Trevor opened his eyes and kept dreaming.

  His mattress had turned into a pile of jute sacks, and his sheets into scraps of dirty cloth. The air reeked, he realized, of sweat and blood, yet he couldn’t feel the air entering his lungs. It was a very strange dream.

  He sat up and looked at the bodies lying around him, all dressed in rough, worn gray tunics. He looked down and realized he was wearing the same thing: a coarse burlap tunic with no visible seams. He looked at his hands. They were calloused. His hands hadn’t had calluses in more than a decade, not since the fall of Ott and the organization.

  “Just a nightmare?” he murmured, but his voice sounded far too real.

  He closed his eyes and tried to unfold his sensory field, trusting in the strange power that had accompanied him for half his life, but the triaura did not respond. Where he had once built a rich mental space, he found only an unpleasant sense of emptiness.

  His breath caught in his throat, dry and bitter.

  He brought a hand to his chest and once again felt nothing, neither his heartbeat nor the pressure of his own hand. He had lost his sense of touch, he realized. And perhaps something far more important.

  “Nake gie hai kuosha,” a voice exclaimed.

  He looked up. Two boys in blue tunics had approached him. The shorter of the two, barely a teenager, spoke to him in an unfamiliar language. The other, broader and more impatient, wasn’t willing to wait for a reply. He grabbed Trevor roughly by the arm, hauled him up, and shoved him toward a line of men walking at a slow pace.

  Where am I? he wondered.

  The first thought that came to mind was that he was inside a cathedral. There was no other way to describe it. The tall, intimidating sculptures that served as columns were clearly religious in nature, with proud faces and complex poses in which they held their weapons. But the lighting was far too sterile for a place of faith. The glowing cubes in the dome were more typical of a hospital or an old factory.

  Another young man in a blue tunic shoved him to keep him moving. This one was even younger than the previous two, and much thinner, yet Trevor still couldn’t resist his strength and fell to his knees.

  What’s wrong with my body?

  “Duo yí!” the boy exclaimed.

  Trevor looked him in the eyes, unable to understand what he was saying.

  “Duo yí!” the boy shouted again, unsheathing a sword that shimmered like a hummingbird’s chest.

  A chill ran down Trevor’s spine. His mind finally woke up. He stood as best he could and moved toward the line of men in gray tunics. He bumped into the last one and fell again, but the boy had already turned his back and didn’t see.

  Trevor swallowed. For the first time he looked closely at the men around him. They were of very different ages: old men, adults, youths, and barely grown boys. But they all had something in common: complete exhaustion in their eyes.

  A forced labor camp, he thought, getting back to his feet. Or something worse.

  He flexed his fingers several times, anxious to regain some sensitivity, and pressed his palm to his chest once more. He no longer worried about his mental space; he was simply looking for some hope to cling to. And finally, barely perceptible beneath the beating of his heart, he felt the faint pulse of the triaura.

  He let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t know how he had ended up here, but with his powers available, there was no reason to be afraid.

  Weak, he thought, still holding his chest. Extremely weak. Fifth, maybe sixth level of the physical tiers. What happened to my body?

  He brought his hands to his face and touched his nose. It was square and a bit thick, very similar to how he remembered it. His eyebrows matched too, as did his jaw and his sparse facial hair. But the scar on his temple, the one he had received in his first confrontation with another aurist, was nowhere to be found.

  Plastic surgery? No, that doesn’t explain my weakness. Neurotoxins? No, my vision is fine. A mental prison? Very unlikely. Something stranger? Time travel? Reincarnation? Where am I? Why can’t I remember how I got here?

  “Li Piao!” shouted one of the boys in blue robes. By then Trevor had already reached the center of the chamber. A young man in the line, around twenty years old, responded to the call and received a wooden token.

  “Dai Lee,” the boy called again, and an older man repeated the same scene.

  “Cao Lu.” Another man stepped forward. “Mao Tian… Baeko Wan… Jo Lee…”

  Trevor heard more than thirty names, all in that strange, sharp language he couldn’t identify. Aside from English, Trevor knew Spanish, Italian, and some Russian, but this language was completely unfamiliar. It sounded like Chinese, but he had no way to confirm it. The facial features of these people didn’t resemble anything he had seen before either.

  “Ten Bai,” the guard called, receiving no answer.

  “Ten Bai!” he shouted again, but no one responded.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Li Piao!”

  The man who had received the first wooden token approached the guard. They exchanged a few words and after a few seconds he read aloud:

  “Trevor! Does anyone have that name?” Li Piao looked again at the paper. “Trevor Van Vate!”

  Trevor was surprised the man spoke his language, and even more that he knew his name. He didn’t wait to be called again. He stepped forward and revealed himself.

  “I’m Trevor. Trevor Van Vate.”

  “Nido show pi,” the guard spat.

  Trevor didn’t understand.

  “He wants to see your left wrist,” Li Piao told him. “Hurry up, they might punish you.”

  Trevor rolled up his sleeve. There was a small tattoo at the height of the radial artery, a sharp and unfamiliar symbol. The guard wasted no more words on him. He tossed him a worn gray token and ordered Li Piao to take him away. As soon as they turned their backs, the boy continued shouting names.

  “You must be one of the ones who were closest to the explosion, right?” They stopped at the back of the group. “Don’t worry. The healers say we’ll recover in a day or two.”

