“Be a mercy, you know.” Demon continued to twist the barb. “Put him down now. Save him the agony of living in despair and misery.”

“Yeah? If I do, you win.”

“I already have.”

She squinted against the sun, letting the heat punish her. Problem was, the evil little shit might be right. What if it had figured out a way to shut off the part of Dek’s brain that controlled his post-Ashanti personality? What if it had excluded Rocket’s and Flute’s various lines of more beneficial TriNA? Somehow figured out a way to sequester itself in Dek’s head?

“What do you do then, Talina?”

She didn’t have to put a bullet in his brain. She could simply leave what was left of Dek here, at Two Falls. He’d have to live with what he’d become. Eventually, Donovan would kill him. Until then maybe Demon would keep him alive to torture and drive insane. Dek would have food, shelter, a fighting chance if Demon allowed.

“But I wouldn’t have to watch it play out,” she told herself, eyes drawn to a couple of scarlet fliers that rose from the treetops to chase a rising column of invertebrates.

“You owe him nothing.”

“Sorry, but I’m the one who put you inside him. Hell, but for me, by now Dek might be working out a compromise with Flute’s TriNA. See, Flute’s line has Tip and Kylee and me in it. All your line has is hatred.”

“We learned from you, human.”

“Then you didn’t learn very well. But that’s history.” She wiped at the sweat beading on her brow. Time to be moving on, find some shade, cool off. “Face it, girl, the man you were falling in love with as good as died that day on the canyon rim.”

The smart money was to cut her losses, save herself the pain. Dek was on his own.

She rose to her feet, took one last look around. The river looked so cool and inviting, the sound of the water pulsing as it poured over the rocks, the rapids flexing and bulging like muscles to churn into whitewater. Where it slowed in the channel below, she could look down into the clear green depths, see the rocks that lined the bottom. Sleek shapes moved there, but she couldn’t make out the details, just that they were long and cylindrical.

Movement at the corner of her vision caused her to turn.

“What the hell? How did you get loose?”

Dek was downstream from the rapids and below Talina’s outcrop, his path paralleling the river. The man wore his coveralls and boots, but this time, lucid or not, he’d remembered to arm himself, though only with his pistol. He carried it in his right hand; Capella’s light glinted off the fancy gold inlay and gleamed on the polished wood.

“Dek!”