Act VI – Chapter 17: "Who Am I?"
2015
The room was white, drowned under fluorescent lights.
A five‑year‑old girl, barefoot, sat on a metal chair, her legs swinging in the void.
A man in a lab coat entered, a file in his hand, a professional smile glued to his face.
"Hello, little one. How are you feeling?" he asked, sitting down in front of her.
"Hm… I'm fine," the little girl replied, fiddling with the edge of her sleeve. "Where's my mommy?"
"She's fine, she's with us," the man assured her in a calm tone. "She's waiting to see the progress you've made. Apparently, you do magic. Can you show me?"
The child frowned.
"My mommy told me not to show my secret…" she murmured.
"Your mommy told us that you could show it to us," the man replied without blinking.
"No. I don't know you," the girl retorted, looking away.
The man had a brief forced smile.
"I see. Let's move on," he said, writing something in his file. "What's your name?"
"Alicia."
"And your last name, Alicia?" he asked.
"Sanchez."
"Good. We're done for today. We'll see each other later."
The little girl nodded, a bit lost.
"And you, what's your name?" she suddenly asked.
The man seemed to remember something.
"Oh, sorry, I forget my manners," he replied with a wider smile. "I'm William. Doctor William Campbell."
He placed his hand on her head, as if to reassure her.
— "Hello, little one. How are you feeling?" the same voice asked.
The girl opened her eyes. She was still in the same room, on the same chair. Yet, something was off.
A slight buzzing was drilling into her skull.
"Um… I have a headache," she said, bringing a hand to her forehead. "I feel like something is missing…"
"That's nothing, don't worry about it," the man replied.
"Where's my mommy?" she asked immediately, as if the question came back by reflex.
"She's with us, don't worry," he answered with the same steady voice.
He flipped through a few pages of the file.
"Apparently, you can do extraordinary things. Can you show us?"
"But my mommy, she…"
"Yes?" he insisted.
"She…"
The child hesitated. Her eyes searched for a reference point in the room, but there were only white walls.
"Show us, please," he finally said, his voice softer.
The little girl slowly raised her hand. Tiny lightning bolts began to crackle at her fingertips. In a few seconds, electric arcs danced from one hand to the other, drawing bluish filaments in the air.
Behind the tinted glass, figures in lab coats began to applaud.
"How long have you been able to do that?" the man in front of her asked.
"Since always…" the child replied, almost embarrassed.
"That's good, very good," he commented, writing something. "Last question: what's your name?"
"My name is… Alicia Sanchez," she answered without hesitation.
"We're finished. We'll see each other later again."
He placed his hand on her head once more.
— "Hello, little one. How are you?"
The same voice. The same white light. The same chair.
The child blinked, her face pale.
"I have a headache…" she whispered. "Where's my mommy?"
"She's fine, she's with us," the man replied mechanically. "What's your name?"
She opened her mouth, then stopped dead. A long silence fell.
"I… my name is…"
Nothing came.
She searched, frowning, as if a word she knew by heart had vanished into thin air.
"I don't have a name…" she finally said, her voice trembling.
The man closed the file. This time, he didn't ask another question.
"Good," he said. "I think you have the qualities to join your new friends."
Someone stuck a number on her white coat. No first name, no last name. Just a string of digits: "009", clearly visible on her chest.
"Come on, go see them," the man added, opening a door.
In the hallway, there were lots of children. Some floated a few centimeters off the ground. Others disappeared to reappear a few meters away. None of them had a name. They were called by their number.
They explained to her that this program was made for talented children like her. That it was an honor. That, thanks to them, the world was going to change.
The little girl, for her part, just gripped the edge of her coat between her fingers, her gaze lost in that crowd of anonymous children.
In a room aside, behind a large bay window, a scientist greeted Doctor Campbell.
"Doctor, you've succeeded," he said, almost admiring. "They won't lose their powers anymore as their identity builds up. You've created…"
He looked at the children behind the glass, those little numbered silhouettes playing with impossible forces.
"…gods."
William Campbell didn't smile. His gaze remained fixed on the children.
"There is only one God," he replied calmly.
The scientist had a small nervous laugh.
"Uh… yes, I didn't know you were a believer, doctor," he ventured.
William finally turned his head toward him.
"And these children, once they reach their full potential, will allow me to kill the one who decides the destiny of men," he said in a steady voice, as if talking about a medical protocol.
"Pardon?" the scientist said, stunned by this strange motivation.
