Ring. Ring. Ring.

"Moshi moshi?"

"Ishii-sensei? My name is Honda Kiku, I ... work with the government." Japan nervously twined the phone cord in his fingers as he spoke.

"Honda-san? Goodness, I've heard of you. I am honoured to speak to you! You've done sterling work in this war."

"Thank you, sir. I have a question."

"I'll do my best to answer, but I'm afraid I can't talk for very long. We have some problems over here."

"Well, there's a certain wanted prisoner we've been searching for for a while. There have been reports that he's been seen in the Pingfang area. We've been telling everyone to keep a lookout for him for some months, but I don't think we sent the information to you. We didn't think he'd have any reason to be near your area." Japan took a deep breath. "He's Korean, quite tall ... looks about fifteen years old, but trust me, he's older and smarter than he looks-"

"Oh, does he go by the name of Im Yong-Soo?"

Japan nearly dropped the phone. "You know of him? Oh, good!" He tried to conceal his relief.

"Yes, actually he is in fact the source of the current problem," replied the doctor, sounding very irritated. "He escaped, and took a lot of personnel and a few of the doors with him."

"Ah. Well, I'm sorry about the losses. Thank you for the effort, I'll make sure you're reimbursed for any damages. How did you capture him?"

"Oh, we didn't. He was caught in Shanghai and sent to us. I do apologise if I overstepped my boundaries, but he was so very useful, and I thought I could send him on to you when we were finished."

A chill ran down Japan's spine. "Finished?" What would an animal-testing laboratory want with a human, or nearly so, prisoner?

"Of course! Don't you know what he can do? We haven't been able to find out how he does it, but he can heal any physical dama-"

"Yes, I know about that. That was partly why it was so urgent to find him. I wish you'd told me about this."

"We did send the information back to Japan, Honda-san. I don't know why you weren't told, if you're working on his case. Sorry, I assumed you'd heard at least something."

Japan had his suspicions. His knuckles whitened around the phone.

Dr Ishii continued, oblivious to Japan's discomfort. "It's a shame we lost him. Saved us a lot of test subjects, though he was rather difficult to handle. We have so much new data from him! Especially in the medical field, he was perfect for testing new surgical techniques. I'm afraid he wasn't a lot of use for the biological warfare testing - we had hopes for vaccines, but we couldn't get his blood samples to stop disintegrating. If only he wasn't sterile, maybe we could be on the way to replacing him by now. Is there any pressing need for him to be shipped back to Japan, or may we take him back if he's recaptured? We have some more ideas we'd like to test."

Japan sat down heavily, his nails cutting into his palms, trying not to crush the phone's earpiece.

"Honda-san? Are you still there? Sorry I rambled a little there, I get a little carried away with my work sometimes."

"Sterile? Replace him?"

"Well, we do have a few female subjects free, it seemed a shame not to ensure a steady supply."

Japan's stomach churned. "Okay, Ishii-sensei, I think I may be missing some important information. Would you please start from the beginning? Tell me what you did with him. Everything."

It took quite a long time. When the doctor finished, Japan was staring into space, blood trickling from his palms to the floor where his nails had broken skin. The Bakelite of the phone handset was cracking in his hand, a poor substitute for the doctor's neck. He said nothing.

"Honda-san? Hello? Are you still there?"

Japan hurled the phone across the room, ran to the bathroom, and vomited.