My quarters were just as I had left them: in the shape of a large, circular platform that doubled as an elevator, enclosed by a domed ceiling. Before Leo and Quess had initiated the reset meant to lure Sadie into my quarters, there had been walls and rooms of my own design, laid out like a snail shell. Now there was nothing, save a central column that controlled the features of the room and a terminal that was suspended from the ceiling next to it.

And next to that stood two figures who were opposite in every way. He was tall, with broad shoulders, while she was short and slender. Her hair was a mass of fire, vibrant against the dark gray of her uniform, while his colors were a direct juxtaposition: crimson uniform and black hair. They stood together, speaking in low voices that were hard to discern over the sound of our boots on the ground.

I walked toward them slowly while Maddox peeled off to go conceal the hard drives with the stack of cartons that held our personal effects, recovered by the system during the reset. We had entered through an elevator hatch near enough to it that it only took her a few seconds to hide the hard drives among them, and I waited, trying not to look at my watch, then sped up when Maddox returned to my side.

Just then, the man leaned over and tapped on the screen of the terminal, saying something in a contemplative voice. To my surprise, Sadie Monroe looked up and beamed at him, pride lining the curves of her pretty face.

“Very good,” she said in a throaty purr that I could hear over our footsteps.

It was so jolting that I slowed to a stop, absolutely repulsed by the idea that Sadie was flirting with Quess. I cast a worried glance over at Maddox, and saw her head cocked and eyebrows raised, green eyes flashing first in shock and then intense displeasure, and I suddenly had a picture in my mind of a gun about to go off.

And why wouldn’t she be angry? Quess was her… boyfriend? I wasn’t sure, and I hadn’t asked. He had been there for Maddox during her emotional crisis and had managed to nurse her through it. Now they shared a room. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know. They were adults, and it was none of my business.

But it became my business if Maddox’s jealousy could potentially damage the final stages of our plan. We were almost there—almost finished. We just had to knock Sadie out again, put her net back in, give her one last dose of Spero, and then send her on her way, report in hand.

Then she’d go back to her home, find it completely disassembled, and tell the council, hopefully with no memory of the events that had, and were about to, transpire.

“Keep it together,” I told her in a low, urgent voice. Her eyes flicked over at me without her head moving, and she carefully began to pull the anger off her face, softening the hard lines of it until she didn’t look so… murderous.

Quess glanced over his shoulder at us, and I started moving forward again, keeping my face even and plain. He gave me a little nod and turned back to Sadie. “CEO Monroe?” he asked, his voice soft and almost hesitant, nothing like the confident man I knew. I smiled when I realized he was playing her hard, because sure enough, her head swiveled up to him, an eager smile curling on her lips.

“Yes?” she asked, leaning closer to him. I bit my lip as his hand dipped down to his belt and slowly eased his baton out, hiding my smile. “What is it, Sam?”

I heard Maddox snort slightly under her breath, but my moment of levity was gone, and I was once again hyperaware of the time. Sadie was really out of it; clearly the sedative had lowered her inhibitions, and she had zeroed in on Quess as her conquest. And that was great, but we didn’t have time for this. On the one hand, I was happy that he had gone along with it in order to better manipulate her. On the other…

Maddox growled under her breath, and I silently prayed to a higher power for her to get a grip.

“Oh, I was just wondering about this little line of code,” he replied with an innocent smile, and then stretched an arm around her to point at something on her side of the screen.

She giggled and turned her attention to it, and I crossed my arms, my impatience growing, even as Quess slowly withdrew to create distance between them so that he wasn’t shocked along with her. “Sam,” she said, her voice a shrill squeal that rivaled the loud slap she placed on his forearm a heartbeat later. “You already know what this is!” She chuckled throatily and flipped her hair over her shoulder, spearing him with a predatory look. “What are you playing at?” she purred.

“Ho-kay, that’s enough of that,” Maddox said, and the next thing I knew she was crossing the floor toward Sadie in long, determined strides, her baton sliding out of her loop. Sadie’s head wobbled around toward Maddox, her eyes narrowing in confusion. Quess had just enough time to step away before Maddox was pressing the end of her baton into Sadie’s shoulder.

Sadie seized up for several seconds, and then slumped over as soon as the charge was expended, slipping right into Quess’s waiting arms.

