A half-dozen technicians in full-body white came marching up. All Neteyam and the others could do was stay crouched behind the wall as these people drained one tank and removed the half-grown child's body within. Bohan flattened herself against the wall and didn't dare look, for fear of being seen herself. Prisha and Lo'ak kept themselves low to the floor, but Neteyam's eye was glued to the hole he'd found.

The tank Bush had chosen held the bald nine-year-old girl Neteyam had noticed – the one who looked closest to normal. That made sense, he supposed. They laid her on a gurney with electrodes on her scalp and chest, and put a mask over her face. Was that to help her breathe, or to keep her unconscious until they were ready for her? There were conversations going on, but Neteyam didn't understand much of what was said. The word arrhythmia was used repeatedly. Somebody said something about right ventricle dysplasia .

Nguyen had mostly watched in silence, but now she spoke up. "I have to insist on one thing," she said. "It's an opinion, but it's a professional opinion."

"Yes?" Bush asked.

"Quaritch stays out. He's an asshole. He only made the Sully boy's mental state worse, and it'll be the same for her, especially when she's a posthumous scan. We want her to feel safe enough to talk to us, not for the first thing she sees to be the man who shot her."

"Fine," said Bush.

"General?" another woman asked. "What do you want done with the rest?"

Dr. Velázquez was not visible from Neteyam's viewpoint, but his voice spoke. "I don't think any of them are really viable. We might as well destroy them."

Neteyam held his breath.

"No," said Bush. "If this one can't tell us anything, we'll try the next, and then the next, until we get a hit." He shook a finger at Nguyen. "Not a word," he added.

She glared at him.

Finally, they wheeled the gurney away, leaving just one man to hose out the empty tank. Neteyam allowed himself to relax a little and turn away from the hole, and realized his neck was cramping from being in an unnatural position. How long had that taken? He rubbed the sore spot. At least with his neck hurting, it seemed his tail wasn't anymore.

Another few minutes crawled by in silence while the janitor finished cleaning up. The tank lid clicked back into position, and the man's footsteps faded. The elevator doors wailed again as he got in.

Now everybody could relax, but not for long. The first thing Bohan did was to whisper to Prisha, "what time is it?"

Prisha checked the watch. "Four-thirty."

"Then we gotta go." Bohan stood up and raised her arms above her head to stretch out the kinks in her own body. "There'll be people in here to check on this stuff any minute. We gotta head for one of the emergency exits in the roof. From there we'll have to cross the bare ground again," she added. "They're gonna see us, and they're gonna shoot at us. We'll need to spread out. More targets will confuse the computers. We need to run zig-zags, because that's harder to hit, and we need to keep crossing over each other's paths, that'll confuse the algorithm. I'd say that Lo'ak and I need to carry you two so you can keep up," she looked down at the humans, "but that'll present fewer targets, so... no, wait, I have an idea..."

"We can't leave yet," Neteyam protested.

"We have to," Bohan said. "Didn't you hear me? Quaritch is already suspicious of me, and if I'm questioned again..."

"No. We can't leave without Pa'ay," he said. "She saved my life in the mountains. I owe her."

Bohan shook her head. "You can't save her. Didn't you hear Velázquez? They rushed growing them and she's not going to live long. It takes eight months to grow a recom to maturity and these have had what? A week?"

"Then we can take her back to Eywa," said Neteyam firmly. "The Sky People will have destroyed their bodies, because that's what you do with your dead. We return ours to Eywa. We know humans can go, too, because Dr. Augustine did. Kiri talks to her. So we'll take Pa'ay to the Tree of Souls, and she can be united with Eywa, like she would have wanted." He looked at the others for support.

Lo'ak was nodding. Prisha cleared her throat.

"Also... we kinda need her help," she said. "I know this is gonna sound awful, but... you guys don't actually know where those explosives are hidden, either, do you? So if she does..."

It did sound awful, but Prisha was right, just as she'd been when she'd suggested burning Konstopoulos.

"We are all gonna get killed," sighed Bohan. "I should never have brought you this far."

"Now that we're here, we might as well keep going," Neteyam told her.

"That's the sunk cost fallacy," she said, rubbing her forehead. "There's always still time to turn back." For a moment she was silent, and then she said, "oh, fuck it, fine. Let's go."

