Now they converged, the three of them. It couldn’t evade them. Did it weep as they tore it to pieces? Did it make any human sound to make them stop? No. All it did was stare up at the hard stars as if they were but an extension of its eyes. Arms hacked and pulled off. Cut at. Peeled away. Tossed to the side. The red of its leg. While still it stared. While a cloud of spores erupted from the top of its head, puffing away, disappearing. Hacked, too, at the torso until there was just a head attached to a wreckage of neck. Still the thing smiled. Still it seemed to live. The reflexive life of a gecko’s tail.

Now they cursed and sobbed. Unable, as the bloodlust left them, to understand how they had been brought to this. How they could have done this. Even as they still wanted to kill it. Screaming. Shouting. Not caring if an enemy could hear them. Just wanting to keep on killing it until it was dead.

Finally, they burnt it, until it was just dead eyes laughing, asking if it had been worth it.

Soon even that burst into spores.

4

Nothing remained of Finch when he was done with Wyte. Not really. Blood or something like blood drenched him. His left hand gripped the sword tightly, the guard thick with gore. Wyte wouldn’t get a funeral. Wouldn’t get much of anything. He’d already begun the short, sharp process of becoming one of the forgotten. Nothing anybody could’ve done to save him from that.

Finch’s left shoulder sang with pain from the blow Wyte had given it. Left knee unsteady from having his legs taken out from under him. Toward the end. One last reflexive lunge from a creature that didn’t want to die. The whole time it had felt like it was happening to him. His steps were heavy from the weight.

The sounds had been horrific. Something had lived inside of Wyte. When it came out, Finch shot it. Then sliced it apart as it squealed. Was it part of Wyte? Was it the remnants of Otto? Finch didn’t care. He had just wanted it dead. Wanted to make sure Wyte wasn’t coming back.

No relation to the family man and husband Wyte had once been, before the Rising. No correlation between his life then and his death now. Something crazy. Something beyond prediction. Never sat on the stoop of Wyte’s former house, drinking out of his silver flask, and said, casually, “You’re going to turn into a monster, Wyte, and I’m going to kill you with a ceremonial sword forged by the Kalif’s empire.”

Would the resurrection of Duncan Shriek be the opposite of this? Better or worse?

The phone rang inside Wyte’s apartment as Finch was leaving. He hesitated. Went back inside. Closed the door. Locked it.