“Yeah, the toilet is fine Bob.”

“It didn’t sound like you checked every valve on it- Did you wash the cup?”

“Come on, I know this thing better than you do.”

“You know about space toilets, but I practically live in sewers- wait, wait, let me rephrase that-”

Before he could, the weightless of worry made a sound of disgust on the other side of the phone, “You really need to get a promotion or… however that shitty job of yours works.”

He leaned back in his chair, “Charlie, please take this seriously. Do you know how many monsters I’ve encountered that live in sewer systems?”

“As many monsters as you’ve ran away from in sewer systems?”

He took no offense to her statement.

“It’s not my job to fight monsters Charlie, I track monsters, study them in the field, engage if it’s below an exterminator.”

“R-Right, making you below an-”

“HASHUSH-SHASHUSH!” He spat into the call, trying to take the focus off his work.

“-In Florida, there were these miniature crocodiles that shot electricity out of their face. Over in Texas, I found a fissure that opened in a water purification plant. Place was filled with worm people. Well, they were kinda nice, we shared a meal, of course I got worms from it, and that’s exactly the reason why you gotta check everything. You can’t even trust hospitable worm people.”

She hadn’t replied in a while, and he started to worry that he wasn’t getting through to her.

“Listen to me Charlie K Parker, do not underestimate June, there’s a reason I phoned you as soon as it ended. Anyone can be affected by it. It’s not a leap to say that out of everything in the world, it is the single biggest unanswered question. It’s been happening for thirty-two years, and it’s had major effects on Unit culture. Kings have died, militaries eradicated, it’s completely changed how Units interact with each other. Not everyone is as bold as the Circuit Board, and it’s because they’re afraid of people retaliating during that period.”

He heard some clattering on the other end.

“Sorry, I had something going on in my workshop, I left w-when you were saying something about… No, I left when you started shushing me.”

His face that had been held in a serious scowl was broken. His eyes rolled back and he seethed from the mouth.

“There could be monsters in your house Charlie! You’ve been gone for a month!”

“Oh, is June that month were people blip out of existence? I could have sworn that was September. Whatever.”

His eyes bulged for a second, “No, not whatever Charlie! You were exempt from it? You, the inventor of antigravity tech used by R.O carriers all over the globe? Wait, wait, are you saying you didn’t even notice it was June? You didn’t notice any crazy phenomena?”

She thought for a second, “Nnnope.”

“You didn’t notice I was gone?” There was a light pain in his voice though he tried to hide it.

“No- Well, I thought it was a little weird that you weren’t picking up I guess, but I didn’t think about it, I think I’m on to something big down here.”

She didn’t notice that her big brother was erased from existence? What the hell? He mulled it over in his head for a few seconds, before finally reaching a rational conclusion.

He thought, ‘Ahh, ok, so whatever phenomena makes June must also encourage those excluded from it to ignore those included in it, that’s the only explanation. I should tell the Doc about this, I’m sure it’ll be useful information, in fact I’ll phone her next, yeah.’

“Hey, I thought you said that only important people get included in it, how come you were involved, Mr Cleaner-who-lives-in-the-sewers-with-worm-people.”

He wasn’t offended, it was a joke.

“It’s not ‘importance’, it’s involvement, (I guess). You never leave your house, so you weren’t in it. I travel the world, in search of cults, and monsters, and-”

“I do leave the house! I went to fucking Alaska!”

He snickered, finally returning to that stiff face. “Charlie, you were paid to go there. With your boyfriend. To build a space ship. And I still had to convince you. And it was a year ago.”

“He’s my ex-boyfriend, Bob. Not that my love l-life is any of your business. Besides, a baseball can break my arm, why would I want to go to Anchorage?”

He laughed, “To build a space ship? Who wouldn’t want to do that?”

She didn’t say anything for a time, “Hello?”

“No Bob, building a giant animal-themed killer robot was not something I wanted to scratch off my bucket list.”

She said it as if it was obvious. Was that obvious?

She tried to end it, “Don’t you have a-a toilet to clean or something? I’m kind of busy.”

He nodded with a dumb smile, “Oh yeah, sure, Like I said monsters could be anywhere Charlie, Babel could be infested with them right now.”

