Tally kept her eyes closed, listening harder, and frowned.

More sounds had joined the first, ringing from all directions now. Three, four, then five high-pitched notes began to ring, their combined volume no louder than a hummingbird at a hundred meters.

She opened her eyes, and as they refocused in the gloom, Tally suddenly saw them: a slight displacement silhouetting five human figures spread through the forest, their sneak suits blending almost perfectly into the background.

Then she saw how they were standing—legs braced apart, one arm pulled back, the other outstretched—and realized what the sounds were…

Bowstrings stretched taut and ready to fire.

"Ambush," Tally said, then realized she'd cut off her skintenna feed.

She rebooted it just as the first arrow flew.

NIGHTFIGHT

Arrows streaked through the air.

Tally rolled to the ground, flattening herself on a bed of icy, fallen needles. Something whistled past, close enough to ruffle her hair.

Twenty meters away, one of the arrows connected, and an electric buzz shot through her hearing like a network overload, choking off a grunt from Tachs. Then an arrow struck Fausto, and Tally heard him gasp before his feed went silent. She scrambled for cover behind the nearest tree, hearing two bodies thudding against the hard ground. "Shay?" she hissed.

"They missed me," came the answer. "Saw it coming."

"Me too. They've definitely got sneak suits." Tally shoved herself back against the wide trunk, scanning for silhouettes among the trees.

"And infrared, too," Shay said. Her voice was calm.

Tally looked down at her hands, glowing fiercely in infrared, and swallowed. "So they can see us perfectly and we can't see them?"