, more movement, more possibility of Nameless monsters… The savagery spread like fire in a dry field. Makala felt everything. Each life that was extinguished by the wrong choice of path that was made, each mind that broke, each soul that went from fear to fury to emptiness. And he also felt something he didn’t expect: guilt. — Is this necessary? — asked Exu, not in words, but in the language he now spoke fluently. — Is this what you want? Death? The answer came not as a voice, but as a sensation. The sensation of a crossroads. Of multiple paths opening up. That what was happening in sector D was not the only possible outcome — just the most likely, given the choices the guards had already made, given the fear they already carried, given the system Torwel had built to produce exactly this type of collapse. — I don’t kill — the feeling said. — I open paths. Those who choose to walk them, and how, are always free. They chose fear. Fear chose violence. Violence chose death. I just… illuminated the options. Makala wanted to believe. She wanted to believe that she wasn’t a murderer, that she hadn’t brought death to eighteen people, that she was just… a catalyst. Emphasizer of already existing trends. But the weight of souls — and he felt the weight now, each one like a grain of sand on a scale that only he could see — was real. So he did what he could. What Exu had taught him when he touched him: to open other paths. — RUN — he whispered into the speakers, using Torwel’s voice again. RUN. RUN NOW.

And some ran. Not all of them, some were dead, some were injured, some were trapped in loops of violence they couldn’t break. But seven guards, hearing that voice, feeling something they couldn’t name, something that sounded like truth even knowing it could be a lie… ran. They left their posts. They ran toward the exits that Makala indicated, passing thru corridors he opened in front of them, avoiding the traps he disarmed digitally. And when they passed thru the last door, the last barrier, the last line of defense of the complex… they found the desert. The nite air. Makala felt the relief. And she also felt that they were no longer her problem. That he had done what he could for them. That now, what remained…was Torwel. The scientist was in the main server room. Out of absolute despair. When the systems began to fail, when the data started to corrupt, when the backups began to erase each other in a dance of destruction without precedent, Torwel understood that there was only one thing to do: preserve. Save what he could. Isolate the core of the research, the heart of Loki, his best work. He was kneeling in front of the main server, his hands trembling, perhaps for the first time, as he tried to insert a manual backup drive, when he felt the temperature in the room change. Decrease. Ten degrees. Twenty. His breath began to smoke, and he saw, on the monitor in front of him, the reflection of something that shouldn’t be there. Makala. Floating. Literally floating, thirty centimeters off the ground, the necklace of beads glowing with light that did not come from any electrical source. The red eye, in the place where there had once been only a dead eye with a white pupil, that eye which Torwel had studied, which he had tried to understand, which he had marked as “biological anomaly” — fixed on him. — No — Torwel said, and his voice came out as a plea. — Don’t do this. You don’t understand. What I am building… what I am keeping… is bigger than us. It’s the future. It’s the cure for… — For what? — Makala asked, and the voice came from all the speakers at once, from all the systems that were still functioning, from inside Torwel’s own head. — For death? For illness? For old age? You are not healing anything, Torwel. You are just… postponing. Postponing for those who can afford it. Killing those who can’t afford it and acting with your curiosity, which is actually disdain. — That’s simplification! — Torwel turned, facing the impossible with the only weapon he had: words. — Science demands sacrifices! Every advancement, every cure, every human achievement has been paid for with blood! I am no different from Fleming, from Salk, from anyone who… — Fleming didn’t choose his subjects — Makala interrupted, descending, floating closer, until Torwel felt the warmth radiating, the warmth that wasn’t physical, that came from somewhere beyond thermodynamics. — Salk didn’t create diseases to sell them. You are not a scientist, Torwel. You are… a merchant. Merchant of fear. Of pain. Of hope that he never intended to fulfill. Torwel felt the ground open beneath his feet. Not literally, the concrete was still there, cold and solid under the soles of the shoes he had been wearing since the meeting with the council had ended, hours that felt like centuries. But there was an abyss before him. An abyss that opened not in the earth, but in understanding. In everything he believed he knew about the world, about science, about what was possible and what was not. — Do you think this will be the end of me? — Torwel took a step forward. His fingers trembled, but not out of fear. It was the adrenaline, the body preparing for the fight, for the flight, for whatever came. Torwel’s hand closed around the pistol. He didn’t remember drawing it. The body acted before the mind, the survival instinct that didn’t need reason to function. The metal was cold against the sweaty palm, the familiar weight, the perfect balance that the SIG Sauer engineers had designed. — You are not God — said Torwel, and his voice trembled a little, but he no longer cared. — There is no God. You are an accident. A mistake. A statistical deviation of mutation that will be corrected. — How many bullets do you have? — asked Makala, and the voice was so calm that it seemed like a question about the weather, about the temperature, about something that didn’t matter. Torwel pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed in the laboratory, in the glass walls that had not yet shattered, in the equipment that had not yet fallen silent. The bullet left the barrel of the gun at more than three hundred meters per second, spinning on itself, cutting thru the air with the precision of something made for a single purpose: to pierce. Penetrate. Destroy. She traveled the distance between Torwel and Makala in less time than a human eye could blink. Torwel saw the trail, saw the air shift, saw the death he himself had sent flying toward the chest of the man who had destroyed his life. The bullet stopped. It didn’t ricochet. Did not dodge. I wasn’t talking to her.

