LUKA AND TYRONE CURL THEIR FINGERS INTO THE NARROW crack and slowly, slowly drag the door open, revealing a patch of light and a sliver of white floor and white walls.

I signal for quiet, then point at Luka and Lien and cock my head to the right. I point at Tyrone and Kendra and cock my head to the left.

For an instant, Kendra hesitates and I think she’s going to argue. But I can’t pair her with Lien. Enough of this our-team-your-team crap. We are one team and she needs to get that right now. And Lien and Luka need to stop glaring at each other. Pairing them up seems like a good plan.

I stare Kendra down and she falls in beside Tyrone. She closes her eyes for a second and takes a deep breath before opening them again and offering a tiny nod. I guess it’s her way of telling me she knows what I’m doing and she knows I’m right.

I hold up my thumb and two fingers, then just two fingers, and finally, one finger alone. We explode out the door, my team going right and left, me going straight.

“Clear,” I call.

“Clear,” Luka echoes back at me a second before Kendra says, “Clear.”

I take a second to evaluate our surroundings. The walls aren’t white; they just looked that way in the initial burst of light. They’re pale gray, polished concrete, smooth, a little shiny. The ceiling overhead appears to be made of corrugated metal—like the door we just burst through—with rows and rows of bright inset lights.

“Still weirdly familiar,” Lien says softly.

Luka frowns. “Yeah, sort of like Halo, but not quite.”

Tyrone shakes his head. “More like Resident Evil, I’d say.”

“Creepy,” Lien says.

“They’re close,” Kendra whispers. “I can feel them.”

We can all feel them. My gut writhes with the certainty that the Drau are just around the next corner or maybe the one after that. Too close for comfort.

When we were in Vegas, Tyrone told me that when we get dropped in, it creates some sort of rift that alerts the Drau. In highly populated areas, we get dropped fairly close because the other people around can help mask our presence. If we enter the mission in a more isolated spot—like the caves—we respawn farther away to decrease the risk that the Drau will pinpoint our location right away. For an added layer of stealth, our cons scramble our signal once we’re here, and that makes it even tougher for the Drau to find us.

Where we are now definitely doesn’t feel like a populated area, so we ought to be far from the Drau nest, not right on top of it. But my whole body’s on alert, every neuron pulsing the word: enemy. From the intensity of the urge to flee, I’m guessing we’ll run into them within minutes.

“Clusterfrack of the first degree,” Tyrone mutters.

Kendra and Lien exchange a veiled look, and Lien whispers, “You do what I told you.”

Kendra nods.

I hope Lien gave her some advice on how to deal, because the possibility of her freaking out on a mission is terrifying. It could put all our lives at risk.

My con tells me which direction to go. I point and say, “Stay behind me. Stay paired up, no matter what. Follow my lead. From here out, stay quiet.”

Luka’s mouth draws in a taut line. I suspect some inner well of machismo makes him want to offer to take point, or makes him want to point out that I’m not partnered, that there’s no one to watch my back. But he swallows any argument because my con’s the one telling us where to go, which means everyone else gets to follow, like it or not.

The corridor’s wide and cold. We move forward silently, except for this weird flapping noise . . . I turn and glare at Lien’s flip-flops. They’re pink with white cartoon kitties festooned with a bow on top. I stare at them, feeling very much like we’re a bunch of kids and not at all like a group of soldiers who can save the world.

Lien steps out of the flip-flops, leaving them behind. Not ideal, her going barefoot, but the noise and the risks of trying to run in flip-flops aren’t ideal, either. Barefoot on cold concrete’s better than dead.

Still following my con, we go straight, then left, then left again. I feel like a mouse in a maze. This place is just a jumble of corridors. Every hundred feet or so, we get to a three-way split with hallways running at right angles to one another. We pass a few doors but not many. So why all the corridors? Where do they lead?

We round another corner and another. I stop dead.

Ahead of us is a huge group of Drau, glowing like hundred-watt bulbs. They’re in neat rows, weapons drawn, aiming down the corridor.

Facing the wrong way.

All we see are their backs. I didn’t just feel like we were walking in circles. We were walking in circles. The Committee brought us around behind the enemy.

I’m not a look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth kind of girl. I signal my team to fan out to the sides, backs to the walls, firing as we move.

The Drau barely realize we’re here before we take down the rear line. I’m guessing about a dozen of them get sucked into the oily, black, speed-of-light ooze that comes from our weapons. They’re swallowed whole. My stomach turns as two get pulled in at once, limbs melting together, fusing them into one writhing, shrieking entity. Their comrades fire, raining pellets of light and pain down on us like a storm.

Chaos.

They move at impossible speeds.

We hit them hard with the element of surprise, but that’s gone now. And there are way more than a dozen of them.

Luka and Tyrone work in unison, shooting, taking down anything that comes at them.