"We need to talk," Thax husked out in a mocking tone. He gave a short laugh. "Well, then. Groff, you and Flantain can feel free to go take a walk along the back terraces, or maybe explore the grounds, while we and the Director have a private conversation."

They all laughed. "Maybe we can look for the library, off the grand hall," Flantain said. "I thought I saw sweeping staircases somewhere back there."

In the chuckling, Groffoco accidentally kicked the lantern over. He picked it up and tossed it to Flantain.

"Hot Seat," he announced when she managed to catch it. "What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?"

"Umm, mud mole pudding," she said with a decisive nod. "Visiting my aunt in Merharn. Back at you, catch!"

Groffoco caught the lantern and bopped it into the air with his fist. Thax jumped in. "Here's one. What's the most expensive thing you've ever owned?"

Groffoco squinted. "Probably… does a girlfriend count?"

"Not a chance, man, you never even had one of those."

"Shows how much you know," Groffoco insisted. "Lonna Sanchon. You were probably still a skinny little junior schooler. Challis, catch!"

Her smile dropped open, and she flung her arms up. "I don't even know what you're throwing," she objected, then it bounced into her lap. She picked it up, feeling the warmth on her hands through the plastic.

"Ever played Hot Seat?" Groffoco asked. "It's simple. Icebreaker. You have to answer any question truthfully as long as you're holding the ball, or in this case, a Pocket Luminator Pouch with double light frequency frames."

"Got it."

"For example: what's the best thing someone said to you in the last twenty-four hours?"

"Ooh." Challis thought. "I think it was when Thax woke me up at the crack of dawn to say the rain had stopped."

"Nice. Quick, toss it," Groffoco said. "If you're still holding it when someone is asking, you have to answer. Or else…"

Thax's words came in rapid fire. "How old were you when you first got the talk about –"

Challis practically threw it at him. Flantain started to object that it was too late, but Groffoco waved her off. Thax made a small sound of pain when the lantern hit him.

"Okay," Groffoco lolled out. "You deserved that. Hot Seat: how come you own a five-cherrigram holostrap and can't afford some decent painkillers?"

"I had some in my pack, dipwad," Thax said. "Besides, who expects a thousand pounds of thrike to squash them into mincemeat?"

"We're asking the questions, not you," Groffoco crowed over the sympathetic laughs.

Flantain asked next. "Hot Seat: what's the worst injury you've ever gotten?"

"Broken elbow," he said after a moment. "It was my first week of thrike training. You remember, Groff? You were one of the mentors. Hurt worse than this does now. Rotten-pickiest day of my life."

"Well now," Groffoco grinned. "Hot Seat: why are you such a wise-ass?"

"Everyone's a wise-ass when you're thick as a brick." Thax carefully tossed it to Flantain using only his wrist. "Maybe two bricks put together."

"Two bricks?" Groffoco feigned hurt. "Say that again and I'll double-brick you in the –"

"Hot Seat," Challis interrupted. "Do you ever wish you had a brother, yes or no?"

Flantain hedged. "Maybe when I was younger. But I've always been close to my sister."

"Nice."

The inflatable lantern bounced back over to Challis, and the conversation turned to favorite childhood stories.

"That's easy," she said, amusement lighting up her face. "My mother used to tell these tales of tiny people living in all the places we couldn't see, like inside the walls or on top of the skybridges. She called them Pipe Stories."

"Did you ever pretend to be a Pipe Person?" Thax asked.

Challis tossed the lantern. "All the time. I pretended our lodge was a coconut and the canyon was just a hole in the ground."

"It is a hole in the ground," Thax coughed out a broken laugh, and the cave echoed with the rest of them joining in.

Drunnel appeared in the doorway, breathing hard and scowling down at them. Groffoco stopped bopping the lantern and quirked his eyebrows quizzically at him.

"How… are the animals?" he asked blandly. The others snorted and tried to smother their laughter. Groffoco couldn't hold it, and broke into a grin. "Welcome back, sir. Could you tell if the light is working properly?"

Drunnel folded his arms. "Just fine," he said stiffly. "Pitch black from out there until within maybe five feet of the entrance. However." He scratched at the scruffs of his blond beard and glared. "Your raucous giggling could have alerted the deafest patrol between here and Hannowold. What do you think this is, spring camping?"

"Groff started it, sir," Thax objected, then tapped his knuckles out to the side. "Besides, Challis can tell if anyone is coming, can't you."

"Not when she's distracted," Drunnel snapped. "Get your head in gear, all of you. We're in hostile jungle terrain, with limited supplies and limited resources. As of now we have zero contact with anyone inside Hannowold, and our primary goal must be a collective strategy to learn as much as we can about the city before we try to breach it and get our people out. The expedition cannot halt here."

The other four faces were solemn by the time he finished. Until,

"Besides survival, of course, sir," Thax's voice came in a lilt. Drunnel seethed at him.

