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I opened the door.

Alex's voice immediately carried down the hallway. "Jade, how many knives is too many knives for a research escort?"

I looked back at Corian.

He nodded solemnly toward the common room. "That is one limit I'd personally like established."

I snorted before I could stop myself.

Then I went to explain to Alex, once again, that there was no such thing.

Chapter Seven: Too Much Life

Jade

By the time everyone had finished carrying packs, research cases and enough equipment to survive what Corian continued insisting was a small deployment into the front hall, I had discovered one problem with leaving the Citadel.

Nephrite was damaged.

Nobody was bleeding, limping or showing any obvious sign that something was wrong, but once I stopped concentrating on my own excitement long enough to pay attention to the four men moving around me, I could feel every old injury sitting beneath the surface of their bodies. It had been there the entire time. I'd simply been ignoring it.

Ignoring other people's biology had become automatic years ago. If I paid attention to everyone around me constantly, I would never have managed to stand in a crowded room without knowing far more about complete strangers than anyone should. Muscle tension, old fractures, poorly healed scar tissue, inflammation, strained joints, blood moving through vessels, organs working beneath skin. Living bodies were loud when I let them be.

Today, with my own nerves running too high for subtlety and all four of them preparing to walk into a Rift with me, my ability had decided subtlety was unnecessary.

Ashter had turned himself into an obstacle in the middle of it, stretched across three overlapping field packs with the deep satisfaction of a creature who'd claimed territory rather than simply fallen asleep on it. Alex had already stepped over him twice. Ashter had also, at some point in the last hour, acquired one of Alex's socks and showed no intention of returning it.

I stood in the middle of the common room and frowned at Alex. He was fastening one of the straps on his field pack when he noticed.

"What?"

"Come here."

His hands stopped.

Alex looked toward Corian. "Was that directed at me?"

"Yes."

"I just wanted witnesses."

"Alex."

"Coming."

He crossed the room and stopped in front of me with the deeply suspicious expression of someone who had spent the last two weeks learning that I occasionally solved problems by putting knives near them.

I looked him over.

There was an old irregularity along two ribs on his right side, another through his left shoulder and enough accumulated minor damage around both knees that I suspected years of training had been less kind to him than he liked admitting. None of it was serious. Most people probably wouldn't even have described it as damage anymore.

I could still feel it.

"You've broken your ribs."

Alex blinked. "Yes?"

"More than once."