Two years after the Tokyo Explosion, Hei has lost his Contractor powers and turned into a dishevelled drunk hiding in Vladivostok under CIA surveillance. His world collides with Suou Pavlichenko, a thirteen-year-old Russian girl whose twin brother Shion was made into a Contractor by a meteor fragment. When the FSB and a shadowy organization come hunting Suou for the meteor core inside her, Hei reluctantly becomes her protector. Their run south toward Tokyo, joined by the amnesiac Doll July, keeps circling back to the origins of Hell's Gate and Heaven's Gate.