Earth. The center of the solar system. Not gravitationally, obviously; the sun holds that singular distinction. But Earth is the center of traffic and culture. The cradle of humanity. The home-world that never loosens its grip on its wayward children.

  And every vacuum-sucking passenger-liner in the system seems to have a layover at the transit hub at the Earth-Moon L4 point. Springboard Station is the largest and oldest orbital port ever built; it's smelly, crowded, and in desperate need of upgrades. Even though the layover adds more time and distance to his journey, Lieutenant Alex Wells bears it with as much grace as he can manage.

  Alex stands in a passenger-loading area, waiting for his vessel to fuel and begin boarding. Looking down from the railing, Earth seems to slowly spin beneath his feet. Despite the station's age, the window is crystal clear. With the 1/3G spin gravity, down is evident. And yet, under the station is void. Vacuum. It should be causing vertigo, but Alex takes a steady breath, pulse even and level, watching the planet below.

  Lieutenant Wells is fairly tall, about 185cm. His blond hair is shaggy, and he has a lean build. The most eye-catching detail is an augmentation; a helical crescent that wraps from his temples back along the rear of his head, with several jacks and ports. The effect is somewhere between a broken crown or halo merging with his skull. An obvious augmentation: that may be why there's a bubble around him in the crowd. Of course, that could also be the result of his uniform.

  As a scouting officer with Third Precinct, he gets a few perks. The cost of his ticket was covered as part of his transfer. General passenger class seating, not business or first class. He also gets a free meal voucher and drinks coupon. Too bad no meals are served on this voyage. At least the company is alright. Standing next to Lieutenant Wells and waiting for a different ship is Sergeant Mac Werkmeister, a freckled redhead with a broad chest and short legs. A man who speaks eight languages, and gossips in all of them.

  "I'm telling you, Alex, Venus is sick. Kumari Nadu, the cloud city Emily lives on? So much open space, so much sun! It's tight, and the ladies? You have no idea," the Sergeant laughs, elbowing the Lieutenant.

  The blond man gives a nod. "Glad you're excited about your transfer."

  Mac gives him a glance. “Yeah? What about you? Psyched for Ganymede?

  The taller man's shoulders slump. "I don't want to talk about that."

  Mac throws his hands up. "Man, you brought up transfers."

  The lieutenant shakes his head before giving a sigh. "Sorry, it's just opening up some old wounds."

  There's a moment of silence as Mac lifts a vape and takes a drag, the menthol vapor leaving his lips in a slow stream. "You heard back from her?"

  "She doesn't want to talk to me."

  The redhead grunts. "She said that?"

  "She blocked me from pinging her. I sent messages, but she never opened them. Not hard to interpret," the lieutenant says, running a hand through his hair and along his augment.

  This earns him a shrug from the sergeant. "Maybe she just needs time."

  "She sailed off to Europa to get away," Alex mutters. "She doesn't want a break. She broke things off."

  "That blows hard vacuum. Void-spawned bitch," Mac says, spitting.

  Fingers tighten on the railing. "Don't talk about her like that.”

  "Are you kidding me? You're defending her?"

  The blonde opens and closes his mouth. "It was... complicated."

  The sergeant gives an exasperated sigh in return. "It wasn't your fault, man."

  Alex watches a shuttle slowly pull away from the station, thrusters sputtering to turn its bulk. "It wasn't hers, either."

  "Fuck that. She beat your head in with a spanner. And she's the one who authorized the neuro procedure. Right?"

  The officer's hand reaches up to touch the augment. "She was trying to save me."

  Mac snorts. "And she bailed when she succeeded?"

  “She doesn't think she did,” Alex sighs. “She thinks I died, and someone new is walking around in her fiancé's body."

  "Lay it out straight, Lieutenant. She smashed your skull in. And when they rebuild your brain and you change a little, she just bounces? Like I said, void-spawned bitch."

  There's more silence as vapor curls around the two men. "I tried to kill her. My body, anyway."

  "But it was a body-jacking. It wasn't you. Besides, you said that wasn't why she left," Mac points out.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Alex frowns. "It wasn't... but it's easier for me to think of it that way."

  "As opposed to?"

  The Lieutenant sighs again. "As opposed to... the truth. That Alex did die, and I'm just a new person squatting in his meatsuit. And she knows it."

  The sergeant elbows his arm. "You keep saying that. We all change, man. Just because you aren't who you were before doesn't mean you died and you're someone else now."

  "Yeah? So same old me? Even though my tastes are different? And my personality changed? And my memories are foggy and scrambled?"

  That earns a quizzical look. "You said that you got most of it back."

  "It's... complicated," he mutters, turning his eyes back to the void. Another shuttle decelerates, thrusters flaring as it slows, growing larger in the viewport.

  Mac leans back, taking a breath. "I dunno what you're expecting, man. To pop up same as you always were? Truth is this, buddy; you were hurt bad, and she bailed on you while you were recovering. Don't make her out to be a saint."

  Alex does snort at that. "She's not. But she would have walked through fire for her fiancé," he says, eyes focused on an engine trail in the distance. "And she couldn't even stand for me to touch her. So, what does that say?"

  “Maybe it says she's not the woman for you,” Mac replies with a tilt of his head. “You should pick someone who won't run off the moment things get rough."

  "She ran because she felt trapped," Alex says softly.

