"Two teams?" Harry almost sprang out of his seat, instinctively twisting around to scan the cabin. "He has accomplices?"
"Nothing surprising about that, a lunatic like him…"
Sirius ground his teeth, stood up, and said, "I'm going to economy class right now!"
His gaze flicked across Lupin's for the briefest instant, then Sirius strode straight toward the back. As he passed Moody, he reached out and patted the Old Auror on the shoulder.
"We're leaving this to you, Alastor, Remus!"
Sirius said in a low voice.
Moody: "…All right."
He had already been standing in the middle of the aisle, leaning on his cane. His gaze swept back and forth between Victor's calm profile and Modis's deathly pale face; his normal eye was filled with barely concealed shock, and a kind of baffled confusion at having no idea what was going on.
From Vid's attitude, Lupin had already guessed something; Sirius's thinking was more straightforward. He wasn't in a hurry to understand the whole situation—he just needed to know what he had to do right now.
Meanwhile, the Moody in the back row had kept his nerves taut, yet it felt as if he were shrouded in fog; his Magic Eye was spinning wildly and chaotically.
Now, that haze and that anxious feeling of being shut out by everyone were both replaced by a sharper, more concrete alertness.
His expression grew grave as he nodded, heedless of the iron rule about "concealing Magic in front of Muggles." He gripped his Magic Wand tightly, and his gaze incidentally slashed like a knife toward Lev Zakharov sitting beside him.
Zakharov: "…?"
The man was still sitting up straight, hands folded on his knees, the picture of composure, when in fact he was even more at sea than Moody.
—At least Moody knew who his companions were, whereas Zakharov's mind was about to be filled to bursting with giant question marks. If it weren't for the fact that you can't just get off a plane mid-flight, he'd have wanted to leave this instant!
…
Victor's eyes remained utterly steady as he continued asking, "And the objective? What's the ultimate goal of your operation this time?"
"The objective, the goal is…"
Modis looked as if all strength had been drained from him. His lips trembled slightly, cold sweat soaking his hair.
He slumped in his seat; Victor's hand hovering near his throat was like a guillotine, keeping him from thinking calmly and scaring him out of any further attempts at concealment. In a shaking voice, he finally spilled the order from his superiors:
"At all costs… kill Vid Gray…"
"Oh?"
That answer did surprise Victor a little. He first turned his head to glance at Vid, who had finally shifted his attention toward them, then pursued the point to be sure:
"Not recruit him? Not abduct him?"
"No…"
Modis took a deep breath:
"The leader judged that the power Vid Gray represents… the power of Poppets… this entirely new, unknown field is too powerful, and far too hard to control…"
"As for Vid Gray himself, everything our organization could offer him, he already has in the Magic World… and he'd be very hard for us to exploit or assimilate…"
"If the organization tried to force him to serve us, it would only backfire in the end, letting him develop power that would bite back at the organization. So it would be better… better to eradicate him completely at the root."
Victor asked curiously, "You Scourers really are unusual—so you don't covet the power of Poppets at all? I remember that Werewolf Poppet of yours was very well made. That doesn't look much like someone 'uninterested in Poppets.'"
Modis fell silent. He instinctively resisted revealing more secrets—yet Moody gave his Magic Wand a small shake, and a Magic Spell flashed silently onto the man's body.
Victor jerked his head up to look at Moody, frowning slightly.
Moody was looking right back at him, his expression both dangerous and astonished.
Victor thought for a second, seemed to realize something, the corner of his mouth curling faintly as his eyes slid toward Vid.
Just then, Modis, struck by the Spell, gave a violent shudder. His expression went blank in an instant, his eyes rolling without his control as his muffled voice sounded:
"Poppets… we've already mastered the basic manufacturing methods. We'll be able to mass-produce them very soon… The leader believes that things like that are better off being dumb, rigid tools."
"They're tools… tools don't need to be too smart, and they don't need a personality… Otherwise… they'd be far too dangerous…"
At that, Hermione sharply sucked in a breath, one hand flying up to cover her mouth on reflex.
Her gaze swept rapidly, with a flicker of dread, over the passengers around them, then landed on Vid. Her face suddenly turned chalk-white.
Lupin's brow knitted tight, a layer of unprecedented gravity settling over his usually gentle features.
As his eyes shifted to Vid, he heard Harry on the other side say heatedly:
"Being smart makes you too dangerous? That's ridiculous!"
The boy clenched his fists, angry. "The danger has never been intelligence. The danger is that you lot want to exploit other people's minds and squeeze their labor, but you still won't allow them to resist—so you're terrified of them being clever and having personality!"
"Because you're afraid—afraid you won't be able to control everything at will anymore, afraid that those you see as tools will have a will of their own!"
Harry didn't notice that right now, everyone in first class was looking at him.
Nor did he realize the line of thought Hermione and the others had followed—
For example, that certain "passengers" on this plane might not be true "passengers" at all, but incredibly lifelike Poppets.
Harry's thoughts were still stuck on the goal Modis had just confessed, and he'd simply chopped off the beginning and end and connected it all together—