Sitting on a stool in the cafeteria kitchen, swinging her legs, eyes glued to the printouts she had requested of the Gushoushin before their departure, 003 hummed "Zun-Doko Bushi" stiltedly like a crosswalk signal as she crammed another carefully formed-together mass of yakisoba noodles into her mouth.

Hisoka, who had long ago lost his appetite, couldn't help but stare. That was her fourth serving in ten minutes, not to mention the cheese omelet, tuna sashimi, deviled ham sandwich, two bowls of instant miso soup and the microwave pizza he had made for her while she studied the data, and the slices of frozen raspberry cheesecake and lemon meringue pie sitting half-eaten on piles of paper.

The way she put it away, he had to wonder if she'd eaten in a year. True, her normal, owl stomach would have been much smaller, and he was aware that owls typically ate their prey whole, but that still didn't explain where it all went now. It was somewhat difficult to believe that this was the same delicate-looking woman who had saved Juuohcho just a short time ago with her fearsome, quick-thinking hacking skills.

She stopped humming for a moment to take another bite of cake, and looked away from the system diagnostics to the data dump, glancing between the columns there and the charts beside it, comparing the two. She made a small sound and raised her eyebrows.

"Find something?" Hisoka asked, leaning over the counter.

"Possibly," 003 said. "This chart gives the times and approximate locations within the grounds where the anomalies occurred. If this is accurate, it seems the rate of occurrence of the anomalies has dropped since about ten forty-five, when they were at their peak."

"Well, that's good."

"Yeah," she agreed distractedly, "especially considering they seem to correspond with the fluctuation in the system. The corruption that occurred during those moments was purged like it was recognized as some sort of virus, but the duration makes me think it behaves more like static. I wonder why Mother . . ." She trailed off. "Hisoka, do you believe in dark matter?"

A little unsure of the relevance of the question, Hisoka stood up. "Well, yeah. I mean, sure, I guess. I remember reading something about it in the news. Why? Why ask me if I believe in it?"

"It is mostly hypothetical, isn't it? You can't actually see the things that are supposed to make up dark matter — hence the name, right? — and so far no one has actually been able to measure the top suspects like neutrinos. And yet, scientists are pretty sure there's something there that's different from the 'light' matter we can see and is affecting the way the universe works in a major way. That sort of takes a leap of faith, doesn't it?"

It seemed like the opposite to Hisoka. But wanting to avoid arguing philosophy with her of all people, he simply said, "You're starting to lose me: Where does this fit in with what happened to the security system?"

"Well," she scrunched her shoulders, "no one's ever tried to scientifically explain where things like demons and guardian gods actually come from—"

"Wait a minute. You're not suggesting that this theoretical dark matter that exists somewhere out there, in space, is real dark matter . . . as in evil."

"No. That's too simplistic even for me. But I can't help but think there might be something to those theories that make this place, for instance, or our continued existence make sense. We in Meifu tend to take it for granted. But what if there is a scientific explanation for what people call 'subspace'? Maybe it isn't a non-physical plane at all, but is simply made up of a different type of overlapping matter that living people can't see or feel. Dark matter. Like being at its most fundamental level isn't what we think being is at all, and there could, in fact, be universes within universes. Pocket universes, if you will."

"So, places like Meifu and Gensoukai are, like, parallel dimensions?"

"Yes." 003 nodded in complete seriousness. "Or perhaps even the 'light' universes we know are subsidiaries of a larger 'dark' one that even now we have not had the proper tools to analyze, even though the rates of acceleration of astral bodies suggest dark matter makes up over seventy percent of the universe. It's like not understanding water."

"This is just crazy." Hisoka sighed and folded his arms over his chest. "Watari-san's been feeding you this SF garbage for, what, two decades now?"

"He believes it."

"Yeah. I'm sure he believes it."

003 frowned and turned something over in her head for a moment. And for a moment, Hisoka wished he hadn't just questioned a dead man's mental stability, at least not in front of someone as close to him as she was.

However, she didn't seem to be hurt by his statement when she said: "That's what he was researching the last time this happened. Watari always was ahead of his time."

And suddenly Hisoka's curiosity once again forced every other concern to the back of his mind.

"Last time?"

"Yes," she said to herself. "Twenty-two years ago, on a summer night of the total lunar eclipse."

"In nineteen-eighty? You became human that night, too? Or do you mean the anomalies?"

