Suddenly, the lights turned on. Victor slowly opened his eyes, squinting, blinded and irritated by the sudden glare. His vision remained blurred for a few seconds as the boy rubbed his right eye with his hand, feeling something sharp and hard inside it. The movement was very clumsy and slow, so much so that he accidentally hit his eye and cheekbone, continuing to rub in a clockwise motion with four fingers as gently as possible, until, only a few moments later, he felt his eye free itself from that thing which he now felt in his hand.

  Pulling it away from his sight, he noticed it. A bit of eye gunk, slightly wrapped in pale yellow mucus that dampened the phalanges of his middle and index fingers.

  “Mh…”

  He wiped his hand on his shirt. Then he straightened up, remaining seated on the bed. He had no blankets on him, and it was already a miracle that he was wearing anything at all. Just a military green shirt and a pair of gray underwear. He remained seated on the bed, sliding his hips slightly backward, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his slightly spread thighs. He stared at the far end of the room, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light.

  He also waited for that strange bitter aftertaste in his mouth to disappear, probably caused by last night’s dinner.

  “And thank God the Bolognese cutlet was supposed to be one of the best…” he muttered, smacking his lips in an attempt to get rid of that awful rancid taste of ham and cheese.

  Afterward, he shifted toward the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the floor. The floor was warm and slightly sticky, and the sensation of hairs and dust beneath the soles of his feet made everything even more disgusting.

  Victor sighed. He turned his gaze toward the alarm clock to check the time.

  It was only six in the morning, June 24th, 2054.

  “Fortieth day of imprisonment…” Victor said with a hoarse voice, letting out a short “mh” to imitate a dry laugh, referring to the fact that forty days had passed since Lieutenant Abner informed them that returning home was impossible.

  Victor remained there for a few more minutes staring at the clock, absentmindedly counting the passing seconds.

  Suddenly, however, he was interrupted by three knocks on his door, producing a loud metallic noise that made the boy jolt in surprise.

  “Shit…”

  “Hackett, it’s Oltmann.”

  The man sounded like he had been awake for several hours. He showed no sign of fatigue. His lively and decisive voice, in contrast with Victor’s half-dead state, instantly irritated him.

  “Yeah, what do you want?” Victor replied in a nervous tone, his voice still hoarse despite raising it. This caused him to cough in an attempt to clear his throat while searching around for water, rummaging through the nightstand, the desk, drawers, and duffel bags.

  “We’re grumpy this morning, huh?” Hansen replied meanwhile, adding a bit of irony, imagining and understanding the exhaustion of the morning and the forced awakening caused by the automatic lights in the rooms. “We’ve been called to the main hall. Abner wants us there in half an hour. Move your ass, kid!” he added jokingly.

  “Give me time to figure out who I am and I’ll be there,” Victor replied.

  “What an exaggeration!” Hansen answered.

  “You think?” Victor said, finding a half-empty bottle of water in one of his bags. It was warm and crumpled, its plastic sticky and covered in dust and lint.

  “Disgusting…” Victor muttered, drinking anyway due to his thirst, though still dissatisfied with the temperature, which made it taste like a bland, tasteless broth.

  “When you become a father and take care of a newborn, you’ll get used to it,” Hansen replied with a chuckle.

  “I still have to learn how to take care of myself,” Victor answered while changing his clothes with fresh ones taken from his bag.

  “Come on,” Hansen said, continuing their playful exchange. “I’ve seen worse cases. You’re improvable.”

  “That’s good then,” Victor replied at last, opening the door with some effort due to his lingering exhaustion. On his first attempt he pushed it, but it didn’t open, stopping instantly.

  “What the hell?”

  “What are you doing?” Hansen said, this time seriously. “You have to pull, not push.”

  “Oh, right!”

  Victor stopped pushing the door, which only creaked, and pulled it toward himself. However, it still didn’t open, producing a loud thud as it was held by a rusty chain near the handle.

  “The latch… God, what’s wrong with you this morning?” Hansen asked, baffled by his friend’s behavior.

  “I’ve been sleeping like shit for days,” Victor replied, finally opening the door after clumsily and frantically removing the lock and unhooking the chain from the knob, letting it hang against the wall.

  “I felt like shit yesterday too. I’m never eating cutlets again.”

  Hansen silently looked at the boy from head to toe with a puzzled expression, noticing a strong smell of sweat coming from Victor’s shirt, which was slightly stained white under the armpits.

  “Did you wash yourself?” he asked.

  “I took a shower yesterday,” Victor replied.

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  He received only a horrified look from the man, who stepped a few centimeters away from him.

