I snapped to my feet, snatching the baton out of my belt and giving it a casual whirl before pointing it at the oncoming men. “We don’t want any trouble,” I said, giving them warning.

I wanted to avoid a fight at all costs—not only because it would eat up time, but also because if this was a replication of Requiem Day, then Knights were watching to see if I would try to preserve peace, or resort to violence. And I knew myself well enough to know that I would always choose the former. Now, whether or not it would earn me support from my fellow Knights—I would have to wait and see. But even if it didn’t, I’d like to think that at the very least, I could live with myself.

Even if this was only a game.

The man in front pulled up short, brandishing a length of pipe as long as his forearm. He eyed me warily, but didn’t back down. “This is our food,” he said gruffly. “You’ll not be stealing it.”

“We don’t want your food,” Maddox said from behind me. “We just need to get past here to make repairs.”

I winced. Cali had no doubt given Maddox a good education in history, but she’d also skipped some of the nuances, and this was evidently one of them. One of the more common causes of murder during Requiem Day had been people trying to steal the supplies others were carrying for Tower repairs. Paranoia had run deep on the days that followed Scipio’s unexpected shutdown, and there was always a concern that either the parts were being stolen by other departments, to try to eke out their own survival, or that they were secretly pilfering food necessary for their own department. Food and water were viciously fought over, even more so than parts in some places. Especially on the farming floors.

Either way, the Knights learned a brutal lesson early on about escorting workers who were frantically trying to repair the Tower: Never tell anyone your business unless you absolutely had to. It didn’t matter if you were honest or lied; chances were that if someone thought you had something they wanted, they would attack. So it was better to say nothing, and get out of the situation as fast as possible. Engagement often drew reinforcements to the citizens rather than the Knights—especially this deep into a department’s territory.

Sure enough, the man’s eyes flared with interest at Maddox’s words, and he flashed a wide, toothy smile. “That’ll be ours, then,” he said, nodding. “Hand over the bag and we’ll let you pass.”

“No chance,” I said, clicking the button on my baton and letting the tip accumulate sharp blue electric light, which glowed like a halo. “Walk away, and no one has to get hurt.”

“Listen, you don’t get to come here and tell us what to do!” the man said belligerently. “We know your kind. You think you’re so—”

Whatever he was about to say was cut short as something whistled by overhead, then wrapped around his throat with a sharp pop of static electricity. I immediately recognized it as a lash line. A second later, he was yanked violently off his feet, landing with a splash in a pool of water.

Then everything devolved into pandemonium. A hand grabbed the back of my neck, pressing down so heavily it nearly knocked me down to my knees. The weight disappeared seconds later, and I immediately straightened, looking for what had attacked me.

To my surprise, I saw Dylan ahead of me on the path, her baton flying as she viciously pressed an advantage against the man now at the front of the line. I realized she had just used me as a springboard, and rubbed my neck, anger flaring up my spine. She’d jumped the gun and just started fighting without letting any of us know!

I turned and saw that Maddox and Leo were already compensating for the surprise, and had maneuvered Eric so that he was between them. Relieved that they had reacted so quickly to shield him from the fight, I turned back to Dylan, glaring at her fighting form. Drones were now circling where she was physically blocking the path against our attackers, her baton, free arm, and one leg flying. I clenched my teeth when she lashed out with a foot, managing to trip one of the men as he stepped closer. He landed in the pool to our left with a splash, and she pressed forward a few feet.

She was using this as her moment to try to wrest the leadership position from me. If she managed to break through and get us through there before the men in the pools got out of the water and flanked us, she’d be well within her rights to declare herself the leader for the rest of the mission, and we’d be honor bound to follow her lead.

I had to do something, or she was going to steal this competition right out from under me.

A noise to my right dragged me out of my desperate thoughts, and I saw the first man already climbing up the bank, water sluicing off his green coveralls. I stared at him for a second, and then smiled, an idea for how to defuse Dylan’s one-woman coup coming to mind. Right now, it looked like she was acting on her own. I just had to muddy the perception enough to make it seem like it wasn’t.

I held my baton straight up in the air, signaling to the drones nearby that I was about to perform something I considered to be a noteworthy stunt. It was risky, because it meant that all the cameras on Dylan would shift to me, and if I failed to upstage her, I would look ridiculous—and possibly lose favor with my fellow Knights.

I had to pull this off.

I took a deep breath as several drones drew near and then stopped, hovering in various positions around me and the man now heading right for me, the pipe in his hand raised. In the next pond over, where Dylan had thrown the other man, I could hear the sound of sloshing, signaling that he was approaching the edge as well. It was now or never.

I waited as the man closed in, and then sidestepped the inevitable blow, wrapping my arm under and around his shoulder and armpit. I kicked off the ground, using him for leverage to swing my legs up, and catching his neck and shoulder in a lock between my thighs. Put off balance by my sudden weight, he began to topple over, but I controlled his fall, guiding it with a twist of my hips. I had practiced the move a hundred times, and all it took was muscle memory for me to let him go before the spin caught up to me. I landed on one knee with a hand braced on the ground, and a second later, water crashed down on me—a sign that I had not only thrown him into the water, but also hit his partner with him. Just like I had intended.

