Escape. Now.
Imagined she was grimacing, there, in the dark. The way she always did when he mentioned it.
"Bad night?" she asked.
"Just don't betray me," the man said, and took Finch's hand.
"Confusing night."
"Tell me later."
Then she was kissing him and he was kissing her. Tongue curled against tongue. The salt of her in his mouth. A hunger. A need. His hand between her muscular thighs. His c**k in her hand. A pulse. A current that made him want to touch, to kiss, every part of her. Warmth and softness at his fingertips. Burning in her hand. An intake of breath. A little sighing cry. He turned and turned until he was above her, his forearms brushing her shoulders. Moaned as he slid into her and kept kissing her. Dissolving his poisoned thoughts. Not thinking at all. Becoming someone else.
She felt so good that he had to stop for a moment. Locked his elbows to hold himself up over her, looked into her eyes, her hands on his chest.
"I love your neck," he said, and kissed it. "And your eyes." Kissed her eyelids. He could see her better now, light colonizing shadows.
She wasn't smiling back. Wasn't responding.
"John," she said, looking worried. "John, you're crying blood."
She wiped a too-dark tear away with her finger.
"Am I?" he said, trying to smile, and came with a long shuddering groan before the thought could hit him.
Occupational hazard.
Later. Lying in bed together. Feral pushing his head against a bedpost, already wanting breakfast. The blood tears had stopped almost as soon as they'd started. Remembered Wyte had told him it could be an after-effect of eating memory bulbs. It hadn't hurt. It had just surprised him. He'd daubed his eyes clean with a bathroom towel. Had stared for a moment at the worn face of the stranger trapped in the cracked mirror.
A desert fortress. An army of silent gray caps. And Ethan Bliss, Frankwrithe & Lewden's top man for so many years.
Pushed the thoughts aside. Sintra would have to leave soon. The place on the back of her neck where she liked to be kissed. Soft brown hairs. Crisp salt taste.
"How was your work yesterday?" he asked her, holding her tightly to him. Skin so warm against his body.
"The same as always."
What did that mean?
"The same as always," Finch echoed. "That's good."
"I guess," she said. She sounded distracted.
Still didn't know what Sintra did, or even where she lived. Remnants of the dogghe and nimblytod had carved out a defiant kingdom for themselves in the ruined Religious Quarter. But Sintra might not even think of herself as one of them, integrated into the city. He'd never asked. Sometimes he daydreamed of her being a rebel agent. Comforting. Utterly unreal. But that didn't matter.
"I'm lonely. Even with you."
"Someday, it will be different . . . "
That she preferred him not knowing hurt him. Even though he understood the sense of it. Even though they made a game out of it.
"Where do you work?"
"In the city."
"And what do you do?"
"Answer questions. Apparently."
He'd known everything about his past girlfriends. But even in their lovemaking Sintra seemed to change from week to week.
Exhausting. Exciting. Dangerous.
Still missed the normalcy of the one time she'd stayed long enough to make breakfast. A surreal, sublime morning. They'd met at a black market party the night before. Taken off his detective's badge, gone as a civilian wanting some fun. Bumped into each other on the makeshift dance floor. In someone's basement. Everyone there expecting the gray caps to blast up through the tiles and send them to the work camps.
"Your day wasn't as good, I can tell," she said now. Bringing him back.
"I have a difficult case."
"How difficult?"
He sat on the chair and talked to me. The cat was as big as a pony and the lizard was as big as a cat. And me, I was as tiny as a reflection in Feral's eye. A perverse nursery rhyme.
"Difficult enough. A gray cap cut in half. A dead man. In an apartment. But they seem to have fallen from the sky ..."
Sintra sat up, looked at him. "Where were they found?"
Finch stared back at her. Surprised by her sudden interest. Sometimes he shared details as an act of faith. But not on something that might pull her down with him.
"Down by the bay," he said. Waited.
Sintra considered him as he'd considered her. Then changed the subject. "Is that why you were crying? Because of what the memory bulbs showed you?"
"Yes." Propped himself up on an elbow. Shuddered, winced. An aftershock? Pressure in his head. Like his brain had outgrown his skull.
Sintra hugged him. Kissed him. He laid his head against her chest. She scared him sometimes. Both from her presence and her absence.
"Maybe it was a bad reaction to a drug," she said. "Maybe you inhaled a bad spore."
Back before the Rising, Sintra said she had been a doctor's aide.
"Unlikely." He and his fellow detectives got fed antidotes every few months. One perk of working for the gray caps. He stole extras for Sintra and Rathven. Sintra always took them with her. Never used them in the apartment.
"But it's over now."
"Yes. It's over."
He broke off the embrace. Feral was cleaning himself in a shaft of light by the window. Sidle was motionless on the windowsill. Drunk on the new sun.
Sintra wrapped the sheets around her and stood up, walked toward the window. Leaving Finch naked and exposed on the bed. Watching her as he put his underwear back on. Remembering the first time they had made love. How he'd checked the sheets, the pillows after she'd left. Wanting to breathe in more of the smell of her. How there had seemed to be no trace of their sex. Only his memory of the act. As if he had entered a ghost.
She turned to stare at him, framed by the window.
"I'll come back in a night or two," Sintra said. "That's not long."
"No, it's not long," Finch said. Thinking of the station. The other detectives. Work fatigue washed over him.
Memory holes and Wyte and Heretic and wanting to scream, to just start shooting.
"Maybe I'll even spend the night. If I can," she said. A curious look on her face, like she was testing him. She held her hands behind her back, one leg slightly bent, her body bronzed and perfect to him. "What do you think of that?"
Must have been obvious what he thought, because she couldn't take the weight of his gaze. Looked away. Leaned down to pick up her knapsack, retrieve her clothes.