After Tokyo, nothing felt real. Though it was probably more the bleeding I had done.

  My world softly spun around me, so I drove slowly. My hands on the wheel looked bloody, then ghost-pale, then normal. I kept seeing the corridor, the vortex bombs, Salieu’s face when the world collapsed around him, and Sora cutting us apart.

  Takezo sat beside me, not moving, just watching the city roll by as if he were already dead and this was the ghost ride home. He breathed steadily though. “So,” he said out of nowhere. “Where are we going? The plan for getting Francesca’s soul is pretty much impossible now.”

  No. It only gained an extra in-between step. “How so?”

  “They know about both portals now. They’ll secure the locations, and our challenge to Kallisto was a long shot to begin with. It assumed her to be forgoing all reasonable approaches in order to have some fun. She’s not abandoning a portal location she just found out about for that.”

  “That’s not a problem though.” Someone in Chevvy cut in front of me, forcing me to slow down. People really wanted to show off in front of a Maserati, didn’t they? “Francesca got in through another portal.”

  “We don’t know its location.”

  I smirked, knowing that’s exactly what Isabella would do, but I couldn't stop myself. Finally, I knew something someone else didn’t. That was pretty much the first time this has happened since I met Isabella. “I know where it is. She lived in Naples and found it in a ravine among the fields near her grandmother’s house. We can find that.”

  He smiled. “It’s on then. I put the challenge to in four days, so we take a flight to Rome, and we can make it.”

  We arrived at the mid-rise. The garage opened for the car, so we drove in. The Maserati’s engine echoed off the parking garage walls like a cough in a crypt. We got out, and our footsteps were the only noise that echoed through the garage.

  Without Isabella, the place didn’t just feel empty. It felt wrong, like a painting with all the faces scratched off. I was even in the garage without her being around, but still, her presence not being in the building could be felt instantly.

  We took the elevator up and went to pack. I peeled off the reinforced suit. Cut in many places, drenched with blood, but still, it was the only anti-radiation suit I had. Dried blood covered most of my body, so I really had to wash.

  In the shower, I scrubbed the blood off my arms and the soot. I had so much soot on me.

  Halfway through the scrubbing, I realized the soot was also my blood, just incinerated by any of the explosions I got caught in. It wasn’t coming off though. My skin was raw by the time I gave up. I sat on the cold tile, water sluicing down, and wondered how weird it was to have seen a nuclear explosion.

  Sure, there were demons and the laboratory and all that, but seeing a nuclear missile go off live was weird as hell.

  I dried, left the shower, and started preparing the things to pack. For other clothes, well, I had nothing other than the endless array of suits, shirts, and pre-tied ties, and uniform underwear and socks. I just packed some of that.

  As I looked over the room, I realized I had no personal items. Like, absolutely no personal items. Not a single thing in the room was mine. They were all things borrowed, or well, given to me by Isabella.

  Even the phone and the charger weren’t mine. The only item that could pass as mine was the steel gauntlets Isabella gave me, and maybe the helmet. Those were technically mine, and about the only items that didn’t just get replaced for a same piece after a mission, though they were still gifted to me. What happened to the clothes and things I packed back when the police chased me out of the shared apartment?

  In the blur of what happened afterwards, I completely forgot about that. And I didn’t see a hint of a single item from them.

  Well, knowing Isabella, she most likely threw it all into the incinerator.

  My old life ended the day I met her, and there was no way back. She might have even told me that. If she did, I didn’t realize how true it was.

  Still. I had to get some things of my own. Just, later.

  Now, I prepared my stuff and realized I had no bags. I searched a bit on the floor and found Isabella’s hallway closets. Aside from an endless array of dresses, she also had luggage here. I took the cheapest-looking one and packed it.

  I met Takezo in the lobby. He had everything prepared, just like before he got on Isabella’s plane.

  We took the elevator down to the garage. We had no car keys though. Didn’t need them. We simply walked out by pressing the garage door opener.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Outside, I installed Uber on my phone and realized I didn’t have a wallet. I had no money, no credit card, absolutely nothing.

  My mouth gaped open, and I slowly turned towards Takezo. “I’ve got no items of my own, no money, and never move around without Isabella. I’m her prisoner. Like literally, I’m a prisoner.”

  “Yeah.” Takezo pulled out his phone. “I’ve noticed. You've also got one of the worst cases of Stockholm syndrome I've ever seen.”

  "No, I don't. Isabella is not that.... fuck."

  He gave me a smack on the shoulder. "She is worse than just that bad."

  Great, well, cool, but how didn't I notice? I didn’t realize it at all. And the only reason I did was that Isabella was unconscious, so I could sneak out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Though you knew.” He ordered an Uber. “It’s all about how you interpret it. You could see Isabella as a ruthless enslaver who keeps you imprisoned to send you to an irradiated hellhole full of demons to maintain their corporate profits. Or, you could see her as your obsessive billionaire sugar mommy.”

  As a… what? I turned red. I mean, technically speaking, yes, she could also be seen like that.

  The car arrived soon. We tossed our bags into the trunk, got in, and told him to take us to the airport.

