Downed it in one gulp. Tasted like dirt and chocolate. Sprinkled with some sharp yet familiar herb.

Fell heavily to the floor. Sat there as the energy left him. As his wounds laid him out flat on his back. As he gasped. Every inch of his body crying out in an endless agony.

2

Finch and Shriek stood in the cavern by the underground sea. In front of Samuel Tonsure’s one-room shelter.

“You’re a hallucination,” Finch said. Wouldn’t look at Shriek. “I’m dying. I’m having a conversation with myself.”

Shriek said, “Remember how Wyte had Otto inside of him? In a different way, you have me inside of you. I entered your mind when you ate my memory bulb.”

Something had lived inside of Wyte. When it came out, Finch had shot it. Then sliced it apart as it squealed.

“That’s impossible.”

“Do you really know what’s impossible anymore?” Shriek asked. “Are you in a position to have an opinion that means anything anymore? You will still die there, on the floor, Finch, if you don’t believe in me.” Felt an immense pressure in his skull. A kind of pulse. “That’s me,” Shriek said. “Me, trying to get out.” His eyes burned with a deep and abiding fire. “I was still regenerating. Healing. But I altered the memory bulb. I encoded it with a copy of me. When you ate it, I entered your brain. If my body had lived, if the real me had lived, I would have eventually become less than an echo. A stray thought. An impulse for tea instead of coffee. Unexpected sadness or joy. You would have carried me, decaying, for the rest of your life. But that didn’t happen. They’ve killed me and I’m all that’s left. Now it’s my mission.”

Tea not coffee. The strange surge of energy during the shoot-out. Sadness or joy. Emotions not his own. Not Crossley’s, either.

“There is no mission now.”

“You’re wrong, Finch. Very wrong.”

Finch, disgusted: “Like Wyte and Otto. I’ll die and you’ll come out of me. Like a fucking parasite.”

Shriek frowned. “No. Not like Wyte and Otto. Not like that at all. Otto ate Wyte from the inside out. I’m just a passenger, gone soon enough. If you help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“Manifest in the real world. Become flesh and blood. Complete the mission while there’s still time.”

“But you’re just a … an imitation.”

“It’s not the best way. It’s just the only way now.”

“My mind’s playing tricks on me.”