If you pay attention, you can spot a hierarchy almost everywhere—even at Burger’s Paradise on the dazzling Times Square. The workers in the open kitchen churned out one burger after another in assembly-line style, selling them at the counter as HighRiser XXL or MegaRoosters, really just soggy meat on even soggier buns.

"Two chocolate milkshakes, two New Yorkers, and a large order of extra-crispy fries," Isaac ordered from a skinny, bored-looking cashier who asked mechanically if that was everything. Next to her, another worker blew a party horn, reminding customers that New Year’s was right around the corner.

Billy added two straws and a pack of matches from the counter to the tray, then followed Isaac to the farthest corner of the joint, where they felt less visible. After all, with the data on the cube, they were far from safe.

With some seasoned meat and bread swirling in his stomach (stinging like he’d swallowed a few razor blades) Billy started lighting a few matches without any real reason. The crackle of the flame helped him think, and the smell of charred wood rising to his nose distracted him a little from what lay behind them... and from what might still lie ahead.

Without noticing how much time had passed, Billy was suddenly aware that Isaac was laughing. "Do you know what I swore to myself when I left the Congo with Tabitha?" Isaac asked.

Billy looked at him, taking another bite of his half-eaten burger. Chewing, he replied, "Well?"

"I swore I’d never put her or myself in danger again. And now the crazy Pope of the PROMISED LAND is hunting me down, the king of the underworld’s got his people out to tear my head off, and the demon of the state is baring its fangs to devour my soul. Here I am, again wanted dead by a government, all because I know the truth."

Billy picked up a pickle slice from the tray and placed it back between the burger buns. He felt Isaac owed him an explanation, and he figured this was probably the best chance he’d get anytime soon. This burger break... it felt like the calm before the storm, Billy could sense it.

"Why did Omar call you Abiem back there?" he asked.

Isaac looked at him silently for a moment, his tongue fishing a stray bit of food from between his teeth. "My real name is Abiem Lual Asaci. Back during Operation Kangaroo, we used anagrams to encrypt key words. When I got to America, I burned my passports and used an anagram to hide my true identity and start fresh... a fresh start that would still remind me of who I used to be. I turned my last name, Asaci into Isaac."

Billy raised his eyebrows, nodding as he grabbed a few pale, limp fries that hung from his fingers like wilted flowers picked three days ago.

"Nice to meet you, Abiem," he said sarcastically. "And what was Operation Kangaroo?"

"Man, I don’t think this is the time for digging up the past."

Billy thought as he chewed. Maybe it was just curiosity, but he had a hunch that knowing more about Isaac’s life would be important if they were going to make it through this together. So he pressed on, even though he knew he shouldn’t be reopening old wounds.

"What do you know about the Congo’s history from 2035 until now?" Isaac asked.

Billy shrugged. "Only what you read in the papers," he said. "The Republic fell into chaos. New presidents took power, each one more ruthless than the last, until finally, in the mid-forties, the nearly democratic state turned into the Congolese Papal Kingdom, ruled by a power-hungry despot who drove the country further into poverty—until rebels finally overthrew the dictator. Since then, as far as I know, the Congo has been run by a revolutionary government."

"Not bad for a factory worker," Isaac replied. "Pope Ochaha I... that was the tyrant’s name. He ruled for four years and had over a million people executed in that time. High-ranking political opponents, but also innocent women and children. Once, he had entire classes of schoolchildren beaten to death in a marketplace by his army. They’d opposed his twisted education system, which portrayed him as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, a lesson teachers were ordered to teach. Ochaha I was the incarnation of evil, I tell you. He ate his enemies’ flesh, believing it would give him strength and knowledge."

"An old wives’ tale," Billy muttered.

"The truth," Isaac replied, eyes wet with tears, his voice shaking. There was an aura about him that made it nearly impossible for Billy to doubt his words, allowing him to sense some of the deep emotions Isaac’s memories stirred.

"Ochacha was a power-hungry cannibal who loved to stage himself in grand ceremonies. Jewels, splendor, beautiful women, a diamond-studded scepter, and thirty marble steps leading up to his throne of pure gold. That’s where he saw himself, where he liked to be photographed. Malice and greed were his finest qualities. Every night he held a banquet worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, attended only by the so-called crème de la crème of Africa’s elite. They enjoyed the finest food, wore the most exquisite clothes, listened to the best music, and were showered in gifts of jewels and splendor from Pope Ochacha. They worshipped him as a deity, and he considered himself one, while his people starved on the streets and died miserably in the jungle or on the fields." Isaac paused, shaking his head thoughtfully as he took a bite of his burger, washing it down with a sip from his chocolate milkshake. "He was insane. Even Omar Branett’s cruelty pales in comparison."

Billy felt a vague premonition, but he couldn’t quite put it into words. He thought for a moment, then said, "And what part did you play in all of this?"

Isaac wiped his mouth with a scratchy napkin, looking at Billy with a serious expression. "I started as a simple cook in Ochacha’s favorite restaurant," he said. "He liked me—or, rather, what I cooked for him—and he invited me to his home. All of this happened before he rose to power, and long before I’d thought about politics. But when he became Pope, I became his personal chef and confidant. I was on both sides, Billyboy."

