The door jams half-way open. Mig has to push twice before it gives. He closes it and engages the lock. Inside is dim and humid. The smell of vomit still lingers in the air. Olivia sits naked in her chair, legs crossed at the ankles, arms slack.

"Is that your blood?"

He looks down at his suit. "No."

She taps the computer screen. Light starts flashing across her face. "Who's is it?"

"Mike's."

"Mike's," she says as if sampling a new food. "Is he dead?"

"No."

The screen goes dark. She taps it again and light flares against her eyes. Mig slowly walks towards her and stops at arm's reach. Her nakedness has texture now. Taste. Weight and warmth. The fine hairs on her body glow like filaments. He watches an outline form along her shoulder to the slope of her breasts.

"Watch," she says and taps the computer screen again.

A young white woman appears. She's gauzy in static. Ghostly. The kill feed is showing its age. Her eyes glint like wet stones. Her mouth is a dark pixelated circle. She turns slowly, frame by frame, her hands slowly rising.

"Stop!"

His own voice is low, dragged out. The muzzle of his AK-580 rises into camera shot. Slow flashes. Olivia's mother jerks once, twice, three times. Deep red blisters burst across her chest. Her hair streams across her face as she falls in increments. Second by second.

Olivia looks at him, then taps the screen again. The feed resets with her mother standing. This time it's split into two images. One in natural light, one in enhanced vision. The scene plays over again. Her mother turns. Alien. Eyes and mouth white with heat, fine details chiselled into the warmth radiating off her skin. An angled black outline eclipses the rainbow of her waist. Long barrel. Thick stock. A Mossberg 950.

"Stop!"

Her hands keep rising. The Mossberg aligns with Mike's bent bright head.

The AK-580's barrel breaches the camera's horizon. Perfectly round and black. It flares the whitest white. Flash, flash, flash. Olivia's mother jerks back with every shot. Her blood creates pearlescent mist in the air. Gliding, glimmering, and finally fading.

The feed stops at the same frame. One image of her mother armed, the other unarmed. Olivia stares at the screen, her eyes full of light.

"Not a single pixel out of place," she murmurs. "It's a perfect scan."

He steps into the bathroom. The tub's still there, as are Olivia's clothes. Drying puddles of water trail across the floor. He lifts the bath and pours the grey water down the toilet where it'll be treated and recycled. He tries to fold it back up, but it won't cooperate. It juts, refuses to bend, creaks in his palms. A red flex of rage snaps tight in his jaw. He throws it against the wall. It clacks against the stone and collapses on the floor. It's too light to make a satisfying impact, too resilient to break. He drags both hands across his scalp and crouches down. His eyes burn in their sockets. He grinds the heels of his palms against them. The darkness behind his eyelids flashes under the pressure. He imagines it's vitreous humor that seeps out from under the edges of his hands. Warm, salted with blood, tasting of some distant terrestrial sea.

Quiet footsteps pad unsteadily behind him.

"I spent 25 years trying to set that right." He lets his hands fall away and stares at the crumpled tub. "Wasted."

"You've started drinking again."

He leans his head against his knuckles. "Just take the bounty, Olive."

"Someone made that scan," she snaps. "How can you let that go?"

"Something like this is never straight. We're not talking a skimmer crew. A lot of time and terra went into that."

"What's the alternative? You keep bawling in your corner and I wait in line every week to hear what I could do if I could only afford it?" She waits for him to say something. When he doesn't, she exhales raggedly. "I just watched you kill my mom and I still needed you to undress me."

He shuts his eyes.

"I had two families, Mig. I need to find justice for at least one of them before I die."

He opens his eyes again and studies the walls. The bands of colour wrap around the room, mark sedimentation and changes in climate. Mars had been like Earth, once. It had broad salt lakes that appeared, evaporated, and reappeared until the atmosphere thinned to near vacuum.

"Supposed to have a better life. New start."

"You killed my mom." Her voice has a gummed quality to it. "And I don't even have the luxury of hating you."

"Wouldn't hold it to you if you did."

