“Yes.”

Thinking again about Wyte. About Stark under the influence of Wyte’s memory bulb. At what price? And: You knew you might die. Why aren’t you willing to do this?

Because it’s not real.

Looked out at the green lights beginning to appear. Above, the blurred gleam of stars obscured by dust.

“It’s up to you, Finch,” Shriek said.

“How do we do it?” Finch asked. “I cut open my own head and you pop out?” And what happens to me then?

“It’s nothing like that,” Shriek said. “Nothing like that. You open yourself to me, and then I open myself to you. Then you sleep for a while. When you wake up, I am out of you. I can feed off moisture. Off the air. What I take from you will be no larger than the weight of a baby. And I will do the rest. Then we go our separate ways. You’ll never see me again.” Except when I look in the mirror. “I know you’re afraid. But what happened to Wyte was invasive. Hostile. He had a parasite inside of him. Something made possible by the gray caps.”

This isn’t invasive?

The green lights were closer. He could almost make out the forms of the creatures gathered out there in the desert. Waiting to take Zamilon for themselves. Who could say their cause was any less just? The Lady in Blue didn’t even know what they were.

“How do I know you’re not hostile? I ‘open up’ and you take over.”

“I won’t. I promise. I can’t. It wouldn’t last for long.”

“What’s the risk if I say yes?”

Shriek hesitated. Then said, “I won’t lie to you. It’s a sacrifice. I will be doing things to your body to make my own. Stealing from your tissue. Robbing you while you’re already weak. You won’t be the same afterward. Even after you recover from the torture. You’ll have dizzy spells. Headaches. You may not sleep for a while. When you do sleep, there will be nightmares as your mind flushes out my memories. But you’ll be setting me free. And I won’t take it from you unless you let me.”

“You’re saying it’ll almost kill me.”

“And heal you, too,” Shriek said. “In the short term, I can make your flesh knit faster. I can shield you from the aftershock of what the Partial did to you. And a part of you will always be with me. Even after you die, you will live on because I will still be alive.” Shriek grinned, showing his teeth. “I’m hard to kill.”

Lost time. Lost worlds. A man who had lived for more than a hundred years, only to die in a crappy apartment as part of a larger game by a species that had come from a place so distant they’d spent centuries trying to find it again.