No Regrets
Before she died, Carolyn said there had to be a part of me that wanted to rejoin the human race. I told her I wouldn't know how. The fact was, even if I had known how, I wouldn't have been able to—not with mercs on my neck. At the time, I thought there always would be.
With that ever-present monkey on my back, there was no way I could stay on New Mecca with Jack and Imam, and the planet's brightness aside, I had nothing to offer Jack. I could teach her two things—how to kill and how to survive. She could never have a normal childhood with me around, and life on the run was no way to live. I cared enough about her that I didn't want her to become what I had become—a killer. The only way to keep her safe was to leave her with Imam, go into exile, and get as far away from humanity as possible.
I knew she would hate me for leaving; she would think I had abandoned her and she would hate me for it. Better that, than losing her to a merc's stray bullet. I knew she wouldn't understand that my leaving was in her best interest, but it was up to me to make the right decision. So I did—I left. In the middle of the night. Without saying a word.
No regrets—another of my many rules to live by, and another rule broken. I had made some pretty difficult decisions in my life, and I'd done whatever needed to be done to survive, but leaving her—the one person I had ever cared about—was, by far, the hardest thing I had ever done. Killing was easy. Caring was a bitch. Regret was a 6-inch blade piercing my heart.
I spent the better part of five years on a frostbitten heap of a planet trying to keep Jack safe, and for what? She signed up with the same fake badges that wanted to cut her up and use her for bait, and she'd become exactly what I was trying to protect her from—me. She had followed in my footsteps and became a killer, landing herself a nice little life-sentence in one of only three no-daylight slams left, Crematoria.
Well, there was no way in hell I was going to let her rot in that hell-hole. Fortunately, Toombs played right into my hand by taking me there.