I'm naked. A regulation IndoChina Mining blanket barely covers my dignity. The urge to gather up my clothes ransacks my mind, but terror has rooted me to the mattress.

The warden's pulser-finger jitters at the same rate as my heartbeat thumping at the back of my throat. Have they hurt Shiro?

The pulser's collimator ends at a familiar face. Kholed eyes, thick dark wrists, a frizzy mop haloing a neon yellow bindi. I recognise the warden who chased me out of the market alleyway a sol earlier. A little younger than me, they bubble with the fervour of a new recruit.

"State your ID number!"

Their pulser is so close. I mustn't move. I mustn't breathe. My jaws grind in an effort to report my ID number, but all that escapes from my mouth is a whimper. The warden must have pulsed Shiro, and I'm next.

They lean over me. The pulser moves to my forehead. I'm dead. I'm finally dead. Goodbye, Shiro.

A warden with a scarred lip marches over and bats the pulser away from my face, the momentum sending their tethered helmet swinging back and forth behind them. "Not yet, Jaya."

With my face no longer at risk of being peeled off my skull by pulser waves, I sink onto the mattress and clutch at blankets, a mess of shivering limbs and staccato breaths. My eyes follow the pacing warden frantically as they toss the pulser from hand to hand, heartbeats jolting in my chest each time it lands in a slippery palm.

I can't see Shiro anywhere. Judging by the absence of that characteristic odour of singed flesh from pulser shots, they haven't killed him. The revolting burning smell often permeates the air of Eris-1's market early on Firstsol mornings; the remnants of citizens' riots subdued by violent wardens. Luckily nothing but the faint smell of shade lingers in the air of the humid little 'porter cab. I send crazed prayers to Shiva-Shakti to keep Shiro safe.

The scarred warden barks, "ID number! Now!" They kick at my medical bag, upsetting the contents. Spools of bandage ribbon across the floor.

I rattle off my lens ID, my every nerve screaming in terror at what they might do to Shiro. The urge to prostrate myself against the mattress is so strong, but any sudden movements and a pulser wave will burn me to a crisp, sending me to the Goddess.

The scarred warden's eyes glaze over; they're poring through my ID data. Has this all been some elaborate ambush to capture me?

Seemingly bored by my ID details, the warden's eyes refocus. They stow the pulser into their belt with a groan, gesturing to Jaya to do the same. "Xe's just a doctor."

"Those idiots at Eris-1 hospital, sending a doctor out here to the sandflats. Do they want their employees to be gutted by smugglers?" Jaya crosses the room, their sandy boots dirtying up a blanket on the floor. They root through my medical bag. "Who did you treat here? Where did they go?"

My heart sings mantras. Shiro has escaped. I should be busy concocting the biggest lies of my life to protect Shiro and extricate myself from this 'porter before the wardens execute me, but my mind has suddenly shed all of its contents. All except for one desperate thought: Shiro must be in agony somewhere, walking on a torn ligament.

The scarred warden slides their pulser from its holster in a fluid motion and points it between my eyes. "Who was here?"

My jaws clack together. My chin trembles. I'm too afraid to lie. "I f-found a m-man here. His ankle was injured. I b-bandaged it. I th-think that IndoChina Mining immobilised this 'porter."

I've betrayed Shiro. Filth. Vampire. Parasite.

"And IndoChina is right behind us, about to retrieve it." The scarred warden peers into the cab's viewer.

My eyes follow theirs. The viewer opens onto a vespertine Eris sky painted with stars. The little disc of the Sun appears from behind wisps of methane-ice, a little larger than the twinkling pinpricks surrounding it. It's like there had never even been a storm.

It hits me then. It's Shiro who has betrayed me. He'd waited for a lull in the blizzard before abandoning me to it while I slept.

Jaya circles an arm, taking in the mattress and blankets in disarray around me. Their face crawls with disgust. "Keeping each other warm, were you?"

My mind digs deep to excavate some mangled excuse. All it finds is hot shame. "He said my hov wouldn't be safe in the storm. He said we could keep warm together... He..."

I bunch the blankets up around my neck. I'm so stupid. Shiro had lulled me to sleep and then left me in the storm to die.

The scarred warden gathers dumpling wrappers, bandages and blankets as evidence. "We didn't see a hov in the vicinity. The suspect must have stolen it to make his escape."

Of course he did. He's a much better criminal than I am. I'd always thought of myself as Eris's most cunning and calculating apex predator, stalking hospitals and alleyways for my prey. Until I met Shiro.

"Did you get his lens number?"

"He wouldn't give me his name or lens number," I lie. Neither of us had offered to exchange lens numbers, and it's not likely that Shiro is even his first name.

"Describe him."

Acerbic. Immune. Perfect.

I try to recall his face, but my mind only offers a shade-warped vision of beauty. I'd been so utterly convinced that I was about to die with Shiro that I fear that recounting his features might make me break down in tears. "He's tall and thin. And too pale. He looks ill."

Jaya grunts, "That's half the men on Eris."

I scramble into my clothes while the wardens saunter around the cab collecting Shiro's forensic breadcrumbs. I'd fallen asleep shivering in a twelve-degree chill; the cab now feels stiflingly hot. Shiro's insistence on being frugal with the heat supply had evidently kept us alive until the storm had calmed a little. A light sleeper and unused to company, I should have awoken the moment he'd stirred. I'd somehow slumbered on while he stole my hov and jettisoned me.

"Can you track your hov?" asks Jaya.

I root around the side of the mattress for my lens box and slide my lenses in, pretending to peer at some imaginary pink data scrolling through them. "My lenses can't track my hov. He must have hacked the tracker."

More lies. But hope blooms inside my corrupted heart that my lies might be just believable enough for me to be released without a pulser wave to the head.

Jaya shrugs. "If this criminal can hack a 'porter then your hov didn't stand a chance. It's his hov now."

"We're watching you, Doctor." The scarred warden pins me with a look of such disdain that I almost wish that I'd frozen to death an hour earlier. "If you insist on sex with real people, at least get their name and description before they steal your stuff."

I tilt my chin in the tiniest nod, when all I want to do is curl into a ball and scream. Shiro left me to die. He's wrecked everything. He'd probably have killed me if I'd arrived an hour earlier, before the fear of death had driven him to shade-sucking. I should be grateful that all he managed was to use me and throw me away.

That same singular buoyant thought bursts through the adrenaline, making my indignant fury ebb. Shiro's meatware is broken in the most special way. Hadn't I used him? My one chance to touch someone, and I'd jumped at it. Being close to Shiro had felt like travelling the most wondrous landscape, every part of him a new and beautiful landmark.

Shiro simply can't be ice-cold to his core. The sadness he'd felt for his sister had been so raw. He must be a kindly criminal under all that ink and shade. If I find him, I could pay him to visit Megumi Kida with me. I've saved enough money over the years. He's my one chance to cure my energy vampirism.

I dash the thought into the sandflats before it makes me cry. Shiro is nothing but an ore thief; even if I could find him, he'd never risk getting his brain opened up by Kida Biotech in a benevolent gesture to fix some murderous doctor's meatware, no matter how many Rupees I bribe him with.

"She's here." Jaya's eyes unfocus as they scroll through lens data.

Both wardens spring into action, stowing evidence and clicking helmets into place. I presume that she is IndoChina's Head of Security, undoubtedly keen to investigate how a thief managed not only to raid a 'porter for ore, but to steal the entire thing.

Unsure if they're actually expecting me to spacewalk forty clicks across the sandflats back to Eris-1, I mumble about needing a ride. By the time I've mustered the courage to ask more loudly, Jaya prods me into a corner of the cab with their pulser and sets about straightening their uniform.

The airlock hatch pops open. The wardens stand to attention as a woman steps into the cab. A tiny doll of a woman. I don't see her face under her helmet but her gait and her poise are achingly familiar.

She unclips the helmet on her tight-fitting turquoise counterpressure suit to reveal a face I know like my own. A widow's peak curves down to upturned eyes, a gummy smile, a pointed porcelain chin. Long thick hair in a messy chignon. Pink lips I wish I'd never tasted. 

Her smile falters when she sees me. She clutches at her throat. Pain twists her eyebrows. Pain caused by me.

IndoChina's new Head of Security is Ying Chen. My ex-partner. The woman I put into a coma four years ago.