I stood up, whirled my baton for good measure, and then threw it in the direction of the splash without even bothering to look to see where exactly the targets were.

It was a theatrical move, and one that had my heart pounding a steady drumline of panic across the inside of my ribs. If my baton didn’t hit within a few feet of them, it was unlikely that they would be knocked out by the electrical surge, even though they were encased in water. The charge would dissipate in force, and they would only be mildly affected.

I, on the other hand, would look like an idiot for not bothering to check to see where the targets were in the first place. But I had already committed to this stupid showboat move, and I needed it to work.

The baton hit a second later, two feet away from where the two men were beginning to break free, and jagged blue lines of electricity shot from it, arcing out like spider webs over the water. Lines of blue light shot into the two men, and they immediately seized up, violently twitching and shaking as the sharp pzzt of energy filled the air.

Seconds later, it ended, and they both relaxed back into the water, two bands I hadn’t noticed around their arms lighting up with a bright yellow color. I realized those were their elimination bands—and that I had knocked the two men out.

But I couldn’t dwell on it; I needed to demonstrate that I was still in command while the drones were on me. Besides, taking out two men with one shot was just the first thing I had planned to do to thwart Dylan’s attempt to exert control. Which meant I needed to keep moving.

“Maddox, baton,” I said, holding out my hand without bothering to look at her. I felt the heavy weight of it slap into my palm, and curled my fist around it. “Get those two men out, and grab my baton while you’re at it. Make sure the Cog is guarded.”

Then I moved forward at a run, heading directly for where Dylan was locked in combat with the last two men, her back to me. She was holding her own for the moment, but the men were clearly Knights, given how well they were using the pipes they were wielding. Pipes they had managed to insulate using rags, making any chance of Dylan shocking them through one impossible.

Dylan was keeping up with them, her movements impossibly smooth and perfectly timed, but that was all she could seem to do: keep up with them. She couldn’t gain any ground, though she wasn’t losing any either.

For a second, I considered pulling to a stop and letting it play out, but that would be viewed for what it was—a petty attempt to show Dylan in a bad light. Whether or not she was attempting a coup on me was irrelevant to the other Knights. If I just left her there to fight on her own, I would be seen as the bad guy, and I couldn’t allow that.

But I could get revenge in other ways.

I smiled as I raced directly for her body, my mind already spinning on how I would do this. I planted my first foot on the back of her thigh, where I could tell her stance was the strongest, and then the second on her shoulder, using my momentum and the height she was giving me as I literally ran up her back to carry me over the heads of the two attackers in a forward flip. I landed firmly on both feet, and then jammed my baton into the back of the first man, expending the charge before his face was fully turned toward me.

He froze up, trembling under the force of several thousand volts of electricity, and then collapsed to the ground, sliding off to one side.

I was already lashing out with a short, brutal kick to the back of the second man’s knee as the first man fell, forcing it to fold up under him. I withdrew my baton long enough to generate another charge, and then tapped him lightly on the arm with the baton, expending it. Like the first man, he seized up violently, and then tumbled off the opposite side, landing a few seconds later in the next terrace below with a splash, leaving me and Dylan standing face-to-face.

“Good job,” I said with a smile, sliding Maddox’s baton into my belt loop.

Dylan frowned. “Good job, I just—”

“Did exactly what you promised you would do,” I said, clapping her on the shoulder. She gave me a confused look, and I smiled even more deeply, baring my teeth. Inside, I was angry, livid, and raw that she would smile in my face one second and then stab me in the back the next, but on the outside, I maintained my pleasant façade, trying to exude leadership abilities.

Dylan opened her mouth, clearly about to set the record straight on what exactly she had done (and how she had saved us), but then looked around and noticed the drones that were now hovering around us in a little dome of viewership. Her eyes drifted back down to me, and I saw realization dawn in them.

I expected anger to follow, but instead, she smiled, and her gaze grew almost respectful. “Clever,” she said, motioning up to the cameras, but keeping her voice pitched soft and low, for my ears only. “I take it not all the attention was on my fight?”

I smiled. “Some of it was, I’m sure. Especially the part where you jumped over me. But I think they got the part where I jumped over you, too, so that makes us almost even. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a kid over there who is trapped in some mud, and I was in the middle of helping him before we were rudely interrupted.”

A flurry of emotions crossed over her face, but the one she settled on was confusion. “You’re going back for the kid? What for? We wasted…” She glanced down at her indicator and frowned. “Yeesh, we’ve already lost ten minutes! That means only twenty are left!”

“Yes, I can do the math,” I said wryly. “But I’m not arguing with you about this. I’m in charge, and you agreed to be a team player. Either be a team player, or take over successfully next time.”

