“Ooh, I’ll show the Architect,” huffed Winnie, rolling up her sleeves. “I’m done with being Ms. Nice Girl. Come here, you monkeys!”

She seized one bodily and, apparently shocked by the affront, it froze. Winnie held it aloft, beaming from ear to ear as though the creature in her hands were a gold trophy for excellent participation, and not a seething, moth-eaten bag of scientifically tampered-with bones.

“See! It’s all in the wrist!”

The monkey quickly recovered and tried to seize up her arm with an outraged chitter. Winnie shrieked.

“Go long, Winnie!” Ahmad hollered, pointing frantically at the other end of the scale. “Go long!”

Winnie gritted her teeth, dug in her heels, and tossed the monkey out of her arms. The creature flew through the air, shrieking as it went, and landed in the lap of the scale, looking rather dazed as it settled in place.

“All in the wrist,” Winnie repeated triumphantly. They high-fived.

By the time they had wrestled a few creatures and were bathed in their own sweat (and a bit of blood), that initial wave of triumph had washed away. They’d fought and measured and added and subtracted, and now seven monkeys sat on each side of the scale. But it refused to balance properly, and the wind continued to lash at their faces and tug at their clothes like a petulant child, frustrated they were trying to ignore its lamentations.

Ahmad threw up his hands in exasperation, not caring that the monkey he had been wrestling took the opportunity to scamper away. “This is not working.”

“There’s probably a trick to it,” Winnie huffed, brushing her damp hair out of her eyes. “But what are we supposed to do?”

Something occurred to Ahmad. This was a game where they had been warned from the beginning that the rules always changed. So why were they still standing here, expecting fairness?

Why not assume that they were being set up from the very beginning?

Without answering Winnie’s inquiry, Ahmad strode to the fuller scale, staring at the wriggling creatures. The monkeys looked up and hissed malevolently, exposing dripping fangs—except one, one that curled on its side and stared out at the rising sand, as though it couldn’t be bothered to play the part.

Or . . . like it was playing its part, the way it was told.

Ahmad gritted his teeth and reached into the pile, narrowly missing a few pounces at his hand from the other monkeys, who seemed suddenly frantic. He fished about for a moment before grasping the bored creature’s tail, yanking it free from the pile.

“It was hiding itself!” Winnie gasped as he held it aloft.

“Exactly. It’s an extra, set in here to throw us off no matter what we did.” Ahmad roughly tossed it aside, ignoring its chitter of outrage.