“Do you want to go that far back? Little miss heartless sat on the swings crying because she couldn’t figure out how to make friends. How smart were you, really?”

“Stop,” Imp said, “Mission comes first. Remember the deal.”

“I do remember. I’ve been getting ahead while this scraping from the bottom of the genetic barrel is getting distracted with his crush on you.”

“What?” Roman asked, looking alarmed, even with a mask on. “No, how am I—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Imp said, sounding exasperated. “Focus. What’s the score?”

“Five,” Juliette said.

“Three,” Roman said.

“What’s this deal you have with these two?” I asked, looking back. Imp had intervened, literally putting herself between the pair. “Do I need to know?”

“Whoever gets the most takedowns. Only way to keep these two on track if they’re within five miles of each other is to make them compete. Nonlethal takedowns only.”

Juliette nodded. “Anything else would let me get too far ahead, and we can’t go breaking his spirit. Yet.”

“You just try,” Roman said, trying to look around Imp. “The only reason you’re all ‘tee hee, murder is funny’ and talking about breaking people is because you’re dead and broken inside and you want to bring others down to your level so you have some company.”

“That’s—” Juliette started, stopped.

“No retort? I thought you were the smart one?”

“Enough. Please,” Imp said. “If you want to fight, do it by scoring points. Or turn around and go home.”

The two fell silent.

Precipice held up a hand. Two hands. We slowed, then stopped.

Twisting, he put one hand to where the ‘mouth’ would be on his face, behind his mask.

He walked over to the wall, pointing up at the corner where the wall met ceiling. The wall was smooth and white, the ceiling a kind of drop tile with lights inset into each tile. Running along the wall and ceiling was cable.

He held up three fingers, then pointed back. Two fingers drew back into his hand, so it was one.

“Splits,” he said, quiet.

“What does it matter?” Swansong asked.

“I was noticing before, splits before intersections and areas with multiple rooms.”

I looked down at the floor, then closed my eyes for a few seconds. In bold, crisp yellow, words and symbols appeared across the pink-black of my closed eye.

I selected ‘map’.

I saw the map of the complex, and it moved somewhat unintuitively, as my eye motions panned around the complex, shifting my focus as if looking at something distant to look at lower floors, shifting it to look at something closer to me to look at the upper floors, which were mostly grayed out rooms with question marks.

“The rest of this place is so neat and tidy,” Rain said. “But external wiring? Even though it’s white and camouflaged?”