“Not sure,” Kylee told him. She pointed at the screen. “Got a weird spike on the organics. Something big, animal, but the signature is like nothing we’ve seen so far.”

Dek tapped the screen, pulling up comparative data. “Doesn’t have the same signature for proteins or gases that the treetop terror did.”

Returning her attention to the controls, she told him, “Keep in mind, that one was wounded. It had been shot, a lot. Was bleeding. And it had snapped off the spike it used to spear people. Not to mention that it had eaten. We don’t know what kind of chemicals it would have given off after digesting otherworldly proteins.”

She didn’t add, “. . . after eating my parents.” But then, Dek had been there. He’d seen Kylee’s grief and rage, knew how deeply personal this hunt was for her.

She checked the instruments and heading. She enjoyed flying. The sense of freedom that Dek’s airplane gave her; that he’d taught her how to fly was one of the greatest miracles in her life. Not to mention that the quetzal part of her brain shut off and left her in peace for those golden hours when she was in the air. Flying terrified quetzals.

She was in love with Dek Taglioni. He had long sandy-blond hair, wore a quetzal-hide coat, chamois pants, and a claw shrub-fiber shirt. His wide-brimmed hat hung from the seat behind. Dek’s skin was tanned into a lovely bronze by Capella’s hot rays. The guy had curiously enlarged yellow-green eyes. The color, Dek said, had been designed that way. The rest of the modifications had been compliments of the quetzal TriNA in his body. Same with the man’s face; TriNA had played with his handsome features, elongating the chin, squaring the cheekbones, and adding angular planes to his face. It hadn’t messed with Dek’s perfect white teeth. The glaring scar on his left cheek added to the image, gave him a threatening presence.

Kylee thought he was really good to look at. Would have liked to have done more than look. But Dek was out of reach. Even for her mixed-up adolescent brain. Nor had he ever hinted that he was anything but lineage, and nothing more than her best friend. Besides, trained as she’d been by her mother, she fully understood the hormone rush her sixteen-year-old body was entertaining. And then there were the quetzal molecules. The memories she’d inherited from Talina Perez’s brain. Fact was, Kylee spent a lot of time wondering who and what she was.