“Ok.”

“In fact, for all we know, this might be our last transmission. I could get up from this office, turn up that corridor… and die.”

“Alright, well I’ll see you at the family BBQ. Bye-”

She hung up, as he blurted out, “Ok, love you, bye!”

He leaned back in his chair deep in thought.

That’s one thing taken care of. What should I do now? Shit that’s right, the system log-in, I should have done that first. But a man has a duty to protect his family first and foremost.

He wheeled around to face the screen, tacking in his password, ‘I12believe’

He kicked back in his chair for a second, pulling open a few drawers, until he found some food.

It was a store brand, or maybe foreign, packet of chocolate peanuts. He was alleargic to peanuts. That made him wonder, is this even his office? He pushed himself over to a filling cabinet, opening the drawer at the bottom, flicking over the ‘x’ section.

Flick, flick, flick-flick, got it. He half pulled it out to have a peak at it.

“Oh yeah… So cool.”

It was technically pornography, but that’s not why he kept it around, he just thought it was neat.

The cover displayed an assortment of alien- as in outer-space- organisms. Two of which were phallically shaped, with a head of hair like a shaggy dog. One was bent sideways, ‘sitting’, the other was curved in an s.

Behind the two of them was a giant creature, horned, slightly humanoid though it lacked legs and stood on its arms. In the place of legs was a mass of writhing tentacles, (he didn’t know if they were writhing, that’s just what he imagined).

He knew the alien was a giant from the first and only human model in the entire world of extra-terrestrial pornography, the person who’d given him the magazine in the first place.

He didn’t look at her on the cover, in fact, he hadn’t even flipped to her pin-up page, not even once.

He just wanted to see aliens.

As far as he was aware, apart from her, he was the first person in the world, or at least in the last thirty years, to have seen a sentient alien organism.

This is not true.

She was right, the idea that she’d brought him back a porn mag from her trip, that was funny.

Well, he admitted to himself, this could be a magazine about anything, he couldn’t read the snippets of text.

Yeah, those were the ‘fun’ days. But he was in his thirties now, it was time to be responsible, a man.

He was about to slide it away, when a creak at the door startled him.

“Eeeeek!” He shouted.

A woman peaked in laughing, “Hey Bob, glad you’re okay, dude.”

There was a pause in the room.

She looked around, “Oh, thank God, I thought you had a woman in here.”

He didn’t want to say anything, but he knew she was talking about that squeal.

He coughed and tried to retain his face, sweating a little as he struggled to shimmy the brightly coloured cover into the file without arousing any suspicion. It’s not like she’d know what it is by looking at it.

“Yuki, I am a professional. I have been working here for nearly ten years, what could possibly make you think that me of a people would do something indecent at work?”

She smiled wide and awkwardly, “First of all, all I said was I thought there was a woman in here. Why would you think I was talking about anything ‘indecent’- unless you were doing something indecent? And second of all-”

She let the door swing all the way open.

Bob said, “Ah,” Seeing now that his tie was hanging around the door knob.

He again questioned whether or not this was his office.

“Well- That’s more likely to be someone’s sick sense of humour. Probably one of the guys in extermination.

She pointed at him, he looked down.

“Ah.” His tie was missing, his shirt half unbuttoned.

“Well, the unbuttoning was- because of the physical exam, which I was in the middle of performing.”

“Oh, do you need me to look at your back then?”

To change the subject? He practically leapt at the opportunity.

“Yes, of course! That would be great.”

He wheeled forward into the middle of the room, taking off his jacket, and unbuttoning the rest of his shirt. She circled around him, standing between the desk and the cabinet.

He leaned forward, and asked, “Do you see anything? Scars, boils- no worms?”

“Uhm, lean forward a little, I can’t really see your lower back.”

He did as he was told, “Is this alright? Actually, my foot feels like it’s dead, isn’t that a sign of…” He couldn’t remember what it was called, it was some kind of ‘magic’ disease. He hadn’t involved himself in that stuff since he was a kid, back when he was still looking for answers.

Well, he never got any answers, but he stopped looking into ‘voodoo crazyness’.

There was a shuffling from behind him, as Yuki said, “Oh- Uh-oh.”

He froze up, his face remained, but his eyes flickered.