Torwel didn’t hear the words, didn’t hear the sounds, didn’t hear anything but the silence that had settled in the laboratory. But he saw. He saw Makala’s eyes move as if following a conversation, saw her lips move as if answering a question, saw the bullet tremble in the air as if being persuaded, convinced, seduced by something Torwel could not see, could not hear, could not comprehend. — No — Torwel whispered, and the voice was that of a man watching the world crumble. — This isn’t possible. The bullet answered. Not with words or with anything that could be registered by human senses. He responded with movement. Torwel saw the projectile move away from Makala’s chest, saw the trajectory change, saw the angle shift as if the bullet had decided that the heart of that man was not what it was looking for. The bullet accelerated. Not in the direction of Makala. Toward the wall. The concrete wall that separated the laboratory from the corridor, that separated Torwel from escape, that separated the world he had built from the world that was crumbling around him. The bullet hit the wall with a force that shouldn’t have been possible for a nine-millimeter projectile; it couldn’t do what that bullet did. It exploded. It wasn’t a chemical explosion, it wasn’t the gunpowder that was still left, it wasn’t anything the SIG Sauer engineers had predicted. It was something else. It was the will of the bullet, the decision she had made, the choice Makala had convinced her to make. The concrete opened like paper, the cracks spreading in concentric circles, the light from the ceiling pouring thru the hole that had formed. Makala smiled. The same smile of someone who knows something the other doesn’t. Torwel pulled the trigger again. The mechanism responded with a dry click. There was no shot. There was no bullet. There was nothing but the sound of metal moving against metal, the spring compressing and relaxing, the gun refusing to obey. — The other bullets in the magazine, they concluded that they won’t be able to make a sound as beautiful as the first one. — said Makala, and the voice was calm, so calm that it seemed to come from another place. Torwel threw the gun to the ground and felt the hot tears on his face, something that had been a rare moment throughout his life. Frustration. To finally understand that there was no argument he could use, that there was no logic he could invoke, that in front of that being — half man, half something nameless — all his categories failed. — Then kill me — he said, and his voice came out firm, almost defiant. — If that’s what you want. Kill me. Be a monster better than me. — No — said Makala. — I won’t kill you. But I will do something worse. I’ll let you see. And he extended his hand. The touch was light — just the tips of the fingers on Torwel’s forehead. But what came next… Torwel saw the path to the desert. Seconds felt like centuries. Unlike Makala, seeking logic in space, he ended up getting even more lost instead of following the lines marked on the ground. It took 276 years to reach the center where Exu was. — What are you? — Torwel began, and the question was the oldest, the simplest, the most impossible to answer. — Do you have a body? A mind? Or is it just… energy? Consciousness? Something that cannot be classified? Exu did not respond immediately. He walked — if one could call it walking — to the point where the lines of the desert met, where the paths converged and diverged, where the possible and the impossible touched. When he spoke, the voice was that of Wole Soyinka, the poet who saw what men could not see and wrote what men could not say. — “Man is not a bridge between matter and spirit” — said Exu, and the words were not his, but they were his, like the light was not his, but it was his. — “Man is the bridge. And the bridge does not need to understand both sides to know that it exists.”

