Roche followed Pester to the parking lot. He was about to get into the car when she called him back.
“Grab the stuff from the trunk,” she said, opening the passenger-side door.
He did as he was told and found a PAA Operations Department field uniform. Holding the garment bag up for inspection, he said, “This isn’t my size.”
“It wasn’t meant for you.” Pester’s tone was cool. “It’s made from special material. You wouldn’t have any use for it.”
Roche turned the bag over and saw a note explaining that the uniform had been made with fire-resistant fabric. Still full of questions, he climbed into the car with the bag. Before long, he realized the driver was taking them farther and farther off course—not back toward the city at all, but into a dark, abandoned industrial district.
In the distance, several black concrete towers loomed like top-heavy hammers. Low, rusting workshops sprawled across the area, and the dry, white alkali flats stretched beneath them like snow. Rust-colored streaks, left by some long-vanished rain, cut tangled red wounds across the ground.
Pester didn’t object once. Clearly, this had all been her idea.
Roche didn’t ask what they were doing. He knew too many questions would get on people’s nerves, and Pester’s in particular. He’d learned that much before the dinner party.
The driver pulled over on a narrow road beside one of the black buildings.
Roche caught Pester’s meaningful look in the rearview mirror and hurried out with the garment bag. What awaited him was a scene so far beyond his understanding that he could only stare.
“What… what happened here?” he stammered.
“Oh, that? It’s a long story.” Koin waved from the roadside. “Anyway, looks like we’re coworkers now!”
His uniform jacket was nowhere to be seen. In one hand, he held a pair of battered glasses held together with tape. Their owner was kneeling beside him, stark naked, with a jacket bearing Koin’s employee badge draped over his shoulders.
Roche rushed over and dropped to his knees in front of Drake. “What happened to you? What’s going on?”
“Relax~ It was just a little test. And the professor passed, too. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Koin winked at him.
Roche didn’t have time to answer. He checked Drake’s pulse and felt a slick chill of sweat. Whatever Koin had done, Drake’s pulse was faint and shallow, yet racing—close to two hundred beats a minute, by the feel of it. Roche hurriedly checked Drake’s eyes. His pupils were completely unfocused, and he didn’t respond to a word.
“Fuck you! How the hell is this good?” Roche shouted. “He’s in shock!”
He reached to lower Drake onto the ground, but Koin drawled, “Why go to all that trouble?”
Roche looked up and fixed his gaze on Koin. He could feel his heart hammering, each beat threatening to break out of his chest. Blood surged through his head, and his whole body trembled despite his best efforts. But when he spoke, his voice came out unnervingly steady.
“Then enlighten me. What would you suggest?”
Koin actually came over. He slipped the glasses into his pocket and drew a gleaming dagger.
Roche rose to his feet and stared him down without giving an inch. But Koin simply walked around him and stopped in front of Drake.
Roche turned. Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. Koin seized Drake by the hair and hauled him upright. The sharp dagger sank almost all the way into Drake’s throat. Koin twisted his wrist, and the blade sliced easily through flesh and blood vessels.
But the arterial spray Roche expected never came. With Drake in shock, his blood pressure was too low. Bright red blood merely poured out in heavy streams, blooming across the rust-streaked, bone-white alkali ground. Then Koin let go, and Drake collapsed into his own pool of blood.
He really didn’t need resuscitating anymore.
The world fell silent. Time stretched like spun sugar pulled straight from the oven, long enough for Roche to see the whole thing play out. And yet it passed as quickly as a bullet leaving a gun—too fast for him to stop Koin. By the time he finally lunged, pinned Koin to the ground, and clamped both hands around his throat, Drake’s death was already certain.
“What? Was I wrong?” Koin said, still perfectly at ease despite being strangled. It was as if oxygen had never been a necessity for him. “Why are you looking at me like that, Doctor? As if I’m some kind of murderer.”
Roche almost laughed. What, wasn’t he?
His grip tightened without him realizing it. With a crack, he crushed Koin’s throat. Bone fragments pierced the skin of Roche’s palms and blood ran down his hands, but he barely felt it. Koin, too, seemed not to notice his crushed larynx. He just kept talking.
“You really need to calm down. Can’t you see—”
Gray, swollen, faintly glowing gel slid down the back of Roche’s neck. Like an insect’s cocoon, it wrapped itself tightly around them both.
“—I’m just speeding up his resurrection.”
Before Koin had finished speaking, an enormous column of orange-red flame erupted into the night. The heart of the blaze was where Drake’s body lay. Its shriek pierced the darkness like the wailing of ten thousand ghosts, shooting straight into the sky. The factory district, without power and dark for years, blazed like midday beneath its light.
By then, Koin had used the strange substance to drag himself and Roche toward the car. Roche knew that if Koin hadn’t covered them in time, the instant the fire erupted it would have charred half of him to the bone. Even at this distance, every breath of air was hot enough to scorch his windpipe.
