Gordon and Pea, from the Technological Group, are investigating a case that traverses corporations, political power, and a technology that promised freedom, in a world where the body, and especially the female body, remains a space of domination. Transition is a dark science fiction thriller about identity, violence, and control. A provocative and disturbingly close to our reality novel, U-Feeling confirms itself as one of the boldest sagas on the current scene, already translated into English, German, Swedish, Ukrainian, and soon French and Italian.
Zenda shares the opening pages of Transition. The U-Feeling Experience IV, by Eva G. Guerrero and José Ángel Mañas (Alt Autores).
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1
—Last stop, pretty.
The man’s voice sounded hard, rough, and determined.
The woman, from the backseat, shook her head. They had been crossing a wasteland for several minutes, and she knew it well. Along the sides of the road, on the battered sidewalks, bonfires flickered every so often. Bonfires fueled with wooden pallets illuminated, with their sad crackle, the marginal night on the outskirts of Madrid… of a Madrid that dragged itself in that industrial zone toward its last gasps. The girls, nearby, warmed themselves as best they could. Some were seated on canvas chairs dragged from nearby warehouses, sealed at those hours. The bolder ones kept their chests bare, indifferent to the cold, as if they were made of plastic. Yet all were attentive to the flow of vehicles that refused to cease. It was a trickle of traffic that even on a Sunday night fed those wastelands of the Marconi industrial complex, famous, and justly infamous, for being the capital’s and perhaps the country’s greatest place for prostitution.
Every so often, a vehicle stopped beside a girl. Then the front window rolled down. The girl approached, murmured a greeting or a “How are you, my love,” sometimes in a garbled, affected Spanish showing years of wandering through the Madrilenian streets, others with a very poor expression betraying that she had just arrived from some Eastern country. None looked at the stars, which that night glittered in the sky as cold as they were. And yet they moved along, scantily clad, with that acrid scent on the skin that comes from secretions and lubricants, the perfume of what is meant to endure a hard life.
The man’s question usually came with timidity or with confidence, testing whether she knew the rules of the game. It could be brusque: “How much?” to which the instructed girl answered: “For the full service, ten; minus the French, my dear.” Immediately the door-click could be heard. The girl looked around to signal to her companions or to the pimp that she had a client, and entered the front seat or, sometimes, the back. The car, after a short ride under the women’s instructions, stopped in one of the empty stalls of that desolate expanse that never managed to fill the dozens of hectares planned and became the wasteland of souls and the supermarket of trashy sex. It stopped under some trees, in a discreet place, and the client switched off the engine while the girl pulled a condom from her tiny purse and proceeded with her trade.
—You’ve probably seen dozens of places like this, pretty —emphasized the descriptor—. Poetic justice. Don’t you think?
The man parked at the far end of one of the clearings, in near-total darkness, and the young woman felt his backbone crawl with intermittent fear. Her left cheek was swollen, a smear of blood at the corner of her broken lips. He undid his seat belt. He turned to look at her in the back seat. He could hear the latent panic beneath the gag. It aroused a strange, ambivalent feeling in him, a mix of excitement and a sudden twinge of pity.
—I’ll miss you, you know.
Twenty meters away, a late-model Toyota sat with its headlights on. It creaked slowly on its shocks. Soon the door opened and a client emerged, adjusting his pants. The girl, in the front seat, rearranged the mini-skirt. Rolling down the window, she released a condom and a few Kleenex. The floor was littered with dozens of tissue papers and wipes. The man, indistinguishable from the many others who wandered there, got back into the Toyota, started the engine, and backed away.
—That one’s heading back. But you won’t be going anywhere. Look around, because this is the place where they’ll find your corpse…
The woman’s eyes popped from their sockets. A fear entered her like a hypnotic current, dragging her toward the blackest abyss. Mouth covered with bandages—painful—and yet she stared, gazing at the retreating Toyota, and suddenly remembered who she was. A surge of anger, a resolve. Her hands were handcuffed behind her, but her legs were free. Her legs had been trained in the gym. With the force of a blast of blood to the temples and the strength of a hundred earthquakes in her muscles, she delivered a kick to the driver’s face, forcing him to swerve away enough to avoid the impact.