"Beg pardon?"

"Our primary goal, sir. What you said, of course, but survival comes first."

Challis shrunk inwardly from the silence that crunched onto them like a boulder. Groffoco threw the lantern at Thax's face. "So start acting it, muttonhead. Do you want him to bite your head off?"

"Thank you, Captain," Drunnel said. "Now. Tofflar and Challis. Come on over here. I need to talk to you."

Groffoco helped Flantain scoot back, and the two of them exchanged the lantern in the back of the little cave as the other three took the front. Challis and Thax ended up on either side of Drunnel, facing him while he sat against the trunk of the balustrade.

"First thing first," he said in a low voice. "Why weren't you wearing the tripwire when we found you, Challis? I told you to keep it on so we can build your stamina with it."

"I… didn't take it off," she said, one hand around the knotted ends. She turned to Thax, trying to keep her voice steady. The laughter had helped, but so many questions still burned. "Hot Seat," she said. "Why did you take it?"

He leaned against the doorway, his left hand supporting his side. A wash of discomfort trailed off of him, more than Challis had ever felt, or seen, on him for as long as she'd known him. She could hardly picture it on his face. Thax's features were built for smiling, his relaxed posture not shaken by anything. His eyes were resolute, if on the small side, inset beneath flat eyebrows that were surprisingly dark compared to his yellow-blonde tufts.

But now, those eyes were turned away, dreading the conversation. The discomfort grew when the Director repeated the question in a stern tone.

"Why did you take it?"

"I didn't consider it such a risk as all that, sir," Thax said finally, looking past Drunnel at the dark.

"You didn't?" Challis burst out. "A Perraxis patrol zeroed in on you like you were under a spotlight." She thumped a fist on her knee. "Damn you, Thax, we were this close to being carted off. Flantain was already hurt, you almost got killed in cold blood!"

"That's not true," he pushed back. Then, in an even tone, "He was warm-blooded. And I think you'll find that most people are."

"This isn't a joke, jackhole," she huffed, frustration making her cheeks all hot. "Unlike everything else in your life."

"Oh, really?"

Challis clamped her teeth down on a thumbnail and turned away. The Director's voice was quiet, pulling in their attention like a dog on a leash. "I expected a more responsible approach from both of you. Especially with Flantain in tow. I know your status was compromised when you lost that captain's badge, Tofflar, but you know what stakes are at play."

"She followed me," Thax barked, his composure finally snapping. "No one asked you to come, Gannagen."

"Excuse me? I'm the reason we weren't killed."

He scoffed. "Perfect, so I shot a man dead in the face just for kicks. Easy to just let that go, is it?"

Drunnel tried to speak, but Challis cut in front of him. "It never would have come to that if you hadn't stolen the only real protection we had. For no good reason either, you rotten –" She stopped.

"Thief?" Thax supplied.

"Exactly."

"At least I can still function without a badge," he said hotly, "whereas you, take away that precious wire and you can't even walk straight!"

"Enough." Drunnel thudded down the word between them. And Challis heard her father's voice in it. She wiped her hands together as if washing the situation away. Heavy silence took over the cave, broken by quiet whispers from Groffoco behind them.

"I had a good reason," Thax's voice finally edged in, still razor-sharp but held back by the reins of his regained self-control. "I still think it is. But… it's not for this company."

"This company?" Drunnel gestured vaguely around at them all, "or this company?" He pointed to himself and Challis.

Thax took a breath, and met his eye. "You, sir."

"Mm." Drunnel nodded and didn't push the issue, instead rolling up his sleeves. Black tattoos swirled into view. "In case you're wondering, you haven't managed to lose that tracker we put on you."

"What?" he said in disbelief. "I thought I'd scrubbed it off two nights ago in the rain."

"Remarkable devices," Drunnel said, as if trying to sell one. "Can be very useful, especially the audio micro-whisperers. Though by now I've suffered enough Tofflarisms for a lifetime."

Thax gave a half-laugh and then went quiet.

"Challis," Drunnel went on, as if nothing was amiss. "How well has the tripwire been working? Did you have any trouble navigating, at least until Tofflar took it from you?"

"Not for most of the time we were out there," she said. "It was actually easier when it was raining. But now – well, it's working differently now. People are getting harder to distinguish. I can't make you out as clearly as that tree behind you."

"Can you find the thrikes? And my horse?"

Challis looked, slowly turning her head as she mindswept the ravine outside. "Yes," she finally said. "You must have found another cave or something. They seem to be inside the cliffsides. I can tell they're active, too. Moving around and…" she cocked her head. "Just the thrikes. Not the horse."

"That makes sense," Drunnel said. "Good."

"Sir?" Thax slowly sat up, apprehension coloring his voice. "What happened to all those raiders you and Groff followed around? And the two that caught us earlier?"

Drunnel released an odd sound from deep in his throat that turned into a cough. "Thrikes gotta eat, too."