“I had it,” he said as he eased her down with a grunt. “What the hell, Doxy?”

“Sorry,” she said, but her tone was anything but contrite. “I just couldn’t stand any more of the Sadie and Sam kissing hour.”

Quess rolled his eyes and then looked over at me. “How’d it go?”

“We had problems,” I told him honestly as I approached and dropped to the ground to help them flip Sadie over. “I’ve got Jasper and Rose in some slaved hard drives, but Jasper is still attacking Rose, and it’s drawing a lot of power. We need to get them downloaded…” I trailed off to check my watch, and my mouth went dry. We only had six minutes left before the hard drives failed. “Immediately,” I bit out, my stomach churning. A minute to exchange nets, and then we’d only have five more to wake Sadie up and get her out. We were cutting it really close.

Maddox straddled Sadie’s back, her hands already filled with the kit she’d used to exchange my net for Sadie’s in the elevator. I pushed Sadie’s hair out of the way while Maddox passed the bloody net she’d taken out of my neck to Quess for him to sanitize, and then began to cut, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Okay,” Quess said with a grim nod. “I’ll get them uploaded immediately. Anything else?”

Maddox withdrew her hand, revealing a half-inch-long incision, and handed the long silver cutter out to me. I took it automatically, knowing she needed to move quickly.

“Yeah,” I replied, my stomach flopping around with anxiety as each second dragged on. If she woke up while we were doing this… I shook it off and answered Quess’s question as he handed the net, now clean and glistening with sterilizing liquid, back to Maddox. “I’ve got the guy who cut my throat.”

Quess froze, but Maddox remained focused as she slid the net into the incision with a pair of tweezers, using them to push it all the way into Sadie’s neck. As soon as she was satisfied, she handed me the tweezers and pulled out a silver canister. A press on the top spilled some pink foam onto her fingertip, and she gently smoothed the mousse over the wound. It would be healed in a matter of minutes.

“Talk about it later,” she said as she got off Sadie. “Quess, how is this going to work?”

“Prop her up against me,” he said, and within moments the three of us were lifting her onto her feet, Quess’s large arm around her waist helping to brace her. Her head rolled forward as we worked, and he reached over and gently positioned it against his shoulder so that it seemed she was sleeping against him.

“I’ve got her on a sort of loop,” he told us softly, shifting her weight a little bit. “Right after you left and Maddox got back, I gave her a quarter pill, and we staged a new arrival scene without you, saying you’d been called away, and then I guided her through things. The sedative made her dopey, but she was able to follow along and jump to the conclusions we set up for her. I gave her a half of a pill forty minutes later, and every thirty minutes after that, restarting the loop in her mind so that there was still a ten-minute sequence of her arriving and interacting with us. Hopefully, this next one won’t eat too much into that time, so she has at least some memory of being here.”

I nodded in wordless agreement. Our entire plan hung on this one thing, and if it didn’t work, Sadie might remember too much and figure out that something was up. If she put everything together and realized that we had pulled one over on her to raid her quarters… then nowhere in the Tower would be safe for us. Summoning up a deep calm, I took a few steps back and waited for her to wake up. Maddox moved to join me.

It only took a minute for Sadie to give a soft little groan, and her head shifted, nestling into the crook of Quess’s shoulder. “You smell nice,” she slurred, and I reached out and grabbed Maddox’s forearm before the statuesque woman could think to move.

The muscles under her skin were tight, but as I glanced at her, I saw her giving me an annoyed look that told me I was overreacting. She wasn’t going to screw this up.

“CEO Monroe?” Quess asked, and something about his tone implied that he’d said it once before and was both nervous and embarrassed to have to do it again.

Sadie murmured something incoherent against his neck with a little snort. Quess cleared his throat and repeated, “CEO Monroe?” in a firmer voice, but there was an undercurrent of panic to it.

Her head rolled up, and she blinked at Quess blearily. “Wha—”

I nodded at Maddox, and we resumed our walk over. “CEO Monroe,” I said loudly, putting a note of disapproval in my voice. “Knight Commander Worthington. How is the investigation going?”

Quess took a quick step away from Sadie, and I was surprised to see a flush forming in his cheeks. I gave him an internal nod of respect for taking his role that far, and then returned my focus to Sadie.

