Rachel combed her fingers through her hair. Markov was right. She would have to deal with things a lot better than she had done so far. It was time for her to step up her game. She wondered what Willow had been ranting about. Flying toys and broken doors? None of it made any sense. She couldn't let herself get caught up in what other people thought and said. Everyone had their own problems to deal with. She needed to focus on what was important to her. She was a commander now, just like Markov had said, and it was time for her to act like one.
She headed down the corridor and took the stairs to get some exercise. Maybe Markov was right. Maybe she did need to burn off some excess energy. She used her wrist console to provide security codes to the shields on each level as she climbed three flights of stairs. After the fourth set of stairs, she changed her mind and headed for the Air Route. She told herself that she hadn't stopped because of the pain in her legs and back. She just wished that she could believe her own words.
The pain was getting worse again. She rubbed her lower back and tried to ease the cramps away. Sometimes she could still feel the blade inside her back, even though the medics had assured her that the knife was long since gone. The wound was still sore, but at least she knew that she was getting better, day by day. She just had to accept that it would take time to recover her full strength.
Rachel took the Air Route to level 139. She was half way back to her quarters when two thoughts struck her at once. The first was that when she had left the medical centre, Lisa had come to visit her. Rachel remembered how the medics had acted strangely around her daughter. They had stared at her several on several occasions and they had made comments when they thought that Rachel couldn't hear them. She had overhead one of them talking about a broken door. At the time she hadn't understood what they meant. When she had asked Annie what they were talking about, she had looked embarrassed. She had said that it was nothing. Could that have been what Willow was talking about?
The second thought that came to her was that Commander Drefnig was trying to find Riser Trent. Alice had told Rachel about it when she had come to her quarters. Alice seemed to know everything about Drefnig. Rachel intended to tease her about it later.
Markov had chosen Rachel to investigate Mekinet News because she was the ideal person for the job, but wasn't she also the ideal person to find Riser Trent? She had suffered the most at the hands of Trent and his brother. She knew what he looked like too. She was more qualified to search for Trent than Drefnig was. If she searched for Trent herself, wouldn't that be a better use of her own unique knowledge and experience? Drefnig knew what had happened in the Mekinet News building because he had read the reports. He wasn't the one who had been alone in the darkness with the Trent brothers. Rachel knew more about Riser Trent than anyone. Why hadn't Markov assigned the task to her? Maybe he didn't think she was capable of taking part in a full combat operation just yet. Maybe that was why he had asked her to investigate Mekinet News instead? It was something that wouldn't tax her physically.
She knew that if she hung around in the White Spear much longer, she was going to get into trouble again. She was no house cat. She needed to keep busy. She would investigate Mekinet News because Markov had asked her to, but she would search for Riser Trent too. There was no harm in being a little more proactive in her role. Rachel knew what she had to do. She was going to offer Drefnig her help.