Chapter numbers go down, but words go up!!
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He looked properly pleased with the thought of learning more, and Kiley rolled her eyes. She rolled up her left sleeve, then grabbed his right hand with her left.
"Today's lesson isn't quite as much fun as what you've been doing lately, but it does involve some of the same principals." She initiated a link, then cut her arm. She habitually kept her knife sharp, and even with the minimal pressure she applied as she drew it across her flesh, the slice was deep and bled freely. She felt Knives recoil and try to break the link, but she held him firmly with her mind and made him experience the process of self-healing.
There weren't words that properly described the sensation of flesh healing at a highly accelerated rate. Itchy came close, as well as ticklish. Crawling, and twitchy, and shuddering all almost worked as well. Actually, any word that tried to describe the feeling only came close if it denoted a sensation of movement where there shouldn't be any. The feeling, no matter how creepy it might be, was not the focus of the lesson. The mental precision needed to manipulate the micro world of cells and the comparatively macro world of the severed tissue, to merge them together seamlessly, was more than most people could handle. She had been thrust into situations that gave her more than enough chances to grow proficient. She was sure that Knives would pick up on the trick to it faster than she had. He did have that annoying habit of being faster to learn than she had been.
But he didn't. When she broke the link and tried to pass the knife over to him, he merely shook his head. His slightly wide-eyed gaze looked everywhere but at her and she sighed. She flipped the blade in her hand and rapped his knuckles with the pommel.
"What's your problem? It's only a little pain." He looked away and took his hand from hers. "Look? See? Hardly any mark at all. There won't even be a scar."
"I don't care about scars," he said in a small, tight voice.
"Then what's your problem?" He didn't respond, and she grew more exasperated with each passing second. "You're the one who wanted to know how to do my tricks. This comes next."
"I wanted to learn how you manipulate the environment, not your body. I don't care how you heal," he said hotly, still not quite looking at her.
"Oh, you want to learn how to destroy first, is that it? Or just skip the healing process altogether, and just learn how to kill?"
He didn't respond, but the tightness of his shoulders betrayed him.
"Fine," she said, and stood up. "We're done."
His head shot up, eyes flashing and finally meeting hers. "You don't make that decision."
"Like hell I don't. I'm not teaching someone how to destroy when they aren't willing to learn how to put things back together again."
"You don't make that decision," he repeated, standing up and looming over her.
Mentally she cursed his height. She hated feeling short, especially when she was angry. And especially when she wasn't short. She glared back, giving it all she had, and was pleased to see him give a little, his head moving back a fraction, and his body not… looming quite so much. Sensing weakness, she stepped forward, finger jabbing into his chest.
"I make decisions that involve me. Teaching you involves me. Picking up after the mess you're planning on making, well, that involves me, too. And I'm not going to go around, cleaning up after someone who does not comprehend what they are actually destroying!"
"I know exactly what I'm destroying. An infestation of vermin." His voice was colder than she could remember it being lately, and he began looming again. If she had stopped to think things through she might have stopped the argument there, but Kiley had caught her momentum.
"That isn't what I'm saying. Until you know exactly what destruction entails, you will be too free to use it as a weapon."
"Of course I'm going to use it as a weapon," he interrupted. "Why the hell else to you think you're still alive? To teach me how to grow daisies?"
She blanched a little at a thrust that scored, but ignored the pang in her heart to press her point. "There are plenty of ways to exterminate the human race without destroying them. You just like the idea of inflicting pain."
He recoiled from that, and she knew that she had scored on him as well.
"So what are your great ideas?" he shot back, sarcastically. "Tell me, or lie and say you don't want to give me ideas when you have none of your own."
"People die on their own. That's why they make more people. And since they don't make more people through mitosis, if you do something to block fertility the human race will die out on its own in a matter of a few generations. That's one non-destructive solution."
Knives snorted, but considered the idea. "And I'm sure you know how to do that," he said flatly, intrigued despite himself.
"Actually, no. But I'm sure that it would be easy enough for you to bioengineer, back in your ship. So why don't you go away now and leave Ace and I alone?"
"Leave her with you? Don't be mad," he said, but without rancor, as he was absorbed in the new thought.
She looked at him appraisingly. "You mean to tell me, you never thought of biowarfare? You've been plotting to destroy a species for over a hundred years, and you never thought of using germs? What, are you a moron?"
He casually backhanded her face, but the force of the blow was enough to knock her to the ground. She had forgotten how strong he could be, too. That went back on her mental list of this she should never overlook. "You can shut up now," he said, still lost in thought.