It wasn’t my best repartee, but it apparently stung, because she blinked as if I had slapped her, and then gave me another appraising look. I ignored both, turning around and moving over to where the boy was still waiting, half sunk in the muddy water.

I passed by Maddox and Eric, who were bent, checking one of the unconscious men, and then stepped over the other man, whom Leo had just finished pushing out of the water. I stopped and gave Leo a hand up the steep bank, then moved over to the next pool and the boy.

“All right, kid,” I said, carefully repositioning myself on the edge and reaching out to him. “Just hold on tight and don’t let go.”

The boy nodded, his small hands already stretching out to grab my forearms with surprising strength. I began to tug him forward, and wound up having to put every muscle into it, because the mud wasn’t letting him go.

Eventually, he slid free with a slick, suctioning sound, and I carefully dragged him toward me and hauled him up, indifferent to the mud he was now depositing on my uniform. I set him up on the ridge separating the pools, and then climbed out after him.

“You okay?” I asked, kneeling down to wipe the slick brown mud off my hands.

He beamed up at me, his eyes sparkling. “Yes, thank you! I’d been in there for an hour.” It was possibly not a lie; it had taken us thirty minutes to get ready, and I’d bet the actors were in place long before we even reached the greenery.

“Well, you get home to your parents, and we’ll just—”

“You said you were here to fix something?” he asked, stopping me mid-turn.

I looked back at him, giving him a considering look. “What if we were?” I asked cautiously. While children had sometimes been used to lure Knights into traps, they had also played a critical role in helping the Knights during Requiem Day, dispatching messages between units and moving through the levels as scouts for the Knights. If he wasn’t a lure—which I really didn’t believe he had been—I had every reason to believe that this particular child actor was a plant representing something else. Help.

The boy puffed up his chest and stuck his thumb into it. “Because I know where the real damaged relay is. And I can show you the fastest way there.”

I smiled, amused by the proud way in which he said it, and confused by the way he said “real”. “What do you mean, ‘real’?”

“I heard a few of the meaner guys say that they had jacked the system and modified the location of the damaged relay to a different one, so that they could set a trap for whoever came to fix it. But I know where the real damaged place is, and I can take you there.”

I bit my lip, thinking. What he was saying lined up with multiple accounts from Requiem Day, in which organized gangs had sent false repair signals and then jumped anyone trying to work and repair the Tower, and stolen their supplies. I had no doubt the officials would give Eric incomplete information so that he would be just as much in the dark as the rest of us, so chances were that he was leading us to what he thought was the right location. What any Cog would deem the right location, had the officials not staged a false report to try to lure us into a trap. It would be on us to figure it out for ourselves, hence the role of the boy.

It tracked with what I knew of Requiem Day, and the odds were with us that the kid was there to help save us time. We’d probably need another ten minutes to get to the island where Eric thought the damaged relay was, with another five to implement any plan for a fight. Once the fight was over, we’d only have five minutes to input the damaged relay. But if the boy was right, and we got to Eric’s island only to discover that the damaged relay was actually in a different location, we’d lose for sure.

“Do you really remember where it is? And can you really show it to us?” I asked him.

“Oh, sure!” he said, jumping up and down excitedly. “You saved me, so I should help you with your mission, right?”

“Liana?” Dylan called from behind me. “Can I have a word with you?”

I ignored her for a second. I knew that she was going to warn me to walk away and just continue on our mission, but I had to follow my gut instinct—which told me that the test designers would put a boy in there to be rescued, if only to give those who stopped and helped him an added bonus for doing the right thing.

Regardless, I felt it was the right call, so I gave him a little nod. “I’d love it if you could show us where that damaged relay is,” I told him. “Lead the way.”

The boy smiled and slipped past me, darting around Leo, Maddox, Eric, and Dylan. “Follow me!” he said excitedly, his bare feet padding lightly over the earthen ground. “And hurry up—there are tons of idiots just like those running around! We have to be careful.”

“I’ll say,” Dylan muttered under her breath—though not softly enough that I would miss it. I gave her a look, arching an eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes. “You do realize this could be a trap, right? Something to draw us off track or mislead us? We could waste precious minutes following the kid, and for what? Some nebulous promise that he knew where to find what we were looking for? We already know where we are going—your little Cog friend told you! He even pointed it out. We should go there, not follow this kid!”

I waited for her to stop speaking, and then looked over at Maddox and Leo. “Boy or Eric’s place?”

“I vote boy,” Leo said. “I suspect he is a smaller challenge, one that is meant to compensate us for the time we wasted on rescuing him.”

“I vote the boy because I don’t like Dylan,” Maddox said sweetly next to him, raking the other girl with yet another disdainful look. “She and I clearly have different opinions of what constitutes a team player.”

I sighed, and then looked at Dylan. “We voted; we’re going. Does that work for you?”

Dylan’s mouth tightened in disapproval, but she nodded and stepped to one side, letting me pass.

It was something, at the very least.

But then again, so was she.