When I woke up, I found Mister Nomura had served me a bowl of not-too-soggy Cere-Os, slices of toast with a side of butter and honey. Next to those, what appeared to be a small, oblong dish filled with six rows of golden-brown cubes, each of them a bite-sized chunk of omelette, laid out beside a bowl of steamed rice. On the tray, Mister Nomura had set a spoon, forks and a knife, next to a pair of disposable chopsticks. I wasn’t too big on those, especially considering how Dad used to make me to pick the wings off flies mid-flight. Looking around to make sure that Mister Nomura was away, I picked up the chopsticks and wolfed down my breakfast, cleaned the bowls and wiped the jar of honey clean with every last bit of toast.

When that was done, I took the time to look around Mister Nomura’s basement getaway. It seemed so different now, in what little light of day seeped in through the tinted windows. The entire place was filled with rows on rows of machinery, covered in tarps to keep away the humidity and dust. I felt around the covers, trying to divine their purpose with my fingertips. Here, something that looked like a long tub, smelling fainly of nickels. Over there, a monster of a machine, standing out over the rest with a smaller, more compact column of cylinders set next to it. Inside a cabinet secured with a length of chain were stacks of heavy iron molds. In the southeast corner, what looked like a smelting furnace, complete with a funnel. A miniature chemistry lab was set in the corner. A cloud of mixed, noxious odors seeped through the cover. A little bit of careful tiptoeing reveals a few loose boards, under which Mister Nomura had stashed blocks of pure silver, wrapped in leather and old newspapers.

“Look at that. He’s serious” I mutter as I turn the blocks around, try to gauge the weight of all that silver. It seems to be somewhere close to a quarter of a kilo, just enough to make four solid silver dagger blades. Or even a few dozen solid silver arrow heads.

“Of course I am serious. Do you think I risked my cutting hand for nothing last night?” Mister Nomura calls to me from the top of the stairs and I try to hide the stash, make it seem as if I found this by accident. “Don’t bother, I have been here a while. Saw you move around the place.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal anything.”

“I know you weren’t. You don’t look anywhere near that stupid.”

I cracked a smile, considering his compliment and settled for a courteous nod instead. “Thank you. I guess.”

“Come upstairs. I will show you your room and we will discuss your living arrangements.” Mister Nomura moved to the upper floor and I followed, as he led me through his small sushi restaurant. It was barely furnished, the woodcut prints on the walls long since flaking and painted with rows of styrofoam sushi mockups set along PVC trays filled with ice made from fake ice. “GoodSushi makes for good cover. People in Orsonville could not tell properly made food if it walked up to them and kicked them in the palate.”

Mister Nomura walked me through a door camouflaged as part of the wall’s decoration and let me up another flight of stairs. The entire place felt claustrophobic and was absolutely bare. The top floor was a long corridor, dividing three rooms.

“On the right.” Mister Nomura said, pointing to a plain sliding door “Is your room. It is not much, but I trust you will manage. I have removed the previous tenant’s personal belongings. You are free to get rid of the rest, if you want. You may do whatever you want in there, provided you are not too loud. No rock music, no boys and if I hear as single note from those dreadful new Japanese pop songs, I am going to smash those speakers over your head. The rest of the floor is off-limits, understood?”

“Yes, landlord-san” I bowed, joking. Mister Nomura smiled for a fraction of a second.

“Instead of rent you are to perform chores for me, either regarding my day job or my other activities. I understand that you are in no position to pay me at the moment, what with school and all.”

“You think I will have time for school?” I hazard.

“I will not have an uneducated little brat going around town saying she lives in my house if people don’t know exactly what she’s doing in the mornings. Contact your parents and notify them about your arrangements, then you will enroll to Orsonville High in a week.”

