Spiral

plutonium encased inside, creating critical mass. It’s not so complicated, once you understand. Dear God, a talented undergraduate could design one.”

The bomb fell, a spear aimed from above. Just before it hit, a blinding flash. For the fourth time in human history, a nuclear chain reaction sparked into life, multiplied, and spread, vaporizing everything near it, pushing heat and air and dust into the heavens.

KITANO FELT THE PULSE RATTLE THROUGH THE SHIP LIKE A giant hammer blow. He was thrown back, knocking his head hard against the bulkhead. He shook it off, put his focus back where it needed to be. This was his moment. Connor knew Kitano’s secret. He must act now.

His hands were cuffed together, but this was not an impediment. He took three sharp breaths, a Bushido technique to ready a warrior before a crucial act. Then he raised his hands and placed the middle finger of his right hand into his mouth. He set his teeth precisely at the joint, just as he had practiced a hundred times before, on live prisoners. With a sudden violent chomp, he bit through the meat, separating it at the gap between the proximal and medial phalange, as cleanly as when he had practiced with the fingers of prisoners.

The pain was nothing. Kitano was greater than pain.

He spit his finger out on the table, black spots before his eyes.

He focused on it, grabbed the bone and snapped it, using the edge of the table as a wedge. A small brass cylinder, as thin as a twig, protruded outward from the bone.

Kitano was bleeding profusely now. They could be here at any moment. But no matter. He needed just a few seconds more.

He heard a click. The door opened.

THE FIRST THING LIAM SAW WAS BLOOD SPLATTERED IN DROPS on the metal floor. He glanced around the room. It was empty. Where was Kitano? Had he escaped?

Liam stepped inside, and Kitano blindsided him.

The impact drove Liam sideways into the wall. Liam felt something give in his shoulder and pain flared. He turned to fight, but Kitano caught him with a head butt, blood erupting into Liam’s eyes. Blind, Liam managed to shove Kitano away, giving himself a second to breathe.

But only a second. Kitano came at him, cuffed hands held over his head like a club. Liam ducked low and drove a shoulder into Kitano’s midsection, sending them both to the floor.

They fought silently, viciously. They traded blows for what seemed like hours but Liam would later estimate to be less than thirty seconds. In the end, Liam delivered the decisive strike. He got behind Kitano and ran him headfirst into the steel bulkhead adjacent to the door. Kitano fell to the floor, dazed, barely conscious.

Kitano was streaked with red. Blood was everywhere.

Liam tried to catch his breath. His shoulder ached. “You knew about the penicillin all along.”

Kitano didn’t answer. His eyes gave away nothing.

Liam looked around the room. Near his foot he saw a detached, bloody finger.

He grabbed Kitano’s hand. The right one. It was missing the last two sections of the middle finger.

What the hell?

Liam nudged the finger with his foot. He bent over, studying it. Sticking out of the flesh was a small brass object.

He pulled it free, wiped the blood off with his fingers. It was perhaps an inch long, threaded at the middle. A small brass cylinder, a miniature version of the ones that Kitano had described, the ones carried by the seven Tokko. Cylinders containing the Uzumaki.

“Jesus. You tell me everything, you bastard. Right now.”

Kitano didn’t speak, and in a fury now, Liam struck him again and again. It was strangely quiet in the room, no cries. Kitano took the blows silently.

“Tell me, you goddamn psychopath.”

Kitano didn’t answer. He was limp, his eyes half closed. Liam was holding him up by his collar. When he finally released him, Kitano fell to the floor. Liam stood over him, breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his fists.

Not moving, Kitano looked back up at him with glassy eyes.

Liam tried to calm down, sort it all out. He and Kitano were alone. The guard was on deck. Everyone was still on deck, Liam was sure, mesmerized by the size and spectacle of an atomic explosion.

Kitano stirred. He tried to stand but then fell back against the wall. He shook his head, trying to get his wits about him, attempted again to stand. He saw Liam, the cylinder.

Liam held up the cylinder. “It’s in here, isn’t it? The Uzumaki?”

Kitano slumped back, defeated. Neither spoke. Liam watched him, the man’s hands still cuffed together, finger missing. The blood dripped steadily from Kitano’s hand, forming a sticky pool on the floor. He was bleeding to death. Liam could stand here another five minutes and Kitano would bleed out. He would die. He should let him die. Liam wrapped his fingers around the cylinder, held it tight. “You goddamn bastard.”

Finally Kitano said, “Kill me.”

“What?”

“Kill me. I want to die. I failed. Please. Kill me.”

LIAM WAS ALONE ON THE DECK OF THE USS NORTH DAKOTA. It was past two a.m.

He looked down at the small brass cylinder in his hand.

He’d spent the last six hours in debriefings with Willoughby and his lieutenants, helping them prepare a communique to MacArthur describing the events leading to the destruction of the Vanguard. A second communique covered everything that he had discovered: that penicillin made you vulnerable to full-on infection. The vulnerability could persist for weeks, even years. Within hours, the Uzumaki takes over your GI tract. Transmission by fecal matter or stomach juices: vomiting, perhaps even spit. Once it is in your lungs, the spores spread from your breath. No known cure. The mycotoxins attack your sanity, producing mania, hallucinations, then suicidal and homicidal urges. Later, they attack your organs, causing internal hemorrhaging. Within a day, you are mad. Within a week, you are dead. You live only long enough to infect those around you, a walking biological time bomb.

He had told them about confronting Kitano after the explosion, finding him wounded, having bitten off his own finger, trying to kill himself, trying to bleed to death.

They had fought. Liam had subdued him and then gone for help.

That was the story he’d told.

He hadn’t told them about the small brass cylinder in his hand.

Throw it overboard, he thought. Toss it over. To the bottom of the sea with it.

Toss it, you dumb Irish bastard.

WHEN KITANO AWOKE, HE WAS IN THE INFIRMARY. HE WAS strapped down. He was alone. His finger was bandaged, missing the top two joints.

The cylinder was gone. He expected the MPs to come, interrogate him, torture him. Tear at his body until he’d told them everything about the Uzumaki.

But it never happened.

They questioned him about the penicillin for hours. But nothing more. Nothing about the cylinder that had been in his finger.

Over the next hours, his certainty grew until it was rock-solid. They did not know. They did not know what he had possessed. Liam Connor had not told them.

A few days after, he saw Connor briefly. They had brought him up for a few minutes of sunlight. Connor stood by the railing. Their eyes met. Connor shook his head almost imperceptibly. He glanced toward the sea. To say I threw it overboard.

Kitano nodded back, then turned and looked away, saying with his countenance that he understood, that it was over. That the Uzumaki was now at the bottom of the ocean.

But what Kitano thought was: He still has it.