High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,66

was burned out. I was the only one onboard and I was safe. They had better things to do than risk another runner looking for a useless Dynastra in a dead zone.”

He gave a nod. “And after that?”

“After that, I knew I was different. There was something inside me. I thought I was going mad some of the time. But I was also faster, healed quicker, heard better.” She paused. “But the magfields on Faldine affect my performance. Flying--that's where I shine. High up, I'm at my best. Until I got a job working for you, and moved to Bero. Then I was at my best at home and at work.”

He tilted his head. “Is that why you applied for the job?”

“No.” She sighed. “I was bored with my old job. I needed more excitement, and I thought working for the head-of-planet would give me that. I didn't realize Bero was as free of magnetic interference as your headquarters. It was a wonderful bonus.”

“You could have left Faldine. Got away from the magnetic fields altogether. And there are places where the VSC military would have given you a lot of interesting things to do.”

She gave a nod. “Special Forces offered me a job a couple of times. But I couldn't leave Faldine until I worked out what had happened to me. This is where I got my upgrade, and I didn't want to go until I'd figured it out.”

“Your upgrade?” His eyebrows rose up.

She ducked her head and laughed. Shrugged. “That's how I think of it. In the beginning, it was separate to me. I had to force it to do what I wanted, not what it thought I should do. But now, after nearly two years, it's mostly part of me. Integrated.”

“You're thinking some kind of nanotech?”

She gave a slow nod. “I keep remembering the string of beads. If each bead was made up of microscopic nanotech, and all of them somehow found their way inside me . . .” She shrugged again. “I'm surprised I don't rattle when I walk.”

“You never told anyone?”

She huffed out a laugh. “No.”

“And if you do manage to find out where you went down. Find some clue to what happened to you? Would you ask for help in working it out?”

She studied him. He was holding tightly to his control.

“You think I should?”

It was his turn to shrug, but it was a little too casual. “I understand why you didn't.”

“But?”

He sighed. “But nothing. It's your decision. I probably would have said something, and then regretted it for the poking and prodding that would have followed. But you might consider that the nanotech itself might have tried to influence you into keeping quiet.”

“No.” On this, she was completely sure. “Its imperative is my safety and well-being. There were times I was almost out of my mind with worry about what was happening to me, what it was doing to me. And I could sense it urging me to get checked out.”

“Its priority is you?” He blinked. “You feel that?”

“It's the one thing I'm absolutely sure of.”

“So if it is nanotech of some kind, it was developed to help its host. That's its sole purpose.”

“Yes.”

“I'm on the Scientific Council, and I can tell you that nanotech has been discussed many times. It's helpful in fulfilling a task programmed into it, repairing cells, or bone. But it has a limited lifespan, and it has a limited function. What you're talking about is nanotech that has been waiting possibly hundreds or even thousands of years in the open, that had the intelligence to find you when you landed near it, and then the ability to integrate with you, a being for which it couldn't have been designed, and that it retained and still does retain, two years later, the mission to keep you alive and well at all costs.”

“I have wondered if I really am a being for which it wasn't designed.” She threw out her most outrageous theory.

Might as well.

Iver frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I will need to find the place where I crashed again. It's a dead zone, so if I crashed there, maybe someone else crashed there, too, long before me. Maybe someone looking to settle on Faldine, which is relatively close to the other planets of the Verdant String. Who's to say the VSC planets are the only ones settled by our common ancestors? They had success settling the Verdant String, but what if they had some failures as well? What if Faldine