Sixteen blocks away, in a modest sushi restaurant tucked between a pawn shop and a condemned apartment building, a man sat alone at the counter.
He was American. This was obvious from fifty paces, the sunburned neck, the cargo shorts in weather that warranted long pants, the too-loud voice that carried across the quiet restaurant like a foghorn through a library. His skin was in many different shades, his neck was unnaturally more tan than his pale chest. His name was Bradley.
"Holy shit," he announced to no one in particular, a piece of toro melting on his tongue. "Holy shit. This is incredible. This is delicious! Hey. Hey, excuse me."
The cashier looked up. She was young, maybe twenty, with dark hair pulled back in a practical bun and the kind of tired eyes that came from working double shifts in a neighborhood that was slowly dying. Her name tag read "Yuki."
"Yes? What is it that you ask of me, sir?" Her voice was flat. The voice of someone who had dealt with too many customers to care about any of them.
"This tuna." Bradley gestured at his plate with his chopsticks, which he held incorrectly, like a child gripping crayons. "This is the best thing I've ever put in my mouth. And I've put a lot of things in my mouth."
Yuki's expression didn't change. "Thank you, sir. Will that be all?"
"No, no, wait." Bradley leaned forward, his elbows on the counter, his sunburned face arranged into what he clearly believed was a charming smile. "What time do you get off? I'm in town for a few days. Business, you know. I have very important matters to attend to. But I could make time for someone as cute as you."
The restaurant was quiet. The other customers, a few locals, a businessman reading a newspaper, an elderly couple sharing a pot of tea, pretended not to notice.
Her face shifted, her eyebrows slightly furrowed in confusion, her lips twisted.
"I'm working," Yuki said.
"So? Everyone's gotta eat. Let me take you somewhere nice. Somewhere that's not—" He gestured vaguely at the peeling wallpaper, the flickering fluorescent light, the general atmosphere of quiet desperation. "This little place, have you ever had American barbecue, we can go back on my private jet."
"No, thank you."
"Come on." His smile widened. "I'm a nice guy. Really. Ask anyone. I'm very, I'm extremely nice and funny. People tell me all the time. 'Brad,' they say, 'you're the nicest guy I know.'"
Yuki stared at him for a long moment. Her expression was unreadable, not hostile, not afraid, just... tired. The tired of someone who had been dealing with men like this her entire life and would continue dealing with them until she died or the world ended, whichever came first.
"The answer is no."
Bradley's smile flickered. Just for a moment. Then it returned, wider than before, almost aggressive in its persistence. "Okay. Okay, I get it. Playing hard to get. I respect that. I respect that a lot. But seriously—"
"I said no."
The words were quiet.
Bradley stared at her. His smile finally faded, replaced by something else, something that flickered behind his eyes like a faulty neon sign. Not anger, exactly. Something more unsettling. Something that had no name in any language that Yuki spoke.
"Fine," he said. His voice was different now. Flatter. Emptier. "Fine. That's fine. I'll just—I'll pay my bill and go."
He pulled out his wallet. Counted out bills with exaggerated care. Left a tip that was precisely ten percent, not a cent more, not a cent less, and stood up from the counter.
"Great sushi," he said. "Really. Best I've ever had."
He walked to the door. Paused with his hand on the handle. Turned back to look at Yuki one last time.
"You know," he said, "I wasn't lying about the business. Very important business. Government contract." He laughed—a short, ugly sound. "Can you believe that? All that money. All that travel, just for me to come here."
Yuki's expression didn't change.
Bradley shrugged. "Anyway. Have a nice life. What's left of it."
He walked out.
The door swung shut behind him.
For a moment, nothing happened. The restaurant hummed with its usual quiet sounds, the distant clatter of the kitchen, the soft murmur of the other customers, the buzz of the fluorescent light that had needed replacing for six months.
Then the world turned white.
The shockwave came first, a wall of pressure that shattered windows for miles, that lifted cars and tossed them like toys, that turned buildings into rubble and rubble into dust. The sound followed, a roar so vast it seemed to come from inside the skull, from the marrow of the bones, from somewhere deeper than hearing.
The sushi restaurant ceased to exist.
So did the pawn shop. The apartment building. The convenience store on the corner and the newsstand across the street and the small park where children had been playing just moments before. Everything within a mile radius simply... vanished. Replaced by a crater that smoked and smoldered and would continue smoking for days.
Bradley stood at the edge of the blast radius, watching the mushroom cloud rise into the gray afternoon sky. His cargo shorts were dusty. His sunburned face was streaked with ash. But he was smiling, a wide, genuine smile that reached his eyes in ways his earlier expressions never had.
"WOO!!"
"Best sushi I've ever had," he said again.
He pulled out his phone. Dialed a number from memory.
"Yeah," he said when the line connected. "I've managed to cause some commotion." He paused, watching the cloud rise higher, darker, spreading across the sky like ink in water. "Get in position, this is sure to cause chaos within their little group."
He hung up. Pocketed the phone. Turned and walked away from the burning city, his footsteps leaving prints in the ash that would soon be covered by falling debris and the gentle rain that was already beginning to fall.
Behind him, the crater smoked.
Above him, the sky wept.
And somewhere in the endless white corridor, Reina paused mid-step, her gold eyes narrowing, her head tilting as if listening to something only she could hear.
"Interesting," she murmured, her eyes glowed an unsettling amber.
"Ma'am?" Caius asked.
"Nothing." She resumed walking. "Change of plans. We'll need a larger crematorium."