  “How did I get here?” The question slipped from his lips, sharp and feminine. Trevor coughed to clear his throat. “Where are we?”

  From the look Li Piao gave him, he might as well have asked what color the sky was.

  “Incredible. Looks like you lost all your memories. I almost envy you. Many here would give anything to forget the horrible journey by ship.”

  “Ship? What ship? You’re not from here either?”

  “Of course not. Nobody can be from here. Do you see any women or children?”

  “I mean this place, this country.”

  “Country?” Li Piao asked, confused. “What’s that?”

  It’s the language, Trevor assumed. Some words must be different. Or maybe he’s mocking me.

  “Where are you from? Where were you born?” Trevor asked.

  “I’m from Lemon Fish Village, on the Seismic Peninsula.”

  Trevor had never heard of a place with such a ridiculous name.

  “Do you know where I’m from?”

  Li Piao looked him up and down.

  “No idea. But Van Vate is a very common surname along the coasts of the Sea of Peace. Many here were captured there.”

  “Sea of Peace?” Trevor asked. “Do you mean the Pacific?”

  “No. The Pacific Sea is to the south. The Sea of Peace is to the east, far to the east,” he replied in the condescending tone one would use with a child. “And my name is Elipio, by the way. Only the Liang Sect calls me Li Piao.”

  “Sect?”

  “You wouldn’t like being called Ten Bae all the time either, would you?”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “They call us that because they can’t pronounce our real names. But among ourselves, among equals, we don’t have to call each other that…”

  “Li Piao!” Trevor interrupted. “No. Elipio. My good Elipio. Help me, please. I think I’m starting to remember some things. Where are we?”

  “In the Liang Sect.”

  “And where is the Liang Sect?”

  “Well, in the lands that belong to the Liang Sect. Where else?”

  Li Piao, or Elipio, or whatever his name really was, was clearly enjoying himself at Trevor’s expense. Trevor was certain of it.

  “Do you know what nation we’re in? The name of some famous monument? If I gave you something to draw with, could you sketch the coastline?”

  A strange smile appeared on Elipio’s face.

  “Sure,” he said. “I can show you a map if you want. I bought one at the last harvest festival. What a celebration. I almost ran away with the sect master’s daughter.” He smiled again, this time without humor. “We’re slaves, Trevor. Neither of us has seen sunlight in years.”

  Slaves. The word echoed inside Trevor’s head. He placed a hand on his chest and calmed himself with the beating of the triaura.

  “You must know something. The name of a nearby river, a forest, a road…”

  “Nope.” Elipio hesitated. “Well… the Liang Sect calls these mountains the Taurus Range.”

  Taurus Range… Trevor remembered a trip he had taken through Asia as a child. The Taurus Mountains! In Turkey, I think. This is Earth. An Earth where they still use swords? Did I really travel through time? No, it’s not just that. Why do I have the same name?

  “You mentioned an explosion,” Trevor said, his mind filling in the gaps as he spoke. “You said that’s what made me lose my memory. That many people were affected.”

  Elipio nodded.

  Amnesia from exposure to toxic gases. I was reborn with all my memories intact, but now the memories of my second life are gone, he thought. The idea is ridiculous, but the triaura has always existed outside all logic. But if I kept my memories and my powers, why didn’t I escape this place? Did I not know how to use them?

  “Come on,” Elipio said, lifting his head as if he had heard something Trevor hadn’t. “Many died. They’re going to change our niches.”

  Trevor set aside his theories and followed Elipio with his eyes wide open. If he was going to escape this place, he first had to understand it. Something told him the slaves didn’t come to this luxurious chamber every day.

  Two boys in blue tunics guided the group, each holding a strange glowing cube the size of a melon. They passed through a massive granite arch and began descending a spiral ramp. Trevor noticed that the floor and walls were polished stone, but after two turns the surfaces began to grow rough and uneven, with mounds of coarse dust and gravel piled along the edges of the path.

  So we’re underground, Trevor thought, discreetly licking the back of his hand and feeling a current of air rising from the lower levels. With so many slaves, they must have entire tunnels dedicated to ventilation. With luck, it might be possible to escape through there.

  By the time they left the ramp, Trevor had regained much of his confidence. Ahead, the tunnel split into three paths. Their group took the left and continued straight, ignoring the branches that appeared every ten or fifteen meters. After about a minute they reached a chamber where dozens of small iron wagons were stored. They took a turn to the right, another to the left, two more to the right, and passed through an immaculate gate of polished metal before reaching their destination: a towering chamber whose walls were filled with hexagonal holes.

  A beehive?

  The boys in blue tunics stopped the group and began shouting several orders.

  “They’re telling us to climb,” Elipio said, asking to see Trevor’s wooden token. “You got cell sixty-two on the fifth wall. That’s over there.” He pointed to one of the walls. “Seventh level. Good luck.”

  And just like that, the only person who spoke his language ran off.

  In fact, everyone ran. From the youngest to the oldest.

  Everyone except him, who couldn’t understand how they were supposed to get up there. The cells had no stairs, no ropes, nothing, and the highest ones were more than sixty meters up.

  Then he saw it: hundreds of slaves climbing the bare stone like cockroaches, propelling themselves upward with the strength of their fingers alone.

  At last he understood why he hadn’t escaped.

  Everyone here possessed the triaura.