She thought for a moment to herself again, staying her fork in mid-reach, staring out in the direction of the kitchen stove. Hisoka turned to see what she was looking at, and it was then she started in again.

"Nobody's really sure what happened. And no one talks about it anymore. That night Watari was working on one of his latest experiments. He had been raving about it for some time, and everyone thought it was either too dangerous or too cockamamie a scheme for him to actually be serious about trying. But that's Watari for you. He was so convinced it would work, and so sure it would change the way mankind thinks about the makeup of the universe, that he went ahead with it in the dead of night anyway.

"Well, to make a long story short, something backfired, or maybe just wasn't accounted for, and the lab he was working in exploded. —No, that's not completely right. I guess it's fairer to say something in it imploded. Watari lost one of his greatest inventions in that accident."

"That's odd he's never mentioned it," Hisoka thought out loud. "I mean, he blows up things all the time, and aside from Tatsumi-san's grumbling everyone seems to more or less expect it. But wouldn't Watari-san bring up that incident at least once, if it was something he felt was that important?"

"Therein lies the problem," 003 said. "During the accident, he must have hit his head real hard or something, because he was out cold for a whole day. I think he must have died for a while."

"Why do you say that?"

"Only because that was the first time I turned human. And the second time was tonight when he died."

"But, I mean, what makes you say he died? Couldn't he have just been really deeply unconscious for a while?"

"Hm." 003 scrunched her lips together as she thought. She cut off another bite of cheesecake with the fork, and pushed it around in some left over mayonnaise and hoisin sauce. "I have thought about that. But it's not as though I turn human every time he hits his head in an explosion, or goes into a super deep sleep."

"Well, regardless," said Hisoka, "how did you turn human in the first place? You mentioned a hex a while back. It reminded me of my own case, so I wondered . . ."

"Oh, no," 003 shook her head. "When I said hex I didn't mean an actual hex. It's just ironic, is all. Although, truth be told, I don't remember anything from my past life, so I really couldn't give any reasoning behind it, and the only thing I know for sure about that night twenty-two years ago is Tatsumi finding me and getting me some clothes. We had a nice long chat waiting for Watari to come out of it. He's the only one who's ever seen me like this—aside from you, Hisoka."

"And you don't know how it happened."

"I don't know how any of it happened. Seriously, during the implosion/explosion event you couldn't see nothing. And Watari doesn't remember either. He's been trying to piece that night back together for two decades."

"This is the first I've heard of it."

"It is a bit of a sore spot for him." She gave him a knowing, lopsided grin. "Well," she amended then, "that and it was deemed too dangerous to ever be attempted again, so King Enma had his memory selectively removed."

This revelation came as a shock to Hisoka, more so than the others. "He can do that?"

"He can order it. Mother did it. That information is safe inside her now."

"But she—" Hisoka shook his head. "It's just a computer."

"The process is only a simple matter of switching off the proper engrams. Finding the proper engrams, on the other hand . . ."

"No, I mean . . . A computer can't erase things from a human brain like it was a disk. They're like apples and oranges. Heck, they aren't even in the same food group."

003 shrugged, as if to say, a fact is a fact. Then she sighed. "Still, it is pretty ironic. That all my wishing we could finally communicate on the same level, no taxonomic barriers, would come to such a pathetic situation as this."

"Don't you ever leave him messages?" Hisoka said, leaning his chin on his hand. "You know, like IM him or something. He seems like a pretty lonely person."

003 started. "Are you kidding? I can't do that! Watari would flip out!"

"But he already knows you're not just a regular bird. Uh, no offense."

"That's not it." Letting out a deep breath, she slumped her shoulders, and stared blankly at the empty plates in front of her. Perhaps she was picturing Watari as she explained, "Right now he thinks my doing things like using a calculator are cute and — if it makes any sense — normal. Like a parrot who says a truck is red, or a gorilla asking for a kitten. People tend to think of abstract things like language as human traits, but it's still totally excusable in animals because those same people don't attach words like 'consciousness' or 'self-awareness' to them. It's a completely different construction of intimacy.

"It's not that I want to be just his pet owl forever," she continued, miming a scale with her hands. "I can't tell you how long I've dreamed we could be just two regular human people together. But I don't want our standing to change either. I just feel like if I did something like that, if I revealed myself to him, that . . . that . . ." She struggled to find the words. "Oh, I know it sounds stupid, but that he wouldn't like me anymore. That he might feel like I had betrayed him, playing innocent all this time."