Neteyam got to his feet, and helped Prisha to stand. Lo'ak yawned and stretched. They took in the row of tanks one more time, including now two empty ones: one for Neteyam, and one for Pa'ay.

Neteyam himself lingered for a moment, looking at Dad's. He'd known since the Sky People returned that if they captured Dad, they would kill him. Dad himself had said as much. That had been the goal of the recom squad who'd kidnapped the younger kids and Spider, and who had apparently chased the family all the way out to the eastern islands. It didn't even seem to have occurred to Dad that they might change him back , or if it had, he hadn't mentioned it in front of anybody. Would that count as a fate worse than death?

Neteyam thought of flying with Pawk, of his family, of the Omatikaya festivals, of communing with the ancestors and with Eywa, of all the things he now knew he would never do again. Yeah, it probably was. They couldn't let that happen.

"How do we know where they'll be keeping her?" Lo'ak asked as they got in the elevator again. The doors complained.

"When I woke up, they ran some tests on me, then left me alone in a room with food," said Neteyam. "It was sort of food."

"They won't do that with your friend," Bohan said. "With you, they weren't working to a time limit. If she's only going to live for a couple of days, they'll want to question her as quickly and thoroughly as possible. They'll keep her in interrogation until she talks. We'll have to find the right room."

"How do we do that?" Neteyam asked, but then he had an idea. "They've got cameras watching those rooms, right? If somebody tells them something, they'll want a recording of it so they'll know exactly what it was." Humans didn't seem to trust their own memories.

"That's right. We need to find a security terminal," Said Bohan. She pushed a floor button. "Miss Patel, I think it's your time to shine. You're a hacker, right?"

"Sort of." Prisha squirmed. "I've never actually broken into a computer. At home I've got everybody's passwords, and everything I've used here, I had the security key in your watch. Anyway, the systems I'm familiar with are all sixteen years old. We've replaced stuff, but we can't do upgrades because we don't have templates for the fabricators."

"We're dead anyway, we might as well improvise," said Bohan. "Either way, we have to hurry. People will be up soon."

The elevator stopped on a floor Neteyam had never been to. He'd thought he'd seen a lot of Site Nine, but now that he had an idea just how huge it really was, he realized that Bush and Nugyen had kept him in quite a small part. He had no idea what the humans were doing with all this space. The elevator doors opened quietly here, to show a part of the base that was clearly much less public. Humans seemed to like high ceilings and bright lights. Here, the roof was low enough that Bohan had to stoop and Lo'ak's head was brushing it. The lights were dim, and the floor was concrete. This was meant to feel like an unfriendly place.

"This way," said Bohan, leading them down a hallway on the right.

This was lined with many identical grey doors, each with a small vertical window in it that had been painted black on the inside, leaving Neteyam to wonder why they'd put it there in the first place. One of these doors was slightly ajar, with voices audible on the other side of it. Bohan put an eye up to the crack for a moment, then turned to the kids.

"Two of them, playing cards," she whispered.

"We can take two," said Lo'ak seriously.

But Bohan shook her head. "I don't want to count on it. They might still have time to hit the alarm button. We're taking enough risks."

A few doors further down, they found one with a handmade sign taped to it. Bohan seemed to consider this a good sign. Neteyam sounded out the letters, and found that it said lock broke , with an arrow pointing to the door handle, and a circle with two dots and an arch drawn inside it, bearing a sight but recognizable resemblance to a frowning face. Bohan very slowly turned the handle and peeked into the dark room beyond. Red and green lights showed that the equipment was working, but there were no displays.

Prisha went in first and waved a hand in front of one of the lights. This made a holographic screen pop up, with a prompt asking for a name and password.

"Try Kontopoulos," Neteyam suggested. "We know her password."

Prisha nodded and entered it. The display showed a red x and a couple of words: not authorized .

"Who else's passwords can we guess?" Prisha asked. "Bohan's are her son's birthdays, but if Kontsopoulos wasn't authorized, she won't be either."

"Bush said he had a daughter," said Neteyam. "Do we know her birthday?" He looked up at Bohan.

"Sorry," she shook her head. "Although I know her name is Philomena."

Prisha tried several variants on the name, with numbers replacing different letters. All were rejected.

Lo'ak's face suddenly lit up. "I know, I know," he said. "Quaritch! Password is eleven sixteen twenty-one fifty-four."

Prisha typed that in. To everybody's astonishment, the screen showed a green circle, and other displays began to pop up, showing security feeds of various things in the recoms' living and work spaces.

