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Bonezuela! MTT/La regla de Tres: A murder time trio AU.

Chapter 8.

All previous chapters under the tag.

Bonezuela! MTT, or La Regla de Tres, is an Undertale AU set in my home country, Venezuela. In this alternate universe the sanses from the Murder Time Trio are not only humanized, but reimagined as part of a criminal gang operating in the barrios of Caracas. Names may change for realism, but I try to keep them recognizable (Héctor=Horror, Diego=Dust, Krishinller=Killer). You can read it here on AO3, which I would greatly appreciate.

He stared at the TV, expectant.

Any second, at any moment, it could happen.

The feeling of taking a step, then another, bit by bit, played out in his mind with a building rhythm.

He fixed his gaze on the dark screen—or on where he believed the dark screen to be—as the gloom seeped into the edges around him, smearing the outline of the TV until it barely held together in his vision. It was thrilling, and a little terrifying, to feel the future pressing so close; with each passing second the lights could return, could flood the room again, could pull him back into the world beyond the box.

Yet it didn’t happen. He closed his eyes, opened them, and lost count of how many hours had slipped past while he waited there. He never grew bored. With every passing second his certainty deepened, a quiet conviction that the next second would be the one, the moment when the lights came back.

“It’s not coming back for a while,” a voice rang out from behind him, laced with a thin thread of mockery, “apparently it’s an issue with this whole zone of the slum. Maybe you should find something else to do, Dusty.”

Diego didn’t respond. He didn’t even seem to hear it. He kept staring, eyes wide, held open by the weight of expectation.

“You could at least sit down on the sofa,” Krishinller said, “it’s there for a reason.”

The room felt heavy, sinking under its own weight beneath a tide of silence. It was cold, as it always was; the living room held almost no trace of anything that could be called living. Only thin streams of light slipped through the curtains, casting delicate, wavering patterns across the walls, the faintest reminder that something existed beyond the press of darkness.

Oh, and the smell. The distinct smell that clung to Diego, who might as well have been a corpse for all the stench he carried with him.

“Sit down with me.” Diego broke the silence with a single sentence, more an order than an invitation.

Usually, Krishinller would have declined. He had no interest in wasting time staring at a lifeless screen in the vain hope that it might flicker back to life. What for? Diego’s taste in movies was terrible at best, and he never managed to stay quiet through them anyway. Still, he was bored. And between Héctor’s constant whining and whatever Cross had gotten himself into this time, an empty box felt like the better option.

Diego let out a low, satisfied hum when he heard the faint rustle of cushions behind him, Krishinller’s presence settling into the space as he leaned back against the couch.

“You're obstructing the view,” Krishinller said, a trace of laughter touching the edges of his voice as the absurdity of it settled in.

“Sorry,” Diego replied, shifting away from the screen and closer to the couch.

And then they both stared.

It was, somehow, interesting.

No one made Krishinller as uncomfortable as Diego did, and that was no small thing. It was not the strange cadence of his speech, nor the odd tone that never seemed to rise or fall. Not the way his words slipped from him, as if they resisted being held. It was not the smell, thick with damp, dust, and something sour that clung stubbornly to that old sweater. Not even the bomb strapped to his chest, worn as casually as if it was an extension of him. Strange, now that he thought about it, Krishinller could not name the reason at all.

“It's like watching someone be brought back from the dead. I like it.”

“What?” Krishinller pulled himself from his thoughts.

“Through the screen, they’re alive. It’s semantics, really. They’re actors, yes, but I mean the characters.” Diego’s voice remained steady, caught in its usual monotone. “They come into being as they’re perceived. They leave something behind, and then they’re gone. Just like that. Trapped in a disc, or a memory, until the TV turns on and it’s life again.”

Krishinller let his gaze drift from the screen to Diego.

“Am I alive?” he asked.

Diego turned, slowly, toward him.

“Now you are.”

There was a hitch in the silence, something thin and taut pulled tight beneath the thin string of words, before Krishinller broke into laughter.

It came oddly easy, perhaps even unguarded, as his mind turned over the answer he had just heard and found no neat place to set it down.

“Hm.”

He liked that.

He had grown accustomed to reading people before they even opened their mouths, predicting them down to the color of their underwear if he felt like it, but Diego refused that kind of neatness.

There were no clear threads running from thought to speech with him; the only pattern striking enough to notice was the absence of any at all.

You could not brace for what he would say next. It gave everything a strange sense of suspension, like the cinematic edge of a film, something that knows exactly when to cut. Maybe that was it. Maybe Diego had picked it up from the endless hours in front of a screen. Though if Krishinller was being honest with himself, Diego’s timing was a lot better.

He opened his mouth to answer, already assembling something half-formed and serviceable, a reply that would keep the air from going stale without offering anything of himself in return. Before he could get it out, however, the dark filled with voices that were not theirs.