"I find it hard to believe he would stop liking anyone," Hisoka said as though to himself. "My experience has always been, once he makes up his mind about someone, that's it. But, then, maybe I don't know him as well as I thought. I never realized he's been through that much."

003 nodded. "He has quite a resilient character. Like one of those punching dolls you hit and they just keep bobbing back up. You know?"

She mimed a boxing stance and smiled broadly, but it was the admiration in her tone that struck Hisoka. Suddenly he felt guilty for the way he had stared at her all night, forgetting she was anything other than an attractive young woman he had never met before. Whose heart wasn't already fixed on someone else.

"Hey," he said in a low voice, "you really do love—"

"You're buzzing," 003 interrupted him, not seeming to have heard, and pointing her fork at his groin.

"Huh?" He started, then finally noticed the pager the Gushoushin brothers had sent along with them vibrating on his belt loop. "Oh," he said, and took it out. He read the display. "Looks like Gushoushin might have made some progress."

"M-m—" 003 swallowed. "We should get down there right away."

And as she said so, she promptly dug into what was left of the slice of lemon meringue, stuffing it into her mouth as fast as physically possible, mopping up the rest of the hoisin sauce with some cheesecake. "You know, it's okay if you don't finish," Hisoka said hesitantly.

"I know." Another mouthful. "But I feel bad letting it go to waste."

She picked up the glass of red wine that she had hardly touched and tipped it up; and Hisoka couldn't help watching fascinated as she gradually downed the whole thing and set the empty glass on the table with a finality that would have made the chief envious. He almost forgot about the plates he had been taking to the sink. "Let me help you with those," 003 offered as she jumped nimbly off the stool.

"It's all right. I can come back and clean up later."

"Shoot," she said to herself, "and this was my one chance to have chocolate."

"Tsuzuki's been hiding some nougats in his desk," Hisoka said before he quite thought about it.

"Oh, wonderful!" 003's face lit up. She gathered the stacks of form feed computer paper together in an untidy pile that looked like it would fall out of her arms at any moment, and on top of that grabbed the can of milk and tea off the counter with the other hand. Managing to keep it all together at nearly a hop as she came over to him, she said, "Hisoka, you're a dear," and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

Then he nearly did drop the dishes.

—

"Being in this place brings to mind the saying about the dew on the morning glory."

A gentle breeze that had an abnormal warmth of summer in it rustled cherry blossom petals from the branches, making an unearthly hush reverberate throughout the grove.

"We say the dew disappears and the flower remains, when in fact the flower withers in the morning sun. The moisture that forms the dew eventually evaporates and is incorporated into the larger whole, but when evening comes it returns again to the morning glory. So, it is not that it goes away, but that it simply changes into something else in the meantime."

A light chink of china hitting china gets sucked up by the heavy, concentrated atmosphere under the trees.

"Then, technically," said the other, "it is no longer dew. More?"

Sitting at a small, round outdoor table in the middle of the grove, Muraki regarded his companion half-amused as he leaned back in his seat. Tatsumi held up the teapot, waiting with strained patience.

In a second, as though just remembering Muraki pushed his cup and saucer closer to the secretary.

"True," he said as Tatsumi filled his cup. "I will concede that it can technically no longer be called dew."

When Tatsumi had finished, he handed the cup on its saucer to Muraki, who added a bit of cream. They were silent for a moment, each man regarding his opponent, during which time Muraki took a sip of his tea.

"You still haven't explained what you're doing here," Tatsumi said then, "in Meifu. It cannot be that you have been killed by some stroke of blind luck, for if that were the case you would have gone through processing upon your demise. And I do believe that, despite your unfathomably twisted character, you are an honest enough man to tell me whether you did or not, regardless of the admission that would be to what is considered by Enma to be a criminal offense, wandering off before your sentencing and trespassing on private property."

Muraki smiled darkly as he set the cup and saucer back on the table. "You are correct, Tatsumi-san. I have not yet died. That continues to prove a difficult feat."

"I'll find a way to pull it off eventually."

"I look forward to your future attempts."

"Then, may I ask what you are doing here," Tatsumi said coolly, "if not terrorizing our employees or looking to pick a fight?"

Muraki raised an eyebrow. "You mean, how did I come here?"

