Sato felt his courage building. “I’m looking for someone. I want to visit him. He’s one of the people who got sick recently—went insane from the new plague that’s been going around.”

“What’s that?” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth. “Plague? There’s a plague about?”

“Haven’t you had a lot of people brought in recently?” Sato asked, trying to fight off the shivers that racked his body.

“Don’t know ’bout brought in.” The man pointed to the treacherous stairs leading down the face of the mountain. “But an awful lot brought out, if ya catch my meanin’.”

Sato turned to look at the stone steps, thinking about the man’s words. The sign stated this door was for the execution of inmates—did that mean they threw them off the knife-edged cliff below? Sato felt his stomach twist.

He faced the man again. “May I please come in? I’m freezing to death out here.”

“Right, in ya go,” the poor excuse for a guard replied, stepping back and opening the door until it bumped against the stone wall inside. “Beats me how ya got here in the first place, but in ya go, nice and toasty. Lots of Loons in here—not much hope of findin’ your mate, I can tell ya that. Name’s Klink, by the way.”

Sato stepped through the doorway, trying not to show his eagerness too much. “Nice to meet you, uh, Klink.” Though toasty wasn’t exactly the word Sato would use to describe the air inside, it sure beat the frigid bite of the outside.

Klink walked down the long, dark tunnel; Sato followed, listening, observing.

“Can’t say as I’ve ever had a stranger knock on that door before,” Klink said. “Only when the Cleaners come back after droppin’ some Loons, that’s all. Quite nice to have a visitor after all these years.”

“They throw crazy people off that cliff down there?” Sato asked. “When they do something bad or what?”

“If they’ve done somethin’ bad, or grown too old, or if they just need more room—whatever tickles them Cleaners’ fancy. They ain’t too particular when it comes to shovin’ off the Loons, ya know.”

They reached the end of the hallway where a small opening led through the stone to a sparsely decorated room: a floor rug, a chair, a filthy mattress. An old kerosene lamp flickered as it burned, somehow making the pathetic place look welcoming.

“Spend most of my days here,” Klink said, looking around with his hands on his hips, proud of his homestead. “Beats the socks off where I used to live, that’s for sure. If anyone ever offers ya to live in a cave full of flying rats, I recommend you say no thanks and move right along.”

“I’ll remember that,” Sato half-mumbled.

“Want to sit a spell? Take a blink or two?”