The ghostly shrieking went on for a long while before finally stopping. The flames died, and darkness swallowed the factory district again. By the headlights, Roche could make out a blackened figure standing where the heart of the fire had been.
At first, he thought it was a trick of the light. Then he realized it wasn’t. The figure was a person burned to a crisp—or, rather, Drake.
Before Roche could move, the charred man raised a hand. Black flakes pattered to the ground. He reached up and tore a large patch of burned skin from his own face, revealing fresh skin underneath, still faintly pink.
Drake strode toward them. As he walked, the charred skin peeled away from his body. Then, without warning, he punched Koin square in the face.
Roche didn’t feel much like observing the social niceties and making a token attempt to stop Drake. He simply picked up the uniform he’d dropped on the ground and handed it to him. Now he understood why it had to be fireproof.
“Did I ever tell you to stick a knife in me? What part of ‘leave it alone’ is too complicated for that undersized brain of yours?”
Drake took the clothes but didn’t hurry to put them on. He turned on Koin and started swearing at him.
Without missing a beat, Koin shoved Roche forward. “He told me to do it.”
Huh? What the hell was this idiot talking about? Roche stared at him in disbelief.
“All right. That’s enough.”
It was Pester. No one had noticed her get out of the car. She stood off to one side, smoking. Her voice was soft, but in an instant the three men stopped arguing, like robots unplugged from the wall.
“You three will be partners starting tomorrow.”
“Aw, my throat still hurts. And my face,” Koin complained, only half joking. Of course, his throat and cheek were both perfectly fine, without so much as a scratch. “Honestly, it’s hard to give work my all after being hurt like this by a beloved teammate, ma’am.”
Pester knew exactly what he was hinting at. “I’m not giving you a raise.”
Roche glanced at Koin, still trying to bargain with Pester, then looked curiously at Drake. Drake had just punched Koin. Surely he’d object to being assigned to the same team?
Drake had pulled on the uniform and was zipping up his jacket. He’d noticed Roche watching him. “What?”
“Are you okay with this?”
Roche meant being teamed up with Koin, but Drake seemed to think he was asking about his physical condition.
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m used to it.”
He picked another charred scab off his arm.
“Um, I meant being teamed up with Koin. Are you okay with that?”
Drake narrowed his eyes. “Looks like that golden-haired guy was right. You really don’t remember anything.”
Without waiting for Roche to answer, he added, with a self-mocking edge to his voice, “I don’t have a choice—unless I want to have all my limbs cut off and get sent to the power plant to spend the rest of my life as a human heat source.”
“That’s a bit…” Roche gave an awkward smile. He’d never heard of Espers being used to generate power.
“Of course they do. What do you think the world’s like right now? Roche, how many years has it been since you left the city to see what things are like outside? Do you have any idea how people are living out there?”
“I… have I been out there before?” he asked uncertainly.
Drake didn’t answer. He went over to Pester and asked her for a cigarette. Now the three of them stood together, while Roche remained behind.
Thin strands of smoke drifted upward. Above them towered the pitch-black buildings, and between them hung a bitter moon: a stone that had burned itself out, unable to shine. It peered into other people’s windows with borrowed light, like a hanged corpse—round, swollen, indifferent to everything around it. It paid no mind to the car finally leaving the dead ruins for the city. Besides, the dim red glow of its tail lights couldn’t illuminate a thing.
Pester dropped the three of them off at the employee dormitory. It was a suite that could comfortably hold three people, though Koin was the only one who lived there. Contrary to his usual behavior, the place was remarkably tidy, with barely a trace of anyone living in it.
Still, finding half a cold, expired pizza in the fridge wasn’t especially surprising.
“What is this?” Roche asked, holding up the crust and looking at Koin. After they’d gotten back, Koin had collapsed onto the sofa with his eyes shut and his feet propped on the coffee table.
“Pizza.”
“Take another look.”
“Oh—moldy pizza.”
Sure enough, a patch of green mold had grown on the underside of the crust. Roche hadn’t noticed it before, but that clearly wasn’t the point.
“Of course it isn’t! I’m asking why the topping is raw meat!”
The crust sat innocently in his hands, piled high with bright-red minced beef. Blood from the meat had soaked into the dough.
“Why is that strange? I like eating raw meat.”
Koin pulled back his lips with his fingers to show off his sharp teeth. Even his incisors resembled fangs, and the teeth where his molars should have been were all the specialized shearing teeth of a carnivore.
Roche wordlessly put the pizza back and took out a bottle of water instead. He wasn’t curious. He didn’t want to know what Koin was. But Koin, just then, displayed an exuberant—and wholly inappropriate—urge to share.
