2.

Darkness engulfed me. Somewhere in the distance, I heard someone call my name.

“Satoshi?” I groaned. My body refused to move, pressed against a surface cold as ice and hard as iron.

Stone. I pressed my cheek into its coolness, seeking relief from the hammering inside my skull. The voice called again, each syllable sending pain through my temples. A hand on my shoulder ignited white-hot flashes behind my eyes as I rolled onto my back.

“Renata, please wake up.”

“Juno?” The name felt wrong on my tongue; thick and unfamiliar.

“It’s Aya. Come on, Renata, wake up! You have to wake up!”

Her voice hovered close, her breath hot and sour against my face.

Aya. The name pierced my fog. I shielded my eyes and fought to sit up.

The room had no windows. Overhead lights cut through the gloom in sterile columns, their glow pooling on the tiled floor. The air carried a chemical tang that clung to the back of my throat, while the cold, clinical light only sharpened the emptiness.

Aya knelt beside me at the edge of one light pool. Her hair hung in matted clumps, dark with dried blood. Her sweatshirt hung in tatters, and bruises bloomed across her skin in violet and deep blue.

“It’s Tobi,” she said, nodding toward another pool of light where a body lay face down. One hand stretched into the glow, fingers curled like the legs of a dead spider.

Blood spread beneath him. Too much blood. The copper tang of it filled my nostrils. I tried to see if his chest rose and fell, but couldn’t tell through the gloom.

“What do we do? He won’t wake up!” Aya’s voice cracked.

A memory surfaced. Night… Hunting. We’d been together, but... The thought vanished as bile surged into my throat. I swallowed hard and asked, “Where’s Satoshi?”

“I don’t know what happened to him. Or Juno. We’re the only ones here.” Aya hugged herself, teeth chattering despite the room’s warmth. “Wherever here is.”

I lifted my head too fast, setting off another round of unwanted fireworks. “How did we get here? What do you remember?”

“Being outside the hospital, then... nothing.” She paused. “Where are we, Renata?”

The ruins—right. There’d been an explosion. I reached for my naginata, hand scraping over glass shards. It was still there. Thank the gods. But my leg sheath clung to my thigh, empty. Its knives were gone. I sat up—slowly—to get my bearings.

Gray walls curved overhead into shadow. Dark streaks bled down their surface, fading as they reached the floor. Its tiles sloped toward a central drain.

The drain. At the sight of it, Satoshi’s stories about places like this came flooding back. For once, his conspiracy theories didn’t sound so far-fetched.

“This might be a detention center,” I said.

Aya’s gasp echoed off the walls. Like me, she knew detention was too polite a word for what this place really was—a torture chamber for shōkōhin, enemies of the regime.

It also meant we were in a holodome. But which one? Not all seven had detention centers. Ours didn’t. Neither did Nagasaki’s.

Then again, why were we in one at all? We’d broken curfew, sure—but Doctor Mazawa had endorsed the kufugaki bounty.

I turned to Aya, my vision steadier now. “Do you still have your crossbow?”

“I don’t think so...” She patted the floor. “No. It’s gone.”

“Keep looking. I’ll search over here.”

No bow, no knives. Just a naginata. That made no damn sense! Nothing about it lined up with what Satoshi said about the capture protocol.

I used the naginata to pull myself up. The room tilted, then settled. Whatever chemicals that blast contained had scrambled my equilibrium.

Aya had made her way to a narrow light shaft across from Tobi. Her next step produced a faint click, followed by a grating sound. Her knee buckled, and she pitched forward with a cry.

“Renata! The floor moved!”

The lights flickered and then began switching on and off in chaotic patterns. Icy dread pooled in my stomach. The hollowness in my bones told me what was happening before my mind could form a thought.

“Get up now,” I said. “Did you bring a knife last night?”

“No, I—“

The light show intensified to a dizzying strobe. Through the chaos, Tobi remained motionless.

