“We are not!” Xiomara said. “For fuck’s sake, listen to us!”

A parasite, I thought. Dr. Summers had not known. But she had believed it was a weapon, sent back by Mournful Evening Song. A parasite could be a weapon as easily as a virus.

Panya gestured impatiently. “Malachi, don’t make me ask again.”

“What do you want?”

“Security drones first. Then you’re going to fly the ship.”

He glanced at me as he shouldered past, a lightning-quick look I could not read, and moved toward Panya’s terminal and reached over her shoulder. She grabbed his wrist and twisted herself out of her chair, turning to face him. She held his wrist so tightly he flinched; the tips of her nails broke his skin, and droplets of blood welled around her grimy, clenching fingers. There was a bite mark on Panya’s hand, a neat half-moon of punctured skin. I wondered which of the hostages had done that.

“You will do exactly what I tell you and nothing else,” Panya said. “Do you understand? Please don’t make this difficult for us.”

Malachi tried to pull his arm away. Panya only dug in harder.

“Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he said. “Let go of me.”

Panya tilted her head to one side, the same way she always did when she was trying to intimidate somebody. When I was younger, I had found that look crushing, to know I had disappointed her so badly, but now I saw only an empty coldness. The calm I had always taken for serenity seemed to me now to be the same calm of a snake before it struck.

She let go of Malachi’s wrist. He slid into the seat and set to work, calling up report after report, switching between displays, moving so fast it was impossible to tell if he was following Panya’s directive or not. He couldn’t be. He was a SPEC agent. He had to be working for his own agenda, not hers. But I didn’t know enough to be certain—nor, I hoped, did Panya.

“Tell me about the parasite,” I said to Bhattacharya. “How did you kill it?”

“Stop humoring them, Zahra,” Panya said idly.

“Electric shock.” Bhattacharya glanced at Ariana as he spoke, but she said nothing. She was looking steadily at Dag, her gaze focused on his weapon. Bhattacharya went on, “It’s biomechanical. We think the shock shorted it out.”

“We found out by accident,” Xiomara said.

They had gotten away, then they had been caught again, and now there was a room of corpses at their backs and a weapon aimed at their heads. I could not tell if they were lying. I could not guess what reason they might have. I knew, in their place, I would say anything to placate my captors, and this did not seem to be placating Panya.