Now now, gentlemen. You can hardly blame me for ensuring that I'm at least somewhat armed, considering the circumstances. You outnumber me, after all. It's hardly a fair fight. [ His voice remains pleasant, even-toned, his expression loose and easy, his limbs casual and limber as though they're truly having a sensible conversation and he's not just desperately searching for a way out. Ethlyn said that she has a way to cure people. He knows that. The problem is getting them into a position to be cured.

So trying to kill them is --

No. No, Claude's smarter than that. Trying to kill them is absolutely still on the table. At the end of the day, he treasures his own life over acts of dignity and selflessness, and cornered the way he is, he doesn't see an easy way out. Especially with threats of not just death, but of some tampering of his greatest asset: his mind. Some sort of alien ability to hurt him, perhaps, or a creative application of drugs, or just the ability to dash his head into the rocks below and to see where that gets him. ]

Let's say I come with you. Where will you be taking me? I deserve an informed decision, at the end of the day. It was my understanding that you lot were going around hunting poor innocent deer such as myself.

[ Imperceptibly, not even a rustle of clothing betraying his move, his thumb works at a hidden vial in one of his voluminous pockets: a poison, easily applied orally or through one's bloodstream, enough to fell a man, but not enough to kill one. If he could just take one of them out... ]