“I’m the person in charge of your case.”

“Are you CIA? FBI? From some other agency that handles contact with alien races?”

Her laughter was low, and surprisingly sincere. “Believe it or not, your kind are the first actual aliens we’ve encountered. Oh, we’ve been watching the sky for decades, but either life is scarcer in the stars than anyone guessed, or your people are very, very good at what you do. That’s all right. We’re very, very good at what we do as well.”

I said nothing, but slid my right hand over the bandage covering the inside of my left elbow, pressing down, like I could somehow will the human skin to grow back.

This woman’s organization couldn’t be as good as they thought they were, or they would have captured Jeff as well. There was a chance they had—I couldn’t exactly ask without giving away the fact that someone had managed to escape—but I didn’t think so. She was trying too hard to keep me talking, and she wasn’t threatening to hurt him if I didn’t cooperate, or telling me he was cooperating and hence I was the extraneous one. I was their only alien. They didn’t need me to work with them. They still wanted it, badly enough to put on this little routine.

“You’ll let them go,” I said flatly. “All three of them. You’ll give them their things, and provide them with their medication, and let them go.”

“Will we, now.”

“They’re citizens. You can’t disappear them the way you can disappear me.” Honestly, I doubted her ability to disappear me without consequences. I might not be a citizen in the eyes of the government, but everyone who knew me—my housemates, my friends, my family—believed I was a real person. They believed I mattered. Unless the government wanted to announce I was an extraterrestrial, they were stuck.

“There’s a word that invalidates your entire argument.”

“What’s that?”

“Terrorist.” There was no disguising the pleasure in her voice. It was enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as she continued, “People believe what they’re told loudly enough. I don’t have to say you’re an alien. All I need to do is leak the story that a domestic terrorist is being detained for questioning and I can make you disappear so completely that no one will ever figure out where you went. You don’t hold as many chips as you think you do.”

“If you want me to cooperate—”

“If I want you to cooperate, I’ll haul your little girlfriend in here and make you explain to her why you’re keeping her away from her medication. You’ll do whatever I say after that.”