  The redhead scoffs and kicks the railing. "Trapped? Fuck her, she should have had the guts to dump you in meatspace. Hell, if she didn't want to work with you, she could have transferred off Armstrong to another Lunar station."

  "I didn't say she handled it right,” he replies, hands gripping the rail tighter, knuckles white. “But there were nights I heard her crying. Mourning the old me."

  "Man, she's got issues. Won't get her wetware fixed up? No more mods or implants because 'she'll lose her soul'?” Mac claps him on the shoulder. “Definitely got some untreated trauma," he says, giving the man a shake. "C'mon, don't put that on yourself."

  Alex only shakes his head once more. "I'm not. But maybe I shouldn't have pushed her to splice her problems away."

  "Brother, every officer in the precinct could see what it was doing to you," Mac says, inhaling from his vape again.

  Alex just nods. "Yeah. Maybe someone should have seen what it was doing to her."

  Mac exhales streams of vapor through his nose. "You can beat yourself up about it all you want, but you're not the villain here."

  "I know. But she isn't either," he says softly. "Maybe we're all just fucked up and hurting."

  "Yeah, that's not a big revelation, brother. We're all human."

  Alex shrugs. "So maybe I can forgive her."

  Mac shrugs right back. "Did she ask for forgiveness?"

  The lieutenant's lips quirk up for a moment. "Maybe that's not the important part."

  The sergeant gives him a skeptical frown. "Well, I'll give you this, man. You have changed. The Alex I knew wasn't a mopey philosopher ready to give his crazy ex the benefit of the doubt."

  A few minutes of silence goes by as the two men watch the vessels passing. Well, not silence; it's filled with the babble of the crowd, speakers making announcements about gates and departures, and the general cacophony of cargo and cases being hauled around. But for a few minutes, neither speaks.

  Alex eventually lifts his head. "Do you know? I can't play the guitar anymore?" Alex sighs. "I used to play it for Mel. I was pretty good. But when I pick up the instrument now, it doesn't come back to me. My fingers don't know the strings, and I can't feel it anymore."

  Mac claps his back. "So, you lost that. Keep practicing, you'll get it back."

  The blonde man shakes his head slowly. "I don't think I will. I've tried, but... maybe I'll find something else, but maybe sometimes the things we lose are just gone."

  Mac blinks at that. "You really have changed, brother. You're downright fucking depressing these days."

  That triggers another shrug from Alex, his eyes lifting to the horizon. "Hey, remember during training? When we had to do orbital insertions down the gravity well, and we went high-atmosphere sky-diving?"

  Mac grins. "Crazy and cold, as I remember it. Jumping out of that shuttle with nothing but a void-suit and a chute."

  That earns a nod. "I was terrified of heights. I never said anything, but jumping out of that shuttle was the most frightened I'd been in my life. And I was so relieved to pass on the first attempt, because I knew there was no way I was going to ascend and jump again."

  A hearty laugh rings out. "Hah, lucky then, you'd have washed out fast."

  "Yeah." Alex leans over the railing and looks down to the world far below. "Heights don't even phase me now."

  Mac bites his tongue and tilts his head, looking at the other officer. "Well, you can't tell me that's a problem."

  Reaching up to fiddle with his augment, Alex sighs. "I just find myself wondering what it means."

  Mac chuckles. "Man, you look for meaning in everything. Fuck it, you're alive, that's all. You changed, but you're still Alex. Stop getting all hung up in what's different and what it means. You and Cruz didn't work? Fuck her. I hope she's not why you're going to the Jovian?"

  He shakes his head. "No. I have some business on Ganymede. It's case related."

  "If you're transferring, you're in it for the long-haul. Big case?"

  Alex nods. "The Gaian League is bleeding bad; Second Precinct cut the heart out of their Solar District operations, and the Navy swept up most of their ships and weapons caches sunward. The remnants are fleeing. Most of the big names left on Earth went to ground or are running off planet with the crackdowns getting worse. The Dark District is where he rats are being driven, and someone needs to ferret them out."

  "Why you? There are plenty of officers in the Jovian, brother," he points out.

  "Ones who might be taking Gaian credits, if they aren't Gaian themselves? No. If the League are the ones who body-jacked me, I'm not letting this go."

  "So, revenge? Really? That was never your schtick, man." The sergeant gives him a sharp look.

  Alex looks down at the surface below, then up at the port bustling with activity. "Yeah. I suppose I'm a new man these days."

  The redhead opens his mouth but tilts his head as a speaker calls out a flight number. "Ah, my shuttle's boarding soon. Well, best of luck, Lieutenant. Bust up some ecoterrorists, get some of that nice Ganymede rum. Maybe get laid and get some of the poison out."

  Alex grimaces at that. "It's not a vacation."

  Mac picks up his bag. "Well, don't work so hard, and maybe you'll even have fun now and then. Or at least stop moping about your ex. You'll find out things aren't so bad, yeah?"

  "Yeah?" He gives the redhead a glare. "No, really; aside from my career, what do I have going for me, Mac?"

  The shorter man blinks a few times, thinking. "Hmm, well, you aren't scared of heights anymore, yeah? Conquering a fear, that's something, right?" he asks, chuckling.

  Alex looks down at the blue ball far below his feet. "Yeah. Hard to be afraid once you've already died."