Elias Thorne died on a Tuesday.He woke up on a Wednesday, on a steel table, naked under a thin sheet, with a tag tied to his big toe that had his own name on it.That was the first thing that pissed him off.The second thing was the cold. It went through the sheet and into his ribs like it had somewhere to be. He sat up too fast, coughed hard enough to see stars, and tasted copper.Something warm ran down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand.Blood. His blood. Red and wet and very, very alive."Okay," he croaked. "That's not right."The room answered with the hum of a refrigeration unit and buzzing lights. Steel drawers lined one wall.He turned the tag over with two shaking fingers.THORNE, ELIAS. Time of death: 11:42 p.m. Tuesday.Last night.He remembered rain. He remembered headlights swinging across his windshield on the Corliss Street bridge, too bright and too fast. He remembered a sound that wasn't really a sound, more like the whole world folding in half.After th

They came out of the dark like a cork out of a bottle.One second Elias was falling. The next he was airborne, and then he hit something wide and flat and papery, and a thousand sheets of paper exploded into the air."Ow," he told the ceiling. "Fuck. Ow. Fucking ow."Boone landed beside him on both boots, dusted off his duster, and straightened his hat. Show-off.Elias lay on his back on what turned out to be a desk. Above him, an enormous iron-framed glass roof let in gold light, and beyond it hung a sky the color of a peach going bad. A clock the size of a wagon wheel dangled from the rafters. Its hands were spinning backward.The air smelled like rain on hot pavement and old library books, a smell he couldn't place and somehow already liked.He sat up slowly.The room was an old train station, or it had been once. Marble floor. Brass railings. Arched windows taller than houses. But instead of ticket counters, there were desks, hundreds of them, in crooked rows, and every desk had s

"Escaped memories leave a trail," Vega said, stubbing out a cigarette that immediately relit itself. "Silver dust. Only Patrol badges can see it. Boone, take the rookie and follow the fucking thing.""Follow it where?""Wherever it goes, Thorne. That's what following means." She pointed her cigarette at his chest. "And listen. If it gets ugly, you burn Scraps and nothing else. Fragments hurt like a bitch, and I'm not carrying your ass back.""Got it. Scraps only.""Say it like you mean it.""Scraps only!""Rule one of tailing," Boone said, already halfway up the stairs. "We watch. We don't fucking touch. Understood, partner?""Sure. Watch. Don't touch. Easy."Boone gave him a look that said he'd heard that exact sentence from a hundred dead rookies.They came up through the crack in the ceiling the same way the memory had, through a maze of pipes and stone, and popped out into a street.Elias stopped walking.He'd expected an afterlife with clouds and harps. Instead, the city sprawled

"Five hours," Vega said, slapping a wall clock that ran backward. "Five fucking hours till dawn. Somebody give me a plan, and it had better not be stupid."Vega's office was crowded. Elias sat in the middle, still holding the marble. Boone leaned against the wall with a bandage on his shoulder. Beside him stood the mullet guy from the hall, who had finally introduced himself as Dale Kowalski, died 1987, cause of death: a bad burrito at a Sizzler."Simple," Dale said, spinning a chair around and straddling it backward. "We walk in the front door of the Bureau, hand Pell the marble, and he gives us the old lady. Everybody goes home.""Dale," said Boone. "That is the dumbest goddamn thing I've heard all week.""It's a classic!""It's a fucking hostage exchange with the people who kidnapped her, you asswipe. The second he's got the marble, he stamps all four of us and files us under Never Existed.""Okay, so we don't give him the real marble."Everyone looked at him."What?" Dale shrugged

Vega's office had a door, and she shut it behind them with a click that sounded like a gun being cocked.Elias stood in front of her desk. Boone leaned against the filing cabinet. Through the glass wall, the whole precinct was watching them and whispering, and none of it reached the room.Vega didn't sit. She pulled the folded page out of her jacket, smoothed it flat on the desk, and stared at the pencil scrawl.SHE KNOWS."Well?" said Elias. "Do you?""Do I what?""Know.""Know what, Thorne? That's the fucking question." She stabbed a finger at the paper. "I've been called 'she' by a lot of people in a lot of decades. Could be me. Could be some other bitch on this list. Could be a joke.""It's a pretty shitty joke.""Most of them are." She exhaled smoke that hung in the air like a question. "Here's what I know. Somebody in the Bureau wants every cop in Halfway erased. Somebody in the Patrol wrote a note in the margin. I don't know who either of them is, and until I do, this precinct