Then he pulled it out. Released the fingers. Let the arm fall. Shielding the paper from the Partial with his body.

Normal paper, not fungal. Old and stained. Torn from a book? He unfolded it. Two words, written hurriedly, in black ink: Never Lost. And below that some gibberish that looked something like bellum omnium contra omnes. Self-contained, or once part of a longer message?

Definitely torn from a book. On the back a printed sentence fragment, “the future can hold when the past holds ambiguity such as this,” and a symbol. Somehow familiar to Finch. Although he didn’t know from where.

Stuck the paper in his boot before the Partial could blink that he’d found something. Got up. Pulled gloves from his jacket pocket and put them on. Opened the pouch at his belt.

Heretic had forgotten the preservatives, but would blame Finch if it wasn’t done. Corpses didn’t last long otherwise. Within forty-eight hours, you’d be breathing them, as the spores did their work.

Carefully, he sprinkled a blue powder across both corpses. Not spores this time, but tiny fruiting bodies. The powder smelled like smoke from the camps to the south. Or the camps smelled like the powder. Pointless to wear the gloves after the hundreds of fungal toxins and experiments that had been released into the air. The millions of floating spore-eyes. Yet still he did it.

Blue mingled with green. The green disappeared as he watched, colonized by the blue. The two bodies would not decay now. They would linger, suspended, until Finch returned to collect their memories.

“… and know you don’t want to eat the memories,” the Partial said to Finch’s back. Sounding triumphant.

Finch’s thoughts had been so far away he’d missed the first part.

“Is that all?” Wanted to laugh.

Did they talk this way together in the barracks near the camps where the gray caps housed them like weapons? Spewing out each day and night like black ants. Foraging on the flesh of the city. Observers and security both.

“You’re afraid of change,” the Partial said. “Of being changed. That’s why you hate me.”

Swiveled abruptly in his crouch, hand on his gun. Met the Partial’s corrupted gaze.

“Is that all?” Finch repeated. “I mean, are you done with your picture-taking?”

No skill when every blink was an image. No honor in a perpetual voyeurism. A kind of treason against your own kind. “It warps the privacy of your own life,” Wyte had said once, as if he knew. “Permanent occupation. I wouldn’t want to live that way.” Yet now Wyte did. And so did Finch. In a sense.

“I’m never done,” the Partial said. “And if you’ve got a past, you should be worried. They’ll work through all the records someday. Maybe they’ll find you.”

Funny thing is, Partial, Heretic already knows my past. Most of it. And he doesn’t give a fuck. That’s not who I’m worried about.