The 11 AM alarm was still twelve minutes away when Jinx said, "So what you’re both telling me is that neither of you has a plan yet, but you both found pieces of one, and the pieces are probably connected, but you can’t confirm that until you get to the basement and the corner section of the wall in the same trip."

Proxy looked at her.

"That’s an accurate summary," he said.

Jinx let that sit for half a beat. "I want to be very clear that I heard all of that and I find it extremely frightening," she said. "The plan exists only as disconnected pieces on day one, there are six days left, and I personally found absolutely nothing useful this morning, which makes all of this very bad for me specifically."

Nyx was watching the perimeter patrol’s loop from their corner of the yard. Without looking at Jinx, she said, "You found forty-seven ceiling tiles."

Jinx frowned. "That was in the cell. That doesn’t help."

"It might," Proxy said.

Jinx looked at him.

"I’m joking," he said.

"That’s the first joke I’ve heard from you," she said. "I don’t like it."

The alarm sounded.

It had the same flat insistence as every other alarm in the building, the sort of sound that did not bother pretending it was sorry to exist. The yard emptied with the obedience of people who have learned the routine, or are in the process of being taught it.

Proxy watched the flow as they joined it. He was reading behavior, which inmates moved at the first sound, which waited for the last safe moment, which clustered around one another, and which kept measured distance from certain others. The prison’s social links showed itself in those small choices.

He knew before they reached the canteen doors that this would be the first time all or most of the eighteen contestants were in the same room at once, the lobby aside. He prepared for that by going through the doors while still observing.

The canteen was long. Table rows were fixed to the floor in lines, bench seating, furniture that made its intention obvious by refusing to be useful for anything except eating.

The serving line was along the far wall behind a partition, with the food station visible through a gap at the counter. Guards stood at the room’s corners and near the serving line, more presence than the yard, more than the library.

He counted positions before joining the line.

The corner guards had coverage arcs. The serving line guards were watching the handoff point specifically, which was where things tended to happen in a canteen and had apparently been studied.

The far end of the room had a response radius from the nearest guard that was longer than anywhere else.

He noted it and joined the line.

"What is it?" Nyx said, looking at the tray the server placed in front of her.

She was giving the food portion the proper evaluative attention. The portion was a stew of some kind, carrying the color of ambition and the consistency of compromise.

"It’s hot," Proxy said.

"I know that," she said. "I’m asking what it is."

"The label says beef stew," Jinx said from behind them, taking her own tray and examining the label the way one inspects a document one suspects of overconfidence. "They labeled it very confidently."

Nyx tasted it.

She said nothing for a moment. Her face did the speaking for her, which is often what faces are for, though most people use them more recklessly.

"It’s fine," she said.

"You’re making a face," Jinx said.

"I’m not making a face."

"You are actively making a face right now," Jinx said. "It’s a very specific one."

Nyx looked at the tray again.

On one side of the stew was a portion of something pale, and on the other was something that had at some point been a vegetable and had since moved on from that identity. She seemed to be searching for the best way to describe this, and the exercise was evidently less cooperative than expected.

"The ration blocks were better," she said.

"They were labeled as artificial protein compounds," Proxy said, receiving his tray.

"And they were," Nyx said, "which made them more honest than this."

"That’s a reasonable observation," Proxy said.

Jinx tasted the stew. She looked at her spoon, then at the tray, then at the two of them with the expression of someone who has reached a conclusion they consider impressive in the worst possible way.

"To be fair, I’ve had things that tasted worse than this."

They moved from the serving line into the seating area.

Proxy chose their table, not the far end, which would have read as evasive, and not the center, which was too exposed. He picked a table in the mid-room section, where they had sightlines to the serving line, the main door, and the far end of the room, with the interior wall behind them.

He sat and kept watching.

The room had all or most of the eighteen contestants among the general prison population, and he mapped positions as he settled.

Vex was at a table to the left of center, about a third of the way into the room.

She had placed herself with a clear view of both the main door and the serving line, with the wall at her left side. She was reading the room the same way he was, only from a different position, and she was not about to announce that fact any more than he was.

Hardin was at a table to the right.

The library warning had only contained him through the free period, and now he was eating with focused attention. He had not looked at Proxy. He had definitely noticed Proxy. Those two facts sat in a relationship that was more concerning than open aggression.

"Should I kill him?" Nyx asked with a little tilt of her head.

"Why this eager," Proxy said.

"Mm, I can feel it. He tried to hurt you."

"Right..."

She considered the best opportunity to commit murder and returned to the stew, eating it now with the full commitment of a serial killer.

Jinx leaned slightly toward Proxy.

"The yard gym guy is here," she said. "Across the room. He looks annoyed."

Proxy shrugged, and Jinx looked at Nyx, then back at her tray, and said nothing more on the subject.

The canteen was warm in the specific way of a closed room full of people who had reasons to be elsewhere and no possibility of being elsewhere, all of them aware the prison was temporary. That awareness was what sat in the air, people given a room, and told to wait.

It started in the far-left section.

The voice was the swordsman’s.

Proxy did not confirm that until then, but the voice was recognizable, the man who Nyx had fought days ago in the resort for the air drop.

Whatever had happened at that table had been building before the canteen and had simply arrived there to take shape.

The answer was not verbal.

The sound of something heavy striking something solid reached the mid-room section a beat after the guards near the far-left wall had already begun moving.

Two of them were already in motion. The corner guard on the far left was reorienting toward it. The near-left guard was moving faster.

Nyx had one hand flat on the table.

She was not watching the mess itself. Her eyes were moving across the rest of the room in a sweep.

"Proxy," she said.

"I see it," he said.

She looked at him, confirmed whatever she had needed to confirm, and returned to the broader sweep.

The swordsman said something else, and the volume climbed from the first line to the second. His opponent had no second line to offer.

The corner guard jumped into the situation.

The canteen started to erupt into that particular moment a room takes on when everyone has understood that something is happening, has asked whether they are part of it, and has reached an answer.

Proxy set his spoon down and watched the guard response with attention.