“Could do some serious long-term damage to the nerve cells,” Raya told him. “I mean it when I say you have to stay off that leg. And quetzal TriNA is jacking around with your brain. It’s already started filling you with hallucinations, weird thoughts. Playing with your free will. Last time I had to deal with that, we ended up with a gunshot-blasted shipping container, and I got ignominiously strapped to that very same bed that you’re now lying in.”

Talina’s lips crinkled in a guilt-ridden wince. “Sorry about that.”

“Your day will come, Tal,” Raya told her darkly. Then the good doctor fixed on him again. “Seriously, Dek. When Talina went through it, but for luck, she’d have hurt someone. Thought she had.”

“Madison and Chaco still in town?” he asked, thinking he might catch a ride out to their homestead.

“Left this morning.” Talina told him. She slapped hands to her thighs, looked up at Raya. “I’ll take him. Put him up at my place. Makes the most sense. Even got my old set of crutches, so he can hobble to the bathroom. Besides, I’ve been through this. If Dek starts hallucinating out of control, I can take him down. Restrain him until we can get him sedated.”

“Whoa!” Dek cried. “Listen, I’ll be fine. Come on, Tal. You don’t want to be playing nursemaid. And what if someone else gets into trouble out in the bush? Or there’s a riot or something? What are you going to do if you have to run down some criminal? Break up a fight or hunt a quetzal? You have responsibilities.”

Talina’s alien-dark eyes seemed to bore clear through him. “I may not have done you any favors out there, Dek. After that CPR, when you came to, was your mouth filled with a taste of peppermint?”

“I, uh . . . yeah.”

“Know what that was?”

Dek made a face. “Yeah, tasted that once when Flute jumped into the airtruck and stuck his tongue in my mouth. Like really bitter and really concentrated peppermint extract. But there wasn’t any quetzal this time. Just you, bent over me.”

“Giving you mouth-to-mouth. That taste? That was you reacting to a load of Demon’s genetic material as well as the combined TriNA from the Mundo and Rork lineages. Sorry, Bucko me boy, but there’s no telling which one is going to come out on top. You just damned well better hope it’s not Demon’s, because as you’re no doubt going to find out, it will do everything in its power to destroy you and as many people around you as it can.”

“Yesss,” the voice hissed so loudly Dek started.

“Struck a chord?” Raya asked knowingly.

“Didn’t you hear that?”

Talina leaned close, her stare even more eerie. “What did it say?”

“Yes. As if agreeing with you about Demon’s line.”

“Sort of a hissing ‘yesss’?” Talina asked.