Finch wondered what they looked like to her. Wyte transforming. Him tired and dirty. In Wyte’s crappy shoes.
Wyte asked, “What’s your name?”
No answer.
“We could bring you in for questioning,” Wyte said.
“But you won’t, because I’m an old woman,” she said in a whisper. “Because you’re decent men.”
Wyte snorted, losing patience. “A night in the station holding cell might make you more talkative.”
The full, hawklike intensity of her stare focused on Wyte. “You want a name? It’s Jane Smith.”
Wyte opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Finch gave Wyte a wary look. Said to her, “What are all these parts doing here?”
“This is a business. People who’ve been released from the camps come here if they’ve lost a leg. Or an arm.”
“Or a head?” Finch asked.
“You seem to be keeping yours, Detective,” she snapped.
Wyte said, “Are you the Lady in Blue?”
Finch knew he’d meant it as a kind of joke. But Wyte’s voice couldn’t convey a joke anymore.
A look of disbelief spread across the woman’s thin features. The wrinkles at the sides of her eyes bunched up. She began to guffaw. The roughest, crudest laughter Finch had ever heard from a woman.
When she had recovered, she said, “You should leave. Now.”
“Bellum omnium contra omnes,” Finch said. Put as much weight as he could behind the words. As if he meant to physically move her with them. Couldn’t have said where the impulse came from, to say it. Wyte gasped.
Her eyes opened wide. The color in her cheeks deepened.
“There is a way,” she said. Hesitated. As if she’d made a mistake.
Finch repeated the words: bellum omnium contra omnes.
Her features hardened. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about after all.”
“I think you do,” Finch said. He hadn’t given the right response, but he’d been close.
Wyte pulled out his gun, brushed past Finch, and shoved it in the woman’s face.
“Wyte…” Finch said in a warning tone.
“No, Finch,” Wyte said. “I’m sick of this. Sick of it. She’s lying. You want this to go down like Bliss all over again? Well, I don’t.” Wyte pushed the muzzle into the woman’s forehead until the discharge dribbled down her face. She closed her eyes, winced, said again, “I don’t know what it means. I don’t.”
“Wyte, this won’t get you what you want,” Finch said.
Turned his pale, monstrous head for a second. “Hell it won’t.”
“For Truff’s sake, Wyte! Put down the fucking gun!”
“If I do, she’s going to kill us,” Wyte said. The gun slipping in his grasp. Finger still tight on the trigger. “Can’t you feel it? We’re going to die here because of her.” Voice small and low. His shape beneath the overcoat in the grip of some terrible insurrection.
The woman’s eyes fluttered, closed again. Waiting for the bullet while Wyte waited for his answer.
No way to get to Wyte before he shot her.
Saved by Dapple calling out in alarm from beyond the door. “Partials!”
Wyte looked toward the door. Lowered the gun. But something was swimming in his eyes. Something that wasn’t part of him. Not really.
The woman leaned down, fast.
The front of the counter exploded in a cloud of dust and debris.
The force threw Finch up against the rail, drove Wyte down to one knee. Wyte’s gun skittered across the floor. A piece of wood had grazed Finch’s left arm. His ears rang from the blast. Through the wreckage of the counter, Finch could see the cannon of a gun that had done the damage. Mounted on a metal stand.
The woman had leapt to the spiral staircase. She was shouting to someone above her. Coughing, Finch got off a shot that bit into the steps at her heels. Then the darkness took her.
Wyte recovered his weapon, started to move toward the stairs. Finch followed, then stopped. Pulled at Wyte’s coat sleeve.
“Fuck. Wait.”
“Wait, Finch? Wait?” Straining against his grip. “Goddamn it, she’s getting away!”
The sound of gunfire. Coming from the top of the chapel. And a torrent of boots on steps from beyond the tapestry door.
“No! Didn’t you hear Dapple? And there’s a whole fucking army coming.”
“Shit,” Wyte said. No longer pulling away.
They ran back down the carpet. Past the pews.
Bullets sprayed in a torrent against the outside of the chapel walls. A muted cry from Dapple.
Brought them up short at the double doors.
Finch looked at Wyte. Wyte looked back at him. Knew they were thinking the same thing. Better outside with Partials than trapped inside with the rebels.
Finch heard the sound of the tapestry parting just as they burst through the double doors. Out into the light. Stumbled over Dapple lying on his back in the dirt between the doors and the archways. Face slack. Clipped by a fungal bullet. Left shoulder turning black. Neck covered in looping veins of dark red that made him look like an obscene map. Convulsions already. Eyes distant. Muttering through a mouth flecked with spit. His guns beside him.
Finch looked up to see Partials behind the sandbags, among the tanks. Dozens of them. Pale faces. Dark clothing. Aiming up at the top of the chapel and the sharpshooters pouring fire down on them.
Frozen for an instant. Caught between two bad choices. Didn’t know how Dapple had gotten hit.
Then a roar from next to him. Wyte was roaring. Standing straight up. Not caring if he got hit. Finch could just see the Partials moving back and forth behind their shelter. The liquid muzzle flashes.
“No, Wyte!” But it was too late. Wyte was shooting at them, and shooting and shooting. Bullets stitched through the dirt. Smacked into the stone of the archways.
No chance for finding common cause now. They had to get away from the front door.
“Wyte! Come on!” Shoved Wyte toward the alcove to their right. Finch dragging Dapple, who had gone silent with shock. Wyte still blazing away with his gun, gone mad with the pressure. Goading them. Laughing at them. Their confused pale faces in Finch’s confused vision like smears of fat.
Between the alcove and the archway in front of it: enough cover to get Dapple out of sight and Finch mostly out of the line of fire.
But Wyte, oblivious, was beginning to scare Finch. A fungal bullet ripped right into Wyte’s arm as he shot back at them. The bullet just stuck there. Absorbed by Wyte’s body.
Finch got off a couple shots at the Partials. Semiautomatic bucking in his hand. Smelled the acid smoke of the aftermath. None of the Partials went down. Had about ten bullets in the gun. More clips in his pockets.
But they’d still get shot to pieces. Now the double doors had opened. Rebels were firing back at the Partials. From the doors. From the dome.
Wyte jammed another bunch of sticky nodules into his gun from his right front pocket. Kept right on firing. The noise was hellacious. Wyte’s bullets made an echoing thwack sound. Finch’s a deeper crack. The Partials’ return fire was like wood popping in a fire. The smell of the fungal bullets musty and metallic.
A scream from one of the Partials. Another scream. Finch, back up against the wall, shielding Dapple, had only a partial view.