“Don’t leave the fuckin’ fridge open. God. All the cold air’s gonna slip out and then what, huh?”

“What? I didn’t. I haven’t even touched anything. I’ve been sick, why would I even get food?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re the only starving brat in this house?”

“It was me, Héctor. I wanted a snack to watch TV.” Diego called from the living room, close enough to the kitchen that he did not have to raise his voice, though he did anyway, just a little. “Quit blaming the kid for everything, jeez.”

“Do you know how dangerous that is?”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“Yeah, yeah, you must not eat then, moron.”

“Can you shut up? I just said I'm watching TV.”

Right.

If Krishinller had ever entertained the idea that someone in the house might play at being a parent, he would have placed his bets on Cross, maybe even Diego in some roundabout, reluctant way. Never Héctor. Not Héctor Rojas. The dead among the living. And yet there it was, an extra body in the house, under their roof and, somehow, under his care.

Héctor insisted it was temporary. He had insisted from the start, with the same rough certainty he used for everything else, that she would be out as soon as possible, that she had planted herself there and refused to leave, as if he were not a man who carried a weapon and the weight of three other men behind him. As if force were not an option he exercised without hesitation in every other situation. But the days passed and nothing changed except the number of reasons he found to justify it.

“She got sick. I’m the medic, what am I supposed to do, let her rot? I’ll kick her out after.”

“Kid’s seen too much. You want her running to the cops? Go ahead! be my guest.”

“We could use her, uh… as… bait? Yeah.”

“She cleans. You like living in filth, that’s on you, I don’t.”

Each excuse came shrugging, as if it had just occurred to him, as if keeping an extra mouth to feed was the most logical thing in the world. It would have been ridiculous if it hadn’t been so consistent, if it hadn’t, bit by bit, built up into something that looked a lot like there was a deeper meaning behind it.

God, Krishinller had to thank Lux for the bits and, most importantly, for all the pieces. Without them, it might have almost passed as coincidence.

Footsteps cut through his thoughts, quick and uneven at first, then growing heavier as they drew nearer, a rhythm that betrayed more than mere impatience. By the time Krishinller could make out Héctor’s form in the dark, the man was already upon Diego, seizing him by the scruff of the neck as he would an animal, yet lacking the strength to pull him to his feet.

Diego stood up, just out of pity.

“Bit of an overreaction, princess.” Diego said, brushing himself off more out of habit than necessity.

“It only feels like an overreaction to you because you sit on your lazy ass all day and never have to look at what we got stocked.” Héctor shoved him back a step, “If power doesn’t come back before that stuff goes bad, I swear to God, I’m making you eat every last bit of it myself. Not even gonna cook it. Straight from the fridge to your mouth.”

“Promise?”

“Keep pushin’ and I’ll start with the worst of it.”

“Oh no. I’m so scared,” Diego said, twirling a loose strand of hair around his finger in what he may have intended to be a seductive move. “Can you tell how scared I am? Ooh, scared. Pissing my pants.”

“Go kill yourself.”

From somewhere behind him, a softer, quieter voice spoke up.

“Am I still in trouble?”

The sound cut through the air and struck Héctor’s spine, a sharp intrusion that sent a shiver rippling through him in a suffocating wave. He turned to find Aliza standing there, carrying that same look she always seemed to wear, like a lost puppy trailing after anyone who might offer even the smallest bit of kindness. His body tightened on instinct, a reflex he held onto for a beat too long, until it finally slipped from him in a quiet sigh, his hand lifting in a vague, uncertain gesture between them that Aliza could not quite make sense of.

He dropped down beside Krishinller on the sofa with a careless sort of finality, immediately whining as the thin padding pressed unkindly against his skin, offering none of the comfort he had clearly hoped for. Diego lingered where he was for a moment, watching him with a measured stillness, half-expecting Héctor to spring back up and resume his tantrum. When he did not, Diego lowered himself back onto the floor, his attention returning to the screen.

Maybe Diego’s particular strain of delusion had a way of spreading, because for a moment it seemed to take hold of all of them, an outbreak of insanity quickly becoming symptomatic. They could feel it then, that faint, phantom suspense Diego had been holding onto for hours, not necessarily for the same reasons, but shared all the same, something frail and even artistic threading through the quiet. It was ironic, the way a lifeless screen managed to hold their attention more completely than most films ever could, its emptiness inviting them to pour something real into it, to project whatever feeling they could not quite place anywhere else.

Aliza shifted uncomfortably in place, and, with nowhere else to place herself, remained standing off to the side, her shoulder resting lightly against the wall as she watched the three of them in a dim, heavy silence.

For a moment they sat there together, watching nothing and finding something anyway in the hollow depths of that broken display, letting it carry them just far enough to forget themselves. And then—

“What the hell are you doing?”

They all flinched at once, the stillness snapping cleanly, Héctor muttering a string of curses under his breath.

“Watching TV,” Diego said.

“There’s…” Cross faltered, the words catching awkwardly, “no power.”