I am about to explain, when I realize exactly how ridiculous all of this is going to sound, relayed to Mom. Hey Mom, so I’m in Orsonville and some guy I bumped into stole my money and then I was squatting in some abandoned place for a while and then my stuff burned down along with a thousand rat-things. Yeah, I know that this place was supposed to be monster-free, but anyway the important thing is I saved this old man who hunts monsters and you should see this place Mom, it’s not as big as Dad’s workshop back home but it’s got everything! Anyway, I need you to send me a couple of papers so I can enroll in high school and…

And then Mom would be here on Chancel Road in the blink of an eye and she’d drag me back home whether I liked it or not. Guess I ought to go Oliver Twist on this one.

“I…I can’t tell my parents, Mister Nomura.” I tell him in my softest, saddest tone. The best way to lie is to avoid unnecessary details, let everyone else fill in the blanks for you. Funny how I never thought that Mom’s acting lessons would never do me any good. Mister Nomura nods, understanding. Thankfully, he does not press the issue.

“Then I will make the necessary arrangements. Make yourself at home. Tonight, you will come with me on patrol. We will visit the rat-nest and see if we can find any stragglers. If even two have survived…”

“They could repopulate.” I tell him without thinking. Mister Nomura raises an eyebrow, then goes:

“Yes. That is good.” he says, before retreating back into his fake storefront, moving slowly so I won’t hear but I can already tell that he is going to head back to the basement and try to pick a better hiding spot for the silver. It might be a while before he fully trusts me, so it would be best if I kept up my ‘amateur monster hunter’ façade, just so I won't scare him off.

The room inside has been stripped nearly bare. I can still see the oddly-colored rectangular patches on the walls, where posters used to be laid out side by side all the way across the room, the distinct ghostly prints of adhesive tape on the windows, the familiar patch of new dust where a wall-to-wall carpet used to be. The floor is cedar and creaks. When I move across it, it squeals like a nest of hungry nightingale chicks. I try the walk-in closet and find nothing but a summer dress left behind, a girly floral print. Fighting back the urge to test for a hidden compartment inside the closet, I check the bathroom. It’s been a while before anyone’s used it, but there’s the lingering scent of strawberries in the air and an aged Hey There Kitty™! toothbrush. The bed is too short, making my legs and arms dangle on the sides but it sure as hell beats squatting.

I check the view outside the window. Past the row of deserted businesses, I can see Orsonville stretching out into the distance, its borders merging almost seamlessly with the forest beyond. To the South, even with the smog from the fracking facilities obscuring the sun, Henderson Lake glimmers. The view is nowhere near as majestic as the one out my window on Chancel Road, but I could get used to this. I’m scared and I’m stressed but I’m in Orsonville and I’ve got a job (sort of) and well, this could have been worse. I could have chickened out and gone right back home.

***

When Mister Nomura calls for me again, a few hours later, he gives me a careful packed bento lunchbox and tells me:

“You make too much noise.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that the floor…”

“The floor is fine. You’re just clumsy.”

“No I’m not.” I protest, but Mister Nomura shushes me with a raised finger.

“If you keep being so noisy, then you’ll have to go back in the basement. You snored, but at least I couldn’t hear you from here.”

“I don’t snore!”

“Yes you do. You have big, strong lungs for such a small girl. Make you sound like a baby elephant. Now, you take this box and you deliver it to Montgomery Pettus, understand? He lives in Etchison and Klein. You’ll know it as soon as you see it. Take the bicycle, he has a thing about time. Do you have a cellphone?”

“No.”

“Good, because he has a thing about cellphones too. Are you still here? Go!”

I turn and run out the door, trying to get my bearings as I scan around GoodSushi, find the delivery bicycle, uselessly fumble with the lock and then quit and then settle for running down Etchison, over the pedestrian crossing into Ellisson street. Klein is just three streets over, barely a block and a half away. I should be there in five minutes, when I see him.

The boy.

