But they’d still get shot to pieces. Now the double doors had opened. Rebels were firing back at the Partials. From the doors. From the dome.

Wyte jammed another bunch of sticky nodules into his gun from his right front pocket. Kept right on firing. The noise was hellacious. Wyte’s bullets made an echoing thwack sound. Finch’s a deeper crack. The Partials’ return fire was like wood popping in a fire. The smell of the fungal bullets musty and metallic.

A scream from one of the Partials. Another scream. Finch, back up against the wall, shielding Dapple, had only a partial view.

A fungal bullet hit the dirt well to their right. Veins of red spread out across the ground. Seeking. Searching. Stopped next to a lizard sunning itself, oblivious to the threat.

“What’s happening, Wyte,” Finch shouted above the roar.

“I’m fucking killing them. Killing them all,” he roared.

A conventional bullet clipped the side of Wyte’s head. Left a bloody track. A runnel of flesh coming off. He roared again—this time with pain. Directed his fire to the left, toward the rebels or more Partials. The response was a fresh hail of bullets that sent even Wyte back into their shelter for a moment. Finch kept squeezing off rounds blind. Trying to aim high but not too high.

Wyte’s face shone bright. His eyes were large and dilated and he was smiling.

“The bullets don’t hurt,” he kept saying. “They don’t hurt at all.”

“They’ll hurt you eventually, dammit!” Finch got off another round.

Dapple convulsed. Blood rushed out of his mouth. His eyes stared toward the sky. Lifeless.

“Fuck.”

Finch grabbed Wyte’s shirtsleeve. Pulled him in close. Green pallor. Tongue purple. Eyes like black marbles shot through with gold worms. A bullet lodged in his left cheek. Coin-shaped. Like a curious birthmark.

“Wyte! We’ve got to get out of here. Do you understand?”

Wyte seemed to wake up. Spittle came out of his mouth as he said, “We’ll go right through the Partials.” Firing with his straight right arm as he talked. Bullets slamming into his side. Finch could hear them making impact. Being absorbed. “There’s an alley behind them. Up or down the street you’re dead. But if we’re fast, right through the Partials works.”

“How the fuck does that work?” Finch shouted at Wyte.

“I go out first, shielding you,” Wyte said impatiently. Almost with a snarl.

“With your body?” Finch said, incredulous. “That’s crazy.”

Grinned at him. One eye on the street. “It’s all fucked up. What’s one more thing? Trust me, Finch.”

“You’ll die if you do this, Wyte,” Finch said.

“No. I won’t.” Never heard Wyte so confident.

A bullet spiraled into Wyte’s left thigh. He didn’t even flinch.

Grim smile. “I love you, Wyte.” And he did, he realized.

A smile back from Wyte like it was the old days before the Rising.