She ran some water, which formed a wobbling globe as it emerged from the tap, then dipped her hands into it, in the way she had seen people doing via the Tabernacle, before moistening her eyes and cheeks. Pressing a button below the mirror activated a device that sucked the remaining moisture away.

She picked up the scissors and began to work them through a clump of hair, cutting it close to her scalp. The strands came away easily, and she stared at her reflection once more, remembering how long and lustrous her hair had been. But that had been another person, another life.

She kept on cutting, thrusting each severed clump of hair into a chute marked DISPOSAL. It whined briefly before sucking them away.

Slowly, a new person emerged in the mirror: boyish in looks, with hair curling around her ears and sticking up on top in spiky clumps. The grooves and lines of her implants were much more visible than before, making her appear somehow strange and alien.

With each whir of the disposal unit, another chunk of her past life was sucked away: Thijs, Karl Petrova, all those petty little restrictions she had endured, the oppressive weight of Mater Cassanass watchful gaze (was the old woman even still alive?). On finishing, she looked again at that unfamiliar reflection and thought: This is the face of a murderer. This is the face of a woman whose greatest love committed genocide.

But, instead of seeing a stranger, she felt as if she were seeing herself clearly for the very first time.

She made her way back through the ship to the cockpit, seeing as she entered that the man named Briggs was now seated on another couch, surrounded by such a density of projected data that he was almost invisible behind it all.

Tarrants eyes widened slightly when he saw what she had done to her appearance, but he recovered quickly. You took your goddamn time, he snarled.

Im sorry, she almost said, but checked herself.

As she climbed into an unoccupied couch, several virtual panels appeared around her, demonstrating how to secure herself properly. Then she glanced over at Briggs and saw that some of the projections surrounding him were maps of various terrains, mostly containing snow-capped mountains and deep river valleys. She recognized these images as the Montos de Frenezo: a part of Redstone that was particularly mountainous and extremely inhospitable, even compared to the rest of the planet. But it had the advantage from the Freeholds point of view of being riddled with caverns and caves and uncountable hiding places. This was the base whence they struck out against the Demarchy, as well as the other Uchidan states.

Other views showed Redstones horizon gradually losing its curvature, the deep black of orbital space sliding out of view as the dropship descended. The entire craft shivered around her as it bit once more into atmosphere.