The bloody little thief with the auburn hair and the steady stride and his hands in his pockets, where he’s probably stashed my money. He’s got some of his friends with him, around three of the creatures, lingering around him. Moving as silently as I possibly can, I follow them across the street, duck down under a trashcan when he turns to give a friendly jab to the elbow of one of his creatures. He’s got a brand new cellphone in his hand, one of those fancy deals that he probably bought with my money -oh who am I kidding, that’s just what he did- and I see red. All I want to do is run across the street, get a good start so I can jump in the air and drive my foot right against his pretty little face. I know how to do that just right so he’ll lose the maximum amount of teeth in the process, then get him by the throat and squeeze until he…

By the time I’ve played out my revenge fantasy in my head, he’s gone inside one of the bookstores with the rest of his pack. I look for him for a couple of seconds, see him chatting up the girl at the register -some other helpless cow, I bet- as the rest of them disperse all over the place. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves and follow them inside; shoulders straight, head held high. He probably doesn’t remember me and even if he does, he’s too preoccupied with the girl on the register to notice me. Making sure I remain inconspicuous, I check the aisles and squeeze in between the ‘Popular Science’ and ‘Photography’ Aisles. Sure enough, one of his posse is there, lingering over a picture book and struggling with the words. I grasp him by the hair at the back of his neck and push him down against the book before he’s had a chance to even squeal.

“Who is he?” I ask. He mumbles some excuse, but he knows what I’m talking about. I twist my grip, jab my fingers against his liver and push. The sudden pressure drives red-hot spikes into his belly. “The boy at the register. Who is he?” I ask again. He struggles and then finally lets up. I give him just enough room for a breather.

“He’s Billy Bailey. I…” he mumbles. I twist the hair in my grip again, push his face back against the book.

“Where does Billy Bailey live?” I pull his face back from the book again.

“Ellisson and Bloch. He’s not afraid of you. Billy’s not afraid of anyone.”

“I know. But you are. You are very afraid of me and because you know that if people find out that you got buffaloed by a girl, you’ll never hear the end of it. So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to leave and you won’t make a sound, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You keep looking at your little book, struggle with the big words like a good boy and I won’t find you again.” I say, letting him go. I leave at the same steady pace. Billy wouldn’t know me even if I walked right up to him and kicked him in the shins. For a moment, I feel like a long, thin shadow that slips through the cracks and walks through the raindrops.

Until I turn around just as the sliding glass doors close and I see the girl at the register looking at me, fixing me in place with her arctic-blue eyes, gives me a knowing smile that says ‘I know you now’ and I can’t help but run like hell away from that place all the way to Mister Pettus’.

***

“You’re late. I don’t want it now.” Mister Pettus tells me, squinting against the mail slot on his door, wrinkles furrowing his skin.

“No, you see Mister Nomura…”

“Mister Nomura always delivers my lunch on time, takes exactly five minutes from the moment he leaves his store until he gets to my house. I know because I’ve timed him. That’s so I can make sure he won’t poison me on the way. Keeps him nice and honest. But I don’t know you and you didn’t come straight from here, did you? Had yourself plenty of time to put something nasty in there.”

“I swear to God, I didn’t…”

“What did you use? Strychnine? No, that’s too obvious, the smell gives it away. Then again, the old man wouldn’t be able to make it out, hm? Mister Pettus is old and his brain is rotting. He ought to be easy to kill. I bet you thought it would be pretty funny, if you put spider eggs in my rice ball, so they would hatch and eat their way out of my belly in a month! I certainly wouldn’t have expected that, would I?”

“Mister Pettus, I am very sorry but…”

“Old madman Mister Pettus with his house with no windows and his bomb shelter and his walls lined with lead. I bet you kids make fun of me me at school, don’t you? I bet you think how funny it would be to put chili sauce on the inside of my tinfoil hat and watch me burn. Or stuff sausages in the back of my pants and let your dogs loose to chase after me, hm? You sicken me.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“Barry must have put you up to it! Or Dmitri. Or was it that old Romanian ghoul, whatsername, the one that infests that old leather couch in that mausoleum they call an old folks’ home? I bet you laugh right along with them, laugh right behind my back!”