Lo'ak grinned. "November sixteen, 2154 – that's Spider's birthday."

"Well done, big little brother," said Neteyam.

"Let me see, let me see," Prisha said, bringing up other areas of the base. There were parts of it that Quaritch was not authorized to view, but she found the laboratory – it seemed they'd gotten out just in time, because people were down there now, performing checks and maintaining equipment. She passed that by, and soon found a set of feeds that appeared to be interrogation rooms.

None of these looked like anywhere Neteyam had been kept. The rooms he'd been in had carpet and soft seats. These were bare tile with mirrors in the walls and bright lights in the ceiling, and furniture made of hard plastic. With Neteyam, they'd been trying to make him comfortable. With Pa'ay, they didn't care. He wondered if Quaritch had sat in a room like this, watching him in the cafeteria or recreation centre as Bush and Nguyen tried to get information out of him.

Only one of the interrogation rooms had people in it. Prisha enlarged that screen. There was Bush and a couple of others, and Nguyen, still in her pajamas, standing in a corner with her arms folded over her chest and a scowl on her face. In the middle of the room was one uncomfortable-looking chair with a small figure curled in it, head down and shoulders shaking, while Bush leaned over it gesturing. There was no sound on the feed, but Neteyam knew instinctively that the man was shouting.

How could he do that? How could he yell in the face of somebody who was so obviously shrinking from him? Did Pa'ay even understand what was happening to her? Did she have missing memories like Neteyam did? How could this be the same man who'd tried so hard to sound fatherly, teaching Neteyam to shave and trying to give him a nickname? Neteyam had suspected that was a trick... but it was still a shock to see this other side of him.

If Neteyam had been in that room right now, he would have knocked Bush to the ground and punched hi in the face. He'd have been dragged off and thrown in a cell much worse than any place they'd put him before, but he wouldn't regret it. Not as long as Bush was missing a tooth or two.

Bush was not getting the answers he wanted. He grabbed Pa'ay by the shirt and shook her. She raised her head, then took his arm and sank her teeth into it. The surprise and pain made Bush stand up straight, while Pa'ay held on so that she was lifted off her feet. Other soldiers ran to pull her off of Bush and put her back in the chair, but the camera caught a moment of the defiance on her face. That made Neteyam smile a bit. The child floating unconscious in a tube full of goo hadn't looked much like Pa'ay – but that did.

Nguyen calmly stepped forward and looked at Bush's arm. There was blood soaking into his sleeve. She said something to him. He waved at the guards as if shooing them like flies, and then let Nguyen lead him out of the room. The two guards hauled Pa'ay back to her feet, and more of them surrounded her as they escorted her, too, into the hall. She could barely walk. Her right leg was visibly longer than the left.

Prisha quickly switched from screen to screen to follow them up the halls. The guards half-led, half-dragged Pa'ay to a row of cells, and punched in a code to open the doors. Prisha's mouth moved as they hit the keys, and then she snickered.

"What?" asked Neteyam.

"Somebody must have told a guy not to set the code to one-two-three-four," she said, "because it's five-six-seven-eight. I can tell by how his hand moved."

They dumped Pa'ay on the cot in the cell, where she curled up and hugged her knees to her chest, shaking. Then the lights went out.

"Okay," said Bohan. "I know where that is. We'll take the west elevator, that's closest. We grab her, we keep going up, and we'll leave the way you came in, through the hangar. I have a plan now. We're gonna steal a ride."

Neteyam frowned. "You can't 'steal' a banshee," he said. "They'll only let one person ride them. Tìtstew will still be there but..."

"We're not gonna steal a banshee. We're gonna steal a vehicle," said Bohan. "I'm guessing none of you have any idea how to fly one," she added.

The young people shook their heads.

"Then I hope I can fold myself into the cockpit."

Prisha logged out of the system again and they left the room, closing the door behind them and then turning in the opposite direction to the one they'd come in by. This brought them to another bank of elevators, and they went up a few more floors. This time, the doors opened on a hallway with people in it – the base was coming to life. A few people glanced at them, ust as they had last night, but Neteyam and Prisha were both dressed like employees and Lo'ak and Bohan looked like recom soldiers. Nobody seemed to find them worth more than a moment's notice. They headed down the hall towards the cell block.

