Tess is midway through pouring herself a shot when she hears the door up the stairs, the faint but unmistakable sound of footfall on stone. The stream of liqueur wavers just slightly, threatening to cross over the glass's edge, and Tess cuts it off short, listening. She is not, at least in her own image of herself, jumpy. Just prepared.

For a half second, that's all it is. Preparedness, maybe some mild fear that it's Kovacs here for round two when she hadn't even been prepared for round one. Then her name on William's voice has her setting the bottle down on the bar, her fist wrapped tight around its neck. That's how he finds her, eyes on the foot of the stairs, waiting tersely. She isn't sure what her face is doing but she's sure it's not half as calm as she wants it to be.

The urge to be defensively flippant feels overwhelming, and beating that impulse down makes her feel strangled. She's used up every shred of good will she ever could have been offered, and there's none left to ask for.

"Well," she says. She opens her mouth to say about a hundred different things, but she just settles on a defeated: "Fuck."