The Voice That Gave Him Life

Meanwhile, near the great wall, something organic came too close, an animal perhaps, a bird. In any case, movements near the wall activated automated weapons sensors that were up and down the length, width, and even to the top of the enormous concrete block. Machine guns opened fire, their high-caliber bullets tearing apart whatever had approached. The loud sounds of gunshots in this dull silent darkness frightened individuals who lived in The Wastelands. They screamed when they heard this, complained in incomprehensible words and without further ado fled somewhere, disappearing into dense fog and rain.

Horgas was found with torn pieces of clothing. His face had dripping open blisters that burned. He couldn't breathe well, blisters burst in his lungs with each new attempt to breathe. Each thick drop that fell from the sky and hit infected flesh hurt like jets of boiling oil, the raw lacerations burning. Somehow he fell asleep or passed out. He was ready to receive death. He felt that someone had to pay for all the suffering he suffered, his situation could not go unpunished. His exhausted mind played tricks on him.

Lying upon the wet, barren ground, he lets himself drift toward the dark tunnel and the light at its end. Shaking violently with fever, El Horgas curses without even hearing himself. His voice produces no sound, only a faint breath that forms tiny clouds above him; even the effort of speaking causes pain. He is doomed. The virus has accelerated through his circulatory system. Amid what he intends as his farewell to life, more—and better—ways of punishing Stormport society occur to him. He must punish them with a single blow, one capable of inflicting terrible pain upon many people.

He needs to deliver a lesson that will last for generations, aimed above all at people obsessed with appearances, money and every form of frivolity. He wants it seared into every mind. Amid this absolute conviction, he begins to hear a sweet female voice speaking to him:

"Do it for yourself, love, for me, for us. Don't let them win, they always win. Don't allow it. Give them what they deserve. I'll be waiting for you on the other side. Do it for what we were, for what we are, for what we will always be."

"Britu?"

"Yes, get up, you know what to do. Do it, love."

As though no pain afflicted him, El Horgas suddenly sits upright upon the ground, pushes with his arms and rises. He feels destroyed inside and out; no part of his body is free of suffering. Yet after hearing the melodic voice that gave him life, nothing can stop him. Dragging his feet through the mud, he advances without pause beneath the relentless rain. At a snail's pace, he approaches the great wall. He is convinced he can climb the hill of dirt and waste. If he can reach its summit, evade the automated sensors, cross the fence extending above the wall and reach Stormport's protected side, he can return to the city. Driven by that hope, he proceeds toward it with absolute determination.

He resigned himself to the inexorable, because he knew he would die.

That summer was one of the hottest on record in Stormport. In the middle of the hottest month, a gray night that dropped heavy downpours, El Horgas emerged from the hole he had dug in the hill among ancient dirt. Behind him he left the region known as The Wastelands, on the other side of that great wall. In that hot summer, El Horgas escaped from the hell of that barren and gray area, surrounded other hills of garbage and after several days managed to enter the first urbanized sectors of Stormport. For a considerable time, he walked through different districts with the aim of reaching the financial core of Stormport, that is, Downtown. Since then he only focused on surviving day to day, hoping not to perish before arriving.

Intense torrential rains, usually at night, were formed by icy stones that in those years used to fall from space. One night, El Horgas pointed his eyes toward the sky, remained incredulous for a moment, and let the rain soak his face. He was trying to suppress searing pain caused by invading blisters that swarmed his skin. These were spread throughout his body inside and out. His manifest symptoms were increasing at an accelerated rate. He had no one to turn to, since his parents had died, he had no uncles, brothers or friends. He also did not have a job or his own home.

At that very moment he was little more than a piece of rotting flesh, sickly, helpless and doomed. He consoled himself only with the memory of his Britu, the love of his life, as he left behind hills of grime and forests of concrete ruins, that is, the outer territories of Stormport. His bulging eyelids creaked in the rain. He spat to the side a slimy, repulsive mixture of saliva, blood and pus that he refused to swallow. This done, he penetrated deeper into Stormport. He had to pass the most guarded district of all without being detected, advance in a diagonal trajectory.

