Finch by Jeff VanderMeer Read Online Free PDF Page A

call could turn into
disaster. A disaster could go away overnight.
    Wyte leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. Red stains on
the shirt's underarms.
    Finch had known Wyte for more than twenty years. They'd fought in
the wars together. Known the same people before the Rising. Played darts
at the pub. Had drinks. Sudden gut-punching vision: of his girlfriend
back then, a slender brunette who'd worked as a nurse. Laughing at
some joke Wyte had made one night, the days of Comedian Wyte now
long past except for the occasional flare-up that just made it worse.
    Some cosmic mistake or cruelty, to work cases together when Finch
had once worked for Wyte as a courier for Hoegbotton. Each a reminder
to the other of better times. Since then, Wyte's wife Emily had left
him. He'd taken up in a crappy apartment just north of the station.
Never saw his two daughters. They'd been smuggled out to relatives
in Stockton before the Rising. Finch couldn't work out how old they
might be now.
    Someday Wyte will be a silhouette on the horizon. Someone familiar
made distant.
    And Wyte sensed it.
    "You can help with the fieldwork going forward, Wyte," Finch said.
If you don't become the fieldwork.
    "No problem. Be happy to."
    "I'll put my notes in order," Finch said, "and after I use the memory
bulbs, we'll start in on it. Tomorrow."
    Wyte wasn't listening anymore. Gaze far away. Disengaged. Apocalyptic
thoughts? Or maybe he was just registering the inside of the building. They all conducted an unspoken war against the station. It tried to
make them forget its strangeness. They tried not to forget.

    Finch turned back to his desk and started sorting through the mess.
Hadn't organized it in a week. Hadn't had the energy.
    Mirror. Pills to protect against infection. Spore mask for purified
breathing. Writing pad. Pencils. Telephone. Broken telephone.
Folders on open crimes. Folders on closed crimes. Paper clips across
the bottom of drawers. A list he'd made of complaints from people
who had called him, thinking he could help. Usually he couldn't.
    Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some
good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could
strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies
that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens.
    But the truth was he'd been tired, had stopped caring. Broken
down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his
past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too
late: he was trapped.
    "I'm not a detective."
    Heretic: "You're whatever we want you to be, now."
    If he just left one day, what would happen to Wyte? To his other
friends? To Sintra?
    And: Did they know about Sintra?
    Nothing seemed missing from his desk. Still, a good idea to take stock.
Lots of things disappeared during the night, or were replaced by mimics.
More than one detective had screamed, picking up a pencil that was not
a pencil. Finch took out the piece of paper he'd found in the dead man's
hands. Placed it in front of him. What could the words mean? Finch took
out a writing pad, scrawled
    Never Lost.
    Bellum omnium contra omnes
    across the top. Stared at the strange symbol. It looked oddly like a
baby bird to him.

    Randomly ripped from a book to write on? Or something more?
Abandoned the question. Wrote:
    two bodies
    fell
    Thought about the Partial, daring to contradict Heretic. Heretic's
secret amusement. What did that mean? At least he knew what
Heretic on the scene meant: the gray cap must suspect the case had
some connection to the rebels and their elusive commander, the Lady
in Blue. She who was now larger than the city and yet not of the city.
Most saw her hand in any act that seemed to cause the gray caps grief.
Although such acts of resistance seemed rarer and rarer. Some thought
she didn't exist. Or was dead.
    The trapped rebel soldiers. The Lady in Blue.
    Was the fate of either