She was terrified.
For the last thirty days, ever since Malcolm dropped the mother of all secrets on her head, Amanda had been living in a state of constant paranoia. The damned Suliban could be anyone he wanted – was he even the right pronoun? Did these shapechangers even have genders? – so she found herself watching everyone, waiting for the smallest hint that they weren't who they appeared to be. She even began seeding conversations with leading questions, references to things that never happened, or intentionally misremembered events, just to get a reaction. If they had been anywhere else, she suspected her behavior might have gotten her removed from the XO position of the whisper team and probably subjected to a battery of intense psychological screenings, but here, in the Expanse,
