CASSIAN COULD sense they were running out of time. Jyn had been gone far too long. If she was going to convince Saw Gerrera to free them, shouldn’t someone have come down to release them by now?

He kept watch on the guards, looking for any sign from them as to how things with Jyn and Saw were going. If all went poorly, he would have to lead a desperate attempt to escape. Otherwise, they would all be executed for sure.

“Who’s the one in the next cell?” Chirrut asked out of nowhere.

Cassian hadn’t given any thought to their neighbor. He’d been too preoccupied with the guards.

“What?” Baze said. “Where?”

Baze walked toward the bars separating them from a man huddled in the darkness. Baze peered at him and then curled up his lips as if tasting something foul. “An Imperial pilot.”

That caught Cassian’s attention. After all, they’d gone to Jedha in search of an Imperial pilot. Had Saw really thrown the defector into a cell, too?

“Pilot?”

Baze moved closer to the adjoining cell. “I’ll kill him.”

“No!” Cassian dashed over to pull Baze back. “Wait! No!”

Baze wasn’t the sort to just let someone push him aside, but Cassian insisted. “Back off,” he told the man. “Back off!”

He peered into the next cell and saw just what had gotten Baze’s temper to flare up: a skinny man with olive skin, dark hair, and a thin beard. He wore the uniform of an Imperial pilot.

The man trembled as he noticed Cassian, perhaps because of Baze’s threats. Or maybe something else was wrong with him on top of that.

“Okay,” Cassian said softly, trying to get the pilot to calm down. “Okay.”

The man’s eyes rolled, and Cassian couldn’t tell if his mind was still in the room with them or not. Had Saw been torturing him?

“Are you the pilot?” Cassian asked. “Hey, hey…Are you the pilot? The shuttle pilot?”

The man fixed him with an empty gaze. “Pilot?” The word seemed to make some sense to him, almost like it was stirring a long-buried memory.

“What’s wrong with him?” Chirrut asked.

Cassian wished he knew. He’d seen people in a condition like this before, and he shuddered to think what the man had gone through to get to that point. He wasn’t about to explain to Chirrut what might have happened and how it could be treated though. He needed to make sure he had the right man first.

“Galen Erso,” he said to the man in the cell. “You know the name?”

The pilot sat up, but his eyes still seemed glassy. The way he moved, though—the way he blinked at Cassian now that he’d said Galen’s name—that had to mean something, right?

“I brought the message,” the man said. “I’m the pilot.”

Cassian wanted to cheer. The man sat up fully now and focused on Cassian and the others in the next cell. “I’m the pilot. I’m the pilot!”