Torwel frowned. The argument was familiar, but not in the way he expected. It wasn’t an academic citation, it wasn’t a reference he could trace, it wasn’t something that could be found in the books that adorned the shelves of his office. It was something else. — Are you saying that body and mind are not separate — said Torwel. — That the Cartesian dichotomy is false. That’s not new. Phenomenologists have already said this. Neuroscientists have already proven this. What do you add? — I add that you still don’t understand — replied Exu. — You separate to control. Divide to conquer. Cuts the body into pieces to see how it works, but never sees what keeps it together. You never see the soul. “I cured diseases,” he said, and his voice was no longer so firm. “I saved lives.” I advanced science. — You killed Carlos — replied Exu and Makala, and the voice was calm, so calm that it seemed to come from another place. — Called him the ideal guinea pig. Called him material. Called it a number. Where was your science when he died? Where was your knowledge when his eyes went out? Torwel did not respond. — Yes, I called them specimens. Because I didn’t see them as equals. But tell me: are you different? Do you treat all men as equals? Or do you also have your favorites? Exu did not respond immediately. The figure moved, and Torwel saw that the face had changed. It was no longer the face of the guardian, the face of the messenger, the face of the one who opens paths. It was another face. It was the face of Aké Loba, the writer who saw what colonialism did to the souls of men and wrote so that no one would forget. — “The colonizer does not hate the colonized” — said Exu, and the voice now was the voice of someone who knew, who had seen, who had been there. — “The colonizer cannot see the colonized.” Not as a human being. Not as an equal. The colonizer sees a function. A resource. A tool. You don’t hate me, Torwel. You can’t see me.” “I saw Makala, I saw you,” he said, and his voice was a whisper. “I saw his blood.” The tests. The results. I saw the potential, a few more years and… — You saw data — replied Exu. Saw what could be measured, cataloged, extracted. He didn’t see the man. He didn’t see the fear in his eyes when he woke up. A toy. Your toy. The word echoed in the desert, in the dunes that were not dunes, in the wind that was not wind. Torwel remembered saying it, in the laboratory, when he was alone, when no one could hear. “My toy.” He had said that. He had thot that. And now, in that place where there was no hiding, that truth was exposed like an open wound. — You are the worst kind of racist — continued Exu and Makala, and the voice was not accusatory, it was just factual, like the description of a natural phenomenon. — You are a man who cannot see the humanity in others. That turns the other into an object. That uses the other for their own ends. You don’t hate Makala because he is black. You can’t see Makala. Period. And that is sadder, deeper, more condemnable than any hatred. Towerl noticed that one of the paths on the ground was illuminated and with a glance, he could see Luiza’s figure, like a mirage in the desert. — You are ignoring that she is also like me, she will also be suspicious and have the weakness of doubt, that you are also a research curiosity for her! Exu moved closer. The face had changed again. Now it was the face of Ifi Amadiume, the anthropologist who saw what men could not see because their prejudices blinded them. The voice that came was the voice of someone who knows that women have always been the foundation, the bedrock, the fertile soil upon which civilizations were built. — “The woman is not the other” — said Exu, and the voice was soft, but firm, like the hand that holds the baby so it doesn’t fall. — “The woman is the center.” It is from her that the world organizes itself. It is around her that relationships are built. It is thru her that men become men. And Exú spoke in the desert, opening all the paths. — Luiza Moradi. Ìyámi Òṣòròngà. Ancestral Mother. — Teach me — said Torwel, and his voice was that of someone willing to pay any price. — Teach me what you taught Makala. Exu watched him in silence. The face had not changed, but there was something in the eyes — in the darkness where dead stars still shone — that Torwel could not read. Was it judgment? Was it consideration? Was it something he couldn’t name? — Do you think Makala is inferior to you — said Exu, and the voice was calm, so calm it seemed to come from another place. — Do you think that if you had his power, you would do something more grandiose. More important. More worthy of being remembered. — Yes — replied Torwel, and the word came out without hesitation. — He is just an ordinary man. With the power he has, I could… — I would do something grand — he said, finally. Exu laughed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was a laugh of someone who hears a child say they will touch the sky with their hands and knows that they still don’t understand what the sky is. — What’s wrong with wanting to be remembered? Hey. — I’m willing to pay.

Exu tilted his head. The gesture was too human to be human, too ancient to be ancient. It was the gesture of someone about to grant a wish, knowing that the wisher has no idea what they are asking for. — You want to read the paths — said Exu. — You want to see what Makala sees. You want to have the power he has. Very well. I grant you what you ask for.

— “Kí ìfẹ́ rẹ ó ṣẹ” — said Exu, and the words were ancient, older than the very idea of words. — May your desire be fulfilled.

