Chapter 3

A sound tore through the air.

It started as the building’s security alarm—a rhythmic *whoop-whoop*—but as it echoed off the glass walls, it twisted. It deepened. It became the mournful, brassy call of a hunting horn.

"The Hunt," Okami snarled, his ears flattening against his skull. "The Guardians of the Gray are coming to reclaim the space. We must go."

He nudged Emi hard with his snout. "Move."

"Go? Go where?" Emi stammered.

"The Mountain," Okami said. He looked toward the elevator bank at the end of the hall. The silver doors were glowing with a white, blinding light.

Emi looked at the elevator. Then she looked at her desk.

Her hand shot out and grabbed her backup drive—the USB stick that held every file, every portfolio piece, every tax return she had filed for the last four years. It was her life. It was her safety.

"I can't just leave," she panicked, clutching the drive. "My job... if I leave now, they'll fire me. I won't have insurance. I won't have..."

Okami snarled. He lunged, his jaws snapping shut around her hand.

He didn't bite her skin. He bit the drive.

With a sickening *crunch* of plastic and silicon, the USB drive shattered in his teeth. He spat the pieces onto the snowy floor.

"No!" Emi cried, falling to her knees to gather the debris. "That was everything!"

"That was a cage!" Okami roared. "You cannot bring the anchor if you wish to sail!"

The hunting horn blew again, louder this time. The shadows in the corners of the room began to stretch, forming faceless figures in gray suits—the avatars of corporate monotony, reaching for her.

"Run, Emi!"

Okami shoved her with his shoulder. Emi stumbled, slipping on the ice that now coated the hallway. She looked back. The gray figures were swarming over the cubicles, absorbing the color from the room.

She scrambled to her feet and ran.

Her heels clicked on the linoleum, then crunched on snow, then slipped on ice. She ran toward the light of the elevator.

Okami ran beside her, a blur of motion. He was huge and wild, a piece of ancient mythology tearing through the fluorescent modernity.

They reached the elevator bank. Emi slapped the button.

The doors didn't slide open. They vanished.

Beyond the threshold was not a steel box. It was a blizzard. A whiteout of terrifying proportions. Through the swirling snow, she could see the jagged black peaks of the Silver Mountain. The wind howled, a sound of pure, unadulterated freedom.

Emi stood at the edge. The office air conditioning blasted against her back; the mountain gale blasted against her face.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

She pulled it out automatically. The screen lit up. *Boss.*

"Emi?" The tiny voice tinny and distant. "Where are the files? The client is waiting. If these aren't done by morning..."

Emi looked at the phone. Then she looked at Okami.

The Wolf King was waiting in the snow, watching her. He didn't command her this time. He just waited.

"The client is waiting," Emi whispered.

She looked at her employee ID badge, clipped to her lapel. *Junior Copywriter.*

She unclipped it. It fell from her hand, landing on the threshold between the carpet and the snow.

"Emi?" the voice on the phone demanded. "Answer me."

Emi dropped the phone. It landed next to the badge.

She stepped forward.

The cold hit her like a hammer, stealing the breath from her lungs. It hurt. It was dangerous. It was real.

She looked back one last time. The office was gray and fading, a bad memory dissolving in the morning light. The gray suits were stopped at the elevator doors, unable to cross the line of imagination.

Okami bowed his head, a gesture of respect he had never written for him in the book.

Emi turned her back on Shinjuku. She reached out and buried her hand in the Wolf’s ink-stained fur.

"Let's go," she said.

The elevator doors slid shut, sealing the breach.

In the empty office, the phone continued to buzz for a moment before going silent. The snow on the carpet began to melt, leaving only a single, massive paw print made of black ink, drying slowly under the flickering lights.