Dapple, uncertainly: “Not true. They can kill us all now if they want to. They don’t need more help.”

Albin: “Not enough of them for that.”

Blakely again: “Some people think it’s some kind of gate. They swear late at night you can see things moving through it. That you can see strange stars.”

The detectives never talk about work. But, rumor? Rumor is like news from some far distant, more exciting place. Especially about the two towers.

Once, Finch offered his opinion. “They’ve got limits, first of all. You can see that already. They couldn’t control the effects of the HFZ. They need help from the camps to build the towers. When the towers go faster, they put up fewer other buildings. The electricity goes out. Or their radio station goes silent. They have limits.”

Blank looks. Not getting it. Much easier to think of the gray caps as some implacable force. Like the weather. Something that can’t be fought. Because the fact is: if the gray caps want, they can disappear your friends, your family. It doesn’t take unlimited resources to do that.

Wyte and Finch aren’t allowed at the hideout anymore. Once it became clear Wyte would never really get rid of his affliction. Ever since Finch decided to back him anyway.

5

Finch and Wyte returned to the station in time to witness the end of a rare fight. Blakely and Dapple had gone at it. Under the glow of spectral lamps, the gaze of the tiny windows. Not caring if the gray caps were watching.

Blakely faced them. Standing on the mottled green carpet right where it reached the desks. Nose bloodied. Dapple with his back to them. Hair rising in tufts like he’d been startled. Fists up, too. Albin watching from his desk. A peculiar look of interest and boredom on his face.

Back when it had mattered, Dapple had been a Hoegbotton man. Blakely had been with Frankwrithe & Lewden. Both stared at each other now across a battlefield of other people’s betrayal.

The other detectives gathered around.

“I won’t do it,” Dapple was saying.

“You’ve done it plenty of times before. Looked behind the curtain,” Blakely said with a kind of cruel confidence. “What’s different now?”

“I was forced to those other times. None of you did anything to help.”

Finch doubted the fight had started there. Or that either remembered what it had really been about. Blakely was famous for baiting others. Daring them to look behind that damned curtain. Enter the haunted house. Walk through the graveyard at night.

After Stark and Bosun, Finch felt like he was watching Blakely and Dapple from on high. Heard Wyte mutter from behind him, “Dumb fucks.”

Blakely saw them first. Lowered his hands. Tension losing out to puzzlement.

“What happened to your shoes, Finch?” Said with contempt.

Dapple turned, looked too. His eyes were red.