A dull gray lump of realization congeals in her throat. Experimentally, she turns back to the board and trips the next surveillance cam in the chain. The seabed conduit winds on towards a distant hazy geometry of backlit shadows.

Walsh tugs at her shoulder, nuzzles from behind. "Ladies' choice. Limited time offer, expires soon…"

Next cam.

"Come on, Len—"

Atlantis. A small knot of rifters has accreted at the junction of two wings, nowhere near any of the assigned surveillance stations. They appear to be taking measurements of some kind. Some of them are laden with strange cargo.

Walsh has fallen silent. The lump in Clarke's throat metastasizes.

She turns. Kevin Walsh has backed away, a mixture of guilt and defiance on his face.

"You gotta give her a chance, Len," he says. "I mean, you gotta be more objective about this…"

She regards him calmly. "You asshole."

"Oh right," he flares. "Like anything I ever did mattered to you."

She grabs the disconnected pieces of her diveskin. They slide around her body like living things, fusing one to another, sealing her in, sealing him out, welcome liquid armor that reinforces the boundary between us and them.

Only there is no us, she realizes. There never was. And what really pisses her off is that she'd forgotten that, that she never even saw this coming; even privy to her lover's brainstem, even cognizant of all the guilt and pain and stupid masochistic yearning in there, she hadn't picked up on this imminent betrayal. She'd sensed his resentment, of course, and his hurt, but that was nothing new. When it came right down to it, outright treachery just didn't make enough of a difference in this relationship to register.

She doesn't look at him as she descends to the airlock.

Kevin Walsh is one fucked-up little boy. It's just as well she never got too attached.

Their words buzz back and forth among the shadows of the great structure: numbers, times, shear stress indices. A couple of rifters carry handpads; others fire click-trains of high-frequency sounds through acoustic rangefinders. One of them draws a big black X at some vital weak spot.

How did Ken put it? For concealment, not effect. Obviously they aren't going to make that mistake again.

They're expecting her, of course. Walsh didn't warn them—not on the usual channels, anyway— but you can't sneak up on the fine-tuned.

Clarke pans the company. Nolan, three meters overhead, looks down at her. Cramer, Cheung, and Gomez accrete loosely around them. Creasy and Yeager—too distant for visual ID, but clear enough on the mindline—are otherwise occupied some ways down the hull.

Nolan's vibe overwhelms all the others: where once was resentment, now there's triumph. But the anger—the sense of scores yet to be settled— hasn't changed at all.

"Don't blame Kev," Clarke buzzes. "He did his best." She wonders offhand how far Nolan went to secure that loyalty.