"I'm well-versed in your extensive knowledge of dark magic. But Juuohcho isn't exactly a back alley you can just walk into. There are measures in place to keep creatures like you, Doctor, out."

"I can't say I really intended to come here at all," Muraki said with a slight shrug. "Call it a stroke of blind luck. I seem to have fallen through a plot hole."

"A plot hole." Tatsumi slowly nodded to himself, pondering the subject deeply. "Well," he conceded, "there do seem to be quite a few of them popping up lately."

The two gentlemen stared at the wrought iron table in front of them, dressed in a white tablecloth and porcelain tea setting, and a small assortment of jams. Muraki reached for his cup again.

In the distance, something rumbled beneath them and rattled the china, at first seeming to come closer and then quickly fading away, like the sound of a helicopter or train passing in the night. Despite its transience, there was a distinct feeling of being watched, though neither man would admit to it in front of the other.

"I must say," Muraki continued, "it has been quite thrilling, intellectually speaking, to have had this chance to see where the ghosts of my past, present and future sins — if you'll pardon the allusion, Mr Secretary — conduct their daily affairs. The insight has been very rewarding, and the moon spectacular, but I do wish I could have come on one of Juuohcho's better nights."

"A temporary disturbance, I assure you, and one that we are working on," Tatsumi assured him in the professional manner in which he had been trained to respond to complaints, and reached for the basket of English muffins on the table beside the jams. "Muffin?"

—

When Hisoka knocked on the door to the records room, he was greeted by a less than pleased Gushoushin the younger. "Is it Tatsumi-san?" his brother called hopefully from inside.

The younger looked him over like he wasn't sure he was Hisoka at all. Like he could have been a body-snatching alien wearing Hisoka's skin. "Nope. Just Kurosaki," he said with a disappointed sigh.

"Welcome back, Hisoka," 003 said cheerfully over her shoulder from the computer terminal, which made him feel better.

Gushoushin the younger eyed the box in Hisoka's hand suspiciously as he stepped into the room. "What's that?"

"Just some chocolate. I told Zero-zero-three—"

"There's no eating in this room."

But 003 had already turned in the chair and stood to take the box from him. "Oh, Hisoka, you didn't have to do that," she said, but didn't seem hesitant in opening them and setting them on the desk next to her work station. Gushoushin was speechless.

Hisoka blushed. "Eh, yeah, no problem," he stuttered, and the other regarded him smugly.

"You are so whipped," the Gushoushin said.

Hisoka ignored him, stepping over to the computer terminals. "So, has there been any improvement since I was gone?"

"The new barrier system that Zero-zero-three put up has been holding together nicely," the younger said, hovering over his shoulder. "Either that or whatever was disrupting it before has given up."

"For the meantime," his brother said, occupied with his own work.

"We still haven't been able to contact Security directly, but . . . again, thanks to her," the younger said as though he really didn't want to, "we have been able to observe the frequency of the anomalies."

"They do seem to be tapering off," 003 confirmed, "like I was saying earlier. But that doesn't mean we'll go back to situation normal automatically, or that we won't see another spike of activity before the night is through. Now that I've had some time to look over the data, I'm going to tap into the barrier shield system again and see if I can't stabilize it somehow, just in case. It's going to be slow going because I don't have all the codes and will be relying heavily on trial and error, but I'm confident the three of us can make some serious headway in the next few hours."

"Sounds like you've got a full load on your hands," Hisoka remarked.

003 nodded. "On top of that, what little activity there is out there right now is still effecting our communication. Luckily I was able to bypass Mother and find another route into Security's control room. For some utterly mysterious reason, we can't reach them by phone, but we can access files and communicate in real-time via the network."

"That's strange. The pager Gushoushin gave us worked just fine."

"Yes, well," 003 said with a tilt of her head, eyes still glued to the screen, "I didn't say the phones weren't working, just that we can't get through. Nothing but white noise. You can listen for yourself if you like."

For a moment, Hisoka thought he would take her up on the offer and reached for the phone. His hand paused on the receiver, however, without lifting it. Some irrational fear kept him from picking it up and putting it to his ear. Whether it was something spurred by his empathy, or a memory brought to the fore of horrific childhood experiences, tuning in to radio frequencies that carried garbled, unintelligible voices and unplaceable sounds rather than songs and talk shows. Sounds that seemed to come from another realm, or even time, from out of a deep, malevolent void.

"No thanks," he said, withdrawing his hand. "Hm?"

