“Nítuchí’s team always handled all that kind of stuff. The stalkers, the messes, the…” My uncle’s words are a froth that dribbles and dries up. “I was the first one to think of Mitso Arakit after your mom disappeared. And Nítuchí was the one who told me Mitso had an accident. That he couldn’t be involved.”

Tai’s hand grips mine tight as iron, but I am no clearer-minded, I only taste that copper at the back of my tongue as she speaks—

“So you’re saying that Nítuchí … caused Mitso’s accident, because he was stalking Mama?”

My uncle’s cheeks are gray. “I—I don’t know. But if anyone does, it would be his people, the ones who … who cover everything up. They do that, you know. Handle people who become problematic, like disgruntled stalkers and ex-employees who leak untrue information. Handle them, and handle the payouts. The team at … at the company.”

The team at Hero Pharm. The faceless crowd. Those minuscule shadows, multiplying in the forest. Always called shadows, and never human beings, I think to myself. The infernal hissing, the buzzing, it grows—

“There are evil forces at Hero Pharm. I’ve tried my best to investigate, but they’ve done everything they can to restrict my access. I—I even thought they might be connected to what happened to your mom,” my uncle says, the words spilling out of him like he’s a bottle uncorked. “Maybe your mom discovered something they didn’t want discovered. Maybe she threatened to talk. I’ve gone over the punishing possibilities almost every day since she disappeared, just like your dad, you understand? But she shouldn’t have tried to handle things alone. I thought your mom knew that she could come to me for help. I’m not Nítuchí. I’m not some Hero Pharm crony. I just—”

But I don’t hear anything else, because the fizzy pennies, the ones that come from the hollows in my head and my heart, they have built and built and built upon themselves and now, with a repulsive gorgeousness they spill out, filling every fleshy crevice with their fizzing, popping, rusting noise, like dozens of malicious coppery toy soldiers intent on war, like an unstoppable virus, like unfiltered doom, and they choke me. Helpless-useless-helpless-useless you paper doll you shouldn’t try to handle things alone; let the faceless take all the blame; let noise crowd out truth.

Tai’s hand in mine is plastic; this ostentatious room suffocates me; I feel the maze growing around me, replete with so many shadowed nooks, where that evil burning hides, and I know something’s not right and never will be again.

I have to go.