  “And you want to show up like that in front of the lieutenant?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Victor said. “It’s too late for a shower now. Besides, I think the lieutenant has more important things to worry about than my smell.”

  “Lieutenant Gordon Abner is our commanding officer,” Hansen said very seriously, raising his voice as if scolding him. “We must respect him in every way, including our hygiene.”

  Victor remained silent, simply shrugging and widening his eyes as if to say, what am I supposed to do?

  “Well, it’s too late for a shower… but don’t you have some spray? Some kind of deodorant?”

  “Yeah… I do,” Victor said, reopening the door to his room in the same slow, clumsy manner as before, clearly annoyed by the situation. He slammed the door in Hansen’s face, almost as if sending an unspoken message telling him to go to hell.

  The man ignored the message, though his irritated expression suggested otherwise. He let out a deep sigh to relieve some stress.

  “So this is what I have to look forward to when she grows up…” the man muttered to himself, referring to his daughter.

  “We’re doing great…” he added sarcastically, placing his hands on his hips and casually walking sideways along the boy’s door before turning and leaning his back against the wall. He sighed and stared blankly at the ceiling and the opposite side of the corridor, putting his hands in his pockets and resting his left foot against the lower part of the wall. He remained there, whistling briefly while waiting for Victor to hurry up, occasionally greeting acquaintances passing through the sparsely populated corridor.

  Victor came out of the room many minutes later, at least twenty. His movements were much less clumsy than before, and he appeared more composed and orderly. His clothes were the same, though he had added an orange jacket to cover the stains under his shirt, which he could only properly remove by doing laundry—but since it was already 6:24, it was too late to go to the laundromat.

  “Not great, but it’s an improvement,” Hansen said, looking at Victor somewhat skeptically.

  “Whatever,” Victor replied with a small sigh as he began walking down the corridor with the man.

  “Is something wrong?” Hansen asked. “You don’t usually act like this.”

  “What do you want me to say, Hansen?” Victor replied nervously. “This wasn’t the trip I expected. And now we’re stuck on Earth with no way to go back home. So yeah, something’s wrong. Pretty much everything.”

  Hansen remained silent. His intense gaze drifted into the distance, his narrowed eyes and quick glances around the corridor suggesting that he was carefully choosing his words, understanding the difficult moment the boy was going through.

  He stayed silent for a few seconds.

  “And what do you think I should say, kid?”

  Victor briefly looked at the man before turning his gaze forward again.

  “I have a daughter I raised on my own. She has no one up there. I still don’t trust the agency I left her with, because they don’t know my daughter and her needs the way I do. And meanwhile, I’m stuck here. You’re stuck here. All of us are stuck here. We’re all pissed off, but venting our frustration or turning against each other won’t change anything. Life goes on, even after tragedies.”

  Victor glanced at Hansen again. This time his expression was no longer nervous but remorseful, almost guilty—like he had said something selfish or insensitive.

  “I’m not trying to belittle your pain, kid. In fact, I’m telling you that I understand it—maybe a thousand times better than you understand yourself. My daughter’s mother died right in front of my eyes. Those teeth… that demonic stare… those twisted shapes…”

  Hansen stopped.

  Suddenly he froze, staring blankly at the floor. He leaned against the wall, lightly hitting it with his arm before resting his hand against it. His gaze was distant, reliving a nightmare that had tormented him for a very long time.

  The distorted vision of his wife collapsing in agony, screaming and begging for mercy, mixed with his daughter’s desperate cries, bones breaking and reforming inside flesh, producing grunts, spasms, and infernal roars, was once again vivid in his mind—so vivid it almost felt real.

  Hansen’s eyes were wide open.

  “Hansen… you okay?” Victor asked, concerned.

  The man sighed and rubbed his eyes before turning toward the boy, his gaze stiff, his eyes wet as a few tears rolled down his right cheek. Despite his apathetic expression, Victor sensed deep sorrow in his eyes—and an overwhelming urge to scream in anguish.

  Hansen nodded quickly.

  He wiped the tear away with his arm, remaining still and silent for a few seconds.

  “Nothing’s okay, kid…” the man said quietly, looking at him with concern. Hansen forced a small smile, puffing his cheeks slightly and curling the corners of his lips.

  “And that’s fine.”

  Finally, the man moved again. Together, they headed toward their destination.

  ***

  “Thank you all for finding the time to attend this meeting,” began General Teodorico Cannizzaro, a man well over sixty years old who, because of the absence of wrinkles, the brightness of his eyes, and the vivid color of his black hair and olive-toned skin, appeared to be at least thirty, addressing the crowd gathered in the large hall—wide and deep, and dimly lit by the ceiling lights, which revealed the dust in the air as it drifted slowly downward.