Campbell didn't answer. His gaze returned to behind the glass, to the tiny silhouettes manipulating forces that had no biological explanation.
Back to the present.
"What are you talking about, Enzo? That's not funny…" Gwen said, her voice trembling.
"The tests are formal," Enzo replied, pulling out his phone. "Look."
He handed her the screen. Gwen hesitated, then took it. Her eyes scanned the lines, the matches, the dates.
"No… no, no, no… it's impossible," she stammered. "How…?"
"You… didn't know?" Enzo asked, sincerely lost.
"It can't be true!" Gwen choked. "If that's my name, then… WHY DON'T I REMEMBER IT!?"
Heads suddenly turned in the waiting room. A mother pulled her child closer to her, an old man frowned. Enzo made a hand gesture to calm the atmosphere.
"Everything's fine, excuse us," he called out to the others in a reassuring tone.
Gwen herself was trembling all over.
"I'll admit I'm as surprised as you, in this case…" Enzo said, honestly. "You apparently have been missing for thirteen years."
Gwen lifted her head. Tears were already rolling down her cheeks. She handed him back the phone with a brusque gesture and ran, limping, to her room.
Enzo stayed standing there for a few seconds, embarrassed to have exploded a bomb like that in the middle of a hospital waiting room. He ran a hand through his hair, sighed, then turned on his heel with a determined step.
Gwen threw herself onto her hospital bed. The pain from her broken arm shot back up like a shock, tearing a moan from her, but her grief was even heavier. She buried her face in the pillow, her shoulders shaking.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Get out! I don't want to hear any more of this!" she cried, her voice broken.
The knob turned anyway.
"I told you to…!" she began, sitting up.
Leo was there.
A bouquet of roses in one hand, a small cake box in the other.
"Uh… are you okay, Gwen? Why are you crying?" he asked, taken aback.
She forgot her pain and threw herself on him. Leo barely had time to move the roses and the cake aside so he wouldn't crush them. She was crying, her face buried against his chest.
"I… did I miss you that much?" he said, a bit embarrassed.
"Shut up!" she muttered, her voice muffled, her only good arm hooked onto him like a lifeline.
"Okay… I'll just put the… " Leo began.
"Don't move…" she interrupted him.
He obeyed, staying with his arms in the air, stuck with his cake and roses, while she clung to him as if the rest of the world had just cracked apart.
They stayed like that for a long time, until Leo's arms started to tremble a bit.
"Gwen… can't we just sit down a little?" he asked in a half‑voice.
She nodded, but without letting go of his chest, still hooked to him as if someone could tear her away from him at any moment.
"Okay, I'm going to put this down," he said.
He took a step to the right. Gwen followed, glued to him, moving in small shuffle steps.
He took a step to the left, to check. Same result. She didn't let go.
Leo let out a slight sigh.
"If miss wishes…" he murmured, a smile at the corner of his lips.
He managed to set the roses and the cake down on the small table in the room, without forcing her to detach. Then, with a quick and sure movement, he slid one arm under her legs and the other behind her back, lifting her like a princess.
"A wounded person needs to be cared for in her grief," he declared. "Tonight, I have to take care of her properly."
Gwen, her fist slightly closed against her chest, relaxed. Her fingers opened and came to rest against Leo's cheek, in a soft, almost timid gesture.
Leo met her gaze.
For an instant, everything else — the tests, the name "Alicia", the pain — seemed to disappear.
He leaned in, and kissed her.
Leo slowly pronounced her name, his lips still close to hers.
"Gwen…"
She pulled away a little, her hand sliding to caress his cheek. Her gaze grew more serious.
"You know… like your sister… I don't have a name," she said softly.
"Yes, and?" Leo replied, not taking his eyes off her.
"And if I did?" she continued.
"Hm."
"If I had a name, a story I don't know… If I was, from the start, destined to be someone else than this girl in love with you… would you still love me?"
Leo narrowed his eyes. Without answering right away, he gently set her down on the bed, sat on the edge, then looked at her with a small sideways smile.
"Do you remember our first meeting?" he asked.
She frowned slightly.
"You appeared like that, right on New Year's, shaking like a leaf, terrified of the outside…" Leo continued. "And to be completely honest…"
He shrugged.
"…I couldn't stand you."
"Huh!?" Gwen said, hurt.
"Well, what? It's true," he replied, laughing lightly. "You were a clingy person when I didn't even know you! You shocked the girls who approached me, they didn't even understand why it hurt. Without mentioning your jealousy fit toward Zoé at the Battle of Los Angeles… Literally a jealousy fit in the middle of the end of the world, it was lunar."