As he walked through the ostentatious streets, avenues and boulevards of Downtown, ready for anything, he heard two people shouting something to him from the sidewalk. His sickly and dirty appearance attracted too much attention. He hurried to get out of the visual range of those people. He turned a corner, put a hood on his head, a mask on his face and ran along that sidewalk until he turned another corner. He took another busier sidewalk, an avenue where many people walked, considering the late hours of the night. Those who had yelled at him did not follow him; he had to prevent other people from reacting like that when they saw his appearance. He stuffed his blistered hands into his pockets, hiding them, and lowered his hooded head. He advanced along the avenue at a normal pace, camouflaged among the crowd.

He has to pass unnoticed through streets where people's appearances are scrutinized above all else. Exhausted, sleepy, hungry and thirsty, he is caught in the torrential rain that falls each night. Once it begins, it does not stop until morning. El Horgas walks soaked along Downtown's luminous sidewalks. At one point, the speakers of a certain bar erupt with a brand-new female voice singing controversial lyrics. It catches El Horgas's attention. He stops, turns to his left and looks toward the source of the music. Beyond a pane of glass replacing an entire wall, he sees a stage inside an opulent dinner show. Upon it, a hologram of Brittany Condon gives everything she has to deliver the finest performance possible.

"Britu? Is that you?" He watches for a moment, studying every detail. "No, that is not my Britu. Who is she? Who is Brittany Condon?"

El Horgas considered that this supposed artist was a shameful, runaway, deteriorated and mocking version of his beloved. For him, that woman who was singing there had nothing to do with his Britu, it was in any case an absurd exaggeration, full of bodily vulgarities and foul words. Concentrated, he was watching her when a scream of panic or perhaps pain, a feminine scream, erupted behind him. He turned suddenly, looked in all directions, saw no one. The screams did not stop. Then he concentrated on examining a building right in front of him, a gray, dilapidated, dirty façade, on the top of the main entrance of which the name read: Destiny Building. She could hear Brittany's song ending at that moment. The holography disappeared.

Under a heavy downpour, El Horgas whispered something under his breath and hurried toward the dark building. He climbed the cracked staircase of the façade, advanced a little further and entered a dark interior that swallowed him like the jaws of a starving demonic giant. He took refuge there in the empty apartment on the eleventh floor, which would be his home from now on. As time went by, starving, thirsty, dying, El Horgas had plenty of days to think about what to do on the night of Brittany Condon's megaconcert, as his body deteriorated. His skin was completely covered with inevitable massive growths of virulent blisters.

He feels it would be better to die in silence and darkness, where no one can judge him. He does not want to inspire pity, revulsion, compassion or disgust. Without easing the afflictions or pain consuming him—much less curing them—El Horgas accepts the fate allotted to him. He endures a singular hell of pain and suffering. Faced with the inevitability of a merciless death, he decides to fulfill the promise he imposed upon himself because of Britu's voice: the voice that gave him life. He need only survive until the night of the megaconcert, no easy task in his condition. Day after day, he loses battles in every organ, molecule and atom. His body is under siege; his blood carries death faster than his body can restore itself, and little time remains. None of that matters to him.

There he is now, still in the darkness of the Destiny Building's eleventh-floor apartment, camouflaged in grime. Thick threads of something yellowish fall from the corner of his mouth. He whispers something, then lets out raucous laughter. Among utopian longings he awaits his imminent death, which is interrupted. Loud noises make El Horgas react suddenly. Someone breaks down the front door with a loud bang. He is startled to see three individuals burst into the apartment dressed in biohazard suits.

"Of course, right? Now they come, trash. Where were you when I begged for medical assistance? Now they come, shit. What's wrong, did I ruin the opium of this society? What is the secret? Hey? Where is my Britu? Who is Brittany Condon?"

One of the individuals takes two steps forward, points a gun at him, pulls the trigger and fires a dart containing sedatives; Horgas faints immediately. That man communicates with someone on his internal intercom.

"Abraham, prepare a BioGenLife, we have it."