The suite looked exactly as they'd left it, which in simple terms meant ownership had not yet been contested.
Proxy checked the camera feeds through the deck while setting the jammer unit against the wall, a sequence of confirmations that felt less like reassurance and more like ritual. There were none others in the resort, including the two from the previous night and the early morning bout.
Then he put his pack on the bar and looked at Nyx.
She looked like she'd spent the morning doing exactly what she'd spent the morning doing, which is to say she looked like evidence of a murder scene.
The jacket was ruined past the point where the word "ruined" added anything, the dried blood on her chin had acquired another layer from her forearm and the palm dressing he'd applied in the field, and her hair had half-dried into a style that suggested mild insanity.
He pointed at the bathroom, because some instructions are clearer when you don't dilute them with language.
"Do we have time for it?" she said.
"Better than have you walk around covered in someone's else blood. Again."
"It's mostly dry." She looked at herself, as if verifying the claim post hoc. "It's fine when it's dry."
"Go," he said, and turned to the pack.
She pouted in displeasure, but he had already begun laying things out on the bar with the focus of someone who had made himself unavailable for further discussion.
She watched the back of his head for a moment, which is a peculiar thing to do unless you're Nyx.
Then she went.
He worked through the inventory while the shower provided some sort of background sound.
The RAM chip pocketed immediately, the knife on the belt, the handgun magazines stowed, ration packs and water units added to what remained of their existing supply. He opened one of the corporate trauma kits and reviewed the contents with detached appreciation.
Biosynthetic wound sealant, high grade.
Coagulant compress, the sort that did actual work rather than shoddy work, which is a distinction that tends to matter only when you need it.
Nano-fiber bandaging.
A synthetic dermis patch for surface burns, which felt convenient. He set aside, with the kit open.
Then he checked Nyx's ammunition, because priorities have a hierarchy even when people pretend they don't. What he found confirmed the problem he'd already suspected while watching her come back across the fairway.
There was little to no ammunition left for the SMG.
He set it aside the same way he set most problems aside. Moving on.
The shower stopped, which meant the buffer had expired.
She came out in the resort towel, the long white monogrammed one from before, her hair down and damp across her shoulders and back, carrying the ruined jacket over one arm like a discarded conclusion.
She looked at the items on the bar, then at the open trauma kit, then at him, and even I could see the interpretations passing through her expression, none of them quite right.
"Sit down," he said, and pulled the bar stool out from the counter.
She puckered her lips, ready to tease, visible even in the slight tilt of her head that usually preceded it.
Then she looked at his face, and whatever she wanted to say died down on her throat.
She came to the stool and sat down.
He stood in front of her and started with the forearm.
The field sealant he'd applied on the fairway had done its job adequately, which meant it had slowed the bleeding and not much else, a temporary solution at best.
He peeled it back and cleaned the wound properly with the antiseptic from the kit, and she watched the ceiling while he did it, oddly quiet in some ways.
He applied the biosynthetic sealant next, a thin layer across the wound surface that bonded immediately and began the repair process, accelerated cellular work engineered to heal wounds in no time. He could feel the warmth of it through his fingers at the wound edge.
The nano-fiber bandaging went over it in two clean passes.
She was still very quiet, but in way that felt increasingly weirder.
She watched him when he was looking at the forearm, and when he looked up she averted her eyes to her hands in her lap, and there was a blush in her face that had nothing to do with the wounds.
She wasn't faking it.
She was simply sitting there, being cared after, and not knowing quite what to do with that.
"Show me your right side," he said.
Somewhat shyly, she held the towel close at her side without requiring further explanation. Just enough to cover what had to be covered but let him touch the area her bruised ribs were at.
He applied the coagulant compress to the bruised ribs, pressing it flat against the skin with steady, even pressure and holding it there.
She looked at the window, as if she couldn't acknowledge what was happening.
The morning light came through the smart glass and fell across them both, and the suite was kept quiet except for the ambient hum of the building continuing to justify its existence.
He could feel the ribs shift slightly under his hands when she breathed, warm and soft.
He held the compress in place for the full recommended time and didn't say anything, although he wasn't sure why.
She didn't say anything either, which made the silence less empty and more about them.
When he moved to the palm, she turned her hand over without being asked.
The burn required the most care, because the synthetic dermis patch needed to be placed correctly or it would adhere wrong, and mistakes at that scale tend to persist.
He took his time with the small applicator, working from the center outward, ensuring the edges sealed properly against undamaged skin.
Her hand was very still in both of his.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, without looking up.
"A little," she said. "Not badly."
He finished it and set the applicator down.
He held her hand for a moment, checking the adhesion, and she looked at the side of his face with an expression that she hadn't quite show before.
He let her hand go and closed the kit.
She sat on the bar stool in the warm light with fresh bandaging on her arm and a palm that was already beginning to hurt less than it had, her hair drying loose around her face.
There was a subtle embarrassment to it, but she didn't let it show, and neither Proxy seemed to notice it.
"The SMG ammo," he said.
She blinked once. "What about it?"
"There's almost nothing left to it."
He leaned back against the bar.
"We will need to scavenge for more later. The drop hadn't none either."
She looked at him for a moment with that same unresolved expression, the one still in the process of becoming something. Then the familiar warmth returned to her face, though not in its exaggerated form, but something softer.
"I thought you were going to say something else," she said.
"What else would I say?"
She considered this, which meant she was thinking how to tease him.
"About how you really liked touching my chest?"
"The side, of your thorax cavity."
"Teehee," she said, and the smile that followed was small and genuine. "Thank you, Proxy."
He looked at her for a moment, unsure if that was another game of hers or not.
The island's speakers came on, interrupting without asking permission.
"Good day, contestants."
The voice was warm and calibrated to sound natural while being anything but.
Proxy looked at the ceiling, which is what you do when the source of a voice is everywhere and nowhere.
Nyx sat on the bar stool and watched him, her hands in her lap, her hair loose and drying, and she was quiet, which at this point had become less an absence of something and more a condition I had yet to understand.