Gwen looked away, her cheeks a bit red.
"Um… sorry," she mumbled.
Leo shook his head.
"But you know… in the middle of all that, you were there for me," he said more softly. "All the time. You were terrified of everything, and yet you never stopped being there."
He paused, searching for his words.
"I don't know if that's really a healthy way to love," he admitted. "But I don't need to know. Because what matters to me isn't how weird you were."
He curved a tender smile.
"What matters is those little moments when, with your absurdities, you managed to pull a laugh out of me. Those moments when you fought against your fear of the world just to stay by my side. So I don't give a fuck who you are, have been, or will become."
He leaned a little, his forehead almost against hers.
"Today, you are the one who stole my heart, against all odds."
A loud "cough cough" broke the silence.
"Oh shit…" Don Javier growled.
Leo suddenly turned around.
Behind the old boss stood Gregorio, followed by most of the organization… all in plaster, bandages, crutches, with pointy hats and tubes of party blowers in their hands. The hallway looked more like a crooked party than a mafia hideout.
Emilio straightened up, smoothed his shirt, struck a confident pose, hands in his pockets, his gaze as serious as a movie boss.
"You okay, kid?" he called out.
Leo, red to his ears:
"How long have you guys been there…?"
Don Javier tilted his head, took a theatrical breath, then, imitating Leo's voice:
"To be completely honest… I couldn't stand you."
"Oh no, please, stop, old man, you're getting worse and worse…" Leo shouted, mortified with shame.
Gregorio burst out laughing, followed by the other wounded ones. Emilio started laughing too, before going into a coughing fit that doubled him over.
Gwen, in front of the scene, started laughing too, a real laugh, frank, that shook her shoulders. For an instant, the pain, Alicia, the questions, everything had vanished.
The wounded members of the organization filed into the room one after another, holding out their casts like trophies.
"Hey, boss, can you sign this one for me?"
"Me too, Gwen, put a lightning bolt there, on my arm!"
"Leo, write 'super weapon destroyed by your sister of the "hero"', so I'll remember!"
Markers were passed around, jokes flew, and the atmosphere gradually shifted from heavy to light, almost joyful. It looked like a bad parody of a mafia family… but a family nonetheless.
Later, when everyone had gone back out, some in wheelchairs, others on crutches, they found themselves in front of the hospital, lined up like a band of crippled men in suits.
The poorly adjusted birthday hats, the casts filled with signatures and drawings, they started singing an approximate "Happy Birthday", but at full voice, that echoed in the street.
And as they left, limping, laughing, leaning on each other, they almost looked like a cheerful troupe celebrating something, rather than a crime empire that had just lost fifty percent of its staff.
Gwen watched them, smiling, one hand on the glass.
—I'll leave you for a moment, I'll be right back, okay? Don't disappear in a… flash," Leo said, with a theatrical gesture.
"I won't move," she replied, in good spirits.
"Great," he said, both thumbs up.
He trotted out of the room, sidestepping on the way a guy in a wheelchair with a lopsided birthday hat. At the end of the hallway, Don Javier was watching the scene, a glass in his hand, leaning against the wall, his gaze sweeping everyone.
"Can we talk?" Leo asked, approaching.
Emilio carefully sized him up from head to toe, expression impassive.
"What do you want to talk about, kid?" he replied in a falsely inquisitive tone.
"Are you still mad at me?" Leo asked, without going around the point.
Emilio made a chin gesture toward the VIP room where the wounded were laughing, drinking, making fun of each other, casts tagged, crutches raised.
"Look at them all having fun…" he said. "It's beautiful, huh? They'd better enjoy it, because because of a hothead, they're probably all dead soon."
He said that while laughing calmly, as if commenting on the weather.
"I'd have loved to break your face, but what can you do… we're understaffed," he added with a shrug.
Leo looked down for a moment.
"Hm… sorry."
"You want to apologize, huh?" Emilio resumed. "Then take your responsibilities, and protect all their futures."
Leo stayed silent for a few seconds.
"…I don't know if I'm capable," he admitted.
Emilio had a small sad smile.
"Oh, but you don't have a choice, kid…" he replied. "Look at them, there, getting drunk and celebrating."
His gaze drifted for an instant to a group of guys comparing the size of their scars.
"You know, we're all criminals. I'm not teaching you anything," he continued. "None of us is a choir boy, cough cough. But what you see there, that's our family."
He gestured vaguely toward the room.
