It had been so long since I’d heard someone misgender Graham that for a moment, I thought she was talking about Toni. The moment passed. Rage replaced confusion. I was on my feet before I had the chance to think better of it, hands balled into fists, turning as I shouted, so that I would be facing my captor at least once.

“Listen here, you … you … you whatever the fuck you are, you may be the human here, but that doesn’t grant you a scrap of humanity,” I snarled, making no effort to pretend I was playing nice. The time for playing nice was over. “If you hurt them, I swear to you, I will make you pay for it. I will get out of here, and I will find you, and I will make you sorry that you ever touched a hair on any of our heads. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” There was a click behind me. I whirled, and watched in wide-eyed dismay as a section of the wall slid open, revealing a hallway on the other side. The woman from the plane was standing there, a smile on her face and another Taser in her hands. She was alone, and for one dizzy moment, I considered rushing her, knocking her back and making a break for it.

“Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. Her smile turned predatory. “I know what you’re thinking, and I promise you, it wouldn’t work out the way you expect. You’d be captured and restrained before you found yourself anywhere near an exit—and once you had been, there’d be no more question of whether you were going to play nicely. Your friends would absolutely become extraneous to needs at that point, and your own feelings on the matter of what was or was not to be done with you would be irrelevant. Do you understand me?”

“I understand that this is bullshit,” I spat. “You’re wasting my time.”

The woman’s eyes widened marginally.

Understanding swept through me, chasing away the remains of my rage. “You’re wasting my time,” I breathed. “You’re trying to keep me busy, to keep me too distracted to notice something. What don’t you want me to notice?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“There’s something,” I countered. “You’re here. You’re close enough for me to reach out and grab.”

The woman took a half-step backward, further from the still open door. I frowned.

“What don’t you want me to realize?”

“If you move, I will shoot you,” she said, lifting her Taser.

“Okay. You do that.” I turned and walked back to the cot, where I sat down, folded my arms, and waited.

“What are you doing?”