The PA system suddenly buzzed. Captain Emily Bohan, a voice announced, please report to recombinant medical. Captain Emily Bohan, please report to recombinant medical.

"Damn it," said Bohan. Somebody had realized she wasn't in her room. "Let's go, let's go." She hurried the teenagers ahead of her.

They arrived at the brig. Prisha used Quaritch's information to log in to the console at the entrance. A metal door rumbled open upwards, and the lights flickered on as they confronted a row of three cells, each a tiny space with three dull grey metal walls and one made of thick bulletproof plastic. The closest and furthest one were empty. In the middle one, on the bare cot that served as a bed, was the sad huddled figure of the girl from the tank. As Neteyam had already noticed, she looked about eight or nine years old, with the two sides of her body slightly mismatched, and a growth that had swollen her right eye shut. Her left one was shut, too, as she rocked back and forth slightly in pain.

"Pa'ay?" asked Neteyam.

The left eye flew open. Like Neteyam's eyes, it was Na'vi gold. She stared at him.

"It's me," he said. "Neteyam."

Pa'ay said nothing. Did she even remember who she was? No, she must – she'd reacted to her name.

"Five-six-seven-eight," Neteyam said to himself, pressing the keys Prisha had noted.

There was a buzzing sound, the door did not open.

"Five-six-seven-eight," Neteyam repeated, trying it again. Wasn't that what she'd said?

Another buzz. Prisha grabbed his wrist.

"It's upside-down!" she realized. "It's arranged like a computer pad, not a phone pad! It's five-six-one-two!" She reached past him to try that combination.

This time, the light turned green, and the transparent panel slid aside. Neteyam went in and offered Pa'ay a hand. "Come on," he said. "We're taking you with us."

"No." She pulled away. Her voice was soft and high-pitched, a child's, rather than the forceful and deep tones Neteyam associated with Pa'ay. "Leave me."

"I'm not leaving you," said Neteyam. "I told you, I owe you my life..."

"You don't have to repay it," she told him firmly. "Leave me here and let me die. I'd rather than than live this way."

Neteyam crouched next to the cot to talk to her, just as she'd once done for him. It was kind of nice to be taller than somebody again. "We're taking you back to Eywa," he said. "The Sky People said you're not going to live very long anyway. If we leave you here, they'll just burn you when you die. You don't want that. Come with us."

Pa'ay looked up again, taking in the three standing outside. She surely recognized Lo'ak, but frowned at the other two. "Who are..."

"Well, you know Prisha Patel," said Neteyam, "and that's Captain Bohan. She's a friend." He stood up and held out a hand again. "Please come."

Pa'ay sat a moment, unable to make a decision. Then she reached out and took Neteyam's hand. "Don't tell Tarsem," she said.

"I won't," Neteyam promised, and looked at his friends. "None of us will."

The others nodded, and Bohan drew an x over her heart with one finger. "Cross my heart," she said.

They'd only taken a couple of steps before it became plain that Pa'ay's unbalanced body was going to slow them down – she could only stumble along awkwardly, and it was obvious that every step hurt. With no better ideas, Bohan picked her up and carried her against one shoulder like an infant as they returned to the elevators, taking long strides. Neteyam pressed the button, and one of the cars opened.

Inside were a dozen soldiers, and Quaritch.

For the first moment Neteyam couldn't move. Later he would berate himself for that, thinking that if he'd reacted in time, maybe they would have been able to escape... but that was foolish. They were outnumbered three to one. The humans poured out and surrounded them, yelling at them to put their hands up. Prisha dropped the holopad she was carrying and obeyed. Bohan just stood up straight, unwilling to put Pa'ay on the ground.

"I knew it," said Quaritch, ducking out of the elevator to walk towards her. "Taking a page from Sully's book, are you, Bohan? Another one gone native?"

Bohan didn't answer him. She just held Pa'ay protectively against her chest.

It was Lo'ak who tried to take the soldiers on. He tackled the nearest human and knocked him over, trying to pull the rifle out of his hands. The startled man fired several shots into the roof, narrowly missing taking one of Lo'ak's ears off. Neteyam ran to help. The gun would be too small for Lo'ak to use, but Neteyam could.

"Boys, stop!" Bohan called to them. "Just do what they say!"

