“Afa,” said Kira, grabbing his elbow. “Look at me.” He kept searching for something, moving his head, and Kira placed herself firmly in his field of vision. “Look at me: They’re going to come up here, and they’re going to kill us.”

“No.”

“They’re going to kill you, Afa, do you understand me? They’re going to kidnap me and kill you, and burn this entire building to the ground—”

“No!”

“—with all your records in it. Do you understand? You will lose everything. We have to get out of here.”

“I have my backpack,” he said, pulling away from her and snatching up the massive backpack from the floor, never more than a few feet away from him. “I never lose the backpack.”

“We need to take it and go,” said Kira, pulling him toward the studio. She had a few seconds to grab her things and then they had to run, as far and as fast as they could. She thought about the radio station upstairs, about Marcus and the way she’d helped him. Dr. Morgan had taken control of East Meadow, and every other population center on the island, and it was all Kira could do to use the radios and keep Marcus one step ahead of his pursuers. She was about to lose it all. Afa resisted, pulling away to go back to the sensor panel, and Kira ran to the studio without him, quickly gathering her things to flee.

“They’ve passed the conference room,” he said. “They’re moving slowly. They’re past the second Bouncing Betty in the east hallway, moving on to the—there’s more now.”

Kira stood up, her bag half-packed with the last of her survival gear. “What?”

“One in the east hallway and one in the west. There’s another group.” He spluttered, his voice growing wilder and higher. “I didn’t see anyone else come in! I’ve been watching the monitors—I would have seen them come in!”

Kira snapped her pack closed, leaving the bedroll and sprinting back down the hall. “It’s not more,” she said. “They’ve split up.” She pointed at the seventh light. “There’s a central hallway here, right? It’s the same on every floor. This is a two-man kill team just like a dozen others I’ve been following on the radio—they don’t need a second team, they just split up the first—” She paused, midsentence. “They’re split,” she said again, as if it meant something entirely different this time. “They’re alone. Afa, where do the separate hallways join the third floor?”

“The stairs,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” said Kira, placing herself in his eye line again. “I know it’s the stairs, but I need specifics. You built this entire system, Afa, you know where they’re going next. This one.” She pointed at a red dot. “Where will that dot reach the third floor?”