“Kenji,” Castle says. “Please sit down. This is hard enough without having to manage your emotions, too. Please.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’ll sit down after I know what the hell is going on.”

Castle sighs heavily. Finally, he says—

“You were right.”

My eyes widen, my heart still hammering in my chest. “Excuse me?”

“You were right,” Castle says, and his voice catches on the last word. He clenches and unclenches his fists. “About Adam. And James.”

But I’m shaking my head. “I don’t want to be right. I was overreacting. They’re fine. Don’t listen to me,” I say, sounding a little crazy. “I’m not right. I’m never right.”

“Kenji.”

“No.”

Castle looks up, looks me directly in the eye. He looks devastated. Beyond devastated.

“Tell me this is a joke,” I say.

“Anderson has taken the boys hostage,” he says, glancing at Brendan and Winston. Ian. The ghost of Emory. “He’s doing it again.”

I can’t handle this.

My heart can’t handle this. I’m already too close to the edge of crisis. This is too much. Too much.

“You’re wrong,” I insist. “Anderson wouldn’t do that, not to James. James is just a child— He wouldn’t do that to a child—”

“Yes,” Winston says quietly. “He would.”

I glance over at him, my eyes wild. I feel stupid. I feel like my skin is too tight. Too loose. And I’m looking at Castle again when I say:

“How do you know? How can you be sure this isn’t another trap, just like last time—”

“Of course it’s a trap,” Nouria says. Her voice is firm but not unkind. She glances at Castle before she says: “I’m not sure why, but my dad is making this sound like a simple hostage situation. It’s not. We’re not even sure exactly what’s happening yet. It definitely looks like Anderson is holding the boys hostage, but it’s also clear that there’s something much bigger happening behind the scenes. Anderson is plotting something. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have—”

“I think,” Sam says, squeezing her wife’s hand, “what Nouria is trying to say is that we think Adam and James play only a small role in all of this.”

I glance between them, confused. There’s tension in the room that wasn’t there a moment ago, but my head feels too full of sand to figure it out. “I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at,” I say.

But it’s Castle who explains.

“It’s not just Adam and James,” he says. “Anderson currently has custody of all the kids—specifically, the children of the supreme commanders.”

And I’m about to ask another question before I realize—

I’m the only one asking questions right now. I glance around the room, at the faces of my friends. They look sad but determined. Like they already know how this story ends, and they’re ready to face it.

I’m floored by the revelation. And I can’t keep the edge out of my voice when I say, “Why was I the last to be informed about this?”

My question is followed by perfect silence. Harried glances. Nervous expressions.

Then, finally:

“We knew it would be hard for you,” Lily says. Lily, who never gives a shit about my feelings. “You’d just been on this crazy mission, and then we had to shoot your plane out of the sky— Honestly, we weren’t sure if we should tell you right away.” She hesitates. And then, aiming an irritated look at the other ladies in the room: “But if it makes you feel any better, Nouria and Sam didn’t tell us right away, either.”

“What?” My eyebrows fly up my head. “What the hell is going on? When did you first get the news?”

The room goes quiet again.

“When?” I demand.

“Fourteen hours ago,” Nouria says.

“Fourteen hours ago?” My eyes widen to the point of pain. “You knew about this fourteen hours ago and you’re only telling me now? Castle?”

He shakes his head.

“They kept it from me, too,” he says, and despite his calm demeanor, I notice the tension in his jaw. He won’t look me in the eye. He won’t look at Nouria, either.

Realization dawns with sudden, startling speed, and I finally understand: there are too many cooks in this metaphorical kitchen.

I had no idea what kind of complicated shitshow I’d just walked into, but it’s clear that Nouria and Sam are used to running this place on their own. Daughter or not, Nouria is the head of this resistance, and it doesn’t matter how much she likes having her dad around, she’s not about to cede control. Which apparently means she’s going to keep him from accessing classified information before she deems it necessary. Which means— Hell, I think it means Castle has no real authority anymore.

Holy shit.

“So you knew about this,” I say, looking from Nouria to Sam. “You knew it when we landed here yesterday—you knew then that Anderson was rounding up the kids. When we had cake and sang happy birthday to Warner, you knew that James and Adam had been abducted. When I asked, over and over and over again, why the hell Adam and James weren’t here, you knew and said nothing—”