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Kesta glanced toward Dreven. He stood across the treatment room with his arms folded, washed and changed since their return from the gate. The red-black dust had disappeared from his skin, though a shallow scratch remained along his cheek. He looked entirely too composed for someone who had also fought rift stalkers in a storm.

“Why are you looking at me?” he asked.

“I’m deciding how much of that list was your fault.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “You walked beyond the marker voluntarily.”

“With you.”

“I fail to see how that improves your argument.”

Sera picked up the thinnest probe. “If either of you begins flirting while I have a blade beneath this device, I will remove more than the tracker.”

Kesta’s gaze snapped toward her. Across the room, Dreven coughed into one fist. Sera’s silver-gray eyes remained perfectly innocent.

“We were not flirting.”

“No,” the healer agreed. “Of course not.”

Kesta decided silence was safer. The black band around her wrist had remained cool since the return from the outer marker, but the locator recovered from the sabotaged condenser had established that the device was broadcasting something. Keth and Tavi had isolated the most obvious tracking function before the expedition, yet neither had been willing to cut into the band without knowing what else was buried beneath the casing. Sera had fewer reservations.

She slid the probe beneath the inner edge and worked slowly around the seam. Kesta felt pressure rather than pain until the tool passed beneath one particular section. A hot sting traveled along her forearm. Her muscles tightened. Dreven immediately unfolded his arms.

Sera did not look up. “Sit.”

“I am sitting.”

“I was speaking to him.”

Kesta looked across the room. Dreven had taken two steps toward them without apparently realizing it.

His expression hardened. “She reacted.”

“And I noticed.” Sera gave him a pointed look. “If I require a commander, I will send someone to find one.”

Kesta pressed her lips together. Dreven stopped. For a moment irritation flashed across his face, but he deliberately returned to his place near the wall. That interested Kesta more than his first movement had. The instinct was still there. He wanted to intervene when someone he cared about hurt. The difference was that he was beginning to recognize that wanting to act did not automatically make the action his to take.

Sera worked another few seconds before a small section of the band released with a metallic click.

“There.”

Beneath the copper-lit surface lay a thread of black crystal no thicker than a vein. Kesta leaned closer. The material swallowed rather than reflected the infirmary light.

“That is imperial memory glass.”

Dreven’s expression sharpened. “Certain?”

“I worked around enough military systems to recognize it.” Kesta resisted the urge to touch the exposed crystal. “The casing is surface technology. This isn't.”

Sera used the probe to lift the thread slightly. “Could it be the tracker Keth found?”

“Part of it, perhaps.”

Kesta looked toward the doorway.

“Keth?”

He entered almost immediately, suggesting he had been waiting outside. Tavi followed close behind carrying the handheld reader against his chest with two hands while the other pair held a tangle of wires and an unfinished ration cake. Sera looked at the food. Tavi quietly put it in his pocket.