  Takezo bought us tickets, and we had some time to kill before the plane was to take off. We actually got lucky, as we got tickets to a direct flight to Rome. To pass the time, we sat down in a Chick-fil-A.

  I haven’t eaten in a day, and my stomach reminded me when we walked into the restaurant. I could use a sandwich or five. Takezo didn’t seem to have a problem with me ordering on his tab, so I got five sandwiches.

  We sat down in a quiet corner. I dove into the food, and only regained enough sense to talk after I devoured the second sandwich. That was a bit of a problem though, because it made me think.

  “You know,” I said. “How do we plan to fight Kallisto, given we’ve gotten obliterated by her goon? That’s what the six-horned demon is, an underling made out of a man she cleanly defeated. We’re going to die.”

  “Probably…” Takezo took a break from eating his first and only sandwich. “But Sora is a bad matchup for us. Kallisto is much more fightable, at least in a challenge.”

  I shook my head. “How so? Sure, an alternative win condition gives us a way to win, but that doesn’t do anything to mitigate her strength, speed, and dexterity. She is the strongest, the most dexterous, and the fastest person we’ve ever met. Demonified Sora was way out of our league in terms of speed. There’s no way Kallisto isn’t faster than him.”

  “If she puts the effort in, of course she is,” Takezo admitted. “She won’t do that though, for three reasons. First of all, we are so much weaker than she that her warrior’s honor won’t allow her to use too much power against us. Second, we won’t fight over anything she cares about all that much, so she won’t be too motivated. And third, she’s bored. Crushing us in a fraction of a second would be no fun.”

  Right, except that we were fighting for our lives. Or at least, I was. He was just going to return home to Hell. Our stakes weren’t nearly the same. “What are we challenging her to, actually?”

  “A fight in a ring. The first that touches the outside loses, except that we fight two on one, and both of us have to touch outside at the same time for us to lose.”

  “With weapons?”

  “Obviously.”

  Yeah, so she was going to be using the spear, the one she cut Isabella in two with. She stabbed Takezo like five times with it, eliminating him as well. And it wasn’t like she needed it to kill Saito. She literally made his head explode by stomping on it. And what weapons did I have?

  I could have brought the firearms, but they did nothing against her. I had the steel gauntlets from Isabella, the closest thing to my personal property. They had no range though.

  Not to mention I wasn’t even good at hand-to-hand combat. Shadow never got even close to getting scratched or hit by me. Isabella also never seemed like she could be hit by me.

  From the demons, Sora annihilated me, as had Kallisto before.

  Though I did hit Salieu. I roughed him up pretty badly, come to think of it.

  Then again, succeeding at punching a scientist, demonic or not, hardly felt like an achievement. How was I supposed to be useful against Kallisto though?

  I didn’t know. Even upon a second thought. no idea crossed my mind. “I’m not sure it’ll work. Frankly speaking, I don’t see how I wouldn’t end up murdered in seconds.”

  “You’ll be fine.” Takezo’s tone softened as he put the food down. “Our plan is for you to be the anchor while I move around. You are exceedingly good at absorbing damage, so you’ll be doing that. The plan has a solid chance to work.”

  A solid chance to work… or death. I sighed. The memory of Francesca getting killed by Kallisto flashed before my eyes. Her death didn’t have to be final. I could help it. Perhaps, even if I died, someone else could help it. Not to mention, I had to give a shot.

  If I didn’t, I would regret not doing it for the rest of my life. “All right.”

  “That’s the weakest buy-in I’ve heard from you yet.” He got up and smacked me in the back so hard I grunted. “Let’s go. Our flight is up.”

  When walking to the plane, I wondered how Takezo moved around the airport with two katanas sheathed by his waist. He had them, they were physical when I poked one with my leg when walking next to him, but nobody reacted. He passed through the metal detection gate as if he carried nothing.

  Nobody reacted on the way to the plane either.

  On the plane, we had middle seats in different rows. He didn’t care, and neither did I. I did the safety dance, dropped into the seat, and practically passed out before we even left the ground.

  My dreams were not dreams. There was nothing. No flashbacks of people dying, no memories of nuclear explosions, I got absolutely nothing. Eight hours later, I woke up to the hostess shaking me.

  My phone was ringing, in the middle of the Atlantic, which it really wasn’t supposed to. The entire plane looked in my direction, because not even the plane had any signal above the ocean.

  Except that my phone was just ringing, clearly from a phone call. I pulled it out of my pocket. Isabella. I denied the call, put the call on mute, and muttered, “Sorry.”

  That didn’t seem to calm the flight attendant down, but I noticed they had left a meal box in front of me. I took the box, pried it open, and dug into it.

  The flight attendant stood above me for another minute, but then she gave up and returned to her duties. I demolished the meal.

  Once done, I relaxed into the seat. Sleep found me in an instant. Seven hours later, the man who sat next to me woke me up by passing through the aisle. We had landed.

  I got up, pleasantly rested. Sleeping continuously without having my blood drained, and without anything else Isabella did to me at night wasn’t bad at all.

  I stretched, seeing Takezo waiting for me. We met in the aisle.

  “You sleep well.” He remarked.

  We were pretty much the last two people on the plane. “You didn’t?”

  He rolled his eyes.