Vik, now there was an interesting woman. She’d been trained as a microbiologist and geneticist. She’d been a member of the Maritime Unit, its only survivor. She, too, was infected with TriNA, but hers had come from some sort of slime that lived in the oceans. It had left the woman’s skin a curious green tone. To a quetzal, the color represented boredom, which colored Kylee’s reaction to the woman. Right up until she came to understand that Vik had the Donovanian version of chloroplasts in her cells. She could partly live on sunlight.

“Funny thing,” Kylee told the somnolent Tip, “but I’d gone quetzal, right? I could have killed him. Would have, but I think it was part of me that’s Talina. Some element of restraint that cropped up in my head. Like a whispered voice in the back of my mind that said, ‘This is not the bush.’”

She glanced at Tip, seeing his eyes flickering behind his lids. He’d always had the most amazing long lashes. Probably inherited them from Madison.

Kylee leaned forward, rubbed her eyes. Piss in a pot, but she missed Flute. This whole ordeal would have been so much more bearable if she could curl up against the quetzal’s side, feel the warmth and safety. “Part of me’s scared, Tip. Alone like I’ve never been. I mean, first there was Rocket. Then Flash. Then the Rorkies, followed by you and Flute. So, here I am. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a quetzal around. I feel like, I don’t know. Scared? Adrift? Fucking naked and defenseless. Like most of me is missing, gone suddenly silent and empty.”

She lifted her gaze, desperate to see some sign that he’d heard her.

Nothing.

“Your mother said that they had you knocked out. But, hey, better to be sitting here with you than being stared at by these fart suckers who live here. And you can bet it’s going to be worse after what I did to Hofer. Don’t these candy-dicked bastards have any better sense than to shoot their mouths off like that?”

She rubbed her long-fingered hands together, seeing where the abrasions on her knuckles were already healing. TriNA had its advantages. She wondered what Flute would say when she got back and shared the memory with him.

She heard the steps out in the hall, figured it was Madison coming back. After standing vigil for most of the night, she’d finally taken up Talina’s offer of a bed and gone to catch a couple of hours of sleep.

Instead, it was Raya Turnienko who stepped into the room, asking, “How’s he doing?”

“If unconscious is good, he’s got the planet by the balls.” She shrugged. “But he’s sure one hell of a poor conversationalist.”