The water runs clear.
I dry my hands. Check the time.
Twenty-three hours until Dexter's assessment is due.
Forty-eight hours until we deploy.
Six years since I learned what I'm worth in someone's equation.
I pull out the box I keep under my bunk. The one I've never opened on station, the one I brought from three postings ago and carried through everything.
Inside: mission patches. A cracked comm unit. A photograph.
The unit. All of us. Before.
Dexter is in the photograph. Younger. Smiling. His hand is on my shoulder.
I remember when it was taken. Two weeks before Sigma-9. After a successful operation, celebrating in the grimy bar on whatever station we were staging from. Someone made a joke. He laughed. His hand settled on my shoulder like it belonged there.
I was twenty-four. I thought I had time to figure out what that touch meant.
I didn't.
My door chimes.
I know who it is. The timing is too late, the station too quiet. Past midnight cycle. No one visits at this hour unless it's emergency or stupidity.
I check the camera anyway.
Dexter. Standing in my corridor like he has a right to be there.
I should ignore it. Let him stand there until he gets the message. Let him learn that some doors don't open twice.
I palm the panel instead.
The door slides open. He's still in his tacticalgear, marks pulsing faint along his temples. Reading me. Tasting the copper-ice that's become my signature.
"This is a bad idea," I say.
"I know."
"You should go."
"I know that too."
He doesn't move. Neither do I.
The photograph is still on my desk. Visible from the door. His eyes find it, hold.
Something crosses his face. Something that might be pain.
"We were good," he says. Quiet. The resonance in his voice doing things to my chest I refuse to name. "Before."
"Before you left me to die."
"Before that. Yes."
The honesty is killing me.
