"Do you like that, Heretic? Do you?" Might have been screaming it. Didn't care.
Blakely pulled him away, hand on his shoulder. Finch shrugged it off. Whirled on him. Looked at Blakely like he didn't know him. Saw Blakely had his gun out. Controlled himself, arms outstretched, palms down.
"It's okay, Blakely." But it wasn't okay. How much else could fall apart? What was left? "I just need some things from my desk and then I'm gone."
The Photographer had said they'd be watching him. Now they'd have to watch him deal with Wyte.
Blakely backed away. Didn't put down his gun. "You're crazy, Finch," he said. "You're crazy." Gustat stood there, mouth open.
Finch reached under the desk. Pulled the ceremonial scimitar in its scabbard from its hiding place.
Blakely backed even farther away. "What the hell is that?"
"It's my sword," Finch said. Brought the belt with the scabbard around his waist. "Never seen a sword before, Blakely?" Already had his gun. Didn't really need anything else. Never would again.
At the door, he planned to turn and say something. What, he didn't know. But there was nothing to say. Instead, he just pushed the filing cabinet aside.
Left Blakely and Gustat standing there, looking like two lost boys in a room suddenly grown huge.
3
yte's door had a sagging "17" on it. Half shadowed, half in sunlight from the decorative stone wall running parallel to all the apartments. The blue paint had a rust-like stain running through it. An old bullet hole decorated the upper left-hand corner. A faded, torn welcome mat. Sweat and mold and the fading stench of piss. It depressed Finch. He'd only visited Wyte there a few times. Late-night drinking sessions. Bold statements about escape or joining the rebels that nobody remembered in the mornings. Commiserating with Wyte over his estranged wife. His far distant children.
Finch had taken the long route, trying to shake any watchers.
Knocked once. Twice. Gun in one hand. Sword in the other.
Nothing.
Knocked again.
Heard a sound this time. Like a voice. A voice drowning as it spoke. Awash in strange tides. Might've said, "Come in, Finch."
Inside: cracked yellow wallpaper. A photo of Wyte's wife on a rickety table. A short hallway leading to the galley-style kitchen. A couple of crooked paintings showed faded watercolor scenes of Hoegbotton ships hunting the king squid. Fables of a bygone era.
Then the living room. Almost no furniture. As if Wyte were already gone.
But he wasn't. He lay in the comer of the living room, the weak light of an old lamp dribbling across his body. The lamp had come all the way from the Southern Isles, brought by Wyte's grandmother. Shells were still glued into the base.
Wyte dwarfed the lamp. Slumped there. Monstrous. Huge. Spilling out in peculiar ways. As if a mossy hill had been dropped into the room. Wandering tendrils as outliers. Above, looking down at Finch, the face within the face. The tiny eyes. White against the encroaching dark. Staring out.
Who'd laid the trap for Wyte? In the beginning? He'd laid it for himself, in a sense. By falling into it.
Wyte spoke. Guttural. Wet. Dissolving. "Thanks for coming, James." Like everything were normal. Four days ago we were tracking down Bliss.
"It's going to be okay, Wyte."
"You don't have to lie to me. It's not going to be okay. It's not. I know that. Even if Otto doesn't." A gruff, coughing laugh.
"You're among friends, Wyte."
A kind of seismic shift from the thing in the corner. Laughter?
"It's nice to call you James again. That might've been the hardest thing. Remembering to call you Finch. Or John."
"You didn't give me up, Wyte. I'll never forget that."
A shambling shrug from the mound in the corner. From the thing with Wyte's eyes.
"Tell Emily. Tell her. .
"She knows. I know, Wyte. No one needs to be told anything." Finch didn't even know where Emily lived anymore.
Creature. Monster. Other.
Finch's hands were shaking. Could he do this? Searching himself. Both Crossley and Finch. Can either of us do this? Kept thinking of Wyte behind the desk at Hoegbotton's so long ago. Showing Finch the ropes. Patiently explaining the job.
A world extinguished as thoroughly as a spent match in the gutter.
"James?"
"Yes?"
"Like I said on the phone, I can't control myself anymore. There's not much of me left. The rest might fight back. But you have to know that's not me."
Telling Finch in a candid moment months ago, "I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to lose control but still be there, knowing what I am doing."
"I know, Wyte," Finch said. Grinding his teeth. Biting his cheek until the blood came. A soundless scream building inside of him. "It's going to be okay."
But it wasn't.
Finch closed the door behind him.
Drew his sword, tears streaming down his face.
What it took to kill a man transformed that way was almost what it took to kill a gray cap. Finch had killed a gray cap once. Before the Rising. When he was James Crossley. When it was just House Hoegbotton against House Frankwrithe & Lewden. Just poorly trained Irregulars patrolling neighborhoods. Making sure the enemy didn't take hold in the cracks. Weeding them out from derelict, firebombed houses. Abandoned theaters. Courtyards that still held memories of massacres. Official Hoegbotton policy called gray caps "noncombatants" unless a unit felt under threat. Unofficial policy encouraged patrols to engage and drive off, "damage," or kill. Back then, the gray caps supplied arms and ammo to Frankwrithe & Lewden.
Crossley was in charge of the patrol that night. They'd emerged from a warren of streets into a junkyard, surrounded by burnt-out buildings, that had once been a playground. Right after detaining and then releasing three youths without papers. The three had done enough to convince Crossley they belonged. Or enough for him to not want to arrest them and have them wind up in a holding cell where they might not last until morning.
They had only the light of a half-moon and the reluctant streetlamps burning a hundred feet away. But Crossley caught sight of something moving herky-jerky through the junkyard.
Seven in the patrol. Exposed. He wasn't sure what he was seeing at first, because gray caps rarely came out into the open. It was like seeing a dolphin in a public pond. So he'd given the signal to spread out without knowing what they faced. Circle round. Converge.
He crept up, over broken girders and garbage, to find: a gray cap. Wandering in a circle. Talking to itself. No obvious injury. But something wrong. Like it was drunk.