Distracted by what Gushoushin the elder was doing on the other computer, Hisoka looked over his shoulder at the monitor. "What's this?" he said.

"Security camera," the Gushoushin said as he cross-referenced the picture of someone's face taken by the camera with employment files. "From before we lost reception. I've been making a list of all the employees who have stayed in the building after hours tonight. The chief will probably want a brief report from all of them, just in case they witnessed anything strange." He paused. "Or . . ."

"You don't think any of us had anything to do with the computer problems, do you?" Hisoka asked when his and Tsuzuki's photos from a hallway monitor were quickly brought up and discarded. "Or that thing you said was leaning on the shield?"

"We won't know until we've had an opportunity to ask everyone, will we?"

Hisoka said nothing, but the Gushoushin's answer did perplex him somewhat. Something about it nagged at his brain, but he couldn't pin-point what that was until the Gushoushin brought up the next picture, and the employee file showed a photo of a young man in his early twenties, with straight black hair, nondescript features, and glasses that were not framed on the underside of the lenses.

"Hold on a minute," Hisoka said quickly. The Gushoushin did as told, and looked up at him. "I've seen that guy."

"Of course, you have."

"No, I mean I saw him tonight, in the building — twice. But I've never seen him before in my life."

"That doesn't really surprise me," said Gushoushin the younger, to which his brother replied, "It doesn't?"

"Sure. He tends to keep to himself and works odd hours . . ."

"Who are you talking about?" 003 said, leaning over in curiosity as she popped a piece of chocolate into her mouth. "Oh, him."

"You know him?" Hisoka asked her.

She shrugged. "I wouldn't say I know him, but he comes around every once in a while. To Watari's office. I feel sorry for him. Got an awful persistent case of athlete's foot, that guy."

"Athlete's foot . . ." Suddenly it all clicked. Hisoka turned away from the screen to her again. "Hey, remember how you said Watari-san was so convinced his project was going to change the way we think about the universe? The one in 'eighty." She nodded, waiting. "Do you think it's possible someone would be so desperate, for whatever reason, that they would try to steal one of his theories? That they would even kill him for it?"

"I'm sure there are people like that in the living world," she said, eyebrows raised, "but here in Meifu? Besides, like I told you, the key to that particular project is no longer in his head. He wouldn't be any help to anyone trying to steal it for their own profit, dead or alive."

"What about any of his other inventions? Sex-change formulas?"

003 shrugged again. "Sorry, but there's not much to steal. If anyone did try, he'd have to know by now it was at his own risk."

But Hisoka still wasn't buying it. There had been something about the mysterious man that bothered him, something he could not quite place. Something suspicious. He glanced at the screen one more time, his eyes narrowing with resolve. "I'm going to check this out," he said, making for the door.

The Gushoushin started. "Wait, you can't go down there by yourself!"

"You don't know the way—"

"He had the fourth-level basement button in the elevator lit. He can't be that hard to track down. If worse comes to worse, I'll just try feeling him out."

"In that case," 003 tossed him something, "you'll need this."

He caught it, and looked down. A simple flashlight.

"Keep your buzzer on," she said with a confident wink. "And good luck."

—

In the same elevator again. Alone this time.

The fourth-level basement light was lit. Hisoka watched as slowly the numbers changed on the strip over the doors. It was past one; he wasn't sure of the exact moment seeing as he hadn't checked the time for a while. The bright fluorescent lights hurt his eyes as though even indoors they had already become well-adjusted to the dark of the deep night. The silence was almost tangible, like a thick fog. It lay about the elevator car as though he and it were hermetically sealed in. Only the faint whir of the cables that reached his ears thickly assured him that he still had his hearing.

At last the chime dinged and the metal doors slid open. Perhaps he hadn't known what to expect. With all 003's talk of dark matter universes and the feeling of being monitored that had hit him again with the suggestion of white noise, Hisoka should have worked his imagination into a frenzy. However, the complete and utter ordinariness of the basement level that he now alighted on worked to kill most of that paranoia. Still, cautiously, looking around, he slowly stepped out of the elevator car onto the linoleum.

It was dim in the hallway, and totally still. Not a sound could be heard but his own footsteps muffled on the floor and the pounding of his heart echoing in his ear. Directly in front of him was a semi-circular plywood clerical desk, the kind used in hospitals and nursing homes. There was no one behind it, the only living thing here a potted fern. Beside the elevator was a stainless steel drinking fountain, and two short hallways extended from this small area: one off to his left and one straight back. Each had a number of doors, but as they were both dead ends there were only so many places he could go.

