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.

Wanted to say it but didn’t. Unsnapped the clasp on his holster. The fungal gun trembled there like a live thing. Wet. Dripping. Useless against a gray cap. Very useful against a Partial. Still human, no matter how much you pretend.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“I see everything,” the Partial said. “Everything.”

“Yes,” Finch said, “but that’s unavoidable, isn’t it?”

The Partial stared at Finch. Seemed about to say something. Bit down on it, hard. Walked out into the hall. Slammed the door behind him.

Leaving Finch alone with the bodies.

Now Finch can see the frailty death has lent them. Now Finch can see the vulnerability. The way the light uses them in the same way it uses him. He walks to the window. Looks out across the damaged face of Ambergris.

Six years and I can’t recognize a goddamn thing from before.