“We know.”

Cross hesitated, weighing whether to humor them and risk being pulled into whatever strange current had settled over the room, or to leave entirely and reclaim some sense of normalcy outside of it. The urge to walk away lingered, but something quieter held him there, something that made less sense the longer he tried to justify it.

Perhaps it was the stillness, or the way the blank screen seemed to invite attention without giving anything back, but despite himself he leaned over the back of the sofa, his gaze lifting to meet it, settling there in search of what they found so fascinating.

And for a brief, disorienting second, it worked.

Whatever Diego had dragged into their house didn't feel like a television so much as something else, some sort of entity that drew your attention and held it just long enough to make you lose sight of why.

For that second, he found himself entertained.

“Imagine if it turns on and Samara Morgan crawls out of it,” Krishinller said, his voice cutting cleanly through the quiet, breaking whatever spell had taken hold of them.

“Samara Morgan?” Diego asked, not looking away.

“The girl from The Ring,” Krishinller replied, one eyebrow lifting. “I thought you’d know the name. You watch it all the time.”

“I never remember names,” Diego said.

“This reminds me of some stories I’ve heard. Not really about that, just things like it,” Cross added, reaching out absentmindedly to ruffle a hand through Héctor’s hair. “We shouldn’t be talking about this kind of stuff. You start naming things, and that's you giving ‘em a way in. You guys are already crazy enough, I don't need you going crazier.”

Héctor let out a quiet huff, brushing his hair back into place with an annoyed flick of his hand.

“Don’t touch me ever again.”

“You’re actually scared of that kind of thing, Cross? You don’t seem like…” Krishinller shifted slightly, glancing back at him, studying him with an edge of mockery, “the type.”

“I’m not scared,” Cross said, “I just know you guys are. The way you all react to the rifle says enough.”

Diego’s head turned sharply toward him, the movement quick and uncharacteristically abrupt, cutting through that slow, measured rhythm that usually defined him. His eyes locked onto Cross with a quiet intensity, something restrained but unmistakably present flickering beneath the surface, too loud in its silence for someone like him.

“Paulo,” Cross corrected.

Diego hummed, the tension easing just enough to fold back into him.

“There’s nothing the dead can do that the living can’t,” Diego said, fiddling with the edges of the dynamite strapped to his chest as if it were a toy and not a weapon. “In fact, the presence of the dead. It’s reassuring. It proves that a soul once existed within it. I mean, within the person. Nobody can, well, not nobody, but sometimes you can’t say that about people. Having a soul, I mean.”

He inched closer to the TV, fingers dragging slowly over the screen, feeling the faint sting of static that he might as well have imagined. “I trust a soul more than I trust the soulless. It’s something you put into it. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re alive. There are a lot of soulful things that are dead. Or no. That’s not right. Dead?”

Before Diego could spiral any further, that sweet, shy voice broke through the silence again.

“I used to sleep in churches very frequently,” she said, letting the words hang there, waiting to see if they would be allowed to settle.

Everybody’s gaze shifted toward her.

Her body trembled almost on instinct, holding her breath as if these men might kill her simply for existing. But as the quiet stretched, it began to feel less like a threat and more like genuine interest.

“They were… safe. I guess. I don’t know. Maybe the idea of God watching over me was comforting.” Her fingers rubbed against the edges of her dress, pressing into the torn fabric. “Plus people seem less likely to commit sin in front of the cross. By that I mean… it wasn’t as dangerous to lower your guard.”

She continued, her voice smaller now, though steadier. “But sometimes you would see things. I remember once I was really tired, and I fell asleep on the stairs of Nuestra Señora del Carmen Parish. I was tired. And I was thirsty. So maybe I made it up, but…”

She looked to the staircase, swallowed whole by a kind of darkness that felt almost alive.

“I saw a woman carrying a coffin on her back. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and she was covered in blood. It felt like a punishment, like Jesus carrying the cross.” She swallowed, shifting her gaze back to the men in front of her. “I was so tired I just shook my head and closed my eyes tight. Somehow I convinced myself she couldn’t hurt me any more than anyone outside.”

The gloom, which had lingered so quietly until then, tightened in its stillness. It gathered itself in the corners where the window light could not reach, something patient and watchful, pressing down on them as the silence filled with a low, electric hum.

Eerie, given the fact that they had no power.

Aliza shifted a little closer again, as if asking permission just to exist near them. Héctor did not move at first, not until Cross cast him a glance that felt a little too much like judgment. He groaned, then he made space, patting the couch beside him and allowing her to sit.

“They say the devil lurks where God is,” Krishinller said, earning a few sharp glances before breaking into laughter. “It’s true. Haven’t you heard about the cathedral dwarf?”

Héctor raised an eyebrow. “The what.”

“Don’t you know about him? It’s a pretty old legend,” Cross added, a faint hint of amusement in his voice, though there was no mockery in it. “Though it sounds a bit silly now that I think about it.”

