“Scared of dying, though, I guess,” Sevgi said snappishly.

“Yeah, and that’s part of your problem. See, Colony are a real bunch of thugs, but they can’t actually kill you, except maybe by accident. But the people Gutierrez works for, the familias—now, that’s a whole other skyline. If they think he’s talked, or even that he might talk, then they got no problem putting him away. None at all, and he knows that. So yeah, Gutierrez is scared of dying, just like anybody else. But you’ve got to be able to deliver on the threat.”

They sat for a couple of moments, facing the dead LCLS screen. Sevgi looked across at Rovayo.

“You mind giving us a couple of minutes?” she asked.

“No,” he said, as soon as they were alone.

“I’m not saying—”

“I know exactly what you’re saying, and you can just fucking forget it. They’re on Mars, Ertekin. You saw the footage. You think I can scare Gutierrez any worse than that from two hundred fifty million kilometers out?”

“Yes,” she said steadily. “I think you can.”

He shook his head. Voice creased with irritation. “Oh, based on what?”

“Based on the fact you and Gutierrez have history. I’m a cop, Marsalis. Eleven years in, so give me some fucking credit, why don’t you. I saw the way you were when his name popped out of the n-djinn scan. I saw the way you watched him up on that screen just now.” She drew a deep breath, let it go. “Gutierrez wired you to wake up midway home on Felipe Souza, didn’t he?”

“Did he?” Now there was nothing in his voice at all.

“Yeah, he did.” Gathering certainty, the way he sat like stone. “It’s too much of a coincidence, you and Merrin. The way I figure it, you did some kind of deal with Gutierrez for the lottery win, but Gutierrez didn’t like his end when it paid off. He sent you home with a little farewell kick. Fuck with your head, wake you up out there and hope you maybe go insane before recovery can get to you. That how it was?”

He rolled his head toward her on the back of the seat, looked at her, and suddenly for the first time in days she was afraid of him again.

“Well, you’re the cop,” he said tonelessly. “You got it all worked out, what do you need me for?”

She threw herself to her feet, paced toward the screen and turned to look back at him. Told herself it was not a retreat.

“What I need you for is to look at Gutierrez like you just looked at me. Look him in the eye and tell him you’ll kill him if he doesn’t tell us what we need to know.”

“That standard operating procedure for the NYPD these days, is it?”

She was back in the field, upstate New York at dawn and the gagging stench of disinterred flesh. The speculative stare of the IA detectives.

“Fuck you.”

“See. I can’t even scare you. And you’re right here in the room with me. How am I going to scare Gutierrez on Mars?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Talking about the mythos, right? You think that because Gutierrez was a thirteen aficionado, he bought in to this whole implacable gene-warrior bullshit that goes with it. But it’s Mars, Sevgi. It’s hundreds of millions of kilometers of empty fucking space and no way to cross it without a license. Don’t you understand what that does to all those fucking human imperatives Jacobsen goes on about? What it does to love and loyalty, and trust, and revenge? Mars isn’t just another world, it’s another fucking life. What happens there, stays there. You come back, you leave it behind. It’s like a dream you wake up from. Gutierrez helped send me home. He isn’t going to believe in a million years that I’d go back there just to kill him for what he did, let alone just to shake him down for you people.”

“He might believe you’d order it done. Pay for someone else to do it at the other end.”

“Someone who isn’t scared of the familias?”

She hesitated a beat. “There are options that—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t doubt COLIN could rustle up a hit squad for me if your pal Norton makes the right calls. But I do my own killing, and Gutierrez knows that. I can’t fake him out on that one. And Sevgi, you know what? Even if I thought I could do it—I won’t.”

The last word grated in his mouth, like braking on gravel. Sevgi felt her expression congeal. “Why not?”

“Because this is bullshit. We are being led around by the dick here, and it’s got nothing to do with what may or may not have happened back on Mars. We are looking in the wrong places.”

“I am not going back to Arequipa.”

“Well then, let’s start closer to home. Like maybe looking a little harder at your pal Norton.”

Quiet dripped into the room. Sevgi folded her arms and leaned against the back of a chair.

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “Work it out for yourself. Who else knew where I was sleeping in New York the morning the skaters jumped us? Who called you the same time we were getting hijacked on the way to Arequipa? Who dragged us all the way back here to look at a fucking four-month-drowned lead when we were just about to start getting somewhere?”

“Oh,” She gestured helplessly. “Fuck off, Marsalis. Coyle was right, this is pure thirteen paranoia.”

“Is it?” Marsalis came to his feet with a jolt. He stalked toward her. “Think about it, Ertekin. Your n-djinn searches have failed. They didn’t find the link between Ward and Merrin, they didn’t find Gutierrez. Everything we’ve found since I started shaking the tree points to a cover-up, and Norton is ideally placed to pull it off. He’s fucking perfect for it.”

“You shut the fuck up, Marsalis.” Sudden rage. “You know nothing about Tom Norton. Nothing!”

“I know men like him.” He was in her face, body so close she seemed to feel the warmth coming off it. “They were all over the Osprey project from as young as I can remember. They dress well and they talk soft and they smile like they’re doing it for the society pages. And when the time comes, they’ll order the torture and slaughter of women and children without blinking because at core they do not give a shit about anything but their own agenda. And you, you people hand control over to them every fucking time, because in the end you’re just a bunch of fucking sheep looking for an owner.”

“Yeah, well.” The anger shifted, sluggish in her guts. Intuitive reflex, maybe the years with Ethan, told her how to use it, kept her voice nailed-down detached. “If they ran Osprey, then I’d say you people handed over control to them pretty neatly, too.”

It was like pulling a plug.

You can feel a good shot, an NYPD firearms instructor told her once, early on in training. Like you and the target and the gun and the slug are all part of this one mechanism. Shoot like that, you’ll know you’ve hit the guy before you even see him go down.

Like that. The anger drained almost visibly out of Marsalis. Though he didn’t move at all, somehow he seemed to step away.

“I was eleven,” he said quietly.

And then he did walk away, without looking back, and closed the door and left her alone with the dead LCLS screen.