Neteyam looked back at her, and at that moment something hit him in the side. At first it was only a prick, like an insect sting, but then suddenly every nerve was on fire. It was like the worst of the phantom pain in his tail, but it was his entire body. He dropped like ripe fruit from a tree, and barely even felt himself hit the ground. There was blood in the back of his mouth, and for a moment his vision faded to grey, spangled with pulsing bright spots.

The world faded back in, and he found himself being dragged to his feet, something cold clapped around his wrists to hold them behind his back. Neteyam could see shadows moving, which resolved themselves into half a dozen humans who were holding Lo'ak down as two more shackled him. Not far away, another had Prisha at gunpoint while she knelt on the floor, covering her head with her hands and shaking in terror.

Neteyam felt like he might throw up, and swallowed hard to try to keep it from happening. He and Lo'ak were both twitching and stumbling as they were dragged to their feet, Neteyam by three soldiers, and Lo'ak by Quaritch personally. One soldier was holding a yellow device, shaped like a gun but not a gun, which was reeling a set of wires back into it. Two more were holding on to a kicking, screaming Pa'ay. Bohan was on her knees, quietly allowing them to put shackles on her wrists, too.

Everybody was hurt. Everybody was in trouble, and it was all Neteyam's fault. The thing he'd been most afraid of all his life had finally happened. He'd let everybody down.

"Nice of you to come straight to the cell block," said Quaritch, giving Lo'ak a shake. "We don't have to take you as far!"

All of them were dragged back into the room they'd just come out of, and the man in charge punched the code into the keypad. "I keep saying the system should alert if it's entered wrong once, never mind twice," he said, mostly to himself, "but nobody listens to me. In you go!"

All five of the captives were shoved into the one tiny cell. The door closed behind them with a thud that seemed to shake the bones. It sounded horribly, horribly final.

Neteyam thought the soldiers might leave them alone in the dark then, like they had with Pa'ay, but they did not. Instead, four men kept standing there, while Quaritch came and leaned down to sneer through the bars at them.

"I guess I got my own back and then some," he said. "Both of Sully's boys. I think that'll be plenty to make him give himself up. Have we got plans for toruk makto."

"Quaritch!" barked a voice – Bush's.

The four soldiers squared their shoulders, and Quaritch stood up straight again as Bush marched in, his right arm in a sling. There was a thick bandage on it where Pa'ay had bitten him. He pointed a thumb at the door.

Quaritch scowled, but then he saluted, and stalked out. Bush took up a position facing the prisoners.

"Wow. You really took a chunk out of him," Lo'ak said casually to Pa'ay, speaking English to be sure Bush would understand.

"He tastes bad," Pa'ay declared.

Nobody laughed.

"What the hell did you lot think you were trying to do?" Bush demanded.

"Nobody answer him!" Neteyam ordered. Bush had never learned anything useful from him yet. That was not going to change.

Bush stepped closer. "You," he said, pointing at Neteyam with his uninjured left arm. "You'd be dead if it weren't for us."

Neteyam wanted to point out that he was still dead. Lo'ak had said he was with Eywa. The real Neteyam was blissfully unaware of this effigy the Sky People had created – this thing that, as Quaritch had pointed out repeatedly, the Sully family wasn't going to want. But he wasn't even going to give this man that, so he kept his mouth shut.

"You don't think you owe us something for that?" Bush asked.

"He didn't ask for it," said Bohan.

Bush's head snapped up to glare at her. "You did," he said. "We spent a lot of money bringing you back from the dead, and this is how you thank us?"

"Yep," was all she said.

"Good thing I don't hope for anything better from you," Bush told her, and returned his attention to Neteyam. "I did from you. The shrink told me you needed a father figure to look up to, somebody to instill some loyalty in you, and I thought, I can do a better job of that than the greatest traitor who ever lived. The man who sold out his entire planet so he could clap some ali..."

"Don't talk about our father!" said Lo'ak, rising to his feet.

"I'll talk about anything I want to!" Bush snarled. "You're in a cage and I'm outside it, so you sit your blue ass down before I order you shot!"

Neteyam turned his head to Lo'ak, silently begging him to obey. If they killed Lo'ak, then by their own rules they'd be able to bring him back the way they had Neteyam...

Lo'ak sat, scowling.

