Finch stood there a moment, brought up short. Trying to process that sudden … lack. Then realized: Heretic must have removed the body. If not, they’d send Finch to the camps. Scapegoat. Returning: the chill that had come over him talking to the red-toothed Partial. It hit him as it hadn’t before. This case was a threat to his life. To the little security he had. His apartment. His relationship with Sintra.

But the man was still there, under a blanket someone had thrown over him. The dead man sat in the chair next to him, smiling. In the same position. The blue of the preservatives still stippling his features. The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.

Finch went over and pulled the blanket back from the man’s face. Sat on the couch, looking at the body. He would have to meet with Heretic soon. The thought unnerved him. Wished now he’d asked Wyte for the whole flask. Wished he could just go home. Find Sintra waiting for him.

“You know what those nonsense words mean,” Finch said to the man. “You know why it’s important.”

Peaceful. The man looked peaceful, to be so dead. How perfectly preserved in the light from the open window. Ignoring how that light changed as it was interrogated by the space between the twinned towers in the distance.

Finch got down on his knees. Searched the body again. Not the careful search of yesterday. Fuck the spore cameras. Fuck the Partial.

Roughly, he rolled the body over and went through the pockets. As if he’d killed the man himself.

There must be something else.

But, no, there wasn’t. Just lint in one pocket. A few bits of sand and gravel, maybe a grain of rice?, in the other.

He began to rip up the fabric. It tore easier than he would’ve thought. Hurting his hands. Red lines on his palms. Aching wrists. Still nothing. No hidden pockets. He forced himself to stop tearing.

The upturned corners of the man’s lips seemed to say, “You’ll never solve me.”

I’m not a detective.

But he would be judged as a detective. Convicted as a detective.

A desert fortress. The HFZ. A phrase. Never lost. Falling from a great height. A gray cap even the gray caps couldn’t identify. An operative from Stockton who was on the same trail. Another operative, probably from Morrow, attacked by Stockton spies and appearing in a dead man’s memories. Now disappeared.

Stark. Bosun. Bliss.

It would drive him mad, he realized. If he let it.

I need a better gun.

Looked at his watch.

5:20.

Time to leave.

Let the horror show begin.

5

Back at the station.

5:50.