The door at the bottom of the stairs is unlocked, which tells me Finch is either very confident or very armed.
Turns out it's both.
The shotgun is in my face before I get both feet in the water.
The water is ankle-deep and faintly blue and I decide not to think about what makes it that color.
Huxley "Half-Dose" Finch is tall and thin as a stripped wire.
His eyes are hidden behind thick jeweler's goggles and his hands are more steel than skin, three prosthetic fingers on each hand that move with a faint whir when he breathes.
He looks like a man running a fifteen-year sleep deficit on industrial-grade stimulants.
His lab behind him is a beautiful disaster, copper coils and boiling beakers everywhere, the smell of something precise and dangerous in the air.
"The sign said no walk-ins," he says.
"Couldn't read it. Literate, but selective."
His eyes sharpen. "Who are you and what do you want? I've got three active titrations going and none of them are patient."
I drop Vance's saddlebags onto the nearest dry surface.
His goggles find the bags immediately and his whole posture changes, not relaxing exactly, but recalibrating.
"Those are Vance's markings," he says.
"They were. He's dead."
"Who killed him?"
"Me."
He looks at me over the goggles. Something moves behind his eyes that I can't read.
"Vance and I had an arrangement," he says carefully. "Not a friendly one. More of a professional tolerance."
He sets the shotgun down on the edge of a table, not putting it away, just giving his hands something else to do. "You want something. Nobody walks into a basement like this without wanting something."
"Goliath adrenal extract. Stage Four. Fresh."
Complete silence. Even the bubbling beakers seem to quiet down.
"Son," he says, "that is either the most ambitious thing I've heard this year or the stupidest. I haven't decided which."
"The bags for the information. And a tool to pull the gland in under five seconds."
"Pull it from what, exactly? The thing'll be dead by then. GADX-147 breaks down in ten minutes after the host dies. You know what that means?"
"Live extraction," I say.
He pulls his goggles up onto his forehead. Without them his eyes are red-rimmed and sharp, the eyes of a man who sees everything and files it away.
"You've got the Blight," he says. Not a question. "Stage Three by the look of your jaw. Maybe further."
I don't confirm it. I don't deny it.
"The Sump-Pits," he says finally, something giving way in his voice. "Graft-Gangs run an underground fighting ring. They use Goliaths. They keep the beasts maxed on adrenaline before slaughter for premium gland yield." He goes to a cabinet, rummages, and comes back with something wrapped in canvas. "Which means your window is when the thing is half a second from dead but still breathing."
He unwraps it on the table. Iron body, pneumatic mechanism, a blade and needle combined into something that looks like it was designed by someone who genuinely hates the concept of mercy.
"Marrow-Extractor," he says. "Drive the blade in, pull the trigger. Two seconds. Miss and it'll crush you like a tin can." He looks at me. "How do you get in the Pits?"
"How?" I ask.
"Find a Graft-Gang enforcer. Red collar. Hit him." He almost smiles. "They'll take you down for free."
I pick up the Extractor and test the weight.
"Don't come back," he adds, going back to his titrations. "I still don't do walk-ins."