"Some of them lost everything after a divorce that went sour. Others were wrongly accused. Others still are victims, more or less, of the system."
"I don't think that justifies everything…" Leo remarked.
Emilio smiled, almost proud.
"And you're right, haha. Everyone has their life, everyone has their shit. But do you know what being in the family gives them?"
"No."
"A framework, a goal, a reason to keep moving forward," Emilio answered. "The world won't change. Crime will always exist, or will change form if it's repressed. In our way, we fill a box in the nature of society, the one that disturbs…"
"You mess up lives," Leo retorted.
"And you too, son," Emilio said, unmoved. "When you make a choice that another doesn't make, or doesn't have time to make, you disrupt their life, on a more or less large scale. And if you don't take that place, someone else will. And maybe it'll be you, the next one, on the wrong end of the gun, you see?"
Leo slowly nodded.
"I understand the idea."
Emilio raised his glass, as if making a toast to fate.
"The light shines because darkness exists. And without light or darkness, there is only chaos. Everyone needs to find their place, in good and in bad… It's a disturbing truth, but a truth nonetheless."
"I see…" Leo repeated.
"When I took the reins," Emilio continued, "I focused our business on drugs and underground fights. We do weapons sales too, yeah, but I put an end to human trafficking and other filth that disturbed me… cough cough."
He placed his hand on his stomach,
"What I'm trying to tell you is that, no matter how deep into the light or the darkness you plunge yourself, son… the result depends only on you, and on the values you want to defend, despite everything."
Leo half‑smiled.
"That's not really like you, to talk like that," he said.
Emilio's gaze drifted for an instant into emptiness.
A few hours earlier.
"Your cancer is progressing, Mr. Javier," the doctor said, sitting across from him. "It would be time to start chemotherapy. There's still time."
"How much time do I have left?" Emilio asked, without beating around the bush.
"If the chemotherapy works, we can…"
"How much time?" Emilio repeated, fixing his eyes into the doctor's.
A silence.
"Without treatment… a few months. At most a year," the doctor finally answered. "Hey, where are you going?!"
Emilio had stood up, without a word.
He turned back briefly, a smile at the corner of his lips.
"Celebrating a birthday," he replied.
Then he left the room.
Back to the present.
"Sir???" Leo called.
"Oh, excuse me, I was lost in my thoughts…" Emilio replied, coming out of his reverie. Silence.
"Hey, Leo."
"Yes?"
"I'm not going to force you to call me dad, believe me, it would bother me too, but… Do me a favor, call me Emilio."
He set his glass down, stepped into the middle of the room where everyone was laughing, drinking, and making fun of each other, then tapped a spoon against the rim of his glass. The tingling sound resonated, and the conversations gradually fell silent. All eyes turned toward him.
"My very dearest scums and cripples…" he said, a smile at the corner of his lips.
Laughter in the gathering. People whistled, raised bottles.
His gaze swept the room.
"Today, we're celebrating our dear Gwen's 19th birthday," he announced.
Gwen raised her finger into the air with her only good arm, striking a victory pose.
Applause burst out, "Happy Birthday!" shouts already flew.
"Happy Birthday, Gwen," he continued, raising his glass. "But I also have something to announce."
A slight murmur died out. Everyone knew Emilio: when he took that tone, it wasn't nothing.
"As you know…" he resumed, "I keep rabbling on about the fact that I once loved a woman…"
"Yes, we know!" someone at the back shouted, triggering a few laughs.
Emilio smiled.
"Well…" he continued, "that woman had a child from me. I'm not going to explain how, huh, I think you've all understood the concept."
A few lascivious whistles, laughs.
He then placed his arm on Leo's shoulder, pulling him to his side.
"I think I don't need to introduce this one, do I?" he joked.
Murmurs rippled through the room. Some straightened up, intrigued.
"Well, believe it or not—I'm not senile yet…" Emilio continued. "This is my missing son."
He paused for a second, then launched, loud and clear:
"I officially present to you… Leo Javier."
A suspended silence, then the room exploded.
Whistles, applause, glasses raised, a few "Junior boss!" and "Heir!" shouted jokingly.
Gwen, surprised, started clapping along with the others, a wide smile on her lips. She was proud, sincerely, to the point of feeling a warmth in her chest at the idea that Leo had finally found his origins, a family, a story.
A few seconds later, the smile faded almost on its own.
And what about me? she thought.
Who am I…?
She lowered her eyes for an instant to her hands, then lifted them toward Leo, as if to convince herself.