Something sly bloomed in Krishinller’s eye, a smirk stretching across his face as he crossed his legs and leaned toward Héctor.

“I know this story by heart, so you’d better sit down and listen.”

Aliza and Héctor exchanged a doubtful glance but said nothing.

Krishinller cleared his throat, settling into something more formal, his voice taking on the cadence of a show host, almost pedantic in its rhythm. “The story goes that long ago, there lived a dwarf in the area who was mocked for his size.”

“Was his name Diego, perhaps?” Cross said, not missing a beat.

Krishinller chuckled. “One day, the man was chased by a group of women hurling insults at him, and in his desperation he sought refuge in the cathedral, where he is said to have remained until the end of his life.”

“He’s even a virgin, just like me, for real…”

Krishinller waved Diego off with an exaggerated gesture, shushing him before turning back to Aliza and Héctor. “However, it is believed that after his death, he became something else. A terrible, hideous demon who still haunts the area, seeking revenge for the mistreatment he suffered in life. He terrifies anyone wandering there at midnight, especially those he approaches to ask for a light for his cigarette.”

Something shifted in the distance. A faint rustle carried along the walls, it might as well have been the fabric of the curtains brushing against themselves.

…However, the sound resolved into hurried footsteps that passed by and slipped into the kitchen, swallowed whole by the stillness that followed.

Or maybe that was Héctor's impression.

He tensed at once. The sound settled into him in a way he didn’t like, a creeping dread that moved through his chest before he could admit it was fear. Then, just as quickly, a thought struck him. It landed so suddenly it almost startled him out of that feeling.

He looked at Krishinller. Then at Cross. Then, finally, at Diego.

And before he could stop himself, laughter broke out of him.

Aliza raised an eyebrow beside him, her gaze drifting toward Krishinller, who offered nothing more than a small shrug.

“What’s so funny? You’re going to summon him here just so he can beat you for being disrespectful,” Aliza said, nudging Héctor in the shoulder.

“Narciso.”

“Huh?”

The word floated there for a moment, and then Diego joined in.

His laughter came more easily, as if the image had already taken root in his mind. Narciso, wandering through churches, haunting more than he already did. The man barely reached anyone’s shoulder, always smelling faintly of smoke, and if that wasn’t enough, there was something about him that never quite felt right. Calling him a demon seemed close enough.

Krishinller let out a chuckle of his own, though it lacked the same warmth.

“No, seriously guys,” Cross said, cutting through it, “don’t laugh at those things. You don’t know what you’re getting yourselves involved in.”

“Do you believe in God?” Diego asked.

He did not even look at Cross when he said it, not at first. The question simply cut through the room, carrying a weight that did not belong with the laughter that had just died. Then his gaze found him, that same quiet intensity pressing forward again.

Cross glanced to the side, then the other, as if searching for someone else it might have been meant for. There was no one.

God, he hated this man.

“Yes, I do,” he said at last, swallowing around the words. “I was raised Catholic. And I’ve seen enough to know he’s there. I’m not the strongest believer, but I know these things deserve respect.”

Diego didn't answer right away. Instead, he mulled over the words, fitting them into something greater that only he could see. He judged them against his expectations, against the weight of their experiences, against meanings that extended beyond what had actually been said. All at once.

Then he smiled, faint and satisfied, as he shifted his attention toward Héctor and Aliza.

“I do,” Aliza said, before Héctor could speak.

Her voice came quickly, but the certainty did not follow it. It lingered somewhere behind, incomplete. “I think.”

Héctor glanced at her, catching the hesitation as it passed. It stayed with him just long enough to sour his own response.

“Yeah, of course.”

He meant for it to sound firm. It did not. The tremor in his voice mirrored hers more than he would have liked.

Diego studied them too, the same quiet calculation settling into his expression.

And just like that, it came down to the last two.

His eyes moved to Krishinller. The man the streets spoke about. The one who’d rush to call himself the devil without hesitation.

“Yes,” Krishinller said.

There was no pause, no change in his tone, not even the slightest trace of unease.

Something in Diego’s expression changed. That half-hearted smile remained where it always did, faint at the corner of his lips, but there was something beneath it now. Something dangerously close to disbelief.

“There can’t be evil without good. I’ve seen it,” Krishinller went on, leaning back into the sofa, one leg crossing over the other as his gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the room. “The amount of cruelty in this world doesn’t make sense otherwise. It doesn’t just come from nowhere. It’s natural, sure, but it has to come from something. And if the devil exists, then so does God.”

He paused, then continued, quieter now.

“Maybe they come from the same hand. Maybe that’s all it is. But from what I’ve lived through, I know I don’t have any ties to anything good this world has to offer. None.”

His eyes remained unfocused.

“And if nothing good comes from me, then it has to exist somewhere else. I’ve asked for it before. I’ve begged for it. And I felt something answer. That’s enough for me.”

