"Oh, I was absolutely in love with her," Kovacs admits. Admits is not the right word: he doesn't seem ashamed or furtive about it. It doesn't seem to carry any weight to him at all. Maybe better as -

"I was absolutely in love with her," Kovacs says.

The idea of anyone getting along with Falconer is so alien that you gape. Kovacs just sits there, eyes distant, reviewing some kind of Fedayeen mantra or checklist inside himself. You're in the #2 prep bay, surrounded by crates labeled HUMAN ELEMENT INTERFACE and scurrying rats who fear no kind of human.

It's so strange to hear it like this, this deep personal thing. What did you even ask? Something simple. And Kovacs just spilled it. "You knew each other beforehand, then? Before the...before this?" Before they were Fedayeen.

"No. I worked with her for eight months on Titan. Long enough for chemistry." Kovacs is a lean, tough guy, probably capable of flexing any part of his body. He has huge, bony brows that shadow his eyes. "I was a mess then."

"Aren't we all?"

"Not like that. I was platform security. There were...criminal elements, Gef influences, ten thousand desperate people working hard jobs. I didn't know Falconer was Fedayeen, but she was a source of mine. Spent all day waiting for her to walk into my office. Real film noir." He slides a four-inch throwing knife out of his belt, but he doesn't throw it at the rats: just looks at himself in the blade. "One day I woke up and I knew I loved her."

He stops talking for a while, until you make a face like: come on, guy, you can't stop there. "I asked her out. We hooked up. She had fun but...it wasn't there, you know? On her end. I was something else to her, not a lover. A project. She would give me all this creepy advice and I didn't realize until later what it was about."

"What was it about?"

"The crime situation escalated. There was a takeover attempt. Hostages involved. I took necessary steps. After that I was post-traumatic."

From somewhere out of memory, gunfire flashes in his eyes.

"When the Fedayeen recruited me," he takes the knife by the tip, "when they brought me into the Red Room for initiation," he offers it to you by the hilt, "I requested personality retrofit. Complete teardown and rebuild. I wanted to be someone else. Different stress responses, different fears, reprofiled attachment behavior. And when I woke up..."

You swallow hard. "It was gone. She was gone."

"She was right there with me. But I didn't love her any more. It must not have been tactically useful."

You take the knife from him. The blade slides out from between his fingers but he doesn't let it cut. "And how are things now?" you ask.

"Better," he says, nodding. "With her? Better than they were before."

Of all the members of Falcata, you can only imagine him being this honest with you.