The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) by Cesar Torres

in all seriousness. Let me show you something. Okay?" I said.
    I pulled out my phone and brought up all the saved searches I had found online, but also the academic materials I had gathered at the university library since I had been released from the hospital. I found a lot of information, but I organized it as best I could in a folder, because I wasn't really sure if any of it was useful for what I needed. I handed my brother the phone, and he scanned for almost twenty minutes until he handed the phone back to me. He lit up a cigarette and offered me one. I passed.
    "So?" I said.
    "So what? You know how to Google. Congratulations to you, Stephen Hawking." José María flourished his right hand and took a small bow in my direction. His sleek eyebrows and his hoodie, his thin stubble—they reminded me of a medieval court jester. He would never, ever stop making fun of me, as long as we lived. With a sigh, I turned the phone's screen back in his direction.
    "Did Mom and Dad talk to you about their visit to my hospital room?"
    "Not really," he said. "Mom stayed up crying every night, and during the whole time you were in the hospital, Dad went up to the attic and reorganized the whole thing. He put every book and tchotchke we have up there into little plastic crates, and he labeled every single one of them. He did this over and over, a real shitload. He did a good job, just like a psycho should, but no, he didn't say anything, either."
    "José María, I am still having nightmares about the Millennium Riot. The reporters won't stop calling me, and they show up on campus, looking for those of us who were there. And my face--"
    "What about it?"  
    José María had never been prone to coddle me when it came to my looks. He awaited my answer.
    "I don't look the same. Probably never will. Feels ugly.”
    He nodded.
    "What does your face have to do with any of this?" my brother said.
    "Well, you're not going to believe me until I show you, so take a look here, at this image I pulled up on the World Digital Library."
    "Ah, you went and dug up the Florentine Codex. Nice!"  
    José María sat up straight, letting the wall support him. He pulled his hoodie back and spikes of his hair rose into standing, while the longer locks fell back . He grabbed the phone from me.
    "The Florentine codex is cool as shit."
    "It talks about Mictlán. That's why I wanted to talk to you while it's just the two of us."
    "Awww... I thought you came out to see Rhinoceros with me because you recognize a person with great taste. You bitch!"
    "Relax, I'm here for the show, too. But you're the only person who obsesses this much about...well, this stuff."
    This stuff. Legends of gods, statues bathed in sacrificial blood, deities whose internal organs fell out of their stomachs like a Hannibal Lecter trophy. These were stories of old rituals, superstitious crap.
    Three weeks ago, in my hospital bed, my parents had warned me about a place called Mictlán. Up until then, they had never mentioned the word much, except in nighttime tales. Or in some books in their library in our small living room. But that wasn’t enough information.
    I had started my searches in the university library. I learned Mictlán was the realm of the dead in the times of the Aztecs, a place ruled by the two lords, the god and goddess of death, blood, and sacrificial tribute. Mictlán was the place where souls were said to travel when they left this world.
    In the end I found out almost too much information. It was more I knew what to do with. There was so much of it--archeological evidence, scholarly work, Buzzfeed trash--that by the time I finished my research, I felt like I had not accomplished much at all. And as I stayed up at night in the library reading abstracts, I realized I should have consulted José María in the first place.
    "Mictlán is the shiiiiit," he said. "It's supposed to have mountains made of poisonous spikes and rivers swimming with monsters. Hades has nothing on this