Diego hadn't spoken yet. The words were still settling, still finding their place, still weaving themselves into that same unseen framework. But Krishinller wasn't going to let him have that kind of time to think; they were both going to be left to stew in the same pot of uncertainty that Diego had served up.

“And how about you, Diego?” Krishinller asked, cutting through it. “Do you believe in God?”

Diego did not answer right away, he never did. Silence suited him too well. He let it stretch and settle over everyone else, as if time itself bent slightly around him. There was no reason to rush. Not for him.

His eyes shifted, lingering on shapes and figures that no one else seemed to notice. His thoughts gathered, then scattered again, coming closer to something rational before breaking into millions of pieces. None of them felt complete enough. None of them felt precise enough.

He grew tired of it.

“Well,” he began, “I exist beyond good and evil. I don’t care for those kinds of divisions. Black and white, even gray. Reducing everything to colors feels pointless. Especially for the color blind. Though that’s not quite right. Gray and white aren’t even colors.”

He felt it then, the weight of their attention pressing in, the slight tightening in his chest that he refused to name.

“But understand this,” he continued, swallowing once, “divinity, to me, has nothing to do with morality. I don’t know why you would tie them together.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Héctor asked.

“Why would you?”

A brief pause settled between them.

“What can I actually prove?” Diego went on. “Externally, I mean. There’s nothing beyond this. Not really. But I feel something in me. A kind of will. And I’ve tested it before.”

Krishinller leaned forward slightly now, something like recognition flickering across his face.

“Through the TV,” Diego said. “I project my impressions onto the scenes, and they take shape. They embody them. In that sense, they’re endowed with something like a soul. Again, semantics: ‘How do you define one, Diego?’ Well, that’s complicated, there’s no single way to do so. Anyway, I know it works, because I’ve found ways to channel those into vessels. Weapons. I don’t fully understand it, but it happens. Shit happens.”

Krishinller exhaled, already losing patience.

“You’re not answering my question, Diego,” he said, almost amused. “And I’m getting bored.”

“But I am.”

“No, you’re not.” He leaned back again, glancing briefly at Héctor before returning to Diego. “It’s a yes or no question. Answer it like one.”

Diego’s breath caught, just slightly.

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Just because you can’t answer it that way doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

Diego went still.

Yes or no. Two rigid shapes, too small to fit what he meant. They couldn’t even contain their own meanings, much less his. Another division, another simplification that stripped away the nuance he clung to so tightly. Still, he tried. He gathered what he could, pressed it inward, forced it to take shape within the two categories as he listed what could have been interpreted as a “Yes” or a “No.”

“Yes,” he said at last. “I do believe in God.”

The words sat heavy on his tongue.

And then, without hesitation,

“I am God.”

This shameless declaration barely had time to settle before something solid struck Diego. He flinched, a small “ow” slipping from his mouth as he raised a hand to his head and looked up. For a second he thought it had been Cross, but then—

“Do not fucking say that, are you insane?” Héctor’s voice cut through.

It might have been nothing more than an old fear clawing its way up from the ashes of his agnosticism, something buried that still knew how to burn deep in its grave. The fear that God, if such a thing watched at all, might decide to stop holding back. That whatever fragile mercy had been extended to them so far could be withdrawn without warning, replaced by something colder than what they already lived through. Héctor hated religion for that reason. He hated the idea of being owned by something he could not even begin to understand, something that demanded submission simply because it stood so far above him that resistance became meaningless. He feared it, and worse than fear was the awareness of it, the sense of being seen at all times, of privacy thinning out under an invisible gaze until nothing remained but the bare permission to exist, and even that could be revoked in an instant.

Was he even talking about God right now?

He glanced toward Cross, who held the same strained expression, something unsettled moving beneath it, Diego brushing against a nerve he did not fully grasp. Or, maybe, he grasped it too well. Cross met Héctor's eyes for a moment and there was a quiet recognition there, then Héctor looked back at Diego.

“I said it wasn’t a yes or no question,” Diego said, calm as ever, his fingers tracing idle circles over the spot where he had been hit, “I treat it like one and I get hit.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that kind of shit. It’s not something you play with.” Héctor said.

And hearing himself, you might have mistaken him for devout. You might have pictured him in a pew every Sunday, head bowed and hands clasped, voice softened into prayer. But he had never done that. More often he had shouted at the ceiling until his throat gave out, accused a silent sky of betrayal and abandonment, of leaving him to rot in a world that tracked him like prey. He had fought alone in small, suffocating rooms, face buried in a pillow to muffle the sound of it, and nothing had ever answered him except more of the same. Misery had been the only reply. At some point even the clouds had begun to trouble him, the way they gathered as if preparing to break, as if they might split open and strike him down just to prove they could.

“I think…,” Aliza said, her voice slipping in carefully, her eyes fixed somewhere below their faces, “that you can participate in the act of creation without being God. Not necessarily. Like, we make bread and things. So maybe it’s something like that.”