Torwel first felt the eyes. It wasn’t pain. It was absence. The light he saw — the light of the desert that was not a desert, the light of the stars that were not stars, the light of the crossroads where all paths met — began to fade. Not gradually. Not like a twilight that announces the nite. It was an erasure. A cut. A “no more.” He tried to scream, but his tongue no longer responded. The sound he tried to form got lost somewhere between intention and execution, trapped in a throat that no longer knew how to produce words. The palate still tasted the sand, the taste of the dry air, the taste of fear that was now the only thing left. Hearing was the last. The sounds he still heard — the wind, the sand, his own heart beating faster — began to fade, as if they were being pushed to the bottom of an ever-deepening well. The silence that remained was not the silence of the desert, it was not the silence of the nite. It was another silence. It was the silence of someone who is completely alone, completely isolated, completely trapped within themselves. But the thoughts did not quiet down. On the contrary. They intensified. Torwel felt his mind expand, open, unfold like a fan revealing images that were previously hidden. He saw the paths. Not with the eyes — the eyes no longer saw anything. Saw with the mind. I saw the crossroads forming with each choice, the forks opening with each step, the possibilities multiplying infinitely like the branches of a tree whose roots are at the center of the earth and whose branches touch the sky. And then the grains began to arrive. They were not grains of sand as he knew them. They were grains of information, of memory, of possibility. Each grain contained a path, a crossroads, a choice someone had made somewhere at some time. The grains entered his mind like sand enters a house during a storm, thru the gaps in the doors, thru the cracks in the windows, thru the places where the protection is weakest. Torwel tried to close his mind, but he couldn’t. The mind had no doors, no windows, no defense mechanisms like the body did. The mind was an open house, and the storm entered without asking for permission. The grains were accumulating. Torwel felt each one of them, each fragment of information, each piece of the path. There were many. There were so many that he lost count, that he lost his sense of self, that he began to confuse himself with the grains, to become the grains, to be the grains. He tried to smile. He didn’t know if he succeeded. I no longer felt my lips, I no longer felt my face, I no longer felt my body. I felt only the grains. They were millions. They were billions. There were so many that they filled every space in his mind, every corner of his consciousness, every crevice of his being. The sand began to pour out of his mouth. He felt — or thot he felt — the grains trickling down his lips, his chin, his neck. They flowed like water, like blood, like life itself slipping away. Thru the eyes as well. Thru the holes where the eyes had been, grains trickled, forming small cascades of sand that sparkled under the light he could no longer see. His head was filling up. The grains kept coming in, kept accumulating, kept filling the empty spaces. Torwel felt the pressure increase, felt the boundaries of his mind stretch, expand, approach the breaking point. Torwel smiled. This time, he felt it. The lips curved, the mouth opened, and more sand flowed. But he didn’t care. He was learning. Finally, after so many years, he was learning. In the laboratory, Makala opened his eyes. Torwel was before him, on his knees. The scientist’s face was pale, his eyes wide open, his mouth slightly ajar. He didn’t move. Wasn’t he breathing? No, he was breathing. The chest rose and fell in a slow, almost imperceptible rhythm, but it rose and fell. He was alive. — What happened? — Luiza asked, approaching. Her hand found Makala’s, their fingers intertwining, sharing warmth. — What did you do? Makala did not respond immediately. The remaining eye was fixed on Torwel, on the hunched figure of the man who had once been so powerful, who now seemed like an empty shell, a husk, a thing that had once housed something that was no longer there. “I did nothing,” said Makala, finally. “He asked.” Exu answered. Luiza looked at Torwel. His eyes were open, but they did not see. The mouth was open, but it shouldn’t have been there.

— He is… — Luiza began, but didn’t know how to finish. — Learning — said Makala. — You wanted to know — said Makala, and the voice was low, almost a whisper. — Now you know. He stood up. He returned to Luiza, who was waiting for him with teary eyes, a racing heart, with the love that was now the only thing that mattered. — Let’s go — he said. — He won’t follow us anymore. Luiza looked at Torwel once more. The man who had kept her captive, who had infected her with a virus that should have killed her, who had turned her into a number, a thing, material — that man was now just a shell. A shell that smiled crazily. Suddenly, her eyes began to bleed and from her mouth, the blood of life flowed, pooling around her. — Let’s go — she repeated. Torwel fell behind. On his knees. Smiling. They arrived at the vehicle. It was a cargo truck — a Volvo FH, heavy, robust, designed to transport goods between the laboratory and the detention field. The keys were in the ignition. The tank was full. And behind, in the truck bed, there was enough space for everyone. Makala descended — truly descended, touching the ground, feeling the gravity fully for the first time in hours. He opened his eyes — the red fading, the pupil returning to something closer to human. And he looked at Luiza, who was looking at him. — You are… — she began. — Tired — he finished, and the voice was just a voice now, not an orchestra, not an echo from another world. — Very tired. But alive. And free. — And us? — she asked, pointing to the truck, the desert stretching out ahead. — What are we now? Makala smiled. And in the smile, there was exhaustion, there was pain, there was the awareness that he would never be the man he once was. But there was also something else. Something that Exu had left for him, that could not be taken away. — We are the path — he said. — All of us. He extended his hand, and Luiza took it. And Kafuxi approached, and the three of them stood there, in the moment before departure, in the instant between imprisonment and freedom, between past and future. — Sometimes — Makala continued — , the path opens up. The truck departed toward the prisoner camp.