“Get the fuck off of me!” Wyte hissed. Twisting in Finch’s grip. Head angled toward the sky. Shoulders arched back like he was trying to take off his coat but had gotten his arm stuck.
“You’re not. And do you know why not? Because you’ve been colonized. And it’s gone too far. And they’ll never take you.” Never take you back. Never want you now. Too late. “And if they did, you’d probably be spying on them. For the gray caps. Without even knowing it. Which is why you can’t.” And you’d be leaving me with a station full of detectives who hate me because I didn’t abandon you.
He released Wyte, pushing off him. Creating space between them in case it turned into a fight.
But Wyte stayed up against the wall. What was the look on his face? Didn’t matter. It was the way he stood. Finch had seen the same tired stoop in workers from the camps. Seen it at times in Rath.
Continued on now that it made no difference: “The closest you’ll get to working for anyone is wringing intel out of that ragged bunch of Stockton contacts you call a network.” Trailed off.
Wyte’s self-disdain when he turned to Finch made him look angry or righteous. A darkness there that might have been spores coming up through his skin.
“Better than doing nothing, like you.”
“I don’t do nothing. I do what I can. There’s a difference.” Hands clenched into fists. Face contorted. Close to being out of control. What if he’s right?
Stood there while Wyte opened his mouth to say something.
But Wyte didn’t say anything, just let out his breath with a shudder. Finch watched warily as Wyte reached into his overcoat pocket with a hand that trembled slightly and took out a flask made of battered silver and tin, the once-proud H&S insignia marred by fire burns.
Finch had given it to Wyte on his birthday ten years ago. Emily hadn’t liked it. Thought her husband drank too much anyway. Didn’t need to “make it into a ritual” as she put it. But that didn’t stop her from joining them when they’d stood on the step outside of the house to share a smoke and whatever Wyte had put in the flask. Remembered its quick glint as it picked up the sun or a streetlight.
“It’s got good brandy in it, Finchy,” Wyte said. “The last bit I’ve been hoarding.”
“You’re not going to hit me?”
“What for, Finchy? What’d be the point?”
Finch grimaced. Managed to transform it into a thin smile. “Some brandy might be a good idea.” He patted Wyte’s ruffled overcoat back into place. “I’m sorry, Wyte. I’m sorry.”
And he meant it. Turned away. Disgusted with himself. Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?
Wearily, Wyte said: “How could you know? What it’s like living with something else inside me. While on the outside I keep changing.”
Worse than a dead man talking to me?
Finch didn’t want to think about it. Took the flask. Downed half of it in a gulp. Felt the liquid rage through his capillaries. Like a forest fire that left ice behind it. He handed the flask back. “Good stuff.” They started walking again.
Wyte laughed. “Still can’t really hold it, can you? Any more than you could when you were working for me.”
Slapped Finch on the back hard enough to make him stagger.
Fair enough.
* * *
Wyte. The story.
He’d gone to investigate a death about a year ago. By himself. No one else in the station. The call sounded simple. A man found dead beneath a tree, beginning to smell. Could someone take a look? Most days, not worth bothering with. But it was a slow morning, and Wyte took the job seriously. The woman seemed upset, like it was personal.
The body was down near the bay. Beside a cracked stone sign that used to welcome visitors to Ambergris. Holy city, majestic, banish your fears. No one was around. Not the woman who had called it in. No one.
The man lay on his back. Connected to the “tree,” which was a huge mushroom. Connected by tendrils. The smell, vile. The man’s eyes open and flickering.
Wyte should have left. Wyte should have known better. But maybe Wyte was bored. Or wanted a change. Or just didn’t care. He hadn’t seen his kids since they’d been sent out of the city. He’d been fighting with his wife a lot.
He leaned over the body. Maybe he thought he saw something floating in those eyes. Something moving. Maybe movement meant life to him.
“Who knows? Just know that it’s a dumb move.”
A dumb move. That’s how the detectives would say it during the retell. At their little refuge, not far from the station. Blakely had discovered the place. In front of what used to be the old Bureaucratic Quarter. Looks like a guard post. Nondescript. Gray stone. Surrounded by a thicket of half walls, rubble hills, and stunted trees. With a moat that’s really just a pond that collects rainwater. From the inside, it’s clear the structure is the top of a bell tower pulled down and submerged when the gray caps Rose.
Always half out of their minds with whiskey or homemade wine, or whatever. When they told the story. A dumb move. Like they were experts.
“Point is,” Albin would say, because Albin usually told the story, “he leaned over, and the man’s head exploded into spores. And those spores got into Wyte’s head.”
White spores for Wyte. Through the nose. Through any exposed cuts. Through the ears. Through the eyes.
Although he fought it. Twisted furiously. Jumped up and down. Cursed like the end of the world. So at least he didn’t just stand there and let it happen.
“But by that time, it was too late. A few minutes later and he’s just somebody’s puppet.”
Wyte became someone else. The “dead” man. Someone who didn’t understand what had happened to him. Wyte ran down the street. Taken over. Screaming.
“Screaming a name over and over. ‘Otto! I’m Otto!’ because that was the dead man’s name. Wyte thought he was Otto.”
Or most of him did. Wyte, deep inside, still knew who he was, and that was worse.
Sometimes, out of a casual cruelty, a kind of boredom, one of the other detectives, usually Blakely, will call Wyte “Otto.” Until Finch makes him stop.
“Well, they found him a day later. Once they figured out who the dead body was. Cowering in a closet. Saying ‘Otto’ over and over again.”
In the dead man’s apartment.
“A caution to us all.”
Then they would clink glasses and bottles, congratulating themselves on being alive.
Truth was, they told the story less to humiliate Wyte than to keep reminding themselves not to take any chances. Ambergris Rules. No dumb moves.
Wyte got Otto out of his head. Eventually. Most of Otto. But not the fungus. That became worse. The gray caps couldn’t or wouldn’t help. Maybe they saw it as some kind of perverse improvement.
No one had ever found out who had lured Wyte there. Or why.
Finch knew they never would.
* * *
They split up. Wyte headed back to the station. Finch decided to return to the apartment on Manzikert. He’d have more than his fill of the station later.
“Do I mention Bliss?”
“If it comes up, no. His file’s already being pulled. That’s enough for now.”