olten tears blaze down Strickland’s face, already burned from the Caddy’s steam. He will not become a human again. Changing would be crawling back into the womb, voiding his whole history, confessing to a purposeless life. Impossible, no matter how badly he might want it. The monkeys shriek and he does what they say, forcing himself to look at Deus Brânquia. Mere paint, mere canvas. He stands, finds equilibrium. Yes, that’s right. If he has to, he’ll yank off another two fingers, a whole arm, his own head, anything to see the blood flow and prove which one of them is real.

Strickland passes through the splintered door into a hallway uproarious with rain, and faces the second apartment. Best to save bullets. Six or seven kicks and he’s inside. It’s worse than Lainie’s unpacked boxes. It’s a slovenly hole fit for vermin. That’s all Elisa Esposito is. The second the Negro told him how Elisa had been raised in an orphanage, he should have known. No one has ever, will ever, or should ever want her.

He follows her smell into a cluttered bedroom. The wall over the bed is covered with shoes, many of which, to his shame, he recognizes. His cock responds, and he wants to rip it off the same as he did his fingers. Maybe later, when he comes back to watch the whole building burn. Deus Brânquia’s smell is thick here, too. He hurries to the bathroom, finds a tub varnished in luminous scales. Little air-freshener trees cover every inch of wall. What in the holy hell happened here? The idea he’s beginning to form disgusts him.

Strickland teeters into the main room. His vision spirals. They’re not here. Somehow the asset got away. The Beretta grows heavy in his hand. It pulls him to the right, to the right, in one circle, then another. He’s spinning. The detritus of Elisa’s world, the world he once wanted, swirls into an ugly brown. He glimpses something, has just enough sense left to notice it. He has to jam the gun against a rattletrap table to halt the nauseating rotations.

A day-by-day calendar. Inked across today’s date are the words MIDNIGHT—THE DOCKS. Strickland checks the clock above the table. Not quite twelve. There’s still time. Still time if he can stop spinning, if he can run in a straight line. He snatches a phone from its cradle on the table, dials with a finger that looks long and insectile next to its missing brethren. Fleming picks up. Strickland tries to tell him to divert the containment crew, coming all the way from Occam, to the docks just down the street. He can’t tell if his instruction succeeds. His voice no longer sounds like his own.

“****** ******** ** *** *****! ******* **** *** ******! ***, ***, ***!”