“Left or right?” Diego asked.

“Huh?” She finally looked at Diego, noticing the way both his hands sat buried in his pockets.

“Diego, what the fuck?” Héctor snapped, the fear replaced instantly by a flash of anger that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than the moment itself, understanding something that Aliza did not.

“Nothing is going to happen, relax,” Diego said, that same lazy smile lingering at the edges of his mouth. “I’d know.”

He turned his attention back to Aliza. Cross shifted slightly, discomfort sharpening in the set of his shoulders. Héctor, at least, made sense in this, but Diego, and Krishinller by extension, felt untethered, moving along a line no one else could quite see.

“…Left?” Aliza said at last, uncertainty dragging at the word as it left her.

“Diego I swear to god.” This time it was Cross, his hand settling lightly against the side of his pocket, the gesture small but very deliberate.

The air tightened. It gathered around them, thick with the kind of anticipation that made every second stretch so thin it threatened to snap. Aliza’s gaze flickered from one face to another, searching for Héctor as if he might be able to tell her, without speaking, what she had just agreed to. Diego watched her without interruption or any significant emotion; he watched her long enough for the tension to peak, to settle into something almost unbearable, and then he pulled his hands free.

“Congratulations,” he said with a shrug and a quick wink, as if nothing at all had been at stake. “See, it’s the burden of proof. I’m not saying I’m God. That kind of title naturally comes with a certain grandiosity and scope. What I mean, or am, is smaller than that. It’s about things. About what came first. Or who.”

“That’s fucked, Diego,” Krishinller said, still grinning, the whole thing apparently landing somewhere between amusing and impressive for him. “What you just did. That's very fucked up.”

“But was I wrong?” Diego leaned back, brushing against Krishinller’s knee as he looked up at him with an expression that bordered on smug.

Then, without warning, he drew a gun from his right pocket.

“My mother never lies,” he said, as if continuing a completely different conversation, “She’s part of the chain of events that led me to this. If… what was your name? Aliza? If you were ever meant to become something else, or nothing at all, I would have killed you the moment I saw you. I know you weren't, so I knew you'd choose correctly.”

Aliza felt it drop all at once, her heart sinking hard and fast with realization. Héctor’s hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him,” he said, and there was something unclear in it, something that hovered between reassurance and judgment. “He’s insane.”

Diego was about to open his mouth, to try and make sense of his sudden actions, when the room was swallowed whole by a thick blanket of white, falling over them with the weight and shock of a cold bucket of water. Whatever words had been forming on his tongue dissolved at once, thinning into nothing as his gaze snapped to the TV, dragging him back into place, back into that familiar spot where he always sat to watch.

Aliza reached for him, or almost did, driven by a sharp, self-destructive curiosity she already knew would cost her more than it gave. She stopped when she saw Héctor rise and leave without a word, Cross following close behind with a look so sour it seemed to curdle the air, leaving a taste in her own mouth. That was enough. She went after them, not wanting to risk whatever might come from staying.

Then the silence settled in, threaded with the faint hum of electricity and the bright, cheerful voices spilling from the screen. Diego leaned into it completely, so absorbed that he seemed to slip loose from himself, forgetting who he was, or why he was there at all. There was something almost tender in it, in the way a grown man could be so utterly consumed by something so simple, the same quiet wonder you might see in a child. It stirred something restless in Krishinller, a longing for that kind of unguarded fixation, and that total surrender.

He watched him, waiting for a word, for the faintest sign that he was still there, and when none came, he broke the silence himself.

“Religion is a prerequisite for morality,” Krishinller said, regarding Diego as if he were not a person but something approaching an animal. “Faith can be very, very dangerous, and deliberately instilling it in a child’s mind is a grave wrong. Especially if you’re doing it at gunpoint, Diego.”

Diego did not look away from the TV. He did not answer. He simply kept staring, and Krishinller knew that he was listening.

So he went on.

“when religion and ethics are separated, they both suffer. I find myself wondering why morality would be etched so deeply into us, into instinct itself, if there were not something greater behind it.”

A beat stretched between them, long enough to feel permanent, even final. The light from the TV cast a shadow around Diego’s silhouette, carving him into something obstructive, something that swallowed light rather than reflecting it, quietly all-consuming.

“You’re still speaking in terms of good and evil, Krishinller,” Diego said. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s wrong at the root. It’s just evolution. The illusion of kinship. We’re social animals, we lean toward kindness. That’s what works.”

“But you don’t.”

“What?”

“You don’t lean toward kindness,” Krishinller said. “Neither do I. It has never felt innate to me, no matter how often it is described that way. In a world that throws you into the jaws of society and feeds you into the machinery of work, do you really think kindness is what we are built for? You gain far more from competition, from cruelty. That’s what survives and evolves.”

