“I was treading water at the bottom of the falls when I saw you pop up a couple of meters away. I swam over, got your head out of the water, and towed you downstream. Pulled you up on the gravel. Got the water out of your mouth and throat and as much of your lungs as I could. Repaid you a favor. Gave you mouth-to-mouth until you coughed your way back to consciousness.”

That sense of smothering and the burst of air? Mouth-to-mouth?

“I don’t taste peppermint.”

He frowned, worked his tongue. “Me either.” A laugh. “The bastards were too panicked by the near-drowning. I can feel them cowering inside. Is that weird, or what? I mean, they’re just molecules, right? From the moment I hit the water, I’ve just been me. After the last couple of weeks? I can’t tell you what a relief this is.”

“This is what your plan was? Throw yourself into the river?”

“I remember what you told me about quetzals hating water.” His shoulders jerked in a halfhearted “Oh-well” shrug. “The waterfall wasn’t in the original plan. Just dive into the river below the dome. Submerge myself and play like I was drowning. Easy, right? Get control, and wade back on shore. Repeat as necessary until I could figure a way to keep Demon at bay.”

He winced. “The molecules wouldn’t let me. We just kept struggling, me trying to get into the water, the quetzals trying to keep me out. Might have gotten it done my way, but Flute and Rocket’s bunch were just as afraid as Demon’s. We seesawed back and forth, and just kept battling our way downstream until there was nowhere to go. By then I was desperate enough to shoot myself rather than let Demon win.”

He worked his right index finger as if pulling a trigger, staring at it thoughtfully. “I was going to get him out of my head, even if it meant blowing him out with a bullet. Weird thing. I had the distinct feeling he couldn’t comprehend what I was doing. That somehow, given quetzal sensibilities, the fact that I’d kill myself confused him. Sort of like it was so far beyond any rational action it defied reality.”

“Quetzals don’t understand suicide? Makes sense. It would be a dead end for TriNA, which is essentially immortal. Quetzals eat their elders, pass the TriNA along down the generations. The idea of just letting all that information go to waste would be a nonstarter. An act of incomprehensible futility.”

He gave her a soft look. “When I saw you floating, I had a moment of complete panic. I was afraid you were dead. That it was my fault.”