After so long doing without, the shower is simply much too large a temptation to resist. Turning on the ‘hot’ tap to full blast, she sheds her sodden garments as a warm fog rolls out from the shower to fill the small, tiled room. Adding a little cold to the mix, she turns on the shower itself and steps inside.

The first touch of water on her skin is an almost religious experience—pleasure wrapped around pain wrapped around a feeling of relief so muscle-jarring that her head spins. Bracing herself against the cool tiled wall, she waits for the feeling to pass before grabbing the bar of soap and lathering up. Days of dirt and sweat swirl down the drain, and she wonders for a moment if her anger, and her fear, and every other negative emotion she’s currently harboring as tightly as a miser to his cash, will so be so easily washed away.

It is only when the water starts to go tepid that she drags her weary—yet blessedly clean—body from the shower. The towel is soft and gentle on her skin, and the clothes she slips into, though a bit large, bring with them a comfort of their own simply by being dry.

A quick drag of a comb through her hair, and she leaves the warm, moist haven of the bathroom for the house beyond.

Koda smiles up at her from her place on the tatty couch. Dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans and a simple white T-shirt, she displays a body that, to Kirsten’s scientific eye, is as close to perfection as she’s ever seen. She pauses a moment, wondering at her body’s response to the picture presented, then shoves the thought down with the rest of them, to be explored at a later time.

For the first time in a very long time, she feels that there may actually be a later.

Noticing the odd look directed her way, she summons up a smile in response and continues into the living room, where her meager stockpile of belongings has been carefully set on the coffee table.

“Feeling better?”

“Much, thank you.”

“Good.” Dakota once again looks over the young scientist, taking in the bloom of roses on her cheeks and eyes which, if not exactly sparkling with good humor, have at least lost their haunted dullness. Still, exhaustion has drawn dark, sooty smudges beneath each eye, and Koda spends a moment wondering when it was that she last slept. “You’re probably tired. You’re welcome to the bed, if you’d like.”

“No….thank you, but I need to figure out if I was able to salvage anything from Minot’s computers.” She pulls the two chips from a pocket in the soft sweatpants she’s been given to wear. “I took these with me when I went outside.” Replacing the chips, she picks up her backup laptop and looks to Koda. “Hopefully they’ve got something on them I can use.”

“There’s an office right next to the bathroom, there. It doesn’t have much in it, but you’re welcome to whatever’s there.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem.” Dakota rises to her full height, stretching slightly to work out the kinks in a back much abused this day. “I’m headed for the mess. If you’re hungry, I could bring some back for you. It’s military food, but it’s edible.”

Kirsten nod, wondering at the simple, unaffected kindness of this stranger. In her world, offers are made with the expectation of gain. Nothing is for free, and each act of faux-kindness is greed dressed in sheep’s clothing. “Thank you. I…thank you.”

A casual grin leaves Kirsten feeling dazzled. A moment later, Dakota is gone.

Left alone, Kirsten blinks twice to clear her head, and, with a deep sigh, turns and enters the small office. Setting her laptop on the desk, she sinks into a chair that is a little rickety, but serviceable. She rubs her head as her ears continue to ring from the bombs dropped earlier. It is an unfortunate side-effect of her implants, and one she wishes she knew how to correct. For now, she does the only thing she knows will help. Reaching up with both hands, she touches a spot behind her ears, and the world falls away to wondrous silence.

She then boots up her laptop, inserts the chips, and is soon lost in the world of streaming data.

6

“Yo, cuz, i know you’re hungry, but man…eating for two?”

Koda shoots Manny a look over her shoulder and continues to scoop unidentifiable, but presumably edible, substances onto two plates. “I’m getting our guest settled.”

“Ah, the good doctor. Has she warmed up any?”

“Physically.”

Manny laughs softly. “Yeah, she’s a tough nut, that one. And she really hates the press. I remember watching CNN once. Damn, she almost fed a reporter his microphone. Enema style.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that the next time I decide to apply for press credentials,” is Koda’s dry response.

“I’m warnin’ ya, cuz. She may be small, but she’s got brass ones.”

“I’ll…keep that in mind.”

Manny claps his cousin on the back, grinning. “If you’re not doing anything later, drop by rec. We’re getting up a dart game, and I feel the need to pull you in for a ringer. Later, alright?”

