Teetered on the edge of an abyss.
Shriek’s voice brought him back: “Let it wash over you. Let it wash out of you. It’s not real. It’s like a dam breaking.”
Finch nodded. Vague resentment: How could Shriek know how it felt?
Shriek wrapped his nakedness in the blanket. Muted the strobing. A shimmer across the face. The arms.
“What now?” Finch couldn’t stop staring at himself.
“Just what Bliss gave you. Just that.”
The piece of metal was still in his jacket pocket. He handed it to Shriek.
Shriek nodded. “Perfect.”
Perfect for what? An unease in Finch. That he hadn’t thought it all through. An urge to pick up his gun and shoot Shriek.
A spark in Shriek’s eyes that originated there. Not a reflection from the light.
“What are you?” Finch asked.
A low, wheezy laugh from Shriek. As if his lungs were filled with spores.
“Just someone who knows too much.”
* * *
Finch watched Shriek assemble the metal strip. Must’ve been some button or other mechanism hidden in the symbols. Because in Shriek’s hands the strip of metal clicked, and like some kind of magician he began to pull more metal out of it. Until he had a length of metal as tall as a man. As tall as Shriek.
“Whoever created this also created the doors,” Shriek said as he worked. “But I’ve never found them. Granted, I was more interested in the gray caps.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Bliss found it. Somewhere far, far away.”
Bliss, again. Finch beyond surprise.
“What does it do?”
Shriek pulled it sideways, with a motion almost like pulling apart something soft, crumbly. A piece of bread or a biscuit. A frame began to appear.
“It focuses my abilities. Like a lens.”
When he had persuaded it into a rectangular shape, roughly door-like, Shriek knelt. Pressed the frame into the air like he was hanging a painting.
Let go of it.
It didn’t fall. Made a snapping sound and it stayed there. About two feet off the ground. No flicker or waver. Static. Solid. Still. An intense but narrow gold-green light invested the edges of the metal. Made the symbols glow. The space inside the frame continued to show the window beyond it.
“It will be a minute or two before I can leave,” Shriek said. Finch said. As Finch had watched, it had almost been like watching himself do it. A ghost watching its body move about the apartment.
“What happens next?” Finch asked.
“I complete the mission. Time doesn’t work the way we think it works. Not really. I’ll go into the HFZ to pick up the trail. From there, I will journey years and worlds away and return. An army gathered with me. I will be the beacon, the light, that guides them.”
Words came tumbling out Finch hadn’t known were there. “Why? Why do it? What does it matter to someone”—something—“so old. Who is so … removed”—alien—“from all of this.”
The intensity of his need to know shocked him.
A sad, lonely smile. “The truth? None of my books ever changed anything. Nothing I did changed anything. I always tried, and I always failed. But Bliss helped me to see that failing a hundred times didn’t mean you had to fail every time.”
“And you trust Bliss?”
“About this? Yes. Even if I am just an echo, this is the last chance.”
“It’s too late to put things right,” Finch said. “Too much has gone wrong.” Ruined neighborhoods. The vacant stares of the people from the camps. The fighting in the streets. The effects of decades of near-constant war.
“As much as they can be put right, Finch,” Shriek said.
“And after? What then?”
Shriek’s dark gaze, from a dark place. The rectangle hanging in the air like a magic trick. A terrible power. Something in between.
“After? After, I’ll be gone. Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. A pile of ashes at the base of the towers…”
“And I’ll still be here,” Finch said. It came out like an ache.
Shriek, forceful: “You are a man who did the best he could in impossible circumstances. That’s all.”
After Shriek left, he would be alone. Terribly injured. In an apartment with two dead bodies. In a war zone.
The door lit up. Became a reflecting mirror.
“I’m leaving now, Finch,” Shriek said.
“Wait!” A last burst of curiosity. “Tell me what happened. How did you end up in this apartment?”
Shriek’s features softened. “I tried something dangerous. Something impossible. I tried to use the nexus at Zamilon to go back in time. I tried to change the past so I wouldn’t have to change the future. But you can’t do that. And the past caught up with me. The attempt almost killed me.”
The door had begun to hum. An intense white light shot from it, silhouetting Shriek. The hum became a kind of unearthly music.
“And the gray cap?”
“He got caught in the door I’d made.”
“What does that mean? I don’t know what that means,” Finch said.
“You might ask yourself who Samuel Tonsure really was,” Shriek said. Then nodded at Finch, and stepped through the door. Disappeared into the light.
The light went out.
The rectangle clattered to the floor.
The metal fell in on itself.
Just a bar of metal again, as before.
Finch knew he would never be able to make it do what Shriek had done. Knew that he would never see Shriek again.
4
Sunlight. Warm against his battered face. Curled up on the couch. His ankles and wrists seemed made of broken glass. Could feel the fragile bones shifting. Sending the glass up into his arms, his legs. His whole body hurt. Ached. His jaw was sore. Couldn’t feel his nose anymore.
A vast and formless rush of city sounds from beyond the window. Sporadic gunfire. The thud and shift of something heavier. Like a giant striding across Ambergris. But distant. So distant.
Someone had applied field dressings to the stumps of finger and toe using torn fabric.
Tried to get up. A hand held him down. A voice he knew said, “Don’t get up yet.” The accent more pronounced. As if she were no longer acting.
An arm propped up his head so he could drink from a cup of water. It tasted good. Even though he had trouble getting it down. Even though it mixed with the blood inside his mouth.
Sintra’s face came into view. He looked up at her with what he knew was a stupid, childlike dependence. Everything stripped away from him. Couldn’t raise his arm far enough to wipe his eyes.
“Just lie there,” she said. An oddly clinical concern in her voice. She wore forest green. Camouflage pants and shirt. Brown boots made out of something soft. A long knife sheathed at her waist. A rifle in the crook of her left arm, muzzle pointed toward the floor.
“Sintra,” he said. Turned his stiff neck to follow her as she got up for more water. Saw again the bodies on the floor. A moment of disorientation. A man and a gray cap. Looking like they’d fallen from a great height. Except the Partial, facedown, was sporling the remains of his fungal eye out across the floor. An army of tiny, black, fernlike mushrooms with golden stems had traveled from the eye to colonize the back of his head.