Billy, pale and delicate as porcelain, held the cold remains of his burger, frozen mid-bite. If Isaac had been the tyrant’s chef, he thought, then Isaac must have known about Ochacha’s culinary tastes. And if the tyrant really did eat human flesh, did that mean... Isaac had prepared it?

A question Billy didn’t even dare ask.

"I quickly learned what it meant to truly hate someone," Isaac continued. "So it wasn’t hard to say yes when a friend told me one day that he’d joined the rebellion and they were planning to overthrow Ochacha, and asked if I would help them. You know this friend, by the way."

"I… know… him? No, that’s impossible; I’ve never been there."

"My old friend was Omar Branett."

Billy fell silent, a chill creeping up his arms. He could hardly believe what Isaac had just said.

"Omar was a resistance fighter? He was one of the good guys?"

"Life made him who he is now. Life’s turned him into a villain."

"That’s still hard to imagine," Billy said. "Omar once fought for... human rights?"

"We were both in the same organization. We had help from another country that also wanted to see the Pope overthrown. They supplied us with the poison, Omar smuggled it in, and I used it to season Ochacha’s favorite dish. What the American intelligence services couldn’t achieve with Fidel Castro in dozens of attempts, we pulled off in a single day."

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Billy was, quite literally, speechless. He now saw Isaac in a completely different light from the loudmouth he’d known at the factory. Here sat a leader of a freedom army, a liberator of a people, now fighting for the love of his life. Billy put down the last bite of his burger on the greasy paper and wiped the ketchup from his hands with a napkin as he tried to gather his thoughts.

"So, in your country, you’re something of a legend?" he asked.

Isaac shrugged as if weighing the question. "To some, I’m a hero; to others, a villain. I was certainly a driving force in the Congolese revolution. I was supposed to become head of state, but I had too many enemies along with the supporters. Then I met Tabitha, and I wanted to go somewhere safe with her."

"That’s why you came to America."

"Yeah. We crossed the Atlantic on a smuggler’s boat, made it to the U.S. coast, and eventually found our way to New York."

Billy nodded. "And why did Omar call you the Cheetah?"

"Because I ran as fast as a cheetah after poisoning Ochacha’s food. His entire following was after me before I even made it off the estate. Many in my country are superstitious, and they believe I was a cheetah in a past life and transformed back into one when I fled. I could just as easily have been a mole, though, since Tabitha and I went underground, hiding out in holes until, two years later, we seized the only opportunity we had to come to America with the help of smugglers. Man, we just wanted to be happy here."

Silence.

That last sentence hit hard.

It sounded so simple—happiness—so modest, yet in today’s world, it was the hardest goal of all. Just to be happy. That was the dream of all the stranded souls and residents of the abandoned boroughs. They all lived in poverty, and poverty was a bottomless pit, always sinking people deeper into misery. No one had it easy, and no one seemed able to escape this dead-end. Poverty as the end of the line.

"Shouldn’t we start looking for that guy’s address? The one who supposedly used to be a researcher for Thandros Corporation?" Isaac asked.

"The guy who supposedly lost his memory?"

"Yeah."

Billy nodded, and in that motion, a sudden gush of blood streamed from his nose, splattering onto the tray and the remains of his burger.

"Damn it," Isaac said, recoiling instinctively. He grabbed a stack of napkins and handed them over. Billy took them, pinching his nose as if he were about to blow it. "I’m fine," he said nasally.

"You’re not fine," Isaac replied. "Your right eye is completely bloodshot. The veins beneath your skin are popping out like they’re about to burst. Looks like all the vessels in your face are ready to blow."

"I’m fine," Billy repeated. "I have to be. But maybe I should…" He fished a worn-out blister pack from his pocket. The last pill was slightly crushed in its plastic casing but looked intact. "It’s the last one," he said. "If I take it, the clock starts ticking. We’ll have maybe six to eight hours before I won’t even be able to stand from the pain."

He hesitated, then pressed the pill out of the blister and rolled it back and forth in his palm. It felt impossibly heavy. His entire life depended on this little helper, weighing down his hand as though he were holding the world.

"Where we’re going, there’ll be more," Isaac promised. "There’ll be doctors who can undo everything they did to you." And suddenly, Billy felt the cold jolt of a realization, making everything feel even more brutal: his only friend was the guy in front of him, a guy whose real name he’d just learned. What if Isaac was actually with them? Just like Vivian. Just like X-3-19, Emilia Steinbach. What if this was the plan all along, to lure him back because their experiments were complete? The stalker had said it—they were done with him, everything they wanted, they’d already taken.

Billy shook his head, unable to think clearly. The line between "justifiably paranoid" and "pathologically paranoid" was now razor-thin. He needed to stay rational. He opened his mouth, tossed the last pill in, and washed it down with a big gulp of milkshake.

"That’s it. The clock’s ticking."

