Six Bullets For John Carter

The man stares at the reflection of his bandaged face in the piss-colored glow haloing the polished metal above the dingy sink. He stares for only a moment before stepping away from the mirror to the grimy porthole. Outside the planet Mars glowers like an angry red eye, as if it remembers what happened the last time he was here.

The man rubs the pressure bandages and wonders, Has the planet ever looked happy? Decades since colonization, metric tons of chemicals injected into the atmosphere daily, surface covered with genetically modified and engineered flora, and now the home of an entirely new civilization, yet the red remains.

Red seeps through like blood on a bandage.

The man's face itches. Back at the mirror, he removes the wrappings. The stale, recycled ship air stings his bare skin. Freed, the bones shift once before settling into their final shape. A side effect more disturbing than painful. Still, he takes a calming breath through wider nostrils, then strokes a squarer jaw, thumbs the cleft in his new, big chin. He leans in close to the mirror, thinks in the poor light his eyes are now a dark green, and reminds himself to check later. His hair, though, is definitely thinner, noticeably so, and much darker. He touches his face. Its lines and contours, naming each feature as his own, affixing it in his mind.

This is his face...his face...his face—No. No. No. It's my face. Mine.

Needing to break his thoughts before they conjure further anxiety, he picks up his bag and checks for the gun he purchased on Akihabara Station. The Trepka 919 is still there, secreted amongst his clothes and the few personal effects he could keep without risk of giving away his identity. The 919 is big and heavy, all dull metal. With its long barrel and thick grip, it feels awkward in his hand, as it should—it's an antique, a relic from days of the Lunar Rangers. Manufacturers stopped using that metal years ago; plastics and polymers are cheaper. The current design is nothing similar. Heavily regulated civilian weaponry tends to be small and ergonomic, and without much power. The problem is those weapons show up on scans.

The Trepka does not. This feels better, he thinks, hefting it in his hands. Aiming it. Sighting down the barrel. Getting a feel for the killing sweep. With weight and purpose, it feels like a thing made for killing should feel.

The man replaces the antique in his bag. Wishes he could have bought more shells. The 919 and a measly six rounds cost him a shitload of credits and the last of his personal stash of DNA mods. He could have set himself up as despot on some distant hunk of rock or scuttlebrush colony, maybe purchased a decommissioned station and opened a free market far beyond corporate reach. Instead he'd paid a planet's ransom for six chances to kill.

It was fine though. All fine. This would be his last time on Mars. His final hurrah. This rewrite was his final burn. The Morphological Freedom Act had guaranteed his right to remix his body however he wished but that did not guarantee success. The twin helixes could only withstand a finite number of changes before they broke into base components. Even as he was performing the slice and splice, the doc on the outer rim had warned him, "You're paying me to kill you, you know."

A matter of days and six rounds. Six rounds to kill this man—this John Carter. And he has to make them count. Every single one for the blonde from Alpha Centauri.

It takes a full hour for the scrap freighter to steer around the commercial lanes, then coast through docking authorizations to land. The man breathes and studies himself all the while. He has to take this face in. Become this man. This new man in the mirror.

One of many side effects of repeated, genetic self-manipulation was prosopagnosia. Face blindness. The inability to recognize anyone's face. Including his own. The most extreme cases sometimes resulted in a full mental break that left the sufferer either insane or catatonic. He's put too much time into this mission of vengeance to risk getting close to his former client, drawing his weapon only to catch his reflection in the mirror and freeze.