29 June 2157. 1415 Hours Earth Standard Time.
He opened his eyes.
He had been awake for several minutes but, instead of leaping to his feet and revealing this fact to any potential observers, Nate had instead used the time to silently take stock of his situation and surroundings. The room was cold, perhaps twelve to fifteen degrees Celsius, and a low hum vibrated through the deck that he was lying on, indicating that he was aboard a starship of some sort. It wasn't much of a cell and actually appeared to be have once been a storage room pressed into service for this job; he gave the room a quick once-over before focusing his attention on Commander T'Pol.
The Vulcan commander sat in a far corner of the room, her eyes closed and her breathing steady. For a moment, Hayes found himself admiring her exquisite physique as she meditated; he'd found her attractive from the moment that he first glanced over her file, and this was the first time that he had seen her in such a state of undress. Her recent decision to allow her hair to lengthen only accentuated her exotic beauty, particularly as her features were partially concealed by the shoulder length hair. The effects of the cold were immediately evident upon her anatomy and he licked his lips before finally tearing his eyes away from her breasts. Lust thundered through his veins and he struggled for control as a darkly seductive part of his brain began to whisper terrible things to him. If he really wanted her, he could take her. She couldn't stop him. No one could stop him. It was his birthright: take what he wanted, when he wanted.
Stop it, Hayes snarled to that familiar and hated voice. I'm better than that.
He wished that he could truly believe that.
Like the ever-present anger that simmered within him, the voice was another part of his Augment heritage that he wished he could lose. A physical superiority that he could never forget had combined with his already conflicted sense of morality to awaken a primal arrogance in him that, at times, urged him to act in completely inappropriate ways. Superior ability breeds superior ambition was how one Section psychologist had explained it to him, and Nate found himself struggling with it on a daily basis. He fought the urges, fought against them with every scrap of his self-control, but times like this made him wonder if he wasn't already too dangerous to be allowed freedom. A civilized man, he mused bleakly, doesn't think about rape.
The moment passed and he breathed in deeply, desperately trying to regain his composure. By concentrating on the current situation, he found himself sliding back into a normal frame of mind, and he slowly felt control returning. Ascertain your assets, he reminded himself as climbed to his feet, and determine a plan of attack. Pretending to be unsteady for the vid-cam that he had already noticed, he stumbled and dropped back to his knees; in that moment, he touched the side of his left foot and noted with some satisfaction that the electronic lockpick was still secured there. Concealed by a strip of synth-flesh that appeared to be nothing more than a childhood scar, it was designed not to show up on sensor scans and would be helpful for any escape attempt.
He briefly studied the piece of metal that covered the access pad of the door before turning away, confident that, with a little effort, he could rip it free. Long minutes passed as he conducted a visual and tactile search of the room; three listening devices and a second concealed vid-cam were found and he crushed all of them underfoot. A third vid-cam was hidden in the ceiling but he pretended not to notice it.
It wasn't the first time that he had been put in a situation like this. During his early training as an operative for the Section, he had been placed in a maximum security facility deep within China. False identity papers were created for him; as far as the Chinese authorities were concerned, he was a cold-blooded sociopath who had the blood of dozens, if not hundreds, on his hands.
Nate tried not to think about the accuracy of that description.
It had been a dangerous training exercise that had lasted over six months. Daily physical and mental abuse had strained his control to its breaking point, and he still suffered occasional nightmares from those days. One guard in particular had delighted in trying to break him and, had the Section's orders not explicitly forbidden injuring any of the prison guards, Hayes would have killed the man during the escape.
Instead, Nate had tracked him down and killed him months later, long after his superiors in the Section had forgotten about the exercise.
In the course of his search of the storage-room-turned-cell, Nate found a discarded label from what had probably been foodstuffs of some sort. He recognized the writing instantly and felt his stomach lurch slightly. If this was an Orion craft, then he realized that he would soon discover if his anosmia would give him any advantage over Orion pheromones. Another deficiency in the process that had been used to augment his genetic structure, Nate's lack of a sense of smell was an admittedly trivial medical problem, but it had led to some difficulties in the past. Humans took for granted how much of a role the sense of smell played in day-to-day activities.
Sinking down against the wall, he hugged himself in an apparent attempt to keep warm in the biting cold. Keeping the cell temperature below the comfort zone was a familiar technique, one that the Chinese had used with considerable success on him, and he wondered briefly how Commander T'Pol would fare against the cold. As he sat quietly, he let his fingers trace another false scar on the underside of his right arm. It too had gone unnoticed; he forced his face to display no emotion.
Once more he studied T'Pol, although this time he found himself wondering how useful she would be. If Tucker had died, it was probable that she would sense it through that telepathic link of theirs and, according to everything that the Section had acquired on bonded couples, she would either fly into a homicidal rage or slip into a catatonic depression that would culminate in self-termination. The information on bonds was still incomplete, of course, but Nate wondered exactly how accurate it was: he knew of numerous Vulcans still alive that had lost their husbands or wives. Still, he decided to keep an eye on T'Pol just in case she did display such symptoms.
Her intelligence background could be useful, Hayes mused as he again glanced at the sealed door. According to the information that his Control had provided him, T'Pol had spent a number of years serving as a member of the Ministry of Security, and had specialized in fugitive retrieval. Nate smirked suddenly at the thought of the petite Vulcan serving as a government-mandated bounty hunter. If nothing else, he thought, no one would expect it from someone who looked like an underwear model.
He quickly realized that the device attached to his neck could be a problem, and spent a few minutes trying to get it off. Electrical shocks lanced through his body as he tried to pull it free, and he gritted his teeth against the agony that burned away coherent thought. Gasping for air, he abandoned the attempts and spent several long minutes trying to recover from the pain. It was altogether too much like his time in the prison; they too had used electricity as an instrument of control.
An odd sound drew Nate's attention back to T'Pol, and he tensed at the expression on her face. She was frowning slightly, and he could see that her eyes were darting around beneath the closed lids, almost as if she were in a state of REM. Abruptly, her breathing began to come at a more rapid and shallow pace, and Hayes glowered at the closed door. Her reaction could only mean one thing: Tucker was dead.
"Trip," she muttered softly in the moment before her eyes snapped open. To Nate's surprise, she appeared almost visibly joyful. A smile played across her lips for a fraction of a second before she smoothed her features back into the stoic mask she wore most of the time. Confusion swamped him momentarily; she wasn't acting as though the captain had died.
"Lieutenant," T'Pol said by way of greeting. She gave him a slight nod and he returned it cautiously, but said nothing as she glanced around the room. She noticed the smashed remains of the eavesdropping equipment immediately and raised an eyebrow that he took as an unspoken question. Shrugging slightly, he let his eyes drift toward the ceiling and the third vid-cam in hopes that she would recognize his meaning. Another nod came from her and he exhaled slightly in relief.
"I'm sorry about the captain," Hayes said after a long moment of silence. It was the only way he could potentially find out about Tucker's fate without revealing that he had information he shouldn't have; after all, the bond between the captain and Commander T'Pol was ostensibly a secret.
"Captain Tucker survived," she declared, no doubt at all in her voice, and Nate glanced at her in surprise. "We should look to our own situation and focus our respective talents on escape," T'Pol continued. As he nodded in agreement, Hayes abruptly recognized a double meaning behind the commander's words.
And he frowned.
