He walked away from the area outside the cell, passed an armed guard who sat at a small desk with a laptop on it, and lifted the lever on the hatch that led to the main corridor on the port side of the ship. He stepped through the opening, careful not to catch his foot on the bottom lip of the doorway, which jutted up several inches from the floor. Zack pushed the hatch closed and turned to his right to secure it, when the first blow struck him in the right shoulder, knocking him backward against the bulkhead.

His head glanced off a steel pipe, even as he fought to bring his arms up to blindly block the second and third blows. He ducked and moved forward as the expected blows struck empty air where he’d been a split-second before. The misses afforded him the time to gain distance from his attacker, and he shuffled quickly forward like a boxer trying to dance away from a rushing attacker.

“You always were a fast one, Zachary,” Griffin said, amusement in his tone.

Of course. You knew this was coming. Zack felt confident he was out of Griffin’s immediate grasp, and he spun on his feet to face the man directly. Griffin stood in front of the hatch, his arms up in a fighter’s stance, front foot forward. But it was his size and his height—at least three inches taller than Zack—magnified by the confined space, that made Zack feel like he was battling some mythological monster in a maze. He wants you to fear him. Everything he does is calculated for that effect. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

“You know, you really are psychotic, but I doubt you even realize it,” Zack said, his eyes burning with anger. “I’ve seen flashes of it in the time I’ve been on the team, but I have to hand it to you, you do a really good job of hiding it, just like any closet sociopath. But this time, you’ve gone too far. You tried to blow us up, and there’s no coming back from that. When we get back, I’m telling Langley everything. I don’t care. I’m done, but I’m not letting you off the hook. You don’t deserve to be on the team.” He paused, feeling his voice grow stronger with each word, firing them like bullets. “You’re an unbalanced, arrogant, reckless, amoral danger to everyone, and Langley deserves to know.”

Griffin stared at him, and Zack braced himself for the onslaught he knew would come, praying he was fast enough to avoid the blows and counterstrikes. But then Griffin smiled, a broad, genuine smile, and it filled Zack with more dread than had the monster lashed out at him again.