“Uh-oh,” he mimicked, “-did you find something?”

There was more shuffling, “Oh my God!”

“What? What is it?” If she had been inspecting his back, she would have seen sweat begin to build up.

“What is that! Looks like it’s going to explode.”

That was enough.

“What what what!”

He twisted around like a dog chasing it’s tail.

Then he saw what she was actually looking at.

She caught him looking and smiled wider.

“Hey!” He grabbed out for the magazine.

“Too high and mighty to bang in the office, but not above whacking one out, huh? To whatever this is…”

“That’s for research purposes.”

“Right, these things look photoshopped.”

“It’s real.” he spun around in his chair locking his hands, still trying. “She gave it to me.”

“Right. You used to date her. Or so you say."

“Right. I dumped her.”

“Sure. You have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

He looked around the room.

“Don’t think so.”

She passed by him, opening the drawer at his desk. Before he could protest, she pulled out the bag of chocolate peanuts.

He looked up to her as she tore it open, “I’m guessing you snuck those in there?”

She shrugged, “Seems like something I’d do.”

He shook his head, rolling over to the cabinet once more.

“We have a duty, Yuki.”

She nodded absently as she investigated the room further. “Yeah, yeah, I know we need to actually perform a physical exam on you, I did mine already. I have a mirror in my room.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Our work is of utmost importance. Without us, and the work being done at the five cities, the protected countries would have fallen to the nefarious things in the night. The tyrants of Russia, the gaze of the Mountain, and the uncountable hordes of monsters that plague ordinary people- Tell me Yuki, how does putting food that I’m deathly allergic to in my desk benefit humanity?”

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She smiled as she munched on them, “I’m really just here cause it’s a stable job.”

He gave a side nod, “Yeah. Free accommodation, an escape from US health care…”

“Found something!”

Yuki’s rummaging led to her discovering something sitting just behind an exotic plant Bob had stuck in a corner. It was a small jar with murky blue liquid.

Bob finally got out of his chair, “Hey, that’s Int-cleaning fluid, anything could be in their Yuk-” He tripped after attempting to take a second step.

Normally, Yuki would laugh at him, but after giving the jar a good shake, she realised why he was having a little trouble walking.

“Holy shit.”

Bob sat himself up, realising that something was wrong with his right foot, “Whatever it is Yuki, I can tell it’s not something you should be messing with. I have a bad feeling about this year’s physical.”

As he shifted his leg around to his face, she placed the jar in front of him, wordlessly telling him to shake it.

He kept a stony exterior, as hard as a shirtless man with a bit of a gut can be. He lifted the jar, tilting it around.

“Ah.”

It floated around quickly, the big toe bouncing off of the glass slowed the fore-foots movements.

.

.

.

“You used an entire 30kg canister of foam? Are you fucking insane?” After seeing her colleagues dismembered foot, her attitude shifted.

“Listen, you didn’t see the state that kid was in-”

“This random kid that you found naked in the woods- this kid that ran to the monster that tore a foot long chunk out of his torso- and you just dumped the whole thing on him?”

This was unheard of, to Yuki at least, that someone would use an entire canister on one person. A wound requiring a 9kg can would be fatal. This kid that he was talking about was supposed to be a Unit, but this story just had to many holes.

“Ok, ok, it’s weird, maybe, but I’m not asking for $10,000-”

She jerked a hand out to him, “You’re asking for a thousand.”

“I won’t even use all of it, just a line to get the guys back on.”

“How do we know they're still-”

He nodded, “It’s International Cleaning fluid, my foots fine.”

She shook her head, “I mean the stuff wards off all bacterial infection- fungal and animal cell growth, but I don’t know about necrosis Bob.

“Why would I just leave it there, huh? I was probably waiting for a good time to ask you or Nglolgth.”

Great. It was good to know that after working with this guy for three years, out of the hundreds of people on staff, she and the worm-person who joined up four months ago had the same relationship with this guy.

Bob at last admitted, “I need my foot, Yuki.”

“Look, if this things over a couple weeks old, we aren’t going to be able to grow you a new one, and we definitely won’t be able to reattach it.”

He clasped his hands, “I need it! Without my feet, I’m not a human being! I’ll die!”