I moved toward him, sliding each foot forward carefully over the tiles. Halfway there, something dragged him out of the light. All I saw was the smear of blood before the light extinguished with a crisp snap.

“Renata?” Aya’s voice pitched high with fear.

“Still here,” I said, keeping my tone steady. “Follow my voice.”

As she shuffled toward me, something hissed in the dark. A sound too sharp, too deliberate for steam. Airlocks disengaging. A door slid open with a pressurized gasp, and foul air surged into the room. Aya collapsed at my side, gagging.

The stench hit me like a punch to the gut. Rot, chemicals, and something worse.

Meaty-sweet. Unmistakable.

Shapes shifted in the mist. One. Two. Three. Each lurched forward on unsteady legs.

“Look sharp, Aya! We’ve got company.”

The stench made my eyes water, but I extended the naginata to its full length. It loomed over me—awkward, maybe, but dependable. More than I could say for anything else right now.

A scream tore through the dark to my left. Lights snapped on in a furious strobe, freezing the room in jagged flashes.

A kufugaki, faster than the rest, had Aya by the hair and dragged her across the floor. She kicked and clawed, weaponless. The others howled and raised their twisted hands.

I lunged sideways, slipping past their charge.

Then I vaulted over Aya, swinging the naginata mid-air. The blade struck true, cleaving into the male’s neck. Not a kill, but deep enough to stagger him. They might lose the ability to think, but they remembered the pain.

The creature shrieked and reeled back, dragging me with it. My blade was stuck fast.

“Help me, Aya!” I skidded across the blood-slick floor, locked in a macabre tug-of-war with the dying cannibal. If I couldn’t free my weapon, it would drag me right into the others.

Aya scrambled up, her face contorting in terror. “No!”

She threw herself against me, hard. As the blade tore free with a spray of gore, I heard a wet, crunching noise behind me.

I spun around, readying for another strike. A female kufugaki staggered backward, blood spurting from her throat.

“How did she get in here? I thought there were only three.”

More disturbing still: how had she approached without my noticing? I always sensed a pressure on my outer ear, a subtle tug that made my hairs prickle when anyone was standing behind me. If not for Aya, I’d be dead. Such carelessness made no sense.

“How many more are back there?” My voice remained steady despite the fear curling in my gut.

Aya squinted into the strobing murk. “I think she’s the only one.”

I didn’t believe it. “Put your back against mine and keep watch. Let’s try not to die.”

The two remaining kufugaki regrouped and charged. The spotlights, once tight circles, now flared in strange patterns, bathing the room in acid green and blood-red columns.

I crept forward with Aya trembling against my back. It’s like navigating a forest at night, I thought. A bizarre neon forest with flesh-eating predators. The shifting lights intensified my headache, but I needed to focus. Given the choice, I’d rather face a horde of yōkai than these things. Imaginary monsters died more easily.

The colored lights had a strange effect on the kufugaki. They recoiled from even slight contact with the beams, screeching and flailing as if burned. I filed the observation away, unsure if it was pain or fear that drove them back. Either way, it might come in handy sometime.

“Let go,” I whispered to Aya. I launched myself between the creatures. My backward thrust caught one in the chest with a crack of bone. A single swipe cleaved the other’s misshapen head from its neck.

The head landed with a wet thud. A rushing sound filled the space, pulling the mist away. The colored lights and strobing ceased, plunging us into darkness again.

Then five small pools of warm light activated one by one, forming a path to another black opening—the same place the kufugaki had entered.

I tensed, expecting another attack—but nothing came. Only the low hum of something recalibrating.

Aya clutched my arm. “Don’t go, Renata. It’s another trap.”

She wasn’t wrong. But what other choice did we have? We couldn’t stay here, not with Tobi gone, and who knew how many more kufugaki waiting in the wings? Satoshi and Juno might be through that door. Or our captors. Either way, we needed answers.

“Only one way to find out.”