“Please stop talking,” she said. Her voice was so calm. She had the same musical, lilting accent as Baqir’s, the accent of the North American deserts. “You are all going to do exactly what we say. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“Of course,” M’Baga said, “but if you’ll only tell us—”

The blond woman pushed the muzzle of her gun against his forehead. “You need to stop talking, Professor. Ready, Zahra?”

“You,” said the dark-haired woman. Zahra. She was looking at me, but her gun was still aimed at Baqir’s head. He had dropped his chin to his chest to shrink away from the muzzle. Our arms were pressed together between the seats. “Bhattacharya. Get up. You’re coming with me. And you”—that to Baqir, with a nudge in the back of his head. “You stay here. If your friend doesn’t do what we ask, Henke is going to shoot you.”

The other man—Henke, she had called him—took her place behind Baqir without question. He grinned and said, “With pleasure.”

I unsnapped my harness and put my hands on the armrest to push myself up. Baqir pressed himself into the seat to let me pass, watching with wide, scared eyes. I wanted to tell him not to be afraid. I wanted to tell him I would do what they said and keep him safe. It was what he had been doing for me since we were twelve years old and he had decided to befriend the barely verbal fellow patient in the children’s hospital. Me with all my broken bones, him with the disease eating him from the inside. Don’t be afraid, he had said to me, more times than I could count. Don’t be nervous. You don’t have to be scared. It will be okay. I’ll protect you.

I didn’t know what they wanted, but my mind was racing. Something from my aunt, that was the only thing that made sense. They wanted to use me to persuade her to do something. They thought SPEC was lying about not having access to House of Wisdom. They were separatists or anarchists or militarists who wanted the Councils to vote one way or another, or release a prisoner, or something, something. I couldn’t wrap my head around what they could possibly expect to get out of this. It wouldn’t work. My aunt would not be impressed by their threats.

“Move,” Zahra said.

She pointed toward the cockpit. I obeyed without hesitation.