Stark: “I’m here to fucking clean house.”

Heretic: “A skery is not as bad for you as what I could bring with me.”

Bliss: “You look familiar to me, Detective. Do I know you?”

And the dead man laughing at all of them.

Beside Finch’s head, Wyte’s feet. In black boots dirty with algae-like fungus. A tiny community. A miniature of the city. Finch imagined he could see creatures there. Creatures who lived out their unaware lives in a state of naive happiness. A sharp smell, like petrol mixed with pepper. The friction of their discourse on that slick black hillside.

He turned his attention back to the sky. Ignored the three crimson tendrils coming out from under Wyte’s overcoat. The weariness wasn’t from confronting Stark. The weariness was from continually being threatened.

“Wyte. Just so we’re clear—you’re not thinking about making a deal with Stark. To replace Davies and your other Stockton contacts?”

“No.” Didn’t sound convincing.

“You’re so full of shit, Wyte.” Exasperated because back in the day Wyte was the one lecturing him about being naive. Telling him not to trust the ship captains at the docks when what was in their hold didn’t match the invoice. Always warning him about getting fooled.

“I’m not going to make any deals!”

Pressing: “What did Stark’s people talk to you about then, Wyte? Scratch that—who are Stark’s people?”

“Nobody! No one,” Wyte protested. “They didn’t talk to me. I had a hood over my head. I never even saw them. And how do I know you didn’t decide to trade information with Stark?”

“Because I didn’t, Wyte. You know why? Because he’s not like your Stockton contacts from before. You can’t really deal with someone like Stark. He’ll cheerfully sell you a knife and then slit your throat with it before you’ve even given him the money.”

“I know that. Tend to your own house.”

“Fair enough.”

A silence that spread and spread until it reached the sky. Not really mad at Wyte. Mad at Stark for making him powerless. For humiliating him.

Thick stalks of green appeared at the left edge of his vision. He turned his head. It was the underside of the two towers. The cross-section of scaffolding and support. It seemed alive. Made of vines wrapped around sinews that convulsively wove and rewove themselves together. Thought he saw a dead fox in there. Thought he saw a face.

Then they were past, and it was just the gray again.

Everyone has a theory about the two towers. Finch has heard them all, mostly at the detectives’ nameless refuge. When they first decided on the location, they’d had to take the bell out of the bell tower to make more space. A grunting, straining ordeal. To get it down. To shove it out of the one window without destroying the place. It had sunk slowly. Much to their mutual amusement. “It should’ve sunk like the stone it is,” Blakely had said. “Something about the clapper,” Wyte had said. “The air trapped inside?” Finch: “Bullshit. It’s just being difficult.” Could still see it in the water below. Dark and rippling. A shape like the bullet head of some monstrous fish.