In Donovanian terms, the guy was “soft meat.” A newcomer who’d spent but a few months dirtside. Nevertheless, he’d listened, learned. Immediately recognized the mobbers for what they were: flying death. That he’d dived to the ground and froze was smart. That he’d been on rocky colluvium, without a thick root mat had been chance good fortune. That he’d stuck it out as the mobbers flocked over him and the gotcha vine began chewing on his leg took extraordinary resolve. That he’d fought off the carnivorous vine with his knife was sheer pluck. As to Vixen having been overhead to receive his signal? Again, just dumb luck. And, finally, he’d been ballsy and courageous enough to climb out of the canyon and onto bedrock where she could spot him from the air. In brain-numbing pain, he’d kept his wits. Been smart. Smart had kept him alive.

On Donovan, anything else was a death sentence.

Talina crossed her arms, stepped over, and stared down at the comatose man. Derek Taglioni had sandy-tan hair, a perfect patrician face, and a dimple in his chin. The pinking scar on his cheek—left by shrapnel from an exploding drone—gave him a dashing and exotic look. With his yellow-green eyes, the guy was drop-dead handsome, muscular, and graceful. Everything that an elite program of monitored breeding and advanced genetics could bestow on a pampered and entitled Corporate male.

She could see the healing wound on his arm where he and Flute had exchanged blood. The guy had willingly infected himself with TriNA. Here she was, wishing she could be rid of the shit, and he was letting a quetzal pump it into him.

She should have hated him for who he was. But the guy charmed her, not to mention that Dek was willing to take on Donovan’s challenges with the full knowledge that the planet would try to kill him at every turn. That the odds were, it would kill him. Today—but for the thinnest sliver of luck—it almost had.

“He wants to mate with you.” Demon whispered from his lair down behind her stomach.

“Go suck on a toilet, you piece of shit,” she told it.

It only felt like the quetzal lurked beneath her liver. Demon—and its antithesis, Rocket—existed inside her as TriNA molecules. The stuff communicated with other TriNA through recombination, transferRNAs, microRNAs, and proteins. Raya Turnienko and her team were still struggling to understand the intricacies, but the notion that intelligent molecules could live within a human being was sobering.