She gave in, “I’m not putting it on, and you better pay me back.”

He let out a sigh, and after a while he was able to return to his strong jaw, now with a confident smile.

She had a think about it, “We should probably get you up on it though.”

He looked back and forth.

“To see if the nerves attached to your foot are still alright?

“Oh, ok.”

She wondered what he was thinking, before a practical joke sprang to mind.

He balanced himself on one foot taking off a floppy sock.

“Twist it round.”

He did.

“Squeeze the arch and heel.”

He did, almost falling over.

“Any numbness, soreness?”

He replied, “Pins and needles, at this bit,” He pointed.

“Hold on I’m gonna go get a drink, a small can, maybe get into communication with the network.”

“Ok.” And once again, Bob was alone with his thoughts.

He fell back on his office chair, analysing his foot, prodding it in places, marvelling at how small it was with half of it cut off. Ok, maybe this was a little weird, even for June, everything else seemed normal, for him at least. He doubted he was directly involved in the ‘main story’ of the month, but it was possible that somebody who didn’t like him cut off his foot.

There were people in Babel that didn’t like him much, there were a group of exterminators, but they were more along the lines of ‘school bully’ than ‘psycho’.

Speaking of psycho, there was his ex, she could have done it easily. But no, they didn’t split on terms that bad… Well, if he drunk called her over June, then yeah, she’d probably cut off his foot if he offended her.

Who’d want to cut off his foot… He honestly couldn’t think of anyone.

The next place his mind went to was that kid, the weird one running around without a shirt and with a luchador mask on or something.

At first Bob thought he was a new Unit that just got their powers, but there was his weird reaction to the monster, not only running to it, but beating it. After he made sure that the kid wasn’t dead, sprayed him with an entire bi-yearly supply of ICF, Bob’s mind turned to suspicion.

The British Isles are a place for that. Home of Bastard, his- well, Bob didn’t really know what she was, but that Clover girl was important. There was a strong connection between the area and the Dark God Balor, most people forget that because his followers live underwater now, but with Gods, there is always something just beneath the surface, something left in their wake.

He started to think that kid was either from the Circuit Board, or from the Mountain, trying to get something on Axel’s trip. That little asshole was full of himself, it was a simple and stupid test. Bob had purposefully told the boy dressed in green that the maker of machines name was spelt Axel Wright, opposed to Axel Right. Bob thought that if he was a spy, then he’d pick the correct spelling instead. Obviously, if they were smart, they’d just write it as they were told. Axel actually told Bob to not interfere, he was curious.

In the end, and to his knowledge, that kid didn’t do anything.

Axel made a comment on the flight back that “He’s an interesting guy. There’s definitely more to him, he’s not just some guy dressed as a dragonfly.”

Bob picked up his phone after thinking it over, scrolled down to S, and let the phone ring, and ring, and ring.

…

But the kid never picked up.

He hadn’t picked up since… Before Valentines, if he remembered correctly.

Actually, that kid did know Clover, didn’t he?

Well, they both lived insanely close together, it would happen sooner or later, but he couldn’t help but get a bad feeling from them being involved with each other.

Especially after June.

He double tapped the green icon on his screen.

…

Still nothing.

“You phoning your sister?”

He shook his head, “The kid from Ireland.”

Yuki shrugged as she walked through the door way, wearing what looked like a colander with electrodes connecting to her nape and temple. In one hand she had two mugs of coffee, the other was free.

“I saw Paige on my way, she says she hasn’t heard anything about bits of bodies being cut off from anybody else.”

Bob acccepted the mug handed to him, “Was she hooked up with one of those things?”

Yuki sipped hers, fiddling with the PC on the desk, “No, she can’t find hers, she’s going on word-of-mouth, and that old system you rely too much on.”

He scalded his tongue on the hot drink, “HAH! … I don’t like the whole… transcogitate thing, it’s too Orwellian, hooking yourself up to a database of people’s thoughts, letting them read your thoughts- It’s just creepy... Hot, hot, ow!”

“It’s effective, instead of typing out a sentence, you can just think it up, it’s way more reliable than emailing all five super-cities, whatever you do to get through the office day.”