"Yeah," Isaac replied. "Odds are bad, but we can’t give up. All that matters to me now is saving Tabitha. And you. So let’s find this guy’s number! He’s our last hope. What’s his name again?"

A long pause followed.

"Omar never actually said, as far as I know."

"Great. So how do we know who he is?"

"Maybe there’s a note with his name somewhere."

"Something like Researcher at Thandros's secret lab?"

Billy shrugged and opened the thick black notebook he’d taken from Omar’s desk. The first pages listed hundreds of phone numbers for lawyers, private doctors, bouncers, and prostitutes. Names like "Ivan the Butcher" or simply "The Doctor" left little room for interpretation and left a bitter taste in his mouth. These names gave him a glimpse into the dirty deals that shaped King Omar’s life.

My God, Billy thought, Omar’s entire new life here in America was built on corruption, pimping, murder, drugs, and organ trafficking. The clubs he owned were just a cover, distracting from his darker operations. But instead of stopping there, curiosity drove Billy to venture further into the depths of this criminal life. The next pages contained the calendar year for 2050. He skimmed through each month, pausing at some jarring reminders that completed the vile profile of Branett, erasing any sympathy he’d gained from Isaac’s story.

"My God. There’s a note here about Fenix Grant getting a new lung today."

"Is that… a reminder?"

"I don’t know," Billy replied, "I read just recently that he’s been waiting on a donor organ without any luck."

"That would be…"

"Disgusting, yeah. But it would make sense."

"Make sense how?"

Billy looked at him and shrugged. "The way things have turned out." He continued flipping through the pages, scanning the next entries, while Isaac kept nervously checking the time on his phone. "This isn’t working," Billy said after a while. "There are already over three hundred names here, and I’m not even halfway through. There’s no one mentioned as having lived in Central Park or any kind of research facility."

"Keep looking, Billyboy. We don’t have a choice."

Billy shook his head, signaling that he thought the whole effort was doomed to fail. And he was right: after countless pages, he’d read every name on the last page without finding a single clue about a secret researcher or a Central Park citizen. He’d just wasted an hour of his life. He shut the book. "I could give you the numbers for a ton of dealers and hookers now, but the one we’re looking for... He’s hidden somewhere in that sea of names. No chance."

Isaac snatched the book from Billy’s hand and started flipping through it himself. They’d been sitting here for almost an hour and a half now. Billy looked around nervously. The place was still packed. A 24/7 fast-food joint, and in this part of town, with its crowd of homeless, Stranded, and factory workers, it was always busier than it could handle. Next to the bathrooms, where wastewater was seeping out into the hall under the door, stood a kiosk with a list of items and their prices. Above it, the word INFORMATION flickered in blunt neon letters.

Suddenly, it was Billy who grabbed the book back from Isaac, flipping through it like a man possessed. First, he skipped dozens of pages, then flipped quickly back.

"What’s going on?"

"Here," Billy said excitedly, tapping his finger on a line and turning the book so Isaac could get a good look. Isaac leaned closer, resting his forearms on the table and leaning toward Billy.

"It says Mimir."

"So?"

Billy pulled out his phone, the battery icon already flashing red, and dialed the number.

"What are you up to, Billyboy?"

"Mimir is the keeper of wisdom. He’s known as a wise head—in the truest sense. Odin carries his head around."

"Odin? Wait, are we talking Norse mythology?"

"Exactly. Odin is the wisest god in the Norse pantheon. He traded an eye for knowledge, but he still seeks Mimir for advice and wisdom."

The ringing tone droned on, playing its monotonous melody in an endless loop.

"So you think Mimir could be Omar’s... informant?"

A voice answered on the other end of the line.

"Mimir?"

A casual "Yeah?" was followed by loud crackling, like interference.

"I’m calling because I need information."

"Oh," came the woman’s voice, beautiful but muffled, as if she’d stuffed her mouth with half a bag of chips. That might explain the crackling on the line. "Bad timing. Try again tomorrow afternoon."

"Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be long dead."

The silence on the line told him he had her attention.

"Who are you, anyway? And where did you get my number?"

"My name doesn’t matter. I got the number from King Omar. We’re handling a job for him. But we need information on a certain person."

"From King Omar, huh? He promised he wouldn’t share my number with anyone."

"Then maybe next time, don’t trust a hardened criminal. At least now you see how urgent this is. He told me to get in touch with you."

"Of course! Everyone should come to me when they need info. I’m an unrecognized hero in this shithole world of give and take. Only, I give, and everyone else just takes. So, what do you need, asshole?"

Billy’s eyes widened as he looked over at Isaac, who could only hear Billy’s half of the conversation. "I… I need information on a certain Professor Doctor Henry Thandros. He’s a researcher."

Isaac furrowed his brow.

"What’s his field?" Mimir asked.

"Something with… humans, I guess," Billy said, vaguely. "I need his private address."

"Ah, that kind of request,” said Mimir in a pleasant call-center tone. Her voice had a soothing quality, with a hint of sensuality—playful yet carrying the authority of a mature woman. Billy would’ve happily listened longer, but then she said, "Wait for my call," and hung up.