I: Try to see it from my point of view. Because I’m trying to see it from theirs. They’ve got a vision that’s extraordinarily deep and wide. A long view.

F: How you must admire that.

I: Does an ant mourn the passing of another ant?

F: Maybe. I don’t know.

I: They see everything, everywhere, over thousands of years. And they work with spores and things smaller than spores—on a microscopic level. What’s it to them if they reduce a life from a macroscopic to microscopic level. To its different parts. It’s just life in a different form. Nothing’s been killed. Nothing’s ended because something else has begun. I find it liberating. If only they’d kept their word.

F: Does that excuse them?

I: After all you’ve done over the past week, Finch. Do you really think they need an excuse? Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Now, I’m going to have to hurt you again.

1

Woke to a sack over his head. Woke to the Partial whittling a tattoo into his leg. Woke to his own shrieks. Wondered if the Lady in Blue had spirited him away. Waking and drugging him. Waking and drugging him. Never lost.

And always, the Partial asking him questions. Who was Ethan Bliss? How did the doors work? Had he met the Lady in Blue? Kept answering sideways, but after a while didn’t remember what he’d said. Or not said.

After midnight. Maybe. Pitch black except for the lanterns. Except for the pale face of the Partial.

Part of his mouth didn’t work right. Jutted out. Swollen. His vowels came out slurry. Couldn’t feel his feet or hands. A kind of mercy. Because early on the Partial had cut off one of Finch’s toes. Had busted up his knee again. Cut a slit in his right cheek that bled into his mouth.

“Confess,” the Partial kept saying. “Confess.”

Was he ready to confess? And to what? Duncan Shriek was dead. The mission dead with it. Changing his name, leaving Crossley behind, now seemed as pathetic as the plan to revive Shriek. What had he been doing but playing sides off against each other? Buying time working for one, working for the other. For what? More of the same? Maybe even less of it. And if he confessed that, would the Partial do more than blink in confusion? Half the time the Partial wanted information. Half the time he just wanted to inflict pain.

The Partial said, “My name is Thomas. You should call me Thomas. That’s my name.”

Laughter gushed up from deep inside Finch at the absurdity of that. Laughter he couldn’t stop.

“I confess,” he said. Screamed it. As the Partial went back to work.

The chair slowly rocking, rocking back and forth.

Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth.