Blood on his lips, Adam watched everything burn. The things he’d bought, the things he treasured—his beautiful parquet floors, the raised platform where his bed stood. Fire had thrown its mantle over his home, shifting from blue and green to a searing spectrum of reds, while he stood motionless, struggling to grasp the scale of the devastation before him, beneath the fleeting artificial rain that could no longer stop anything.

  The massive photo of himself walking shirtless along the sea cliffs crashed to the floor, eaten by strands of fire that leapt from it to the shelf nearby. The flames climbed the wooden bookcase, devouring whatever they touched—including the urn that held Juzo’s ashes. In seconds, the tiny box and its contents vanished forever behind a curtain of red light.

  “Get out of there!” Vicky shouted, but when Adam turned, he found himself face-to-face with a fireball opening its jaws, ready to devour him.

  Vicky shoved him just in time, and the blast only managed to graze his skin with a whip of flame. Adam hesitated to react, and by the time he did—by the time his eyes processed what they were seeing through fire, water, shadows, and the shock of watching everything he owned fall apart—Vicky had already collapsed at his feet. She had just saved his life, and he didn’t know if she was alive or dead.

  “Ain’t gonna wait ‘round for you to burn, sissy boy.” Soaked, Simon came up from behind and grabbed him by the neck, digging his fingers into Adam’s throat. “I’m gonna kill ya myself,” he whispered in his ear, so close his bloodied nose dampened Adam’s ear.

  The mercenary’s stench—sweat and scorched clothes—clung to Adam, almost as much as the smoke. He tried to throw Simon off, but those fingers felt like hydraulic clamps locking around his neck.

  Air fled his lungs; consciousness slipped away. Even his growls had weakened into mere whimpers. He would suffocate—if Simon didn’t rip his throat out first.

  A distant noise, someone yelling. Vicky? No—Vicky was on the floor, dead or unconscious, waiting for the flames to claim her and drag her to hell. Maybe it was his neighbor, Mr. Quintana, knocking to check if everything was okay.

  No, Mr. Quintana! Run! Get out of here!

  The darkness crept in, and as his eyes began to close—

  “Don’t fade out!” Juzo commanded. “Wake up!”

  With lightning speed, Juzo’s presence burst through that black cloud smothering his senses and became a supernatural heart pumping blood straight into his awareness—a motor screaming for clearance to unleash its full power.

  It was as if Adam, the pilot of this machine called a body, stepped aside and handed over the controls to his brother, the copilot.

  From that point on, he experienced everything as if from the outside.

  A glow broke from beneath his skin, as if a white star were hidden beneath his muscles, growing and growing, seeking to break free of its prison of flesh and bone to shine with full intensity.

  Soon, the light turned into streams of energy dancing like lightning around a lightning rod; into a supernatural storm that pulled sparks, fire, ash, and water droplets into a vortex that whipped through his hair, his shirt.

  Overwhelmed by the sudden surge of raw power, Simon let go of Adam and staggered back, slack-jawed. What the hell was happening? Was this his doing? What punishment would he receive from the android now that he had screwed it up in a big way?

  Struggling to comprehend, Simon stared at Adam, who now hovered midair, his back to him, enveloped in an electrical blaze of white flames that coursed from his feet to his wild, crackling hair. The water falling from the sprinklers overhead evaporated instantly, adding veils of mist to that whirlwind of energy and fire.

  Without moving his legs, without touching the ground, Adam slowly turned to face Simon, and the mercenary found himself staring into the face of a man possessed by a god—an arrogant being freed from the shackles that restrained ordinary mortals, both physical and moral.

  Adam/Juzo opened his eyes, divine lights flashing within them, and locked them onto Simon’s dark gaze, freezing him on the spot. He grabbed him by the neck, flipping the roles, and jolted him with electric surges. The power was so immense that the Auriga cuffs they both wore exploded into a shower of sparks.

  “What’s the matter, you piece of trash? Afraid I’ll kill you?” Adam/Juzo growled, shaking Simon. In his hands, the bastard looked—felt—like a rag doll, so light he could lift him as easily as a sheet of paper; someone so fragile that it filled him with a twisted joy to know that, with just a little more pressure, he could inflict unimaginable pain.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  But then, like someone suddenly remembering they forgot to take the trash out, the amusement vanished from Adam/Juzo’s face. Gliding through the air, he dragged Simon by the neck across the burning lounge. Wherever he passed, the ceiling sprinklers burst and sprayed water in heavy gouts—only to evaporate instantly.

  Passing under the platform where his bed once stood—now moments from collapsing under the weight of fire and water—Adam/Juzo hauled Simon toward the loft’s largest window, its frame glowing red-hot, shining like a neon sign pointing exactly where the garbage belonged.

