failed, refusing to carry her weight, and she plummeted to the hard ground. The impact didn't hurt, but she rolled over, cradling her arm.
A fuzzy call to her father brought him running, and his facial features seemed exaggerated, even for the parent of a child with a broken limb. I'd lived through many of these same scenarios on many different planets, so I'd come to recognize the look of a genuinely panicked parent. He looked off—his eyes were too wide, and his mouth a little too contorted.
Time skipped again, bringing us to the end of the manufactured portion. Floral scents choked me as Grace stared at bunches of flowers on her side table. The view jerked down to her aching arm, where we found it wrapped and pinned to her body. Her wing throbbed, and oddly enough, the word matted came to mind. A standard method of repairing injuries to the membranes of their wings involved a substance that tended to be sticky, leading to matting of their feathers until they fell out. It was an injury that a fall wouldn't have caused, and I fully understood why her memory box took on the scary appearance that it did.
I pushed the false memory into the rest, and it spooled again. Spotting more of the oddly textured moments, I allowed them to pass by, knowing they weren't pertinent to what I searched for. They didn't even have the same signature, the same feel and technique of whoever had Harvested the Reaper that attacked me. Still, each time I spotted that spackled sort of edging, my gut burned a little brighter.
When hers finally finished, it sucked back into that black hole, and I remained for a moment, simply staring at it. My hand lifted, ready to touch it, but with only a hairsbreadth to go, I jerked away and closed down our connection.
I blinked and glanced at Grace, giving her a wide smile. Her wobbly one in response left me with the hope that I'd covered my concern well enough. Shadow picked up on it, though, and tapped into my thoughts. When she saw them, she sent her version of a farewell followed by an image of Grace's face. Shadow's cool aura dissipated as she leapt across the short distance, choosing to ride on Grace for a while.
I patted Grace's arm before telling her, “All good.”
She jerked her chin down and fiddled with her fork.
Pushing what I'd learned to the side for now, I looked at Axton and held out my hand. “Well?”
He lifted his arm, and his hand hovered over mine for a moment. Just when I started to think he would refuse, he sighed and slapped his palm against mine. “I trust that you will do as you said.”
Diving into Axton's past proved to be rather simple. I did find one occasion that I pulled up. Something about it made it stick out, but I couldn't really identify anything wrong when I examined it closer. Even as I watched Axton walk to the dispensary, nothing stuck out to make me think it was an implanted memory. I reviewed it three times, each time slower than the last, but everything was there. It held no glitches like Grace's had. It was vibrant and full. The faces around him appeared blurry, but that wasn't unusual. Most beings didn't pay much attention to crowds. And he had a lot on his mind, debating ways to sneak up on me.
Eventually, I allowed it to go by and tried to shrug off the nagging sensation that I'd missed something. The rest of his memories didn't draw any concern, so I stayed out of them and released him when I finished.
“Well?” Axton asked before I could speak.
“It looked,” I paused, rolling around the words in my brain. “Fine.”
“That's never a good word. Fine means something is wrong, but you don't want to tell me. What did you see?” Axton leaned forward, coming so close that I could feel his breath on my face.
His eyes searched mine, and he gave my hand a brief squeeze.
Ugh, fine, fine, fine. “Well, I thought I noticed something, but when I studied it, I couldn't find anything wrong with it. And no, it wasn't anything too personal. Just you walking to the dispensary a few binals ago. Remember? When you went out to grab some snacks, and you forgot Trace's caronds?”
Trace grumbled at the mention of Axton's failing, one that led to Trace leaving to stock up on them. When Trace