“Mister Pettus…”

“But I know, oh I know you and I’m ready and when the chips fall down and everything falls apart and you are out on the streets eating each other, I’m going to be safe and with a full belly and after the world’s done falling apart, I’ll come out of here and shout ‘I told you so, I told you so’ but you won’t listen! You never listen!”

“Mister Pettus!” I raise my voice just enough to make him understand that I am sick and tired of his rambling. “There are no spider eggs in the rice ball, I am not from around here, I don’t know who these you are talking about are and I am sorry I was late but it was just for a couple of minutes and if you don’t believe me and think I poisoned your damn food, I’ll let you watch me eat it!”

And with that, I pop the StayFrez™ lid open, exposing the food to the naked air, grasp the disposable chopsticks. I’m about to plunge them into the food and make happy, filling noises when Mister Pettus opens the door and reaches his gnarly, skinny hand out to stop me.

“No, wait! Just give me the food. Don’t touch it.”

“That will be twelve-ninety five.” I tell him and make sure to keep the box out of his reach, until the money’s changed hands. Mister Pettus moves like a coiled snake. Shoulders low, relaxed façade but ready to spring at any moment. I make sure to keep my poker face, not let him know I caught on, jump appropriately when he grabs the box out of my hands. Behind him, the long corridor with the rows of chain-link enforced metal doors leads into a bare living room with stacks of gutted cardboard boxes, their packaging-foam innards spilled out all over the floor.

“Prepping for the end of the world?” I tell Mister Pettus, just as he’s about to slam the door shut. He freezes, looks at me for a while. I give him my best, clueless smile.

“Side-project. All work and no play makes something-something.” Mister Pettus mumbles, is about to close the door on me when I lean closer, putting my weight against it.

“What kind of side project?” I ask him with eyes wide and beaming and I realize exactly how vulnerable he must be feeling right now, how exposed. I can’t help but feel like I am taking advantage of his weakness as a way to enact petty revenge.

“Alternative food sources. Now please, go away.” He says, pushing against the door harder. I resist with just a little bit more pressure.

“Are you going to grow mushrooms in your basement? Or are you just going to make a squirrel farm in your bunker? Squirrels can carry the plague, so you might not want them in there with you all the time.” I go on. Mister Pettus’ struggle has turned into a subtle test of strength, each of us trying very politely to be rude as rude as possible to one another.

“Squirrels” Mister Pettus tells me, giving the door a single, decisive shove. I lean back, give him a couple centimeters, let him think he’s winning. “Have insufficient protein, especially considering the need for skinning and sanitation. I eat spiders, instead.” He tells me and gives me a big boogieman grin, showing me two rows of yellow teeth flecked with nicotine stains. “They are just scrumptious.”

Mister Pettus clicks his teeth and it’s enough for me to slip up, give him the edge he needs to slam the door in my face, nearly send me tumbling down the steps. I stand there for a while, shake my head to clear it from the thoughts of mister Pettus shoving spoonfuls of spiders and roaches and all sorts of invertebrates from my head and then I head straight back to…

What do I call it? GoodSushi? Mister Nomura’s? I struggle to find the right word. Orsonville still feels strange under my feet and I can’t for the life of me think of ever staying in this place for long. Not here, under the shadow of the Edgarhorn, not looking out at Henderson Lake for the rest of my days, treading the same four avenues and walking through the strange maze right under my feet, fighting rat-things as a glorified exterminator. I can’t even see myself ever growing used to Mister Nomura, either. Turning on my heels, I look across Ellisson street, try to get a second look at the place. Maybe I can make it something more than just a series of streets and rows of neatly-arranged houses and faceless pedestrians. Trying to find that little bit of Chancel Road I could tread across and feel like everything is all right with the world, when I see it:

The old, dusty phone booth.

