(Note: Aula's speech is now normal. The surgery in previous chapters will be changed later on.)

Aula walks into the command module at 6 am on the dot. Chatter echoes from the Cubby down the hall. Nakamura and Ward are already present. A video is replaying on one of the laptops. They both look up and for all their composure, neither one expects it to be her. Ward moves to close the laptop, but Aula holds up her hand.

"It's okay."

Nakamura studies her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He presses play.

It shows Aula trying to manoeuvre with some grace over the MAF's railing. She shuffles along its outer hull in the bulky Z-1. Regolith puffs around her boots as she shifts position. It's absolutely dark behind her. None of the soft blue earthglow is visible on camera. The meteorite gleams beside her like scorched iron.

"I see a breach in the fuel line."

"So do we. Mind stepping back for us?"

She places one bulky glove on the bumper. "Cop—"

A tiny bloom of white vapour. That's it. Her suit's profile goes still. A garbled half-word over comm. She slowly teeters off-balance. The first sign of life is her reaching for the pole. Her glove tips brush against it. Then she falls into absolute darkness.

"Al?"

The camera jerks forward. Harvey braces himself against the railing to keep from going over. His lights show cutouts of the MAF as he follows her tether down. Her boots appear first, smudged dark grey with dust. Her legs jut at odd angles because the suit's air pressure. Her arms stick out in the same way. She swings on the tether and hits the MAF's shield. Her PLSS takes the brunt of it, but the impact ripples through the Z-1.

"Al."

A gagging sound. A splatter. Like someone dumping water onto concrete. She hits the shield again. No reaction this time. No twitch, no sound, nothing. Her visor is hidden by the shadows cast by her legs.

"What's going on up there?" Bauer asks.

"Al fell off," Harvey says with sudden professional calm. "She's not responding."

Hinton's voice is curt, but equally calm. "We still have vitals."

"Copy." The camera swings towards the MAF as Kalashnikoff lopes to his side. "Kal, help me bring her in. Ben, I need you to prep the SEVs."

"Prepping the cars. Out."

Harvey and Kalashnikoff grab the tether like they're playing a tug-of-war and start bring it in. Their breaths huff against the mic and create bursts of static. Aula's boots surface into the light. They grasp her left leg and arm and haul her over the railing. Then they get a good look at her visor. It's almost completely obscured by dark blood spatter. Frost glitters on one side of her helmet.

Kalashnikoff hisses through his teeth. "Pisdets."

"We've got ice, Rob."

It takes three long seconds for Hinton to answer. "Check for punctures. We're reading a decrease in suit pressure."

"Wilco."

Big white gloves press against the Z-1's soft spots: arms, legs, and hands. Anything meant to move. Harvey grasps her hand and she jerks to life. Two startled inhalations crackle over the comm.

"Bleeding," she gurgles.

"We know." Harvey squeezes her hand. "Tell us where."

Aula makes another splattering sound. "Air."

The video pauses. Nakamura and Ward look to her for a reaction.

She crosses her arms and shrugs. "What's the plan?"

"Rest," Ward says.

"Ugh."

Ward actually laughs. It's a warm, contagious sound that lightens the air.

"Major, I know how important this work is to you. If our positions were reversed, I would feel the same." Nakamura glances at the computer screen. "But this is not something we can afford to minimize."

Cold sweat sprouts across Aula's back. "I've no intention of becoming a burden. You'll have my best."

"We all know you'll push yourself past your best." He looks at her with an odd tilt to his mouth. It's not a smile, but somehow it softens his face. "No one doubts that. But consider the possibility that your well-being is more important."

"Of course. Part of not becoming a burden is recognizing my limits and operating within them."

Ward bows her head. Her hands are tightly clasped in front of her waist. Nakamura winces. It's a quick twitch of his right eye, but there it is. Aula realizes they're embarrassed for her. Because what she's saying sounds an awful lot like begging and—she can't deny that. She can't even stop herself from pushing forward.

"I understand. I do. The success of this program is more important to me than personal ambition." Aula abruptly thinks of Kelly and her line of decommissioned astronaut suits. "Someone will always pick up the torch."

The admission nearly clamps her throat shut. This is a sacrifice that's seldom talked about. Everyone knows the cost of going into space. Putting your life on the line for science and species. The flip side is that you have to know when to bow out and let someone more capable take your place.

And while she believes that, she also believes saying it might help sway things in her favour. Which is utterly selfish and self-serving, but she keeps her mouth shut and waits.

"Your scheduled an extra hour's rest," Ward says. "Please use it."

Aula nods heavily and walks back to her room. She shuts the door, looks at the pictures on her wall, and then sits in the middle of the room with her lights off. No one comes after her. Harvey's sixth sense doesn't pull him here. She's alone. After nearly ten minutes of strained listening, her solitude feels secure. She covers her face with her hands, paces her breath to be as quiet as possible, and waits for her emotions to crest.

They don't.

A wide, hard-packed tension pulls on the muscles in her neck and back. Her breath sounds like a saw against her palms. The one time she has time to herself, she can't find the release valve. There's no relief. She lays back on the floor to try and stretch her muscles. She sits up again and tries to meditate. She stretches, poses, and postures in all the ways that all the experts told her to. Nothing helps. Her body is bedrock. Crushed. She doesn't have to look in a mirror to know her expression is blank.

Sophie commented on it sometimes. That was hard.

And alone in the dark, Aula can finally admit to herself that she lost something after ILUB-1.

A part of her is out there somewhere. Frozen in some crevice near the pole like Ziva. Like Sam. She came back to prove that she can. Going back to ILUB-1 for closure is shit. She wants a do-over. A chance to get her own back. And for the first time, she has to admit that she can never get it back. Whatever that piece is, whatever part of herself crumpled into the dark alongside ILUB-1, that's never coming back. And there's nothing she can do about it. And there's nothing she can say.

She's as powerless up here as she is on Earth. Without the MAF, ILUB-1 is just as unreachable. The only way back is in her head. And that....

She does remember.

Somebody shoves her. That's her first thought. Aula instinctively puts her hands up to brace her fall. She hits the regolith and everything goes dark. Dust sticks to her visor. Makes a little eclipse inside her suit.

"ILUB-1, Reed. What was that?"

No answer.

This is the starfish thing all over again. Aula groans and pushes herself off the regolith. It's hard to gauge with her visor obscured, but she uses her suit lights to eyeball it. The first try isn't hard enough. The second is successful. She gives a harder push and the Moon falls away from her visor. Her boots catch on solid regolith. She nearly overdoes it, but some expert hopping prevents her from falling over backwards. It takes a few tries to wipe the dust off her visor. Most of it snags on her gloves instead, but she'll take visibility over clean hands any day.

The EMU lights create two overlapping cutouts of the regolith. Clouds of dust slowly roil towards the surface. It looks like some creature disturbed sand at the bottom of the ocean. The lunar shadow is absolute. So deep and black as to lack any dimension. It's disorienting. Where are the base lights?

Aula shuffles around towards ILUB-1. Her suit's lights catch on more skiffs in the regolith.

Then a hand.

An arm.

A face.

Sam.