“What can I say, I’m an American at heart. I can’t sit down and rub some weird gel on my forehead. The whole thing is a breach of privacy. It’s dehumanizing.”

She gave it a second.

“Come on, there’s no way you haven’t wondered what someone’s thinking, right?”

He snickered, “I mind my own business. The only thing on my mind is the matter at hand, or rather, foot. I can’t think of how I could have possible gotten into a situation like this. Wasn’t there a Unit criminal interned here? One with a fascination with dismemberment? For all we know, this entire compound has been compromised, this roof could cave in any moment, as far as I’m concerned, the only thing that equipment is good for is connecting us with the rest of the world, and getting our footing after whatever went down…”

As he kept talking and talking, he never really said anything, at least he didn’t say anything that grabbed Yuki’s attention.

No, she was more concerned with getting this to work.

After Bob finally got accustomed to the heat of the coffee, he started slugging it into him.

“What was the first thing you did when June ended?” The question was thrown at Bob while he was mid-sentence, “What?”

The message reached the transceiver, a little foggy and unclear at first.

“I phoned my little sister, almost shitting myself. The entire time the phone was ringing, I just kept thinking to myself, oh god, oh shit, what if she’s in trouble and I’m sitting on my ass doing jack shit? What the hell was I doing? I had the browser open on a shitty forum for DIY- that reminds me, I’ve still gotta sort that wardrobe out, don’t I? No, I probably did it over June… well, knowing me, I probably didn’t…”

The answer that left his lips was quite different, Yuki listened to see how it differed from the second long response.

“Please, Yuki, I signed into the post-June network as soon as possible, like I just said, we-”

Boring, she thought, she wanted to at least keep going till he caught on.

“Who did you phone after your sister?”

He was a little puzzled.

“Did I tell her I phoned Charlie? Did she over hear me phoning Charlie? Did she hear me arguing with her about toilet cups? Or how I had worms coming out my ass for a week after that case in Texas? No, no, I didn’t say anything about that. I only told Dr. A, God I cried like a bitch after that, fucking humiliating. Maybe she heard my cell ringing? We’ve worked with each other for years, she knows I’d get in my ship- screw what the CFO says, I’d fly my ass to California in a heartbeat. No, I’d be glad if she just heard me phoning that kid from Ireland- or trying to, at least. It’s weird, but something about that kid reminds me of myself, not just the fact that we were both nearly naked when we met, but he kinda reminded me of my ex, maybe that's because she's also a Unit-”

“I phoned my sister a while ago, yeah, and then I tried to phone that kid, like I sai-.”

“For advice on how to get rid of worms?”

His eyes went wide and he started shivering.

“How does she fucking know about that! Did the doc tell her? Did I tell her when we got drunk in Vegas? Did she find those pills I was taking for it? Calm down, I’m over reacting, I might have told her I had worms, but there’s no way I told her they were in my but…”

She kept a semi-serious face the whole time, “You know. For your butt.”

His lip started to tremble.

“Why! Why would I tell her that! It must have been the doctor! No… NO! I refuse to believe that my idol would destroy my reputation so nonchalantly! It must have been someone else, it must have been my EX! Was I still dating her at that point? I don’t think so, then again, she can do anything! She’d easily be able to get into my apartment, or find my medical records, whatever! Damn her! Damn her to hell! I broke up with her!”

Yuki lifted an eye brow, “Did you actually date the lady on the porno mag Bob?”

“I wish I didn’t! God, I wish I didn’t! She was a fucking psycho! A psycho! But holy hell was she great in bed! Though, that might’ve been because I was, like, twenty something, and she was- well she wasn’t actually older than me, but she technically was- What in the hells up with these questions? She’s trying to do something here isn’t she?”

She slowed into a grin.

Bob’s sweat, turned to steam as he cried out, “HUMAN RESOURCES! SOMEBODY CALL HUMAN RESOURCES! UNCONSENTIAL USE OF TRANSCOGITATE TECHNOLOGY! You should be ashamed Yuki! This is a new low, even for you! Spiking my drink with that shit, really? No, wait, you’ve done worse! You did it with walnut powder last time!”

She nodded, “You’re right, that was juvenile and immature. The walnut powder only had superficial appeal, big puffy lips isn’t as funny as the situations you get yourself into Bob Parker, the ED king.”

