Suddenly her thoughts flew back to that moment she had been talking to Jimex, down in Deck C before the encounter with Holt. The android had said there were cameras in certain parts of the ship, and also something else—before he suddenly cut himself off. He’d been trying to warn her about something. He’d said that Sagara had told him not to say.

He must have noticed the bugs when he was cleaning rooms, Park thought. And Sagara silenced him. Ordered him not to tell me. Because he hopes to use ARGUS to catch me doing whatever he thinks I’m doing.

“Who else knows about this?” she asked.

“Sagara, obviously,” Wick said, oblivious to her thoughts. “Me. Boone. And now you.”

“And why me?” She suddenly felt defensive, almost hostile. Wick said he had heard her and Fulbreech down in the utility rooms. Did that mean ARGUS had flagged their conversation as suspect? That he thought she was some sort of saboteur, as Sagara did?

Wick put out a steadying hand toward her, though he didn’t go so far as to touch; Park still flinched away. “Because I think we need you,” he said gently. And when Park scanned his face, his slate-gray eyes, she saw that he was being sincere. That the skin around his eyes looked puffy, as if he’d been crying.

“You think that?” she asked cautiously, still on her guard.

Wick made a hapless gesture. “Look,” he said. “Kisaragi’s frozen. Keller and Holt and Ma are—sick. I don’t think now is the time to be divisive, to isolate and mistrust each other. And truth be told, I’m not convinced that—even if ARGUS could figure out what behaviors are red flags—it would do us a lot of good. Because we still wouldn’t understand what was causing it all. What the root of the problem was.” He looked into her eyes. “We would need you, Park. Your expertise and insight. We need you to understand what exactly is going on.”

Park felt a crest of emotion rise within her, and couldn’t tell if it was hysteria or sentimentality. She couldn’t help but think again of what Natalya had said, earlier in the corridor: But do you understand the content of what you’re observing? What it all means?

Wick had faith that she could. She wanted to feel touched, grateful. She thought she did. But she could only say, “What’s down in the utility rooms, Wick?”