“You are my friend,” Tom agreed. “That’s why you’ll get it when I tell you we are all in serious danger right now if we can’t temporarily scramble you again. I can’t give you details. You have to believe me. You have to trust me. Come on, man, help us out.”

There wasn’t any immediate danger, but Tom knew this was an appeal Yuri would never, ever refuse. If there was the slightest hint of a threat, even if Tom couldn’t explain, even if it was a suggestion of danger to them, Yuri would bend over backward to help, any way he could.

But today, he said, “You presume too much upon our friendship.”

“Oh no, Yuri,” Wyatt cried. “They’re right, aren’t they? Something’s wrong with you.”

Yuri’s gaze riveted to her, his eyes as distant and empty as some lizard’s. Then his gaze roved to Vik’s implacable face and to Tom’s.

After a moment, Yuri smiled. “This is unfortunate.”

And then he raised his forearm keyboard. Words flared across Tom’s vision center: Datastream received: program Incapacitation initiated. And Tom heard Vik yell out as he did, because his head felt like it was cracking in half, and his legs collapsed beneath him. He plunged to his hands and knees, his brain on the wrong end of some terrible, electric drill, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t get his balance, couldn’t move.

“What are you doing to them? Stop it!” Wyatt shouted at Yuri.

Tom peered up through blurring vision to see Wyatt dash across the room and grab at Yuri’s arm. He seized her easily, swept her around, and trapped her back against the computer console controlling the census device. Tom tried to heave himself up, but he dropped again, unable to manage it.

Yuri pinned her wrists to her sides, his body crushed against her, head tilted to the side as he contemplated her almost clinically. “That program didn’t take down your firewall, I see. We shall have to rectify that.”

“Let me go!” She twisted and tried to escape him. He tore her forearm keyboard from her arm, flung it aside with a clatter, then grabbed her again. Her arms bunched up against his chest as she tried to press back out of his grip. “What are you doing? I don’t understand.”

“Drop your firewall,” Yuri urged her, drawing his face down to stare right into hers. When she gazed stubbornly up at him, he seized her neck so swiftly, she gasped. “Do it right now!”

Wyatt drove her heel down into the instep of his foot, and his grip slackened enough for her to smash her fist into his face. But Yuri was like a wall, absorbing the blow easily, snaring her in his massive arms again and twisting her around to face Tom and Vik.