“Aren’t you even curious about what happened in that abandoned factory?” Koin patted the sofa, inviting him to sit. Roche knew that, given Koin’s gift for talking, sitting down would mean staying there until who knew when. He stood off to one side, clutching his water bottle warily. “I think I’ll let the people who were there tell me.”
“He’s in the shower. Can’t exactly ask him—”
“Then we won’t talk about it.”
“Hey, wait.” Koin sprang off the sofa and grabbed him as he turned to leave. “Then tell me what you talked about with Sanchez and the others.”
Roche saw the smug smile on his face and belatedly realized that this was what Koin had been after all along. Everything else had been a smokescreen to distract him.
“Nothing much. We talked about the strange noises at the Escher Manor. Pester said she’d send someone to check it out tomorrow.”
No mention of the girl behind the hedge, or of Pester’s cryptic remarks at the time.
“No wonder she called and told me to clear my schedule tomorrow.” Koin stroked his chin. “Would you look at that? Your first assignment isn’t dealing with an Anomalous Entity or tracking down a criminal Esper. You’re going to the boss’s—sorry, former boss’s—place to check the heating pipes. Fantastic.”
“That’s all. Nothing else?”
“No. What else did you expect? It wasn’t a business meeting. It was just their private get-together.”
“Oh, my God,” Koin exclaimed with exaggerated dismay. “Young master, your social experience is as extensive as a sheltered young lady’s. Let me clue you in: if more than three coworkers of different ranks are at a gathering, that’s overtime. They’re discussing work, okay?”
“Don’t call me that.” Roche was genuinely annoyed now.
“All right.” Koin shrugged. “I thought they might—let me apologize first. I thought they might talk about the former Director.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Just a hunch. Never mind if they didn’t. And nothing else happened?”
“What are you getting at? Just say it. I’m going to bed.”
“Nothing, really.” Koin straightened up and moved out of the way. “It’s just that when Pester called me, it sounded like you guys were up to something pretty wild. Or are rich people’s parties always that debauched?”
All right. Roche knew who’d been on the phone with Pester by the hedge.
As he headed for his bedroom, he shot back, “And what were you doing? Murder and arson?”
In that order, not as two separate things.
“Nope. To be honest, it wasn’t all that different from what you were doing.” Koin smiled at him.
Roche shut the door without hesitation, cutting off that irritating grin. For now, all he could hope was that nothing went wrong at the Escher Manor tomorrow.
As soon as Roche’s bedroom door clicked shut, Koin pushed open the bathroom door.
Drake was bandaging himself. The new skin was still tender, and the uniform was made of thick, rough fire-resistant fabric. He’d ended up with scraped, bleeding patches all over, especially around his wrists and neck, where the material had rubbed against him over and over.
“You’re good at putting up with pain. Roche didn’t notice a thing.” Koin went to the cabinet by the mirror and took out a roll of gauze. The antiseptic-smelling bandage unfurled, then wound around Drake’s bloody neck.
“I suppose I deserved it,” Drake said sarcastically. He sprayed some hydrogen peroxide on his wrist. The moment it touched the wound, it hissed and bubbled up pink with blood. He wiped it away with a bit of cotton. He never changed expression, as if he couldn’t feel pain at all.
Koin kept bandaging him. “Don’t say that. I was in the wrong. Even if Roche is a little sweetheart right now, you don’t think his sister is going to be easy to deal with, do you? Pester’s a pragmatist. To her, an Esper generating power at a plant and an Esper working for PAA are no different. Without a very good reason, she’d never let you stay.”
Drake wrapped a bandage around his wrist and didn’t answer. Koin continued, “When did you realize you had a superpower?”
“Just now.”
“Just now?”
“When Morian got blown away. He hit me with a teacup, and my blood splashed onto him. Then it exploded like high explosives.”
He finished wrapping his wrist and started to turn away, but Koin caught him by the arm.
“Wait.”
“What now?” Drake sounded impatient.
“About tomorrow.”
“Shouldn’t we wake him up for this?” Drake glanced toward the bathroom door.
“I’d rather not. He seems pretty mad that I conned him.”
“I could help him get even. Maybe punch you again.”
“You’re serious?”
“I’m kidding. Does my opinion really matter? Get to the point.”
Koin didn’t answer right away. Instead, he pulled out his phone and started typing.
“If you want a drink, there are a few bottles by the restaurant bar. Don’t expect them to taste good. It’s peated whisky, like rocket fuel.”
Drake glanced at what Koin had typed on the phone. Aloud, he said, “That works. I don’t care about the taste. I just need the alcohol to help me sleep.”
“Couldn’t be better,” Koin said, typing again. And don’t smoke anywhere except the balcony. That smoke detector is insanely sensitive. It’ll go crazy.
Koin put his phone away. “Got it?”
“I’ll remember,” Drake replied.
Naturally, he meant it both ways.
Escher Manor