—Be careful with this pretty face, bitch. I’ll need it.
She regretted the ridiculous, weak attack. She panted in horror, watching the man who remained at the wheel smile at her. The expression on his face, foreseeing an act of extreme violence, ripped away her reason, left her without shorelines, without any options.
—Don’t waste your energy. You’re a woman, whether you like it or not. You’re not a rival. The back windows are tinted. And even if they could see you, no one cares about what happens. If you scream, no one would come… precious.
He said it looking at her through the rearview mirror. His eyes reflected gobs of light dark as night. He had stopped in a secluded place, but the headlights of cars passing on nearby streets shed enough glow to see something. He killed the engine. He removed the key from the ignition. He opened the vehicle’s door. In that moment, the woman in the back knew she could still feel more fear and it seemed unreal. She wriggled, trying to lean back on the seat. She kicked at the side door as it opened. She tried to strike again at the man who planned to assault her with the determination of an executioner, but he easily repelled her advances.
—Calm down! Quiet, beast! —he teased. Straddling her bare legs. He grabbed her by the hair. He pulled it back with both hands——Let me look at you. I need to say goodbye, you know? You’ll die here like a whore, and like all whores, a victim of your depravity. —He settled between her legs, pulled a combat knife from a harness on the inner side of his jacket, and began unzipping his trousers—. Believe it or not, I’m in pain about what’s going to happen —he added. With a shameless gleam in his eyes, he revealed his erect member—. And don’t complain. The both of us love sex.
2
We all know that when your phone rings in the middle of a Sunday night, it rarely bodes well. Inspector Gordon understood this immediately. With the premonition of bad news, she switched on the lamp. The phone rang with Indiana Jones’ theme, flashing on the bedside table. As a good cop, she never silenced it. She knew that if there was an urgent matter in the unit they would call, although she trusted that no colleague would wake her from sleep, and Intercambialismo, her Group, wasn’t Homicide, thank God. And, with a bit of luck, it never would be.
In the quick glance she cast at the clock, as she sat up, she saw it was one o’clock in the morning. The voice on the other end wasn’t Peña’s, her partner in Intercambialismo, but González, who for two decades had been her boss in the Technological Crimes Unit where she had spent half her life since leaving the academy.
—It’s important, Gordon —mumbled.
<p—Gordon, I’m sorry to wake you at this hour. It’s serious. I know it’s Sunday night, but I need you dressed and here. Come right away. It can’t wait.
Gordon didn’t even protest. It was unusual for her superior to need her on a Sunday, and even more so that it sounded like an outright order. But being a chief inspector gave her the authority of a general in the field; especially if the person you’re addressing commands a small team with only two members. With a yawn and a dry mouth after a couple of hours of sleep, she looked toward the chair. There lay her clothes. She decided not to shower. She would pee, dress, grab the chocolate croissants ready for breakfast, in case the thing dragged on, and head to wherever it was. People shower in the morning, she thought. Then she would return home in a couple of hours and nestle back into bed. Luna slept deeply, not noticing that her mother had left.
—Okay, González. In half an hour I’ll be where I’m needed.
3
The bar’s lights created a warm, intimate atmosphere in the Fulanita’s lounge area. It was a lesbian bar, and at the bar only couples or a lone woman like her arrived requesting a drink. Groups of friends and a few gay men preferred the dance floor near the stage, or inhabited the leather- or velvet-covered couches and the tables around the place. The turnout was sparse for a time when hate and impunity were on the rise, especially on a Sunday night.
For Angie Peña, this place felt like love: a safe space to share your quirks, even if she couldn’t quite grasp love, and her quirks didn’t particularly interest anyone. In that joint she could feel comfortable and yet isolated. Regular clients ignored the imperturbable cop, and the new arrivals were kept at a distance by the staff with a glance or a show of teeth—the mark of a territorial predator. Because Eme, the waitress, was fierce if she set her mind to it. Her physique served as a defense against prying eyes, and her loyalty was a shield. To Peña, Eme represented a corner where she could relax within that welcoming refuge, even if the place could use some aesthetic improvement. They had repainted the previous loud orange walls to a mustard yellow, no matter how Eme claimed it to be Tuscan Sun. Eme was also the old friend of Peña’s ex’s schoolmate—the only one who remained. The most bar-wo woman you could find in the capital, a lesbian barmaid who stood her ground. It wasn’t easy to find many who still worked as bartenders in such venues; in recent years most had closed or been converted into generalist cafés or clubs. Since the party led by Ricardo Barrera had come to power, people like her found themselves surrounded, confined to reeducation camps with ever more visible fences.