Come to think of it, the whole fourth-level basement looked like a chunk lifted from a hospital or nursing home.

A loud grating noise behind him made him jump and reach for the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. But it turned out to be just the elevator, closing its doors for the return trip. He nearly fainted from the sudden rush of adrenaline. Taking a very deep breath, he turned back to the hallway to determine which way to go.

He didn't need to use his powers to figure that out. At the end of the hallway ahead of him was a large set of double doors. An AUTHORIZED PERSONEL ONLY stencil across them. The fluorescent light above blinked spasmodically, its right half clinging to life.

"It couldn't be that simple," Hisoka muttered to himself, and took off straight for it.

Through the double doors was a long, narrow space like a service corridor. Plumbing and heating pipes lined the wall. There was something like an electrical generator behind metal grating. A quick push off the wall told him all he needed to know: the man with the earphones had come this way.

But when he opened the heavy door at the end, pitch black and the echo of trickling water suddenly assaulted his senses.

Half-blinded and deaf, Hisoka reached for the flashlight that 003 had given him and pointed it into the darkness before him. Dark concrete walls and ceiling stretched away in every direction, branching off into tunnels farther down. It certainly did not look welcoming. But the man had come this way, that he knew for sure, and he was not about to let Watari's murderer get away when Hisoka had come so close to uncovering his identity and bringing him to justice. He jumped down from his ledge.

And shin deep into black, slimy water. Perfect, Hisoka thought, the sewer.

Still he trudged on, letting his determination and the traces of the strange man's presence guide the way through the maze of tunnels. At one point he swore he heard whistling through one of the drainage pipes. Swinging his flashlight, he zeroed in on the one down which it was coming, and stopped to listen. He couldn't place the melody, but the voice sounded familiar. Thinking maybe that was the way he was supposed to go, he went to climb up into it — and immediately hit his head on something hard.

"Ouch," he hissed, rubbing his crown. He shown his flashlight down the pipe. But there was nothing solid there. He carefully reached out his hand. No mistake, there was in fact something there, even if it was totally transparent. He got a sense of hunger and curiosity and wildness from the other side. "A barrier seal?" he wondered aloud, looking up. Was he under the outer edges of the office building complex already?

Nonetheless he kept going, until he rounded a bend and came face to face with a towering waterfall. There was just one problem: despite all the raging water pouring down it, this waterfall made no sound. Just the same languid trickling of before. It must be another illusion, he told himself. The signal, and the tunnel, ended here. Whoever was behind it must have wanted to keep others as far away as possible — which seemed to him to fit the profile of a cold-blooded killer. Not even taking so much as a deep breath, Hisoka ducked under the waterfall.

Which was a big mistake.

For all it made little more than a whisper of sound, it was made of honest-to-God water. Cold water. Buckets and buckets of it. Instantly soaked, he gasped in surprise, and fumbled blindly for the doorknob behind, stumbling into the room when it fell open and closing it bodily behind him.

There he stood for a few moments with his back against the door, catching the breaths the shock of it all had forced out of him. Then he remembered why he was there, and calming his breathing, drew his gun quietly and carefully stepped further into the room.

On second thought, to call it a 'room' per se did not do the place justice. He could not see all of it, but what details were apparent told that the space was huge, like a warehouse or national library, and circular like a great rotunda. Rows of tall bookcases lined the walls, disappearing without end into the darkness. There were crates stacked up here and there randomly, their sides stamped with various languages, most of which he did not recognize. In what seemed to be the center, on a raised platform, was the mounted skeleton of a titanic creature the likes of which he couldn't begin to guess.

That is because Hisoka's attention was not focused on the skeleton. It was focused on the dark-haired, suited young man who sat with his back to Hisoka at the oak desk some dozen paces before it. Slowly, his heart pounding hard in his chest, his clothes dripping on the floor, Hisoka drew the gun and trained it on the back of the man's head. The man at the desk stopped what he was doing at the unmistakable sound of its cocking, and slowly raised his arms, showing his empty hands.

"How're your feet?" Hisoka called to him, trying to sound menacing through chattering teeth.

The man let out an amused chuckle, ending in a sigh. And to Hisoka's surprise, he didn't seem alarmed in the least when he said, "What took you so long?"

—
tbc