Malcolm jumped out of the window and gave Bryson behind him a quick smile before the young man closed the window and disappeared. Malcolm crouched low and hurried to the hedge around the garden again. He couldn't hear anything, but he had realised by now that that didn't mean much- these Aurigans were deathly silent. He looked over the hedge and, figuring it was safe, he jumped over and crouched briefly, before running low over the first twenty metres or so of the field. He then fell on to his stomach and shimmied his way forwards, inch by thistley-painful inch. He was close to the edge of the forest when he realised that he could hear a pounding behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw two Aurigans bearing on his position, with two more behind them.

He had obviously been seen, so Malcolm jumped up, no longer bothering at stealth, and ran full pelt into the forest. He had excellent training and was at the peak of physical fitness, but the Aurigans' extra long legs meant that they caught up with him easily.

As he realised that he couldn't outrun them, Malcolm tried evasion tactics instead. He used the thickening trees to dodge and zigzag his way forwards. He thought about returning to the shack to hide, but as he threw a look over his shoulder, he knew that he could never be out of the Aurigan's sight for long enough to do that.

He glanced back again quickly to gauge the distance between him and the Aurigans, hoping he could get back to the cell ship in time, when he tripped on a hidden root and fell, tumbling down a steep bank into a dell below, and landed heavily on his front so that all the air in his lungs was expelled noisily.

He pushed himself up immediately, ignoring the scratches he had on his arms and face from the brambles he'd just landed in, and ploughed on. Two of the Aurigans had followed his route down the bank, with the exception of having a more graceful way of going about it, and the other two leaped from tree to tree in unbelievable lengths and heights to get ahead of Malcolm and to cut him off.

They succeeded.

Malcolm had abandoned his jacket as it got caught on the spiny thorns clutching at him from all angles. He knew there were two behind him, but as he saw the other two coming from in front of him, he knew he was caught.

One of them from behind caught his ankle with its' staff before he knew what was happening, and he was once again on his front in the slimy mud. A foot pressed into his back, and his hands were brought around behind him and secured tightly, the wires cutting into his wrists enough to draw little beads of scarlet.

Fingers grabbed his hair and roughly snapped his head back, enough for Malcolm to feel a sharp click as his spine adjusted. A lumpy face was an inch away from his. No change seemed to occur on the face, but it just tilted slightly, as if confused by Malcolm's expression- his teeth were bared and lips in a grimace as he braced himself against the pain of his neck being pushed too far back and the straps, combined with the foot still pressing hard into him enough to bruise. The face looked away, and up at its' compatriots. For a second, all pressure, bar that of the wires in his wrist, was gone. Then, a hand grabbed his left upper arm, and swung Malcolm on to the shoulder of one Aurigan.

As it did, all Malcolm could think of was how stupid he'd been not to bring a phase pistol with him. Captain Archer is having a bad effect on me, evidently. Time was, I'd have died before going anywhere without one. He had a knife in his boot, but that was not really an option against four assailants whilst running at the same time.

As he thought this, he almost missed the swing of a staff as it came at him suddenly from the periphery of his vision and made his thoughts quieten and everything very black.

0000000000000000000000000

As he came to, the first thing that was obvious was the crippling pain in his neck- he'd been at an angle for who knew how long. A secondary pain that he felt was a dull throb through his right temple, following through to his ear. The skin there felt taut. He guessed that there was dried blood there from when the staff had hit him into oblivion earlier.

Whenever earlier was.

He shook his head and blinked his eyes open wearily.

The second thing he realised, was that he was tied to a chair, wires securing his wrists awkwardly behind and also around his chest, ankles, and just above his knees. Each wire dug into his skin enough to mark and sting.

He stretched his neck side to side to ease the cramped muscles there while looking around. He was all alone for now. The closest he could guess was that he was in a cold storage room- it certainly was cold, his breath was coming out in misty clouds before him. At the edge of his vision, just behind him, there were the frozen carcasses ready to be cooked for human consumption, hanging from hooks from the ceiling. Enough to feed several people. Probably in the hotel. When he watched Old Jack being taken to the house, it had seemed like the village hotel was some kind of temporary base.

A door immediately behind him opened up, but no other noise could be heard. It clicked shut.

An Aurigan came around in front of Malcolm and for a moment, it just stood there watching him silently. Malcolm stared back at it, challenging, but also silent. He did silent and watching well. It was part and parcel of his job after all.