Diego turned it over in his mind, not even troubled by his words. He tested their shape, fitting them into the shape sorter of his thoughts, weighing something on his tongue before answering.

“You’re still using the same terms. That’s not what I meant. Kindness, cruelty, whatever you want to call it, how do you assign value to any of it? It could be either. It could be neither. It might not be anything at all. It’s just a set of actions inside a framework.”

Krishinller drew one of his knives from his belt, his eyes catching in the reflection along the blade, the light staining his features red for a moment before he spoke again.

“Then we have nothing left to talk about. Everything is a set of actions within a framework. Everything is something we defined. There are no words in nature. If you want to strip meaning from everything, then start there. Strip it from conversation, from language, from anything you like.” He turned the knife idly between his fingers, tracing its edge with a touch that bordered on intimate. “And you claim to be God, yet you speak as if these concepts escape you. If everything begins and ends with you, why invent what you refuse to understand?”

“It’s my mind,” Diego said, his eyes never leaving the screen. “There are things that exist within you, things you know are there without quite understanding why. You know what a thought is, how it forms, how it moves, but until you think it, where is it? Nowhere. Can you understand what a thought is, as you think it? That’s what this is. It feels innate, foreign, but still yours. I accept everything as mine. I know it is. I told you I’m not God. This is just the closest way to put it.”

Another pause.

“If I’m the devil,” Krishinller said, letting the idea settle between them, “and you’re God, then we are natural enemies, aren’t we?”

“I don’t have enemies.”

“Now you have one.” Krishinller smiled, leaning back into the sofa as a slow breath filled his chest. “How does that feel, Dust?”

Diego turned, only slightly, but enough. And maybe it was only Krishinller’s imagination, but there was something there, the faintest trace of a smile.

“That feels good.”

────────────

Left or Right?

When Diego first arrived as a Recogido, Krishinller couldn’t understand how he fit the profile Narciso often sought. He was shy, slow at times, and didn’t seem to carry even a trace of harshness or ill intent. He simply lingered. He moved through the halls with that air of torment, settling into a place he did not seem to recognize, the ground beneath him not yet willing to hold him, or even welcome him. It was clear—or so Krishinller believed at the time—that Diego simply did not know where he stood. At least, that is what he thought, until the moment he saw it.

“Left or Right” is a simple game. Or rather, it was a game to Krish, because Diego never treated it as one. It began with a question, always the same, spoken in that measured way of his, “Left or Right,” and the other person was made to choose.

It felt pointless. Krishinller had seen it a handful of times, always with the same hollow conclusion. The question was asked, the answer given, a small pause stretched between them, and then Diego would leave, satisfied. Krishinller tried to understand what it meant. He turned it over in his mind until it dulled. Was it political? Some crude provocation? A private code? In the end he arrived where Héctor had arrived long before him. The man was insane, and whatever shape that question took inside his head was far beyond the reach of anyone else.

He remembers the day they went to a pharmacy for a few pills, and perhaps something more if it presented itself. They were not strangers to theft, and they had no intention of paying when they stepped inside. Krishinller lingered behind, drifting along the aisles, letting his fingers hover near the neatly arranged products as if he were deciding between them, while Diego moved straight to the counter. Krishinller watched him from a distance and wondered, not for the first time, what he believed he was doing.

Still, there was a pull to it. Curiosity, you might say.

Diego leaned over the counter and spoke to the shopkeeper in a low voice, something that seemed to sour the old man’s face by degrees until it settled into a kind of weary displeasure. Krishinller could not hear the words, not clearly, only the shape of them, until the question came through, faint with distance and yet unmistakable.

“Left or Right?”

The man frowned, confusion gathering slowly, his eyes lifting until they met Krishinller’s for a moment, then going back to Diego's. He asked the only thing that made sense. “What do you mean? As in politics?”

Diego laughed then, and the sound was wrong in a way that was difficult to place, carrying something almost amused and yet entirely without warmth. The smile that followed did not quite leave his face. It lingered, faint at the corners of his mouth, reflected dimly in the other man’s gaze.

“Don’t think too much about it,” he said. “Just answer with what you like best.”

Did Krishinller remember which one the man chose? Left, or right? He did not. The memory dissolved there, swallowed by that quiet expectancy that had already begun to settle in his chest, the certainty that nothing would come of it, that it would end as it always ended, with nothing at all.

Except it did not.

The man answered, and Diego let the silence follow, allowing it to linger and settle as if that heartbeat of dread were also part of the ritual, something unseen weighed and measured in the space between them.

Then he moved.

He drew the gun from his pocket. From the side the man had chosen.

And he shot him in the head.

For a moment, something inside Krishinller stirred in a way he had almost forgotten was possible. Surprise, clean and sharp, cut through him before he could even begin to process what was happening. It felt foreign in that moment, like something he was reminiscing about rather than a very present, vivid feeling. Something pulled up from a place that had long since fallen silent.