“Later.”

7

When Dakota re-enters the house, Asi greets her with a soft bark and a furiously wagging tail. Placing the dinner trays on the kitchen table, Koda gives the dog a fond scratch behind the ears before straightening and calling out to Kirsten.

“Guess she fell asleep after all, huh boy?”

Approaching the closed office door, she gives out another soft call, accompanied by a knock. Neither are answered. Turning the knob, she opens the door and enters the room to see Kirsten, quite unexpectedly, wide awake and enraptured by whatever it is that is on her computer screen.

“Dr. King? I have your dinner.”

Still no answer.

Dakota watches for a moment, then crosses the room and lays a gentle hand on the scientist’s shoulder.

Only to pull back and catch a swinging hand a split second away from clouting her across the face.

“Woah. I’m a friend, remember?”

Stone deaf, Kirsten stares up into impossibly blue eyes, trying to ignore the radiant warmth emanating from the large hand encircling her wrist. Dakota’s lips are moving, but Kirsten can’t quite find the wherewithal to decipher what she’s saying.

It is only after the hand releases its grip on her that she is able to gather herself enough to realize what she’s almost done, and why. Flushing, she touches the spots behind her ears, and sounds once again flood into her consciousness.

“You startled me.” She winces internally, part of her wishing that those words didn’t sound quite as accusatory as they do.

“I apologize for that,” Koda replies smoothly. “I didn’t realize you had implants.”

“Well, it’s not exactly something I needed others to know.”

Accepting the rather terse answer, Dakota nods, then gestures to the door. “Your dinner’s in the kitchen.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll take it in here. I’m in the middle of some things that I don’t want to leave.”

“No problem. I’ll get it for you and leave you in peace.”

“Thank you.”

8

Several hours later, Kirsten’s body wins the battle it’s having with her mind and, with some resentment, she finally shuts down her laptop. Her work thus far has been far less successful than she’d hoped.

Damn General and his damn bombs. Ten minutes more, an hour at the most, and I would have had those goddamned codes in my hands. Now? I’ll be lucky if I find a goddamned recipe for carrot cake in this goddamned mess.

Heaving a deep sigh, she pushes herself away from the desk and looks through the slats in the blinds covering the office’s only window. Darkness and snow have fallen once again. “Great. Just what the world needs. More snow.”

Stretching, she turns from the window and heads for the door, fully intending to take up Dakota’s earlier offer, if that offer is still on the table. Asi greets her as she steps outside, rubbing his face and body along her own as his tail beats a steady tattoo against the wall.

Kirsten looks over at the bedroom door, surprised to find it closed. “Must be later than I thought.” Listening, she hears quiet murmurs coming from the room in question, then once again damns the acute sensitivity of her implants as those murmurs resolve themselves into something quite a bit more intimate.

The blush starts from the inside, warming her belly before spreading its way up her neck and face until her ears are burning with heat.

“C’mon, Asi,” she grunts, walking over to grab her borrowed coat, “a bit of cold air seems about right right now. Let’s go for a walk.

Asimov happily follows.

9

A burst of warm air greets Kirsten as she pushes open the front door of the Colonel’s house. The luxury of it almost unsettles her, familiar as she has become with the cold and the near offhand acceptance of her own death. She is not yet quite resigned to life, still less to comfort. Like the restoration of her hearing years ago, this seems more an intrusion than a healing. Something she has never asked for. A prosthesis that does not fit, rubbing insidiously against her accustomed rawness. She feels as she believes some death row inmates must when, at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour, the phone call from the governor arrives, granting them a temporary reprieve. When you’ve accepted your death, sometimes life doesn’t look all that special.

Asi has no such qualms. He shoulders past her, still shedding snow onto the entryway rug, and makes a dash for the warm tiles of the hearth. At least, she thinks sourly, that is where he comes to a sprawling stop. Perhaps it is only coincidence that the Lakota she-giant with the improbable blue eyes—fullblood, my ass!—sits on the couch with her outsize boots propped on the hassock, strategically placed to deliver a down and dirty belly rub. As if he is reading her mind, Asi rolls over onto his back with a whine and cocks his head up at the woman, tongue lolling. Rivers laughs, lowers one foot, and commences scratching. Asi’s tail thumps.