She knocked. The door slid open instantly, which meant Wick had been waiting to activate the room controls at the first sign of her arrival. When she came in, she saw that he was standing with his back to the door, his hands crossed squarely behind him. The pose seemed deliberate to Park, affected. For one thing, it prevented her from reading his face. For another, it suggested that Wick was unthreatened by her; that he had nothing to be concerned about, and so neither did she.

Animals in the wild did that, Park thought. To lure their enemies into attacking. Then they whirled and made the kill themselves.

“You wanted to see me,” she said, trying to banish her paranoia.

“Yes,” Wick answered. He didn’t turn around immediately. “I thought we should take some time and—get on the same page. Since your position on the ship has changed.”

“Because Keller’s frozen, and I’m now the primary psychologist?”

“Yes.” Now he glanced back at her. “And because I can’t afford to have you out of the loop. Not with everything that’s been going on.”

On the same page, Park found herself thinking, distracted. Out of the loop. Such strange, outdated terms. What page of what story were they struggling to get on? It felt like they were all parts of different volumes entirely. And did one want to be on the inside of a loop that was closing around the ship, like the knot of a tightening noose?

“Everything that’s going on?” she echoed. She was too tired to berate herself for sounding like a simpleton.

“I heard you and Fulbreech,” Wick said. He sounded almost apologetic. “Down in Deck C. While you were exploring the utility rooms.”

Park blinked. “You were there?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then—Natalya told you?”

“No,” Wick said again, chagrined. “I mean—I heard you.”

“I . . . don’t understand.”

He sighed and turned, making a gesture at the wall; his wrist console activated and projected a holographic blueprint of the ship onto the blank gray panel. Park looked at the diagram uncomprehendingly. The only thing she could grasp was that there were flashing red dots in every single room.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Captain Sagara has activated the ARGUS protocol,” Wick said in turn. “Do you know what that is?”

“No,” Park answered blankly. She shook her head. “Should I?”

“I’m not sure,” Wick mused. “I don’t know how much information ISF gave you, as their—orbiter.”

“Nothing about this.” Or anything of importance, she didn’t say.

“The ARGUS protocol is a secondary function of METIS,” Wick said. “While METIS is largely devoted to maintaining the ship’s life support systems and its other prime directives, ARGUS is a way for us to . . . remotely monitor the crew’s activities on the ship.”

Her mind flashed to what Jimex had said about cameras. “I thought there were only cameras in certain areas.”