Adam was lying on the couch, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. The rain wasn't letting up, and thunder kept on rolling in the sky. There was no one else in the living room with him, but he felt their eyes on him and tried to tell them to leave him alone. I can't talk. It was as though his voice had been reduced to gasps, each breath a struggle. I need air. He had to get up from that stiff couch and open the balcony door.

They are going to kill your sister.

"I need to breathe," Adam said.

"What you need is Prozac. Maybe Zoloft."

An icy shiver shot up his back. Adam wasn't imagining this. He had heard a voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. And this voice sounded very familiar.

"Adam, they know," said a voice to his left.

"Destroy the video!" another voice shouted behind him.

"This is your fault," murmured a third voice from below.

"Bianca is on the Red List," assured a hollow voice inside of Adam. "They will kill your sister."

"No!" Using every muscle in his body, Adam finally got on his feet. "There's no evidence. I'll delete this video."

"And Raul?"

"I asked him to destroy the originals. He didn't watch them. He never does," Adam walked to the balcony door and tried to open it. "Raul never watches his client's videos because he's too busy watching his own back."

"But Bianca marched several times, she signed the recall referendum," whispered someone behind Adam.

Covered in darkness, a woman laughed and said, "she signed it."

"Every time there was a referendum against the President, she signed it. What an idiot!"

"It doesn't matter." The darkness thickened around Adam as he tried to see who was talking to him. "Many people signed. Almost every Venezuelan has been with the opposition at one point or another."

"Run," said someone in the distance.

"It's too late," someone outside the apartment assured him.

"The file..."

"I said I'd delete the video!" Adam shouted, desperate to open the balcony door. He feared that this breathlessness would kill him.

"No," said a voice coming from the ceiling. "The audio file."

"Yes," agreed a female voice in front of him, chuckling. "The audio file that your dead girlfriend sent you."

"That's right," Adam wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead and stopped wrestling with the doorknob. "The stego-message that Zhang found. Bianca was in that video. Rafael too."

"That's why you went out tonight," muttered a voice in his ear. "You had to find out who sent that email. Did you forget that?"

"It was a threat," said a voice behind him.

"It was a warning," said a voice moving in the dark.

Bianca got out of Lili's bedroom and started walking straight to Adam, holding a beer bottle in her left hand.

"For Christ's sake, dumb-dumb! Are you ever sober anymore?"

"Bianca!" Adam took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, hoping the hallucination would vanish. A few seconds went by, however, and his sister was still there. "Are you here?"

"I am not."

Every attempt to make sense of what was going on proved to be futile. Adam had no power in his voice. He couldn't tell if this was Lili's apartment or not. Don't know where I am. His eyes followed Bianca as she walked towards him in a hallway that seemed to grow larger with every step she took. The lamp covered by the piece of red tulle turned on—on its own.

"This has already happened before," a voice reminded him. "Twice."

"All bad things come in threes," said a voice, laughing in the kitchen.

Bianca stood next to Adam; her clothes were torn, and she had the Venezuelan flag painted on her face. The bottle was no longer in her hand, and black droplets fell from her bloody hair.

Drip, drop.

"Bianca..."

Adam grabbed her by the arm.

"Let me go!"

"Mommy, don't be mad," said Dario, coming closer to them. Despite his age, he had regressed to behaving like a three-year-old.

"We are not your parents!" Adam yelled.

Dario started crying.

"Look out the balcony door," said Bianca. "It's your fault."

"No, it isn't," said the hollow voice.

"Yeah! He didn't do anything!" another voice agreed.

Adam looked out the balcony; under the heavy rain, thousands of people marched in unison. And they were all his brother. Shocked, Adam turned around and realized that Dario wasn't there with them. He was never there.

"Bianca, tell me the truth," Adam pointed at his phone. "What I heard in that video... What did you do?"

"What did you do?" the question echoed within him.

"Nothing. Neither did you. That was the problem," Bianca said. "And all for thirty pieces of silver. Let me go!"

Adam tightened his grip, drawing his sister closer to him.

"Don't let go of her," a voice begged. And then another. And then another.

"B, tell me the truth."

"Find the person," she said.

"Who? Rafael?"

"The one who sent the email."

"But, Evi is dead."

Bianca shook her head.

"She's still here."

"Where?" asked Adam.

"Remember," Bianca said.

"It's the video hidden in the audio file, right? The one that Zhang has? Is the key there?"

Instead of letting her go, Adam hugged her the same way he used to when she was a little girl.

"I'm sorry I haven't gone to visit. I'm sorry I haven't been to see grandma or Dario. I miss you, but I have to work to help you."

"No," his sister said. "Do this."

"Do what?"

A streak of bright red crossed the sky. Adam thought it was a lightning bolt until he realized that the storm clouds seemed to be ablaze. That blinding light forced Adam to turn his face away and clench his eyes shut. Struggling to half-open an eyelid, he distinguished intense beams of crimson light, flooding the entire living room through the windows and the balcony door.

"Do it," his sister said one last time.

Adam didn't know what time it was, but it was morning already, and it had stopped raining.

Nothing around him looked familiar. I'm at Lili's place, he remembered. Like the small television near the dining table or the lamp next to him, the most mundane things in there looked eerie somehow. Empty shells of what they are supposed to be. The walls were pale pink, the massive painting of the Red Sea was hideous, and the bookshelf filled with porn movies was an atrocity. Although the apartment reeked of humidity, the salty smell of food cooking in the kitchen reminded him of his hunger. The murmur of the city outside was growing louder with each passing second.

Adam realized he had dreamt something. He couldn't remember what it was about. What he did know was that the countdown in each of his wristwatches had a different meaning now. Before they were ticking down toward the deadline he and his cousin in Miami had discussed; the date Bianca and Dario would leave the country. After what happened last night, it was a countdown to so much more than that: it was all the time left for him to find out if his family was in any immediate danger. He had to reveal the truth behind that audio file and figure out why Rafael had sent him that email from Evi's account.

"I have to know if she's alive."

Adam was determined to sort this out. That was the only way he could be sure that his brother and sister would cross the border unharmed.

It's decided, he thought. I'm doing this.

There was no going back.

End of Part 1

With this chapter the first part is over. Part 2 will begin next week.