Surit straightened, the twin-star wristband in his hand, extracted from its protective bubble. It should have felt like taking a finger bone from a corpse, but it just felt like what it was: a thin strip of soft metal.

“I think it’s Marit’s,” he said.

“Oh,” Tennal said, his tone different. He tentatively reached out and touched Surit’s shoulder. Surit recoiled.

Tennal pulled back, chagrined. As he did, the ringing footsteps came back, and they both froze. The direction had changed. Surit pulled up his mental plan of the archives and realized the guard was heading to the elevator.

“Patrol,” he said. “We’ll have to come back later.”

Tennal’s mouth curved. “Let’s go.”

They shoved the crate back and scrambled for the hatch, trading silence for speed. Tennal presented the pass while Surit took over the lever.

“Maybe we should stop and explain,” Tennal said in an undertone as the hatch opened. “We might find out firsthand what happened to those remnants—”

“In,” Surit said, seizing Tennal’s arm and bodily pushing him toward the hatch. There were no metal walkways on this level, but he could almost imagine soft footsteps.

And then it wasn’t imagination at all. Surit heard a clank as a door slid open a few rooms over. Surit threw himself into the maintenance tunnel, clung to the ladder, and shut the hatch in desperate silence.

Neither of them dared move. Surit could hear Tennal breathing on the ladder below. He felt the accidental press of Tennal’s hand on his foot.

The guard was doing their patrol in a perfunctory way: only a quick look into each room. Doors slid open one after the other. Surit counted them in his head and held his breath when the guard reached the one they’d just left.

He visualized the room, trying to remember if they’d left anything noticeably out of place, but for once the memory was out of focus. He’d been distracted by the wristbands, and by the way Tennal turned everything else into background.

The door shut again. The footsteps receded to the far side of the building. Surit breathed out.

“Gone?” Tennal whispered from below. He sounded as if he were about to laugh.

Surit didn’t want to laugh, but Tennal was starting to make him think he did. “I think so, but be quiet.”

Tennal was already climbing down, slow and awkward, his feet making muffled sounds on the metal rungs. Surit followed, down several floors of ladders, at one point wordlessly pausing as Tennal ran out of breath.

“Did you ever complete that basic physical training?” Surit murmured, hanging on to the ladder as Tennal got his breath back.

“I wouldn’t do it if the Resolution itself told me to,” Tennal said. “I wasn’t made for exercise. Thank Guidance, I can see the ground.”