Its glass panes have been smashed and generations of cats have lived and died in it, but it’s right there. The receiver is hanging down from the hinges, half the keys are missing and the phone book that used to dangle from the chain’s been pilfered long ago but it will have to do. All I need to do to get out of here is just dial three little numbers and sure as shooting, I’m going to be back on Chancel Road. Back to the dusty old shifting place, keeping an eye out for the crumbling castles, treading the rotted, dry garden paths. Hiding from the midday sun under the shadow of the chapel’s belltower; a part of ancient history that never made it into the textbooks.

Finn of the Don, safe and sound in the middle of a shifting nowhere.

I’m too busy pondering my fate that I bump into someone. This time however, I land carefully, shoot back into my feet and shove my hand in my pocket. The boy I’ve bumped against is down on the pavement, sprawled on his back.

“Damn it!” he says, as he struggles with the torn shopping bag in his hand even as he struggles to get up. Canned milk and groceries spill out into the street. He’s lanky and clumsy but he’s got puppy-dog eyes. “I’m real sorry.”

“It’s okay. Need any help?”

“No, I got this. It’s okay.” He tells me, grasping at whatever he can salvage, shoving them in his oversized jacket-pockets. I stop a can with the heel of my foot, offer it to him. He smiles and places it in the bag, ties a knot and holds it against his chest. It’s only when he’s struggled to his full height that I realize that I’ve seen him before: the boy from next door of the house I was squatting in. “Thanks. I’m Anton.”

“Finn.”

“Hey there.” he flashes me an awkward grin, reaches out to stroke a lock of hair back, almost spills his salvaged groceries, stops. “Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“Just got here yesterday. Trying to get to know the place.”

“Well, I mean…if you ever need a guide, I could…” he shrugs and I’ve shut him down before I even know I’m doing it.

“No, it’s all right. I think I can find my way around. You’re sure you…”

“I’m okay.” He blurts out and it’s only now that I notice that he’s red in the face, eyes darting all over the place so he won’t have to look at me. “I guess I’ll see ya.” He says and crosses the street without watching, heading toward Etchison, almost getting hit by passing traffic twice on the way.

It’s only later, when Mister Nomura is chewing me out over how upset Mister Pettus was with my nosiness that I realize how much like Anton I must have been, when I first bumped into Billy Bailey. How clumsy and embarrassed and blind. The thought of it makes my heart sink right down to my stomach. I must be making a face that Mister Nomura takes as an expression of downright shame, because he stops as soon as he notices.

“Go to your room. Rest until I call for you. Tonight, I will show you around Orsonville, get you to see the dark underbelly of the place. Get to learn a little bit of history, too.”

***

“These tunnels” Mister Nomura says, as he pries open the reinforced door in his basement and jumps into the darkness of the tunnels “Are older than Orsonville itself. The old settlers had set themselves up here during the Gold Rush. They thought that the tunnels had been set up by the natives. They expanded on the network, stretching all the way across the town, reaching all the way up to the Edgarhorn where the old silver mine used to be.”

We move through the darkness, knees bent and heads low to navigate the narrow maze. Mister Nomura takes a right turn.

“There was hardly any gold here, of course. Seemed like most of the ore had been mined a very long time ago and even after the settlers had poked this land full of holes they couldn’t find more than a handful of nuggets, at best. But there was enough silver in the Edgarhorn mine to last them near a century. So much that they brought in some Romanian immigrants and a few Chinese laborers on the sly, so they could get to it faster. And it worked, as these things go, for a very short while.”

We move along the narrow, twisting path and reach a fork in the road. Mister Nomura makes a left, then a right, then a right again and we’re on another path. We’ve gone in a circle and I know he’s doing it to make sure I won’t know the way just yet, not until he can trust me. Can’t blame him, really.

“It took the Romanians and the Chinese three years to turn it around on the settlers. They would have probably gotten it done sooner, if they could communicate in the first place. Maybe they wouldn’t have done anything at all, if those settlers had half the brain to treat them like human beings. Maybe if they hadn’t driven them so deep into the earth that the people working the mines weren’t poisoned by mercury and died screaming. Or maybe if they had taken any precautions to make sure all those people wouldn’t end up entombed in the bowels of the mountain.”

