F: Because I haven’t felt the same since I ate them. Because they were scenes out of a nightmare. I don’t know.
I: There’s one strange thing in all of this.
F: Just one?
I: A mention of a fortress. In a desert. Do you know the name of this place?
F: No.
I: I think you do.
F: I don’t even know if it was real or not.
I: Is this real?
[screams]
1
Woke to a weight on the bed next to him. Went rigid. Sucked in his breath. Reached for his gun. Then relaxed. Recognized the smell of her sweat, some subtle perfume behind it. Sintra Caraval. The woman who had been part of his life for the last two years. She smelled good.
He could feel her staring at the back of his head. Her breath on his back. He smiled. Didn’t open his eyes. She kissed his neck.
She was naked. Smooth, soft feel of her breasts against his shoulders. He was instantly hard. Opened his eyes. Turned over on his back. Sintra turned with him so she was nestled under his left arm. A surge of happiness startled him. Through the window: dim light creating shadows out of the darkness. Her brown skin somehow luminous against it. She’d told him she was half Nimblytod, half Dogghe. Tribes that had lived in Ambergris since before settlement. Before the gray caps.
Even in the darkness, Finch knew her face. Thick, expressive eyebrows. Green eyes. Full lips. A thin scar across the left cheek he’d never gotten her to talk about. A nose a little too long for her face, which gave her a questioning look.
An exotic lilt to the ends of her sentences as she whispered in his ear: “I let myself in. I wasn’t trying to startle you.”
He started to get up, to lock the door. She pushed him back down. “I locked the door behind me. No one else can get in.”
Finch stopped resisting her. The key was the greatest act of trust between them. Was that good or bad?
“Sintra,” he said sleepily, bringing his right arm around to cup one warm breast. “I could get used to you. I really could.” Not really listening to what he was saying. Still waking up. Reduced to the kind of meaningless words he’d mouthed at fifteen. Having sex in his room with the neighbor’s daughter while his father was out.
“You could get used to me?” she said.
When mock-angry with him, she raised her eyebrows in a way he loved.
“A bad joke,” he said. Hugged her closer. “I’m already used to you.” Kissed the top of her head. Relaxed against her, the shudder that had been building up overtaking him. Then gone.
Then, more awake: “Let’s escape. Tonight.”
He’d worked it out in his head hundreds of times. Along the shore of the HFZ at dusk.
A rowboat. Not a motorboat. To the end of the bay. Then either west to the Kalif’s empire or south to Stockton. West because it was easier to get through the security zones in the desert. He knew places there. Places his father had shown him on maps.
Escape. Now.
Imagined she was grimacing, there, in the dark. The way she always did when he mentioned it.
“Bad night?” she asked.
“Just don’t betray me,” the man said, and took Finch’s hand.
“Confusing night.”
“Tell me later.”
Then she was kissing him and he was kissing her. Tongue curled against tongue. The salt of her in his mouth. A hunger. A need. His hand between her muscular thighs. His cock in her hand. A pulse. A current that made him want to touch, to kiss, every part of her. Warmth and softness at his fingertips. Burning in her hand. An intake of breath. A little sighing cry. He turned and turned until he was above her, his forearms brushing her shoulders. Moaned as he slid into her and kept kissing her. Dissolving his poisoned thoughts. Not thinking at all. Becoming someone else.
She felt so good that he had to stop for a moment. Locked his elbows to hold himself up over her, looked into her eyes, her hands on his chest.
“I love your neck,” he said, and kissed it. “And your eyes.” Kissed her eyelids. He could see her better now, light colonizing shadows.
She wasn’t smiling back. Wasn’t responding.
“John,” she said, looking worried. “John, you’re crying blood.”
She wiped a too-dark tear away with her finger.
“Am I?” he said, trying to smile, and came with a long shuddering groan before the thought could hit him.
Occupational hazard.
* * *
Later. Lying in bed together. Feral pushing his head against a bedpost, already wanting breakfast. The blood tears had stopped almost as soon as they’d started. Remembered Wyte had told him it could be an after-effect of eating memory bulbs. It hadn’t hurt. It had just surprised him. He’d daubed his eyes clean with a bathroom towel. Had stared for a moment at the worn face of the stranger trapped in the cracked mirror.
A desert fortress. An army of silent gray caps. And Ethan Bliss, Frankwrithe & Lewden’s top man for so many years.
Pushed the thoughts aside. Sintra would have to leave soon. The place on the back of her neck where she liked to be kissed. Soft brown hairs. Crisp salt taste.
“How was your work yesterday?” he asked her, holding her tightly to him. Skin so warm against his body.
“The same as always.”
What did that mean?
“The same as always,” Finch echoed. “That’s good.”
“I guess,” she said. She sounded distracted.
Still didn’t know what Sintra did, or even where she lived. Remnants of the Dogghe and Nimblytod had carved out a defiant kingdom for themselves in the ruined Religious Quarter. But Sintra might not even think of herself as one of them, integrated into the city. He’d never asked. Sometimes he daydreamed of her being a rebel agent. Comforting. Utterly unreal. But that didn’t matter.
“I’m lonely. Even with you.”
“Someday, it will be different…”
That she preferred him not knowing hurt him. Even though he understood the sense of it. Even though they made a game out of it.
“Where do you work?”
“In the city.”
“And what do you do?”
“Answer questions. Apparently.”
He’d known everything about his past girlfriends. But even in their lovemaking Sintra seemed to change from week to week.
Exhausting. Exciting. Dangerous.
Still missed the normalcy of the one time she’d stayed long enough to make breakfast. A surreal, sublime morning. They’d met at a black market party the night before. Taken off his detective’s badge, gone as a civilian wanting some fun. Bumped into each other on the makeshift dance floor. In someone’s basement. Everyone there expecting the gray caps to blast up through the tiles and send them to the work camps.
“Your day wasn’t as good, I can tell,” she said now. Bringing him back.
“I have a difficult case.”
“How difficult?”
He sat on the chair and talked to me. The cat was as big as a pony and the lizard was as big as a cat. And me, I was as tiny as a reflection in Feral’s eye. A perverse nursery rhyme.
“Difficult enough. A gray cap cut in half. A dead man. In an apartment. But they seem to have fallen from the sky…”
Sintra sat up, looked at him. “Where were they found?”