Six years earlier, Thomas was eleven years old and still believed that fathers came home.
It was a March afternoon in Asterión City, one of those afternoons when the sun turned orange and the clocks kept perfect time. He was sitting on the front step, knees dirty from kicking a soccer ball against the garage wall. He was waiting for the familiar sound of his father's key in the lock. Alexander Lych always arrived smelling of old coffee and map paper, and he always brought some story to tell before dinner.
But that afternoon he didn't come.
The light grew more orange. Then red. Then black.
Thomas stayed there until his legs hurt. Inside, the television was on the news channel. They were talking about Impossible City No. 13. They showed aerial footage: crystal towers that split the light into seven impossible colors, streets that moved by themselves, a helicopter hovering far too still. "Another historic breakthrough," the anchor said in the voice of someone reading a happy fairy tale.
Thomas hated that voice.
When the doorbell finally rang, it wasn't his father.
Two men in dark suits stood at the door. One held a black folder. The other had the face of someone who had practiced the sentence many times.
—Thomas Lych? —asked the first.
He nodded, even though he already knew. He had known the moment he saw their faces.
—Son… your father was exploring Impossible City No. 13. He disappeared three days ago. We found no trace. We're very sorry.
The words entered cleanly, without sound. As if someone had turned off the sound of the world.
Thomas didn't cry. Not in front of them. He only looked at the folder they handed him and saw his father's name printed in cold letters: Dr. Alexander Lych. Disappeared in the line of duty.
In the line of duty.
As if his old man had been a soldier and not a man who simply wanted to understand why the cities appeared every twelve years.
When the men left, Thomas closed the door and leaned against it. The television kept talking. "Impossible City No. 13 dissipated before the hundred days," the happy voice said. "A unique event in history."
Thomas picked up the remote and turned off the TV so hard the plastic cracked.
The Impossible Cities were not an event.
They were thieves.
They had taken him. His father. The only one who read him chapters of Childhood's End before bed. The one who had promised he would be back before dinner.
That night he slept on the couch because he didn't want to go into his room and see the empty bed on the other side. He dreamed of crystal towers that ate people. When he woke up, his fists were clenched and his nails dug into his palms.
Two days later his aunt arrived.
She was a short woman with soft hands and eyes that had already cried too much. Thomas barely knew her; she was his father's younger sister, the one who lived in a small apartment near the center and never spoke much about the family.
—Come here, mijo —she said, and hugged him without asking permission—. Your house isn't safe anymore. The authorities say… there are risks.
Thomas didn't ask what the risks were. He knew they were the same cities. Always them.
They packed in silence. Clothes. Two of his father's books. The photo of the three of them together (before Mom left without saying goodbye). His aunt packed everything into a single suitcase, as if Thomas's life could fit in thirty kilos.
When they closed the front door for the last time, Thomas stopped on the threshold. He looked at the empty hallway, at the coat rack where his father's explorer jacket still hung, and felt something break inside him. It wasn't sadness. It was rage. Clean. Hard. Final.
—Never again —he murmured.
His aunt looked at him.
—What did you say?
—Nothing —Thomas answered, and locked the door.
In the taxi, as Asterión City slid past the window like a set that no longer mattered, Thomas pressed his forehead against the cold glass. His aunt stroked his hair in silence.
—You'll be all right with me —she said softly—. We'll get through this.
Thomas didn't answer. He watched the city lights and thought about the crystal towers, about the seven impossible colors, about the sirens that sounded whenever the cities appeared.
He hated them.
He hated them with all the weight of an eleven-year-old boy who had just lost the only thing he had.
And that hatred, small and hot like a burning coal, stayed there. Growing slowly. Waiting.
Six years later, at the Academy of Explorers, Thomas still felt it burning in his chest every time someone spoke the words "Impossible City."
Because he knew, better than anyone, that they didn't appear.
They had always been there.
Waiting to take someone else.