"I'm a demon," Cam says.

"Elaborate."

"How about you tell me what you are, first?"

"We represent the Alteri Confederacy. We control this ship and most of this planet. Your presence here is unauthorized."

"How about that. That's news to me. A demon is a kind of daeva."

"We are not familiar with daeva. You appear to be a Liar with unusual capabilities."

"I consider myself a scrupulously honest person, actually."

The walls are silent for a while. 

Eventually people start moving again. Most people don't move very much, and keep lying on the ground, but Imrainai sits up.

"Well. That's not great."

"I'm still really confused," Cam says. "I have figured out that there are aliens here for some reason and they're in charge and they don't like surprises but other than that I'm lost."

"So they're not super sure how to incapacitate you, I think? And because the rest of us are all in here it isn't very easy to kill you. Do we have biosuits, I think if they get scared they're gonna cut their losses and cut off air, or maybe try gas or something - "

They do not have biosuits in this room, judging from the various people shaking their heads.

"Are biosuits all the same except for sizes," says Cam.

" - I mean there are models? And obviously the ones that Alteri and Thieves use are different than the ones that we use - I think we use Atekri model 3498 or something - "

Everybody's wearing one now. Except Cam.

"...well."

The psyon is moving, too. This has caused people to remember that there's a psyon among them. 

"We need to decide whether we're going to kill the psyon," says someone. 

"They'll know what's happening through the cameras - "

"Yes, but if the demon knows how it can be destroyed - "

"Wasn't she the one who caused it - "

Oh joy, yeah, there's a bunch of people here thinking about murdering her now.

What's a psyon. "What's a psyon and why would you kill her?"

" - sorry, the mindreader. If there's a way to destroy or remove you she probably knows it by now, and given that you seem - super likely to get us all killed, but also potentially very helpful, assuming that was you with the biosuits just now, uh..."

"That was me." Apparently nobody here is going to hold it against him if he kills the mindreader buuuuut still murder but aaaaaaaaah the devil went down to Georgia he was looking for a soul to steal he was in a bind 'cause he was way behind - "Does she mindread everyone all the time?"

"Pretty much how it works." She doesn't know that murdering her would help, really, with the other four-year-olds in range of this room, though they're not close enough to get the sort of information she's getting -

" - the four-year-olds in range of this room want to know if you're going to kill them, too."

Still murder, so nope. But maybe it would be a good idea if the aliens were unclear on his willingness to do that? Four year old? Might be different years. He was willing to make a deal when he came across this young man sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot and the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and is there some kind of material that blocks it or something

"We're not murdering anyone right now," says Imrainai, because maybe if she says it it'll be true. The monitor on her arm alerts her that it's no longer safe to breathe the air. This seems unlikely to do much to the demon, but maybe they just want to make sure they're being thorough. "We need to - either think of a way to get them to let us out of here or find a way to counter - if we can't think of something and the gas doesn't work then they're going to escalate - "

      "They might try starving him out," says one of the kids. The adult nearest him shakes her head at him seriously.

"Maybe? But he's not going to collapse before we do. We don't know that he can't make food."

"I can make food," Cam confirms. (boy let me tell you what, I guess you didn't know it but I'm a fiddle player too, and if you'd care to take a dare I'll make a bet with you -)

"See, if you can make whatever you want then I have to figure that makes you more dangerous, and makes them more likely to just - I don't know, evacuate the rest of the ship and then blow it up. Naturally they would like to evacuate this room too, and they would like to be able to control the object generation, but if neither of those is on the table, then..."

"They're not trying very hard to control the object generation in the only way they possibly could."

"They are not really big fans of having to ask for things."