  The explosions had already shattered the glass—perfect, that made his job easier. Using Simon’s back as a human mop, Adam/Juzo cleared away the remaining shards, then dangled him over the precipice. He was ready to take out the trash.

  The wind howling twelve stories above the ground only fanned the flames higher.

  Simon stared into Adam/Juzo’s blazing eyes. There was no soul in them—only raw power. Yet the mercenary, defiant even in the face of a god, managed to hold his gaze. All wasn’t lost for him; he had an ace up his sleeve—or rather, beneath his jacket.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that,” Adam/Juzo said as though reading Simon’s mind. Reaching beneath the man’s jacket, he yanked out the Daedalus thruster strapped to Simon’s back—the very device he’d used to infiltrate the loft. Like the Auriga cuffs, the chrome rectangle sputtered, sparked, and disintegrated into shards of light.

  “No, no!” Simon panicked. “No, p-please!”

  “Ha! Pathetic fool.”

  Adam/Juzo pictured Simon smashed on the pavement below, a bloody mess; or impaled on the roof of a car, a mangled heap of flesh and glass shards. The power surging through him demanded release, screaming for one of those images to become reality. The fury he felt toward Simon—for betraying Vicky, for hurting her, for humiliating Juzo in the park and being partly responsible for his death—for every punch, for the fire consuming his home. That fury demanded satisfaction.

  As Adam/Juzo was about to release him into the void, a fragment of his own restraint surfaced, halting him. No. That wasn’t who he was. He wasn’t a killer, wasn’t like the human filth he was holding. Whatever he would do, however, he had to do it now—before the desire to kill became too overwhelming to resist.

  Pulling Simon so close their noses almost touched, he growled, “If you survive, I never want to see you again.” Then, with his hand glowing white-hot, he struck Simon with a powerful backhand, sending him hurtling across the street and out of sight.

  Simon felt the scythe of death graze his chest as he was launched. The electric flames tore into him, ripping his skin and drawing blood before he crashed, spine-first, into something that first stole the air from his lungs, then gave way to a painful embrace of metal, shattering sound, and complete darkness.

  Adam/Juzo watched as Simon’s back slammed against the windows of the building across the street, shattering the glass before vanishing into a dark void of broken shards. Good. It was done.

  Turning his attention to Vicky, he approached her with care. Mindful of the dangerous white flames coursing from his body, he extinguished them with a thought. Knowing that his current strength was overwhelming, he gently lifted her off the ground. The poor girl was soaked to the bone.

  Leaving behind the inferno that was consuming his loft piece by piece, he floated back toward the window where he had tossed Simon and launched himself into the sky, cradling Vicky in his arms. The evening cloaked their escape with a soft veil of darkness and warm winds.

  He descended onto the rooftop of the nearest skyscraper, settling beneath the blinking red obstruction lights atop an antenna. With care, he laid Vicky down against the outer pipes of a ventilation duct.

  And just as swiftly as it had come, it was gone. The divine force within him retreated in an instant, and he collapsed, sitting on the cold concrete. It wasn’t a physical exhaustion but a sharp psychic vacuum. Juzo’s presence had receded from his conscious mind, withdrawing to some hidden corner, taking all its divine strength with it and leaving Adam fragile and human once more.

  His heart pounded so violently it felt like his chest might burst. Breathing was a struggle, and his neck, still raw from Simon’s chokehold, burned painfully. His split lip throbbed, flooding his mouth with the metallic taste of blood. Overwhelmed by a cascade of emotions, he broke down, sobbing.

  Despite the satisfaction of his hard-won victory, dread clawed at him. The thought of facing something like this again wasn’t just unnerving—it was terrifying. He knew another confrontation loomed in his future, waiting just around the corner.

  But right now, there was something more urgent.

  Still drowning in emotion, he tried to assess how badly Vicky was hurt. But in the shadows, with red lights pulsing over them like the beat of a heart, he could barely make anything out. Bloodied bruises glowed beneath the torn, scorched fabric of her light blue blouse. Thin trails of blood ran down her forehead, her cheek, her ears, slipping past her earrings—everything rinsed clean by the water.

  Vicky was alive—of that he was certain—but Adam didn’t know how much longer she could hold on. She needed a hospital, no matter how much she wanted to avoid them.

  He pushed himself to his feet and, as he lifted his gaze, caught sight of how breathtaking Proxima City looked from this height. A vast, ethereal sea of lights stretched endlessly, with no horizon untouched by buildings. But then his eyes found a column of smoke rising not far away. He turned his head, like someone unable to bear watching a loved one in their final moments.

  No. He couldn’t look away. He had to witness the end of the place he had called home for so many years. He had to say goodbye.

  His loft—his beloved sanctuary—was vanishing before his eyes. There would be no more sacred spaces for him.

  His cherished solitude was over.