—Give me an Alhambra, Eme —she said from the far end of the bar.
Peña had just arrived at the place, but she knew it like the back of her hand. Her police instinct couldn’t suppress the impulse to study everyone around her as if she stood behind glass in a suspect-watching wheel. She glanced around. From the look aimed at her by a couple of blondes in the back, she understood they were looking to party. She cut off eye contact immediately, signaling she wasn’t interested, and one of them attempted to approach, but that remained just a try. She felt distant from reality, surfing a state of numbness, in that gray zone that dulls the bright glow of others’ happiness. That day she wore her hair in a low bun and winter was behind her. People often mistook her for a young university professor or perhaps a librarian, given her solitary demeanor. As soon as the beer appeared before her, she asked Eme:
—Were you in Valencia? Do you know anything about Marina?
Eme’s expression twisted. She muttered:
—Are you an idiot, or what?
—Fine, I’m glad to see you too, Eme.
—Let me introduce you to someone, Peña. I adore you, darling, but you make it hard for the rest of us.
Peña took a sip of her beer and quickly weighed the possibility of lowering her guard, of starting to dismantle the stones behind which she sheltered her emotions. She murmured that perhaps it was better not to, but Eme didn’t heed.
—That one by the side who dances near the edge runs piano lessons at the Conservatory, and she’s lovely… in her own way. Look, she’s alone in the green booth.
Peña directed a distracted glance toward the green booth and, yes, the girl had a fae-like charm, though it was hard to tell whether she was a fairy or a gnome.
—She’s about a meter and a half tall.
Eme wore an offended look.
<p—I didn’t know you had a petite-phobia. You embarrass me.
And she moved away to the far end of the bar, where she poured drinks for a couple of regulars who had just entered. Peña used the moment to turn her head discreetly toward the green nook and kept her gaze for a moment, long enough for her target to smile. Then she took another sip of her Alhambra, hesitant and at the same time eager to end the dry spell she had lived through for the last year. She was about to stand up from the stool and approach with all her resolve when her phone vibrated. She pulled it from the back pocket of her jeans. She glanced at it with curiosity. She was surprised to see her boss’s name appear, and she almost decided not to answer, but sensed that something out of the ordinary was happening.
Stepping away from the bar, she walked to the entrance that opened onto Regueros Street and exited into the lobby where the doorman opened the door for her. The street outside was a tangle of fog and shadows from decaying buildings. The perfect setting to feel sad. Shops that the crisis hadn’t yet erased wore graffiti on their shutters. The Chueca neighborhood had lost the charming, vibrant atmosphere of decades past to reveal the melancholy of the decaying nineteenth-century architecture. Nostalgia there lost its charm amid peeling façades and the dirt on the sidewalks. Next to a trash can overflowing with cans and litter, she answered the call.
—Sorry to bother you at this hour, but you have to come here immediately. —It was Gordon’s voice—. González and I are waiting for you at the Marconi industrial zone. A dead body has appeared. I’d rather not explain it over the phone. Come. It’s urgent.
The call ended.
Peña looked at the screen and turned toward the doorman, who watched her, and then toward the street where a couple of shops still flew the rainbow flags on their signs in that classic Madrid neighborhood, and then back to the locked door of Fulanita. That was it. The opportunity had vanished. Sometimes you go out at night to look for something impossible to find, she thought as she walked down the street toward Fernando VI to catch a cab. At least she had her profession to console her, as she tucked herself back into her coat.
It was cold at those hours, cold in that winter month, in that landlocked city.
It was cold always.
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Authors: Eva G. Guerrero and José Ángel Mañas. Title: Transition. The U-Feeling Experience IV. Publisher: Alt Autores. Sales: Todos tus libros.