A muffled voice. “Doug wants two Guards posted in here around the clock until we have a lead on Sommers. Jora got held up in the Control Room. I told her I’d cover until she shows up.”

“Why doesn’t he just check the eye in his staff and see where Sampson and Sommers went?”

“If he could do that, we’d have found them already. They’re not like us anymore.” The keys clatter against the floor. “Would you open the damn door, already? You have one job, for Chronos’s sake, March.”

I slip silently into the bunk room, grateful that Lyon never got around to upgrading the locks in the wings to key cards. Kai’s a dark lump against the pale sheets of my bed. I kneel beside it and press a palm over her mouth. The whites of her eyes flash wide. Her hands clamp around my wrist, and her breath stills as I stifle her gasp. I hold a finger to my lips as the door rattles and the Guards argue outside.

“Keep your voice down,” the first Guard says.

“No point sneaking around,” the other answers. “Sommers would have to be an idiot to hide in his own room.”

I slide my hand from Kai’s mouth, touching my ear where a transmitter would be. She nods.

The bedsprings creak softly, her movements catlike in the dark as she searches for her bow. She pats the surface of the bed, then reaches deep into the gap between the mattress and the wall. Her hands come up empty. She turns to me, drawing a panicked breath. She must have left it in the front room.

I reach for my knives, but my holster’s out there, too, lying on the arm of the sofa with my jacket.

The door swings open a few inches. A flashlight cuts across the floor, making a slow pass over the furniture as a first Guard enters the room. A second Guard follows.

“March, look at this,” the first says, lifting my jacket off the couch. “This wasn’t here earlier.”

I slip behind them and toe the door closed, cutting off the light from the hall.

The Guard shouts, and her flashlight beam sweeps toward me.

Kai rushes in from the bunk room, smashing my skateboard into the back of March’s head with a deafening crack. She grabs his transmitter as he drops. I’ve got the other Guard in a choke hold from behind. I mute her transmitter before pitching it to Kai.

The Guard’s elbow slams into my ribs. She swings the butt of her flashlight into my knee, pivoting out of my arms and shining the beam in my eyes.

A Kai-size shape emerges behind her, my skateboard poised to strike.

“No!” I shout to Kai, dodging the Guard’s next blow and using her momentum to slip between them. “We need her alive.”