Mister Nomura weaves and bobs through a series of tunnels, occasionally backtracking for effect. It’s not long before I realize that I can’t trace my steps back. If he decides to move ahead and I miss him for even a second, I’ll be well and truly lost so I make sure I keep up.

“Terrible thing to die from, mercury. Starts as a rash on the skin, seeps through and makes you sick. Get it in an open wound and you’ll go insane before you’re dead as soon as it makes it into the brain. Remember Ranger Renegade? That old black and white TV show that they show in summer sometimes? Remember how it says that criminals that got struck by one of the Ranger’s bullets died out of shame? That’s mercury, in the tips. No way for anyone to die.”

Mister Nomura moves ahead and the tunnel suddenly feels familiar, the way it expands and gives us some room to move. The floor is strewn with debris and dead rats and there’s the smell of burnt plastic lingering in the air. We’re where the rat-thing nest used to be.

“I’m going up to check.” Mister Nomura says, after standing on his toes to look though one of a grating. “Come when I give you the signal.”

I watch Mister Nomura disappear up into the street, hear him shuffling about for a while; he’s quiet, but not enough to fool the rat-things. They have ears that can hear a hamster drawing breath and some of them can even read human heartbeats. If two of them are still alive and in hiding, they’re going to make sure they’ve disappeared long before Mister Nomura’s even spotted them. But then, rat-things don’t linger in a place where a nest used to be. They are too cowardly for that. It’s far more probable that they’ve gone to skulk near a supermarket or headed for a landfill, anyplace where they can breed in peace without anything that’s smarter or more vicious than they are to hunt them down.

“Up you go” Mister Nomura tells me, peeking down into the grating. I nearly jump with fright. I didn’t hear him coming just then. How was he so damn quiet?

I follow Mister Nomura up to the surface, look at the plot of land where the smoking wreckage of the pre-fab home used to be. The smell of melted plastic and burnt wiring is overwhelming. Some of the weeds in the garden have burned down to ash, but the rest of it has been spared. The ground is muddy in places, probably doused by the neighbors so the fire wouldn’t spread. I slosh about in the muck, looking for any place dry enough to walk on. Mister Nomura moves through the mess undeterred.

“Quick.” he whispers hoarsely and I do my best to follow, even as the mud spills into my sneakers and soaks my socks with grime. Mister Nomura checks the mess, scatters the ashes. Tiny singed and shattered remains of rat-things float up from the wreckage.

“What are we looking for exactly?” I ask him, looking over his shoulder.

“The brood-mother. There is one to every swarm. It probably didn’t join in on the attack, made her nest someplace where she’d be safe and out of reach so she wouldn’t have to move. If that one has been killed, then Orsonville is clean and my work is done.”

“And if not?”

“Then the rat-things will be back in a couple of years, perhaps. They will hide better, spread out through the sewer systems, hide in hospitals and larders and make sure they can sink their sickly little fangs into as many people as possible. Then, after a third of the population has been killed by rabies or the plague or simply been gnawed to death, they will decide to hunt them down and it will start all over again. They make for very tenacious warriors, the rat-things.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“I should. After all, my father is the one who brought them into the country.” Mister Nomura says, nonchalantly, as he shifts wrist-deep into the mess of bones and powdered flesh.

“What?”

“My father, Hiroaki Nomura. He was an Imperial spy, in service to the Emperor Hirohito. A member of the biological warfare division of the War Ministry. You won’t find any mention of it in the history books, but it happened. You’re ankle deep in its legacy.” He goes on, even as he’s picking up rat-thing remains, turns them this way and that. Some disintegrate into ashes. Others, he pokes with his fingers, then sets down beside him. “Well? Are you just going to stand there gawking?”

“I…what do I do?”

“Look for the broodmother.”

