In hindsight it was a pretty stupid thing to do, to go off by myself. But I couldn’t sleep, I wasn’t thinking straight. I slid out of bed in the middle of the night, careful not to wake anyone. Not that I had to be careful. They were all well and truly passed out. A jet could’ve flown right by the window and they would’ve slept through it. The handgun Kenji had found was on the bedside table next to Kim. I decided to take it with me, just in case.

The stairwell was right next to our room so I began to climb. I wanted to get to the roof to see if I could see the ruins of the bridge. I don’t know why I wanted to see it. Maybe I was hoping the bridge would somehow still be there, that everything I had seen, the massacre and all the explosions was just a dream. Maybe I was in denial.

I made it to the top of the stairs but the door to the roof was locked. I decided to check out the penthouse instead because I figured it probably had views of the entire harbor as well. But as soon as I entered the penthouse suite, goose bumps formed on my skin and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I froze. Every muscle in my body was tensed.

It was totally dark but I could hear breathing. It wasn’t my own. It was deep, heavy.

I reached for the gun tucked in my pants and flicked the safety switch off. I held my breath.

“A muse for a flame that would ascend the brightest heavens of invention.”

I swung the gun around to where the voice came from. A match was struck and a dim orange light flickered to life and illuminated a man sitting on a couch all by himself. He put the match to the end of a cigarette in his mouth and inhaled.

“Nice night for a walk,” he said.

He didn’t react to the gun. He didn’t seem to care. He leant his head back and exhaled.

“You want a smoke?” he asked.

“No thanks.” I said.

He grunted. “No one smokes anymore. Socially unacceptable it is. Gone the way of the mistress it has.”

His eyes were fixed on the little orange flame in his hand. At the time I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to run away or shoot the gun or yell out for help.

“So?” he said. “What brings you here, if you don’t mind me asking? And why are you all by yourself?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, still unsure of what to do.

“It’s dangerous in the city. Especially at night. Even if you do have a gun.”

He reached for something in the top pocket of his shirt. It was a small pill bottle. He tossed it over to me. “This will help you sleep,” he said. “Helps me when I can’t turn off my brain.”

“What is it?”

“It’s morphine.”

Alarm bells started ringing somewhere in a distant corner of my mind. Who carries morphine around in their pocket and offers it to random people? “I don’t take drugs from strangers,” I said.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The man laughed out loud, like what I said was genuinely funny. He then started rambling off a whole bunch of facts about the drug.

“Morphine is an opiate,” he said. “A German physicist first discovered it in 1804 but it was not widely used until 1854 when the hypodermic needle was developed. The word morphine is derived from Morpheus, the god of dreams in Greek mythology. He is the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Morphine is a highly potent analgesic drug and acts directly on the central nervous system to relieve pain. No other narcotic analgesic is more effective or superior in the management of severe pain. It also gives a feeling of euphoria, relaxation and sedation. On the downside, it is highly addictive. Each hit will only last about four to six hours. So tolerance develops rapidly. Physical dependence develops rapidly. And psychological dependence develops very, very rapidly.”

The match in his hand had nearly burnt down to his fingers.

“How do you know all of that?” I asked.

“I’m a doctor,” he answered as he leant forward and dropped the match into a glass of water, or maybe scotch. The match sizzled as the flame was extinguished. Once again it was dark.

“Where did you get that gun?” he asked me.

“From a cop.”

“You ever fired a gun before?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever killed a man?”

“Yeah.”

The man laughed again. “I guess I better be nice to you.”

He struck another match and stared at the flame. The cigarette burned steadily in his mouth. The ash lengthened. He took one long draw, exhaled the smoke out his nose and then threw the rest of the cigarette away. “I’ll start by not smoking around you. I know how non-smokers hate it when you smoke around them. Especially when they’re eating. And even though you’re not eating, I still thought I’d put it out. Just to be nice. I used to be a non-smoker myself, you know.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not a problem.”

The weird thing was he didn’t look at me. Not once. He just stared at the orange flame of the match in his hands. He was obsessed.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked him back.

He blew on the tiny flame but not hard enough to blow it out. “This is my humble abode.”

The penthouse suite of a casino? “It’s nice,” I said. “I love what you’ve done with the interior decorations. It doesn’t even feel like a hotel room.”

He laughed again and snuffed out the flame with a short, sharp breath. He then continued to blow on the burnt end of the match so the embers glowed. “Blow and you can extinguish a flame. Blow and you can fuel a flame.”

He took another match and held the head of it against the glowing burnt one. It heated up and sparked and ignited. The tiny orange flame danced and flickered and was reflected in the black pupils of his eyes. The man was definitely obsessed.

“Once upon a time,” he said. “I wanted the big house, the penthouse apartment, like this one. I wanted to drive a Ferrari and cruise around in a bright pink Rolls Royce. Everyone wants that. Well, maybe not a bright pink Rolls Royce, but everyone wants money. At least enough so they don’t have to worry about paying bills or paying the mortgage or saving for a rainy day. You ever bought some groceries not knowing whether you had enough money in your account to pay the bill? Money can solve that problem. No more stress. No more fighting or arguing over money and what we can afford and what we can’t afford.”

I looked at the man looking at the flame in his hand and I wondered if he was talking about himself.

“But money doesn’t really mean a thing when you think about it. When you think big picture, money isn’t even an issue.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Especially when a virus starts killing everyone and turning them into psychos and the military conducts a clinic on how to execute a massacre.”

“Do you know anything about loss?” he asked.

A lump formed in my throat. I thought about my father, my mother. I thought about Kenji.

Did I know anything about loss? “Unfortunately.”

“I lost everything,” he said. “And I mean everything. I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about my life. My soul. I lost it. And believe me, when you lose your soul, when you say goodbye to that concept or whatever it is, you can never, ever get it back.”

I lowered the gun and swallowed the lump in my throat. “What happened?”

He shook his head. “I’m not even really sure. My life had turned into a monotonous routine. One failure after the next. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was too damn late. Until I had already sold my soul to the devil.”

“It must’ve been hard.”

“It was easy, actually. All too easy.”

I switched the safety on and tucked the gun back in my pants and the man lit another match. “What did you do?” I asked.

He stared at the tiny orange flame of the match. It continued to dance. It was hypnotic.

“I created the Oz virus.”