She makes a disgusted noise. Her footsteps pad away, quiet as rain on glass.

The tub sits half-folded in the alcove. He gets to his knees and picks it up. The hinges are reluctant to bend. He lays it flat and starts over. Mike's blood flakes off every time he flexes his fingers. An ache builds in his legs and pushes up into his back. He straightens up and his spine makes a series of pops.

Olivia's clothes are still folded where he left them. When he reenters the main room, she sits on her bed staring at the computer. A double image of her mother is held onscreen. Both dead. He walks to his side and looks at the rumpled sheets. Her scent is still there.

"Always needed you," he admits quietly. "You had a goal and you pushed for it. Most people don't know how to push like that. Never had to cling to the edge like you did. I know what to do when you're here."

A long silence hangs in the air. Olivia's spindly silhouette shifts slightly.

He turns the seal on his gloves one at a time. They unlock from the torso of his suit. His fingernails are split and bruised from moving against the glove.

"Operations like this take time, information, money." He starts on the hard upper torso of his suit and lays it out on his bed. "You could spend the rest of your life chasing this and find nothing. Or find something and die for it."

Hair tumbles over her shoulder when she turns her head. "I'm not a coward. Don't ask me to be."

He takes Ellie's SIG out of his pouch and examines it. Compact, light-weight, and resistant to jamming. Regolith is hard on anything mechanical. He walks to the other side of the sheet. Olivia's eyes dart to the gun, then up to his face.

"Cowardice isn't the problem," he says. "It's conscience. Killing someone breaks your life into a before and after."

She meets his gaze without blinking. "Can you get my clothes, please?"

"Alright." He grabs her hand and shoves the SIG into it. "It's loaded."

Olivia knows the basics. Most Martians do by the time they're ten. She checks the safety, keeps her finger away from the trigger guard, and points the barrel at the floor. It looks awkward in her grip. A broken twig in a talon.

"Take in the weight. What it can do."

Her eyes shift slightly to look at the screen behind him. "I know what it can do."

"Then imagine doing that to another human being." He pauses in the archway. "Because that's where this can go at any time. You have to be willing to kill for this, Olive. To get others killed."

"They're my parents," she says softly and rubs her thumb against the SIG's slide.

He lowers his eyes, then steps back into the bathroom. Her clothes bear his awkward stitching. Closing wounds doesn't transfer perfectly to closing seams, but they make do. Martian fashion is simple, pragmatic, and paramilitary. He carries her things back to her bed. She still stares at the gun laying across her palms.

"Here." He holds his hand out. She surrenders the SIG grip-first. He checks the safety, then pushes it back into his pouch.

She slowly stands up and puts her hand on the back of his neck. He grabs her underwear and bends down. The ritual starts all over again. She leans on him and puts one leg through, then the other. Her hip brushes against his ear. If he turns his head, his nose will graze her navel. He keeps his head bent down and reaches for her pants. The process is the same. She looks down at him, her hair dangling like a curtain.

Two high beeps come from his helmet. The encrypted frequency. He straightens up and hands Olivia her bra. She slides it on herself, but he has to bring the hooks through the eyes. His knuckles graze her back, which is warm and tense. The images of her mother are just visible over her shoulder. Two more high beeps. He lifts her shirt and offers it to her. She pushes her arms through sleeves, then slowly pulls it over her head. Each movement is slow, choreographed, and uncomfortable.

When the beeps come a third time, he taps the control module on his wrist. "Make it quick."

No one speaks on the other end.

Mig looks at the computer screen. An automatic ping eclipses Olivia's mother and traces the signal beyond New Shanidar. He startles when Olivia pulls away from him and sits back down. Her long fingers dart across the cushioned gel interface beneath the main screen. The map in an old satellite composite she hacked out of the UN's local network. It zooms in on a small structure. The view from overhead makes it more difficult to identity, but he knows of the place. Everyone does. Rain's crew uses it as an outpost. Olivia looks up at him, her mouth pressed to a grey line.

"Now we truly see each other," Aiko says. "Hello Samuel."