There had been no need for it. None. They had come for pills, perhaps a little money if the opportunity arose, nothing more. There had been no threat or resistance, no reason to leave behind something so loud and final, something that would haunt them long after they walked out that door.

But Diego spoke, answering the questions nobody asked.

He said it wouldn’t be fair to leave things unresolved. That if he walked away, something worse would have taken shape in its place. That what is refused does not disappear but returns to balance itself; it is taken back in equal measure for the act of doing nothing.

The game was simple. Left or right. He carried the gun in one pocket.

And if you chose the wrong one, you died.

The air in the small room hung thick with a heady mixture of stale tobacco, gunpowder, and the sharp sweetness of aguardiente. It was not the fragrance of incense that filled his lungs, but something far more familiar, a scent he had come to recognize as life itself.

At the center, the altar of the Corte Malandra stood as a testament to the last remnant of his faith. The figure of Ismaelito, cap tilted to one side and hand set firmly on his hip, presided over everything beneath the flicker of three candles, red for blood, blue for the justice of the heavens, and black for the shadow that guards in the night. At his feet there were no fresh flowers, only offerings dragged in from the street, a wad of crumpled bills, an open switchblade stained with the same red that marked every blade he carried, and a half empty bottle of anise liqueur.

Suddenly, the music shifted. A fierce salsa by Héctor Lavoe surged through the room, rebounding off the unplastered cinderblock walls streaked with erratic lines of graffiti, the sound pressing into every corner as if it were trying to force the room itself into moving.

A cigar hung loosely between his fingers, still unlit, as he stared at the figures before him, their shadows trembling against the walls in uneven pulses of dark.

His leg bounced in a steady rhythm, following the music without thought, while the words curled around his throat and seemed to tighten there, choking the air before it could fully leave him. He thought about it, about the things Diego did, about the things he himself had done, and whatever shape morality was supposed to take between them.

Did he care about morality? No, not really. He had tried to force it into himself, to press guilt into whatever remained of his mind, but it had never settled there in any natural way. He understood it as an idea, felt its weight as something that hovered close and constant, yet he could not grasp it as something he should hold onto. It simply was not part of his nature. Kindness, goodness, empathy, all of it dissolved into that endless ocean stretching past the horizon, a suffocating expanse of boredom that no one could pull him from, unless they were willing to sink with him.

He lifted his gaze to Ismaelito, watching in quiet expectation. Ismaelito stole, just as he did, lived as a malandro as he did, yet somehow remained good at heart. A kind of Robin Hood, taking food for those who could not afford it, protecting the people of his barrio, guiding the younger ones to not follow in his steps. Krishinller studied him with something difficult to name in his eyes, swaying faintly where he sat, a flicker of irony, perhaps even helplessness, passing through his expression.

“So what do you think, huh?” Krishinller said, a smile pulling faintly at the corner of his mouth. “That man is crazy. You think he learned that from a movie? Probably did. I could swear I’ve seen something like that before.”

He leaned back in his seat, the old plastic chair creaking under his weight as if it might give at any moment.

“Thought I was the craziest of the group, but I guess it can always get worse. Makes you wonder what kind of things makes a man like that. It’s almost pitiful. I wonder how long he’s got before he dies because of it.” He lifted the cigar to his lips, though he never lit it, and pulled it away again. “If you ever meet him, beat him up for me, would ya? I’ve been itching to give him a good punch.”

There was no answer.

The smile slipped from his mouth, replaced by something heavier, something thick with a quiet, stubborn melancholy.

He stared.

He stared at the figure, fixed and unblinking.

Stared right through it, at something far beyond.

He stared as the world curdled through what felt like a jar of pond water, bleeding into the bruised violet of his vision, drowned in a permanent, tea-colored twilight.

And for reasons he could not begin to explain,

He pressed both hands to his face,

And began to cry.

There was no clear emotion in it, nothing he could seize and name as the source. The tears came without shape or reason, and he tried to stop them, tried to hold himself still long enough to find even the faintest trace of real sadness beneath them, but there was nothing there. The more he resisted, the more desperate the sound of his own crying became.

He folded into himself, arms wrapping tight around his body in an instinctive gesture he did not fully feel. He cradled himself, curling into the chair and into his own warmth, rocking gently as if that alone might steady him. When he looked up again, his vision had dissolved into a blur of shifting shapes and streaks of light, and the words slipped from him before he could stop them.

“If I were your son, would you love me knowing what I am?”

They settled into the air with a quiet weight, something alive almost stirring beneath them, something that might have been akin to anticipation. He might have said the silence stretched, but it did not. It was his own words that lingered, echoing off the walls again and again in the absence of anything else.

Then, just as quickly, that familiar grin returned, almost feral in its shape. The back of his head met the chair’s headrest, and he let out a slow breath.

“No,” he said at last, answering himself as the words swelled and turned within him, dizzying in their certainty. “Of course you wouldn’t.”