“He looks bad,” said Samm. Kira nodded, too exhausted to care about whatever Samm still thought about Afa; besides which, he was right.

“He’s retreated inside his own head,” she said. “It will be a while before we get him out again.”

Samm jutted his head toward the server, and the screen handle still connected to it. “Did we get everything?”

Kira held up the handle. A small green light still shone at the tip of it. “I don’t know. I don’t dare disconnect it in case it’s still transferring data.”

“How long will it take?”

Kira shrugged, gesturing at Afa. “The only one who knows is currently singing a lullaby to his backpack. And he’s losing blood, and I don’t have the antibiotics I need to help him, and I have dead guy soaking into my pants, and I’m really starting to wish that a whole lot of things had gone differently.” She took a deep breath, surprised at her own outburst.

“You’re under a lot of stress,” said Samm.

Kira felt tears coming close to the surface, and wiped one from the corner of her eye. “Yeah, what else is new?”

Samm stayed silent for a moment, and picked up the screen she’d brought up from downstairs. “You think we can plug this into the other one?”

“It only has one port,” said Kira, wiping her eyes again and sitting up straighter. “We can’t connect the new screen until we disconnect the server, and I don’t want to mess with it if it’s still downloading.”

“Then we’ll set up a perimeter and stay here for the night,” said Samm. He glanced around the room, computer towers obstructing visibility in every direction. “We can’t stay here, though—there’s no good way to guard it, plus the generator was damaged in the battle. And the exhaust pipe. It’s pumping the whole place full of burning paint thinner.”

“Great,” said Kira. “Life wasn’t crappy enough yet.”

Samm rose to his feet and held out his hand for Kira. She took it, standing to face him. They didn’t turn away. She looked in his eyes and felt . . . something. The link was still hard to interpret sometimes.

Samm looked away first. “I’ll grab his arms,” he said, stepping behind Afa. “Let’s get him somewhere safe.”

Kira jolted awake at two a.m., certain that something was wrong. She looked around wildly, grasping for her gun. “Who’s there? Are we under attack?”

“Calm down,” said Heron. “The generator just shut off. The change in background noise probably woke you.”

“I’ll go check it out.”

“It’s probably just out of gas, and we’re not getting it restarted anytime soon.”