They answered with one voice. “One shot!”

“Where do they come from?”

Louder this time: “They come from above!”

Dana paused, rocking back on her heels, and caught sight of Peter. She sent him a sad smile before facing her charges once again, her face hardening into a scowl. “Well, that was horrible. You’ve just earned yourselves three extra laps before chow. Now, I want two lines, bows up.”

“What do you think?”

Sanjay Patal: Peter had been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard the man approach. Sanjay was standing beside him, arms folded over his chest, his gaze directed over the pits.

“They’ll learn.”

Below them the trainees had begun their morning drills. One of the youngest, the little Darrell boy, misfired, burying his arrow in the fence behind the target with a thunk. The others began to laugh.

“I’m sorry about your brother.” Sanjay turned to face him, drawing Peter’s attention back away from the pits. He was a physically slight man, though the impression he gave was one of compactness. He kept his face clean-shaven, his hair, wisped with gray, trimmed tightly to his scalp. Small white teeth and deep-set eyes darkened by a heavy, wool-like brow. “Theo was a good man. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Peter didn’t reply. What was there to say?

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” Sanjay continued. “To be honest, not all of it makes complete sense. This thing with Zander. And what you were doing at the library.”

Peter felt the quick shiver of his lie. They had all agreed to hold to the original story and not tell anyone about the guns, at least for the time being. But this had quickly proved itself a far more complex undertaking than Peter had anticipated. Without the guns, their story was full of holes—what they were doing on the roof of the power station, how they’d rescued Caleb, Zander’s death, their presence in the library.

“We told you everything,” Peter said. “Zander must have gotten bitten somehow. We thought it might have happened at the library, so we went to check it out.”

“But why would Theo take a risk like that? Or was it Alicia’s idea?”

“Why would you think that?”

Sanjay paused, clearing his throat. “I know she is your friend, Peter, and I do not doubt her skills. But she’s reckless. Always quick with the hunt.”

“It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was just bad luck. We decided as a group.”

Sanjay paused once more, casting a meditative gaze over the pits. Peter said nothing, hoping his silence would bring about an end to the conversation.