She, however, was considerably less embarrassed, given the displeased curl of her lips. “You’re back,” she said haughtily. “I’m surprised you even bothered to show.”

I kept my face expressionless but was grateful to see that she hadn’t remembered the first time she arrived—when I’d been here to greet her. “My apologies,” I replied, keeping my voice as empty as possible to tell her I wasn’t sorry at all. “I was dealing with a potential undoc situation.” It wasn’t technically a lie, which was why I probably shouldn’t have said it, but it was worth it to watch her eyes narrow into slits.

“I see,” she said primly. “Well, Knight Commander Worthington and I are still conducting our analysis.” Her tone was dismissive, and she even went so far as to turn her back to me, but stopped mid-motion when Quess cleared his throat and gave her an apologetic look.

“CEO Monroe… we finished the analysis, remember? Is that headache still bothering you? Or was the medicine I gave you too strong? I’m so terribly sorry…” He held out the pad, his eyes brimming with uncertainty, and I almost gagged at Sadie’s positively feline response.

“It’s fine, Sam,” she said soothingly, but there was a greasy undercurrent that made me sick. Enough was enough.

“Sam?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re on a first-name basis with the Knight Commander I put in charge of maintaining our servers and computers?”

“Internal server police,” Quess corrected softly, and I speared him with a look so fierce that for a second, I thought his recoil was real. It wasn’t, of course, but even if it had been, I would’ve gone for it anyway.

“Care to correct me again, Worthington?” I growled menacingly, and he quickly shook his head.

“No, ma’am.”

Sadie tsked and took the pad out of Quess’s hand. “What a way you have with your people,” she remarked, condescension thick in her voice. “Especially with such a talented Knight. I’m quite surprised that our department hasn’t poached you yet, Sam.”

I raised an eyebrow at her as Quess somehow managed another flush—I was going to ask him about that later—but this was dragging on far too long already. “I’m sorry, are you questioning my ability to run my own department?”

“Always,” Sadie replied with another feline smile. “Anyway, it seems that Knight Commander Worthington is correct. We have finished, and the medication he gave me to combat a headache was fairly strong. I apologize for drifting off on you like that, Sam.”

Quess widened his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, no, ma’am. It’s not your fault; it’s mine. If you’d like, I could escort you to the Medica, so we can make sure you are all right.”

I could’ve killed him with a single look. The last thing we needed was for her to go to the Medica and get checked out. One look at her blood would definitely reveal the sedative and could even reveal Spero. I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to figure out what it was, but it wasn’t even worth the risk.

Not to mention, we needed Quess to upload Jasper and Rose. They were waiting. They had been waiting too long already. I didn’t want them to wait a second longer, and if Quess left, it would mean that we couldn’t upload them until Leo arrived.

But Quess seemed to have a better read on Sadie than I thought. “No,” she said, finality in her voice. “I’m truly sorry, but I just don’t have the time. I’m already behind on my schedule, and I’m sure I’ll be fine. That nap seems to already have me feeling as good as new.”

Maddox growled as Sadie winked at Quess, and I tensed, wondering if Sadie would notice.

She didn’t, however, and bent over to pick up her bag, tucking her pad into it. “Champion,” she said curtly.

“Hold up,” I said before she could even take her first step. “What was the problem with my room?”

“It seems to have been a random glitch,” she announced. “I’m sure you won’t understand the details, but suffice it to say I have fixed it, and it shouldn’t happen again.”

I gave her a doubtful look. “Could this affect the other councilors’ quarters?”

She shook her head, her face annoyed. “It was a random error,” she repeated slowly, and I resisted the urge to smack her. “My report will be sent to you shortly.”

I gave her a bright and vacuous smile in response. “Thank you ever so much for your help,” I told her lightly. “And I hope that you can catch up on your schedule. Lieutenant Kerrin?”

Maddox nodded, echoing my empty, yet chipper, smile, and began leading Sadie away toward the elevator. I started walking toward where Maddox had set the hard drives before they were even on board, but as soon as the door shut between us, I was racing toward them.

“Call Leo!” I ordered Quess as I picked up the veritable tower of plastic boxes. “Get him and Alex down here.” I checked my watch and saw with great relief that we still had two minutes left.

But that didn’t mean we were out of the woods. We still had Baldy to deal with, fallout to worry about, and two AIs to break apart.