“What does it look like?” I ask him, as I try to make sense out of the mess of ashes and bone and bits of house strewn all about us. We never used to do this, the Helfwirs. We would go in, take care of everything, leave the cleanup to the locals after we were paid. We weren’t a clean-up crew after all; we were monster-hunters.

“Look for anything with too many heads or limbs. Broodmothers are much bigger than the other rat-things. Fat, too.”

I hold myself back from retching as the image of the rat-thing broodmother comes to mind. To stay occupied, I move along the perimeter of the wreckage as quietly as possible and scan the area. The plot of land is walled off from the other houses but their roofs have already been partly singed. The house that Anton lives in has an entire wing blackened. Orsonville is packed too tight for us ever to attempt such a stunt. That is, if there is anything else here besides rat-things in this place but that seems far-fetched. Even places like Athens that only boasted perhaps a couple of white-screamer nests and a few vampires were considered to possess too high a monster population. Maybe Mister Nomura and I had solved Orsonville’s monster problem in one night. Maybe things would be fine here and I’d be safe and bored just like everyone else. Going to school and helping Mister Nomura keep his fake storefront up and meet people and maybe find that thieving creep Billy and make his life hell whenever I'd need the workout.

It’s funny how much the idea of ‘normality’ scares me. I work slowly, not really wanting to find the broodmother. Maybe if I let her get away, I could…

No. That’s not the way we do it. Not as Helfwir, not as part-time monster hunters and definitely not as people. We get things done and then we go back home and sleep knowing that we did the right thing.

We safeguard the night, like Dad used to say.

I’m so busy negotiating my way around a still-burning mess which looks like it used to be the kitchen counterpane that I nearly miss the flash of piercing blue from somewhere just beyond my field of vision. By the time I’ve turned it’s gone, but I can still see it trailing by away from me into the night, fading into nothing. Standing on the tips of my toes, I look over the fenced area, attempt to peer at the roofs but there’s nothing there. There’s a whiff of wet fur and a familiar smell still lingering. Like old sweat and creaking, cracked leather. Like an abandoned house, settling at midnight.

“The sooner you start looking, the sooner we’ll go home.” Mister Nomura tells me from somewhere in the darkness. I nod and kneel, move the ashes and the rat-thing remains.

***

We find the broodmother just as dawn is beginning to break. It’s bloated and as big as a basketball with six arms and a mouth filled with teeth as long and sharp as nail files. A tiny skull grows from the back of its neck. Mister Nomura places it in a strongbox ‘for safekeeping’. Something is written in elaborate ideograms on the side.

“Why did your father bring these here?” I ask him, as we make our way back into the underbelly of Orsonville, through the twisting lightless corridors.

“Rat-things are plague-carriers that have adapted to thrive in cities. Dump two of them in New York City and it will be swarming with their kind in two months, bringing the black plague and cholera with them. You could set fire to the entire place and you’d never get them all. They’d only stay there, count their losses and then move on to the next place over, where they can start the cycle anew. They make for excellent weapons of attrition.”

“I can see that.”

“They were going to be Japan’s alternative to the atom bomb, you see. A cruel weapon that would kill millions in every generation. ‘In twenty years’, the Ministry promised the Emperor, ‘the Americans would beg to be annexed’. Some of the people in charge of the war effort were…unstable, to say the least.”

I stay silent, hold myself back from pushing Mister Nomura when he pauses in his story out of fear that he might stop for good.

“The rat-things they had trained had been coaxed to attack children, first. The creatures consider infants to be a most prized delicacy.” Mister Nomura says in a voice not wholly his own: “’To take way your enemy’s future: that is the ultimate cruelty and the only assurance of victory’. My father thought this was insane. He devoted his life to stop this, to save the children of America.”

We reach the basement of GoodSushi without exchanging a single word. Mister Nomura lingers in the darkness, sitting on a tarp covered bench with his head in his hands. I’m halfway climbing up the stairs, when I hear him mutter:

“There were a lot of children in Hiroshima, that summer morning.”