My eyes quickly adapted to the dim light. After a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart, I began to take in my surroundings.

  The place felt just as old and worn as the long hallway we had come through. The wooden floorboards and counters exuded a faint smell of smoke, and the pale blue candlelight bathed the entire space in an almost unreal glow. Not far away, someone made a two-finger gesture and slapped a coin onto the counter.

  …How was I supposed to order a drink with no money?

  Following Rafe’s gaze, I looked toward the menu printed on a grease-stained piece of cardboard behind the counter. After a moment of blurriness, the text—written in a mix of Chinese and English—came into focus as naturally as if it had always belonged there.

  The blurriness hadn’t been a trick of my eyes; it was the language system of Nowhere—something fundamentally unreadable to humans. But thanks to my Skill, which was tied to words, I could sense their meaning even without knowing the language.

  If I ever got some money, I ought to buy a book written in Nowhere’s script—preferably a dictionary. With that in mind, I quickly scanned the menu, growing more and more disheartened the longer I looked.

  A hoarse voice came from behind the counter, from within the even dimmer glow of the candles.

  I looked up—and came face to face with a swollen face, its eyes sewn shut. I flinched, nearly tumbling off the high stool.

  Was throwing a jump scare like that at a guest really the best idea?

  My heart pounded like a drum in my ears. Embarrassed, I let go of Rafe's hand and awkwardly greeted the bloated corpse behind the bar.

  "Didn’t expect you to die so soon. Bounty number one-four-five-eight completed. Hold on, I’ll get you a drink first—on the house."

  The bloated corpse lifted a grayish, stubby finger and pointed to a spot on the wall behind him.

  "Happy death day, kid."

  Who had died? Who had completed the bounty? And what exactly was a death day supposed to be? I made exaggerated faces at Rafe, wishing his Skill included mind reading. Rafe looked uneasy, but he simply patted my shoulder absentmindedly and shook his head.

  The bloated corpse pulled out a large wooden box from beneath the counter. Inside were six soda cans, each fitted with an old-fashioned metal syringe at the top.

  "For the deathday girl. Happy death day."

  The corpse used the syringes to inject liquids from the cans into a crystal glass, one by one—six strange colors layered into a cocktail, topped with a heap of whipped cream and a single cherry. It really did look a bit like a birthday cake.

  The "birthday cake" and a glass of unknown liquor—raw egg floating on top—were pushed toward us by the swollen hand.

  "Hold on—ran out of Sigils. I'll make more now. You two completed the task together: three for you, seven for you. Nowhere thanks you for your... contribution."

  The bloated corpse’s words were slurred and drawn out, making them hard to catch. I wasn’t sure if I understood him correctly.

  "One Sigil, three Soults, fifty Remns…"

  What the hell were these things? I was being torn apart by too many questions, on the verge of collapse. I wanted to grab the corpse's hand and squeeze it like a sponge, forcing out every answer I needed.

  "Look at the wall—that’s not wallpaper. Those are bounty notices. Number 1458 is near the top rows. It says: Kill Dai Li in Nowhere," Rafe said in a low voice, fiddling with the whiskey glass where a raw egg floated, his eyelids drooping. "Sigil, Soult, and Remn are the currencies used in Nowhere."

  Even more questions surfaced. I lifted the cocktail with a trembling hand and took a small sip. "So what he means is—you and I used Nowhere to kill me together? I’m dead?"

  "Don’t be too scared. This is a twisted world, and their interpretation of things like death is... different. I once heard about a Hunter who lost his name. In Nowhere, that’s equivalent to being dead. He lives in New Jersey now—he just can’t use a Path anymore," Rafe said, patting my shoulder in a comforting gesture—and it actually worked. "Look on the bright side. Here, you’re absolutely safe. And the bounty he mentioned—it’s an extraordinarily large fortune. Worth more than several Hunters' lives. Most Hunters wouldn't earn that much in their whole lives."

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The bloated corpse climbed slowly onto a stool, tore the paper notice off the wall, and shredded it into pieces—then shoved them into his mouth. His upper jaw and tongue were covered in teeth of all shapes and sizes. The dull, grating sound of him chewing made my scalp prickle.

  "Your bounty’s gone now. At least you don’t have to worry about what happened before. Try to see the bright side," Rafe said, filling a glass with lemon water from a tap behind the bar and nodding slightly toward the bloated corpse. "This bartender has the power to mint coins. He's pretty high-ranking among the Residents."

  For a moment, I forgot my fear entirely. I stared as the bloated corpse, dressed in an old-fashioned suit, bent down and hauled out a machine that looked like a typewriter—presumably the press used to make Sigils.

  If just any Resident had the right to issue currency, then Nowhere's entire economy would be garbage.

  That thought barely formed before it was obliterated by what I saw next.

  The bloated corpse seemed to sense it. He "looked" at me through his black-thread-sewn eyes, placed a familiar bead into the brass machine's central slot, and pressed down hard on the handle with both hands.

  The counter dented slightly, then sprang back, a translucent white coin was slapped onto the counter.

  "The raw material for those Sigils—is dead Hunters?!"

  My stomach lurched. A bitter, acidic rush hit the back of my throat, and I swallowed it down, trying to hold back the tears brought on by a wave of nausea and collapse. The bloated bartender pushed the opal-like coin toward me, along with ten colorful oval chips.

  A whole pile of colorful oval coins mixed with a few small gold ones was handed to Rafe—the most valuable was the Sigil, the three gold-coin-shaped pieces were Soults, and the Remns—the cheapest—looked like melted plastic tokens in various colors.

  Eating human flesh—fine. Just cross that off my bucket list. I'd always planned to try a piece of meat before I died anyway. Compared to the question of whether I was actually dead, it felt almost trivial.

  I gave myself fifteen seconds to have a full-on breakdown. When the countdown ended, I crushed the chaos back down, drained the cocktail in one gulp, and pushed five Remns and the empty glass toward the bartender. "Thank you."

  Good customers tip... hopefully five Remns wasn’t too little.

  Rafe froze for a moment, as if he’d noticed something. He quickly left behind another five Remns, grabbed the suspicious drink where the raw egg was almost dissolved, and tugged urgently at my sleeve.

  The bartender collected the empty glasses and the toy-like plastic tokens, then jammed his thick fingers into his sewn-up eye socket, stretching the right side of his head grotesquely. With a wet, squelching noise, he pulled out a small silver-linked key and tossed it precisely into my arms.

  "Here’s your spare room key. Saves you another trip—now get moving. You’ve stayed here too long already."

  The pallid candlelight had dimmed even further without me noticing. Something seemed to writhe in the shadows. I whispered another "thank you" to the bartender and let Rafe drag me out of the dim zone back into the brighter area beyond the bar.

  "Rafe?"

  Rafe absentmindedly patted my head—the same way he did with Otto.

  "A particularly strong pseudo-bio just showed up. Its mental state’s off. It might not bother following the rules here."

  The shadows completely swallowed the bar behind us. When I asked whether we should leave immediately, Rafe nodded.

  I found a spot in the corner, swallowed all the questions crowding my throat, and poured the raw egg and liquor mixture forcefully into Rafe’s mouth.