The food stopped sitting so comfortably in Challis' stomach, and she hugged her knees close with a squirm. Thax made a noise that matched her thoughts.

"Better them than us," he sniffed after a moment. "You took that first man down in a blink. May I take a look at your sidearm, sir?"

A shuffling clink sounded as Drunnel pulled it out.

"Willerton 20-mag Tangent. Pops like a dream. If you so much as breathe on it wrong, I'll skin you," he said without a hint of humor in his tone, then turned to Challis. "The deal that I mentioned earlier, Challis," he said easily, "is something that needs to be done before we have any hope of getting our friends out of Hannowold safely. How much do you know about Brumelo Insights?"

"A little bit," she said, wondering how to work around the fact that she rarely interacted with even local technology since Cormellican six years ago. "Rival tech company of the FHF, dominates the northwest-ish side of Petchkan. Don't they contaminate their generated power through plant life? Not just solar. Or wind."

"That's right."

"Factions split over it maybe ten years ago."

"Yes. While the FHF, mostly channeled through Cormellican Institute, generates pure airbound energy to power its products, Brumelo sucks it out of plants and redirects half of the effort back into plant production. You get a lot less out for the exertion put in," Drunnel said, leaning back against the tree as if exhausted by the mere thought.

"Timber Tech is similar, isn't it, sir?" Thax pushed the Willerton back carefully with his boot. "At least, where it's all woodlands. I thought I read something about earthbound energy sourcing and its effect on the land itself."

Drunnel drummed his fingers on the stone. "The whole concept of earthbound energy is exactly what makes these other companies so short-lived, and constantly re-conforming themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of them burn out within our lifetime."

"Our lifetime, or… your lifetime?" Thax asked through a yawn. Challis couldn't tell what expression Drunnel made, but it grazed the air like a heat wave.

"All that to say," Drunnel went on in a hard voice, "we need to find an unpolluted airbound energy capacitor, which likely will cross the line into illegal activity. There has to be one somewhere in Hannowold, if Brumelo hasn't swamped the place."

"Why?" Challis asked.

"Because until two years ago, Hannowold was a –"

"Sorry," Challis cut in again. "Why are we looking for a capacitor?"

"Ah." He dropped down to a whisper. "Because we need to recharge that tripwire."

The words thrummed into Challis' head, reverberating uselessly for a long minute before she started to make sense of them. An energy capacitor would be the most condensed form of the city's generated energy, of course. The tripwire couldn't be recharged by the source alone, whether it was sunlight itself or collected from a million tiny factories like leaves on a tree. A capacitor would have already done the work of collecting the energy, if they could only find it and tap into it. Without getting caught. She fingered the tiny facets along the length of the cable. For the first time, she wondered if the texture was the same as the miniature complexity of hexagons in her Cormellican neck patch.

After thinking along those lines, Challis released the part of her mind that wanted to do what Drunnel said, and couldn't wait. The tripwire, recharged, could let her be so much more than she was now. Its fizzing excitement, driving her abilities into hyperspeed, was pushing her toward something so new and fresh that she could only imagine the possibilities. What had Drunnel promised? An international program, with her as frontrunner? Challis forced herself to take a deep breath. Until a few days ago, there had been nothing to her life to look forward to. She and her brother were living a life of dead ends, sinking deep into debt with nothing but the next day's work and payment to think about. They were one step from expendable. But if Rasalas could see her now, she thought. He would… of course, he would be impressed. And proud. Her father too, and everyone else she knew in Oedolon. Let them see what she could do.

"Perfect," she said.

Drunnel kicked Thax's boot as if waking him up. "You. Starting tomorrow, Tofflar, you and Groffoco will need to take turns watching the patrol patterns in and out of the city. Challis can help you. We'll need to spy on the spies, as it were, and get an idea of what we're up against."

"Hoo boy," was all Thax said.

They sat in mutual silence. Challis swept the area outside once more, and then turned her concentration to the north, where Hannowold waited for them like a beast crouching on the edge of a cliff. She could just feel a slight difference in energy from this distance: the more sturdy, static presence of the settlement among the flowing tangle of jungle overgrowth. Somewhere, just within reach, was an energy source that could ramp up the tripwire's potency, and her own abilities as a result.

"Director," she broke out. "Let's go take a look."

He sat up. "Tonight?" Challis expected him to scoff and refuse, or perhaps to remind her who made the decisions around here. But his efflux disclosed something else. Challis felt him looking closely at her. "Ah. You're not tired, are you." It wasn't a question. Challis smiled, noticing for the first time how her fingers were tapping nonstop. The tripwire caressed her neck, alert and active where it tingled into the patch.

Drunnel pushed up to his feet, vigor making him ten years younger. He touched her shoulder with a hand until she took it, and helped her up.

"Excellent," his enthusiasm seized the air. "Let's go."