His face flexed back from anger; it was almost his neutral face if one ignored the bulging eyes.

He leaned swivelled around in his chair rubbing his nose.

“What am I thinking of now?”

The words ‘The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog’ looped in his head.

“You’re thinking about that time I caught you dancing around with your nuts hanging out, but you’re trying to cover it up with a dumb reference.”

He rubbed his nose harder, before bending his arms and raising them over his head like a fork.

“What about now?” He looked like he was going to blow his lid.

“Well, you started by chanting ‘human will, human will’ repeatedly, but now you’re thinking about that time a whole bunch of people saw you shaking your balls around, including your mom. And now you’re trying to cover it up with a clip from ‘twin peaks’.

He was about to lose it; he was going to slam his hands down in frustration-

But he steeled himself, he drowned out all of his frustrations, his stress, at being treated like a joke by his closest acquaintance.

He cut through the air, and all tension in his body was gone. His mind was as tranquil, like a newly flushed toilet.

His jaw stretched out, like a figure made of stone, his mouth chiselled into an assured smile.

She looked at him, the raised eyebrow showing how sure she was that this third attempt would bare no fruit.

“This the last one I’m gonna do before I actually hook myself up.” She pointed at a slider on the side of the device.

He shook his head, “Try me.”

She looked into his eyes, the thoughts entering her mind were coded differently than her own. The feelings were ‘coloured’ differently than her own, in fact, the longer she studied them, the more differences this new wave, this new wall of thought- it was completely unlike his earlier attempts.

It was a single train of thought, most minds have two, or three running at any given time, though they vary in position and speed, they’re always running throughout the human psyche.

But right now, there was only one train running in this stubbly idiot’s mind.

“Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it, charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick erase it, write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quick rewrite it, plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, rip it.”

She took a second, mulling it over in her mind before finally saying, “Technologic? I mean, it shows mental discipline, to think of just one thing, but I’d say in your case, you're simply using your obsession to-”

It was the rise back up, the surface of the toilet water began to bubble, as Bob’s expression changed.

A grin was spread across it, he clenched his fists, the joy exploding from his voice.

“THE TIME YOU DREW OVER MY PANTS WITH INVISIBLE INK RIGHT BEFORE WE HAD TO DO THAT CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION!”

She tried to sift through his constant stream of thoughts, but it was too late, the toilet bowl had broken, and her mind was flooded with lyrics from Daft Punk.

She should have been able to find a thought, something pertaining to the prank he described, or at the very least, a couple of thoughts on his ‘victory’.

But it was just lyrics.

He rocketed out of his chair as she physically backed up to try and think this through.

As he shot up, he fell back down to the ground, screaming ‘YEEEEEES, THE HUMAN WILL!”

She squinted her eyes at her ‘serious’ co-worker, now kneeling on the floor, shirtless, and with a stub of a foot hanging out of his trouser leg.

He was facing the open door when somebody gave it a courteous knock.

It was a younger man, with bleached blonde hair, he stood with his hands in his suit pockets.

“Hi, sorry to bother you guys, but, well, everybody else is trying to do their job? You know if you guys, I don’t know, checked the system in the last ten minutes, or actually used that piece of equipment strapped to your head, you might have heard.”

Bob reflexively repaired his expression, the solemness of it clashing with his current state. He slowly, slowly lowered his arms which had been pumping into the air.

“Heard what Hunter?” He asked the question with a completely straight face, though if Yuki had been checking his thoughts in that moment, she would have known that he was screaming at himself.

He scratched his face, leaning on one leg, “Oh, you know. Egypt’s gone.”

“Uhm,” Yuki slowly asked, “-the city, or the country?”

He let out puff of air shaking his head, “Oh, well from some satellites… Yeah, all of it.” He changed to a nod at the end.

He sized up both of them, before saying in a tone that was dead serious, “Again, totally sorry for ruining your fun. My bad guys, please, go back to screaming about your balls.”

He tried for one last faux smile, but it soon fell away into a grimace when he looked down at Bob.

He frowned before looking away, “Always the mother-fucking Cleaners.”

He strutted away leaving them in silence.