The Aurigan seemed to consider something, and looked over Malcolm's head. Malcolm suddenly realised that there was more than one in the room with him, but they were so quiet, he couldn't tell exactly how many. One brought a small hover-table around in front of Malcolm. On it were various organic-looking objects, none of which he recognised, but he could still have a fair guess at what they were for.

The Aurigan in front of him picked up an object that looked a bit like a miniature octopus with only five tentacles. Malcolm's head was yanked back and tilted to the side slightly as the octopus instrument was brought up to his left temple and placed there with a squishing sound- it felt like one would expect a jelly-like marine creature to feel like.

The Aurigan let Malcolm go and stood back, standing at attention, but looking right at him. There was a decidedly weird sensation at his temple as the octopus suddenly seemed to come alive- there was definite movement coming from the area. A feeling of pins and needles started to emanate from it and spread throughout the left side of his face. Right at his temple was where the sensation was at its' worst, and then came an incredible sharp shot of pain from there. Malcolm involuntarily threw his head back and screamed with every limb in spasm at the agony he had never experienced before. True, his training with S31 had meant that he had been through some rigorous Resistance to Interrogation training which included being at the receiving end of some torture, good old SAS style, but this pain was something else entirely. At least in training, you knew that despite what it might look like, you would never be killed or have any long-term damage at the end of it.

The pain hadn't lessened at all, but through it all, Malcolm had become aware that there was a whisper inside his head, one that was ever so slightly evading his consciousness- he could feel it, but understanding it was something else, and it was seeming to be telling him something.

Almost as soon as he realised this, the agony subsided, and became a pulsing pain instead of the all-consuming fire it had been before, and the whisper became clearer.

Instinctively, Malcolm 'reached' for it in his mind and words came into focus, as if coalescing from the fogginess that were his thoughts.

"What were you doing here?"

Malcolm peered around, confused. He hadn't seen anyone speak, and the pain still had him in a muddle. "What?"

The Aurigan in front of him squatted down to look Malcolm in the face. "What were you doing here?"

It still took him a second to realise it, but he did eventually figure that it was the Aurigan 'speaking' to him by telepathic means, most likely using the octopus. T'Pol would love this technology- I'm sure it would intrigue her immensely, was the only thought he could muster.

"Who is T'Pol?"

Bugger.

The last thought was Malcolm's reaction to the appearance that his conscious thoughts at least were no longer his own- the Aurigan could hear him. He wondered if it would work both ways. He 'reached' forward and his brain was instantly on fire again.

The Aurigan seemed unbothered by the fact, though he must have known what Malcolm felt.

The fire stopped again, leaving Malcolm slumped as far as the tight wires would allow him to.

"You cannot evade our questioning. We can destroy your mind if you resist. Answer our questions and we will return you to the village for rest with the rest of your species. Who are you?"

Malcolm had never had this kind of interrogation before. The fact that the Aurigans seemed to be able to hear his conscious thoughts meant that he was almost completely defenceless. Malcolm did the first thing he could think of and began, in his mind, to sing his way through every naval song he had ever come across. His father would have been proud at the selection and variety, although many were somewhat of the bluer sort.

During the first bar or so of his first song, the Aurigan seemed a bit taken aback, and more of the pain jolted through Malcolm mercilessly, but he carried on as soon as he was able to, gritting his teeth even though he was beginning to get white spots in his vision. The Aurigan carried on its' same questions, but got nothing out of Malcolm.

'Rule Britannia' began in Malcolm's mind, and the Aurigan in front of him suddenly, with the graceful quality of a wild cat, spun and hit Malcolm just under his right jaw line, knocking him to the floor with such force that Malcolm was stunned for several silent moments. He hadn't been knocked unconscious, but that changed when he was picked up, set the right way up, and the octopus was removed from his temple.

The loss of the whisper, while welcome, was almost like a bereavement. His brain suddenly had the silence of the grave in the shock, and Malcolm felt something actually physically removing itself from inside his skull, slippery, and leaking down the side of his face. His head fell forwards as the octopus was removed and he vaguely noticed the relentless dripping of blood on to his shirt. The octopus passed his peripheral vision as it was put back on to the hover cart, several of the tentacles covered in blood and writhing.

The edges of his vision turned grey, then black as the Aurigans left the room, leaving him where was and switched the lights off.

The room became deathly dark, and then so did Malcolm's brain as he dropped away from wakefulness.