“Whether you’re right or wrong, J, we still need to know for sure,” Keeda says.

She pivots on her foot just as I see Arryn and Riley shuffle into the light from a flaming torch, so in a panicked voice, I half shout, “I agree!”

Keeda pauses and looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Glad to hear it, Lyss,” she says dryly. “But I wasn’t looking for approval.”

By the time she turns again, Riley and Arryn have moved into another dark patch, but they’re not yet safely in the passage. I still need to distract these three a little longer.

Jet makes it easy for me, since she offers me a quirky grin before diving into the water. Keeda follows quickly behind her, challenging her to a race to see who can reach the other side of the springs first. They’re now out of the way, but Pandora is still in front of me, all but swaying on her feet as her mouth opens in yet another yawn.

“You look exhausted.”

“Like I said, Kael has me working around the clock,” she says, her words almost slurred. She frees her pigtails to bunch her hair in a purple knot on top of her head as she continues, “I’m the resident IT geek, so I basically run all our surveillance teams. Until we can get a lock on these guys, I’m pretty much at it twenty-four hours a day.”

I wince on her behalf, then wonder if I should have asked for her help in convincing the Remnants to move their focus from SCARS to Vanik. She would have been a good ally in that regard. If my talk with Kael doesn’t yield results, I’ll make sure she’s the next person I seek out.

Pandora still doesn’t enter the water, so to keep her distracted I say, “I’m sorry for adding the syringe to your workload. I’m guessing you haven’t figured out what was in it?”

I already know she mustn’t have, since I’m certain she would have said something to Kael otherwise. If nothing else, I’m glad it means that he’ll hear the truth about the serum from me first, now that I’m ready to tell him.

Pandora rubs sleep from her eyes as she asks, “Syringe?”

She must be truly out of it. “The syringe Kael gave you to test.”

Shaking her head, she says, “Kael didn’t give me a syringe.”

Aside from the distant splashes from Keeda and Jet still racing across the springs, there’s nothing but silence following her words.

I frown at her. “Are you sure?”

She reaches up to fiddle with her bun. “I’m so shattered that I’m not sure of anything right now. But I don’t remember anything about a syringe.” She squints at me. “Why did he want it tested?”