Bradley commanded herself not to cry, and the tears began streaming from her eyes.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told him. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I only feel your face.”

He pressed her hand against his cheek for several more seconds, his eyes radiant with that terrible intensity.

Then he relaxed his grip on her, let her pull back.

“All right,” he said. “Listen well, scientist. I’m going to tell you something you’ll surely wish to remember. . . .”

Cold Corners Base

Nimec entered the water-treatment dome, strode to its central platform, asked the group working on the pump where he could find the man he was seeking, and was pointed in his direction.

“You Mark Rice?” Nimec said, approaching him from behind.

The man glanced up over his shoulder and nodded. He was crouched at a warped metal pipe-coupling near the platform, a small plasma cutter in his hand, a welding helmet and mask covering his head.

“I’d like to talk,” Nimec said. “When you’ve got a minute.”

“Got one right now.”

Rice switched off the torch, rose, carefully set it down on the wheeled tool cart beside him, turned off the oxygen supply to his face mask, and raised its glass hatch.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

Nimec looked at him. A few spikes of hair showed over Rice’s brow, sweaty despite the penetrating cold inside the dome. They were blond with dyed cobalt-blue streaks.

“I’ve seen your folder,” Nimec said. “You were with the Sword detail in Ankara, my old friend Ghazi’s section.”

Rice nodded silently.

“Ghazi sent your team to flush those terrorists out of the mountains a couple, three years ago. On horseback.”

Rice nodded again.

“Before UpLink, you were Army Ranger,” Nimec said. “The 3/75th, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Saw your share of action in the service . . . Task Force Somalia, an anti-narc unit in Colombia . . .”

“Right.”

“And earned some impressive commendations,” Nimec said. “The Distinguished Service Cross, a couple of sharp-shooter’s medals . . .”

Rice flicked a Nomex-gloved hand into the air between them.

“With all due respect,” he said. “It’s been a long while since I wore a black beret. Or rode a horse—”

“Or fired a rifle,” Nimec said.

Rice looked steadily at him.

“True,” Rice said. “Before the attack on this plant the other night.”

Nimec met his gaze. “You were going to resign from Sword until Rollie Thibodeau talked you out of it, and even then only agreed to stay if you could ship out to Cold Corners,” he said. “Feel comfortable telling me the reason?”

Rice regarded him another moment, then shrugged.

“I didn’t want to shoot anything anymore except with a camera,” he said. “What I do here is mostly work for the beakers. Photographic ecosystem profiles. It suits me fine.”

“And still puts that trained eye of yours to good use.”

Rice made no comment.