"I'm done playing house," said Bush. "Here's what's going to happen: all five of you are going to tell us what we want to know. Everything we want to know. You're gonna tell us where that explosive is," he pointed to Pa'ay. "You're gonna tell us where your father is," he indicated Neteyam and Lo'ak in turn, "and where the Na'vi are hiding from us. You're gonna tell us where the last of the traitors are," he jabbed a finger at Prisha, then indicated Bohan. "And you are gonna tell us what really happened while you were missing, and you're gonna start right now. Understand?"

Nobody spoke.

"I said, do you understand?" Bush repeated.

Lo'ak muttered something.

"What was that?" the general demanded.

"I said get bent, butthole," Lo'ak replied, loudly.

Bush went red in the face, and for a moment he looked as if he might burst with rage. Then he took a deep breath, and calmed his face. "All right, then," he said. "We'll do it the easy way. I'm having the lot of you shipped out to Bridgehead tomorrow. They've got ways of making you talk there, and you won't enjoy them, I promise you."

Lo'ak's tail switched suddenly back and forth, rumpling the bedclothes.

"I'm gonna let Quaritch escort you," Bush added, "so at least somebody will be having fun. You've got twelve hours to change your minds. Sleep well." He turned and walked out with long, purposeful strides.

The other soldiers remained behind, standing there watching them. Even with the group locked in a cell and their hands shackled behind their backs, they weren't going to take any risks.

"You can't get killed," Neteyam told Lo'ak. "Now that you know what they'll do to you after."

Lo'ak's shoulders dropped, and he sighed. "I'm not sure it would make any difference for me. You said you can't do anything anymore... I wasn't ever any good at anything in the first place."

"You're good with animals," Bohan told him. "With the horses, and the banshees? You're awesome."

"Being good with horses and banshees doesn't help me at all out in the islands," Lo'ak said. "The ilu don't like me at all."

"Shut up, skxawng," said Neteyam. He tried to make it sound affectionate, but he wasn't sure it came out that way. "Look, I'm... I'm sorry. This was a bad idea. Bohan even told me it was a bad idea, but I wanted to try it anyway. I screwed up, and I ruined everything. If you manage to get out somehow, just..." What was he going to say? Don't tell Mother and Dad? If Lo'ak didn't, they would think this was his fault. "Make sure you tell them it wasn't really Neteyam. Just... just a copy." That wouldn't soil their memory of their son.

"Apparently I didn't think it was a bad enough idea to refuse to go along with it," said Bohan. She couldn't cradle Pa'ay anymore, not with her hands bound, but she was sitting on the bed letting the girl lean against her.

"Or me," said Prisha.

"Or me," Lo'ak agreed.

"Honestly," Bohan said. "I wish I could have saved you kids, but... I think I'm glad I get to die doing something besides fighting for a cause I don't believe in anymore. I think I'm glad I got to decide that the ends don't justify the means."

Neteyam looked up at the line of soldiers, who were still watching with carefully neutral expressions. He probably shouldn't have said anything, but he wanted to apologize, and he really didn't want his parents thinking this failure was the same person as Neteyam. "Just... tell them what I told you to, okay?"

"Okay," said Lo'ak.

Prisha scooted across the floor to lean on Neteyam's shoulder – that was all she could do, either, with her hands tied. "You tried," she said. "I wouldn't have even tried. I'm a coward. I don't think having an avatar would change anything because I'd still just be too scared to go outside."

Neteyam didn't know what to say to that. She'd been terrified since this began, hadn't she? She'd been scared of him realizing she had a crush on him, scared of flying, scared of heights, scared of grubs, and yet... "you kept going," he said. "You could have gone home. I told you that you could."

"Yeah," said Prisha.

The hallway door opened again. Everybody looked up, including the soldiers, as a new person walked in.

It was Dr. Nguyen. She'd washed and put proper clothes on, though her hair was still wet and her eyes were darkly shadowed from lack of sleep. She was drinking coffee out of a glass mug with a line drawing of a human brain on it, and under her other arm was a folding metal chair.

"You four," she told the soldiers. "Scoot."

They looked at her in confusion.

"I've got a job to do," Nguyen snarled. "People don't like opening up while they're being watched by total strangers. Scram."

The soldiers exchanged some glances, but then they trooped out of the room.

Nguyen unfolded her chair with her free hand and one foot, then sat down in it, facing the cell, and sipped her coffee while looking the prisoners over. When she'd spoken to Neteyam before, she'd always sat up straight and leaned forward, trying to show she was interested in what he had to say. Now she sat back, her legs crossed and her brow furrowed.

"My turn," she said.