Bob’s arms finally lowered back down in a flop.

Yuki slowly sat down on the edge of Bob’s desk.

“I’d- I think I’d like my foot back please.”

He was quiet like a whisper, limping back to his chair.

Yuki felt like she needed to say something, anything. “Did uhm, did you know anybody over there?”

Bob unscrewed the jar, it opened with a plop.

It took him a moment to get of the embarrassment, and disappointment in himself.

“What? Uh, no. No, I’ve been here forever.”

The sudden hit that came from the knowledge finally passed Yuki’s mind, “I mean- it must have been a couple million people. Hundreds of our people. With us out of the region, the Mountains going to be getting bolder- so will the war lords through of Africa. Do you think we’ll be sending any relief?”

He shook his head, “I can’t see us doing anything about it, at least not us. Maybe the guys over in Absalom, they're closer.”

He looked over at his phone one last time.

“You thinking about that kid?”

He looked at her. Seeing that she was attempting to tune into a wider frequency, if not with the wider city of Babel, then she was trying to get into touch with Egypt.

“Yeah. He didn’t pick up.”

He shook his head, “I doubt the Circuit Board Seven was enough paranormal exposure to get him into June.”

“Obviously,” She nodded along, “But the Princess? The Mountain?”

He grabbed his shirt putting it back on.

“I spent ten thousand on him.”

She looked over, a little surprised, “Is that what you're worked up about?”

He didn’t take any offense to her assumption.

“It’s just- I carried 30kg out to the middle of the woods, brought him back from the brink, and-” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. He’s dead. Because I couldn’t…”

Yuki looked down as Bob raised his half-foot on to the desk.

“It’s just- I ask myself, am I enough, you know? Ten years given, and what do I get? I get bitten, burned, electrocuted, and does it make a difference? When somebody can glance over your life’s work and reduce it to a couple files in a drawer and a porn mag from space.”

“Am I giving enough Yuki? Because it sure doesn’t feel like it.”

She looked back up, “Come on, dude-”

When he met her stare, she checked around the room, looking for something to try and bring back the ‘ED king’.

“We’ve- come too far- to give up-” she pointed a finger at him.

He laughed a little into himself understanding where she was going, “Maybe ‘who we are’ isn’t good enough.”

She kept going anyway, “So let’s- raise the bar- and our cups- to the stars!” She lifted the Rebirthing foam can up.

He grabbed it from her hands.

“I don’t think this is really something I can avoid by listening to music- or your horrible singing.”

She shrugged, “I don’t know what comes next.”

He pointed a finger out at her as he fished the foot out with his other hand, “Ok, if that’s not a lie than I don’t know what’s true.”

She gave a little laugh as the atmosphere they had built a few minutes ago slowly crept back.

She argued “But you can see how it’s relevant- uhm, ‘the present has no rhythm, what keeps the planet spinning’, uh-huh?”

“Shit happens, best we can do is clean up the mess.”

She pulled at her blue forked tie, denoting their profession.

He looked down, “Is my tie still on the door?”

She looked over, understanding what this probably looked like to Hunter, “Yeah.”

“Ah. I think you should take it off.”

“Yep.” And with that she hopped off the desk.

Bob felt around his foot for the bones, found the major veins and tried to do the same with the chunk that had been taken off.

The rebirthing fluid was best used in regrowing lost limbs, though if you know what you’re doing you can get everything working with the original tissue, at a more reasonable price too. A thin layer of foam costs a lot less than a foot’s worth.

Besides, if he botched it, it was good to have some blood pumping through it and be paralysed rather than it sitting in a jar, he could always get an operation done later.

“Ah.”

Yuki came back over, setting his tie on the desk, “What is it?”

He held up his right foot, realising why he couldn’t find the veins.

He held the foot just above the jar to stop the fluid from soaking the floor.

Pinky toe to big toe, left to right.

In other words, this was a left foot.

Inside his shoe he wiggled his left shoe, he wiggled his toes.

Yep, they were all in place.

“Ah, okay. I’m missing half a foot, and I have someone else’s.”

He dropped the thing back into the jar with a plop, gave his hand a wipe, and started tying his tie.

“Well, sitting around isn’t going to find the bastard who took my foot.”