“You’re talking too much, Joaquin.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Of course you are. So now you have to decide how far you’re going to go to protect your cousin and his friends against how much of yourself are you prepared to lose. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“So. Cousin Baptiste, he sent someone here yesterday, didn’t he?”

Joaquin nodded urgently.

“Okay, good boy. So: two questions left. One: Why?”

“I don’t know, please, I swear on my own fucking mother, I don’t know where they go.”

Yuri stiffened. “They?”

“Yeah. Baptiste, he does this, like, every couple of months. People he’s taken get driven here to Bronkal; then they shoot them full of heavy-duty chemicals which put them in this really deep sleep, like a coma. After that they get shipped out again.”

“Why?” Even knowing every second was critical now, Yuri couldn’t help the question. “What for? What are they doing to them?”

“I don’t know what the fuck happens to them, man! I’m not crazy stupid enough to ask. I figure it’s got to be some weird rich dude who’s off-the-scale perverted. I mean, what kind of normal person wants a bunch of unconscious people?”

“That’s a very good question, Joaquin.”

“I don’t know. Really! Please, I don’t. All I do is take care of the vehicles. I arrange new registrations for the vans. That’s it!”

“I’ll accept that for now. Second question. Baptiste snatched a friend of mine yesterday, a decent boy called Horatio Seymore.”

Joaquin started rocking from side to side. “No, no, no. They’ll kill me. Please!”

“We know Horatio arrived here in Bronkal—” Yuri clicked his fingers and turned to Jessika. “When?”

“The van came through the commercial transport hub thirty-one hours ago,” she supplied.

“Thank you. Thirty-one hours ago. The van then drove to the docks. Where in the docks?”

“Please,” Joaquin whimpered.

“Ah, you were making such good progress, too.” Yuri held out his hand, and the paramilitary gave him the Bowie knife.

“Shit. All right. Christ!” Joaquin eyed the blade frantically. “It’s the bioreactor complex.” His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay? That’s it. Please, just let me go.”

Yuri slammed the knife down. Joaquin screamed. He looked down in terror to see the blade sticking into the chair, a centimeter from his crotch.

“Oops, missed,” Yuri said. “Let me have another go, see if my aim improves, because that reactor complex is huge, and you fucking know that.”

“Building seven! They’ve got them in building seven!”

—