  The hall was composed of nine sections of ten horizontal rows, with fifteen seats in each row, for a total of 1,350 seats, though less than half were occupied by soldiers, mechanics, doctors, and workers of every type and rank.

  The general stood in front of a large glass desk, on which rested several half-empty bottles of water, neatly arranged papers, pens, and seven microphones, all directed toward those seated behind him—including Lieutenant Abner—who sat in black leather chairs, three to the general’s right and three to his left.

  There were four men and two women, all between thirty and forty years old, well dressed in military uniforms and wearing expressions that were a mixture of boredom and alertness.

  Victor and Hansen entered shortly after the general had greeted the attendees. They were not the only ones who had arrived late, though by then the flow of people entering the hall had become very small compared to a few minutes earlier. The two boys began searching for their companions while the general delivered a brief introduction, speaking about the changes that had taken place in the base over the past few weeks.

  Water supplies had drastically decreased by at least 47%, and the filtration systems had repeatedly malfunctioned, operating poorly and occasionally producing dirty and contaminated water. The remaining water was barely enough for washing clothes and drinking, with reduced rations per person that usually ran out within twenty hours of being delivered to the base.

  Meat production—supported by machines that synthesized muscle tissue through the use of bovine and caprine genetic material—had also declined due to the impossibility of obtaining fresh DNA from those animals. The livestock had been cultivated in specialized laboratories, which had not received the necessary enzymes required to conduct the replication processes.

  Finally, the Ijo attack that had occurred the previous week, carried out by the two Level-B entities Yabanhito and Atrax, had strangely increased the number of Tokbog-29 infections, bringing the death toll to approximately 837. The base had therefore lost 62% of its original members.

  While the general explained all this, Victor and Hansen reunited with their companions after noticing Raiko waving her hand to get their attention. She was seated in the third seating block on the right side of the hall, opposite the entrance.

  The boys wasted no time, quickly taking the empty seats in front of Raiko and Nikita and sitting down in a rather clumsy and unbalanced manner because of their haste. At first he ignored her by accident, but Victor soon noticed Toria in the opposite row waving at him. He returned the gesture, giving a thumbs-up with his right hand to ask if she was okay. She answered with the same gesture.

  “Hackett, don’t,” Hansen said, giving Victor a small pat on the shoulder to get his attention. “Abner saw us come in late. He’s been watching us for a few minutes now, and he looks pretty annoyed.”

  Victor then noticed the detail himself, observing the lieutenant’s gaze directed precisely toward him. However, more than annoyed, he seemed like the usual Lieutenant Abner—wearing the same dull yet authoritative expression he always had.

  “With that said, I will now give the floor to American Lieutenant Gordon Abner, commander of the personnel evacuated from the now-defunct Class Kanon Military Base ‘Axel Brock,’ who has some important communications to deliver to his subordinates.”

  Abner rose from his chair, thanking the general and shaking his hand with a firm and decisive grip before stepping toward the central microphone that the general had just vacated. He adjusted himself briefly, repositioning the microphone on its stand.

  “I would first like to say that these past forty days have been very long and difficult. The fact that we are still alive is a miracle, and I feel compelled to congratulate all of you.”

  The lieutenant was suddenly interrupted by a burst of applause, joined by everyone present, including the boys. Abner looked at them with deep pride, showing a noticeable smile.

  “Now… during these dark days, I and all the men we managed to gather have worked tirelessly to find a solution to this problem.”

  There was a brief pause—just long enough to create a strong tension among the audience. Victor noticed Toria repeating that strange movement with her hands again, and he saw her leg trembling slightly.

  “We have found a new base where we can relocate and continue our operations: the Mega-Class base ‘Franca Florio,’ in the city of Palermo, Sicily. It has proven to be an excellent outpost, equipped with highly sophisticated technologies and one of the most advanced operational and medical systems in Europe. Furthermore, after the destruction of the Class Giga ‘Romolo’ and the recent collapse of the Martinelli base, the Florio now stands as the primary military stronghold in Italy. For the time being, we will be hosted there.”

  Celebration broke out immediately. The audience had begun cheering almost from the beginning, talking among themselves, applauding, and praising the lieutenant in every possible way. Victor himself was surprised. He and Toria—who looked equally shocked by the news—looked at each other almost instantly. Their happy, hopeful gazes met and intertwined. Their destinies seemed to bind together, and in that moment, more than ever, no man could have received better news.