"Are you sure you're ready to do this, Doc?"
Lieutenant Brody's voice turned her head from where she had been focused on the unconscious figure before her. They had moved the bed away from the wall enough so that she could get in behind the head of it, a perfect position for her to lightly place her hands on each of Ortiz's temples. She gave Brody a small smile, wanting to reassure herself as well as him, but the expression felt a little watery, and therefore unconvincing. "I don't know if anyone can ever really be ready for something like this, Lieutenant," she said with a small shake of her head. "But I have to try, and the longer we wait the more chance there is that we lose what little advantage we might have."
"If we even have an advantage." It was sensible to be sceptical, James Brody was a pragmatic sort of man, but she could pick up on the first flickers of hope in him as well. He wanted this to work, and he wanted Wendy to be right.
"Exactly," she agreed. "And there's only one way to find out." That was the unfortunate, inescapable truth of the matter. If they didn't try then they would never know either way, and wasn't that worse? Even if she tried this and it didn't work at least then they would know. They could plan their next step. "Jim, it's now or never."
"I know." He sighed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "I just wish I could do something. I've never liked standing around watching." There was something almost childlike about the way the man said that and Wendy felt a rush of fondness for him, giving him a warm smile that she hoped would tell him she understood. Nobody like to be powerless.
That drew her gaze back down to Ortiz. Powerless was a good word for how he had to feel, she imagined. As a psychic herself she liked to think that she was immune to being controlled as he had been but she honestly didn't know if it might just be possible. If the other psychic was strong enough, perhaps. The thought made her feel cold, chilling her right down to her bones, and she gave an involuntary shudder.
"All right," she said, more to herself than anyone else. She gave Lieutenant Brody another glance and he gave her the slightest nod, telling her with the gesture that he would keep an eye on her, keep watch, and should anything happen he would do his best to take care of it. She gave a tiny nod of her own, grateful, and then settled herself into position. She touched her hands to each of Ortiz's temples, closed her eyes, drew in a breath, and then reached for his mind with her own.
The world around her slipped away, drifting and fading from her perception, as she tumbled weightlessly into the expanse that was the consciousness of another.
When she felt herself settle, the connection solidifying, she kept her eyes closed for a few moments, waiting for the disorientation of that bridging to pass. When she opened them, feeling steady and grounded, she blinked and looked around. She frowned, thinking for just a moment that something had gone wrong during the building of that bridge.
She had expected to find something, some sort of construct formed by Ortiz's unconscious mind. It could have been anything from part of the ship to a place for which he held a particular fondness. For some people it was something wholly new and original, something created from their imagination and wildest dreams. She thought briefly of Charlie and the surreal surroundings in which he had ensconced himself during his coma.
But this was nothing like that. There was no colour, no structure, no surroundings whatsoever.
It was black and dark and dismal, a hopeless landscape, an endless expanse of emptiness.
Except for one spot. One spot in all of that nothing held something and Wendy couldn't help but be drawn to it. That draw was almost magnetic, an unstoppable pull, and she was powerless to fight against it. After a few moments spent worrying about what was happening, however, she realised she shouldn't fight it. That she didn't want to.
Because that something was exactly what, who, she had come in here to find.
"Miguel."
It didn't even occur to her to be cautious, to not rush forward blindly, because in that moment she was just so relieved to have found him that everything else fell by the wayside. The blankness of the space in which she had found not only herself but Miguel as well was still troubling though, thoroughly unlike anything else she had ever experienced or discovered in all her time as a telepath. There was something hopeless and cold about it, and as she moved forward she realised with a sense of resentment and disappointment that that was very likely exactly how it was supposed to feel.
If not for that psychic, the one who had been using the man whose mind this was, there likely would have been much more to find, but they had smothered and censored it all. Wiped it away. This wasn't a retreat, or a refuge: it was a prison.
She had once told Nathan that psychics were incapable of treating others cruelly because their empathic abilities made such acts painful for them as well, but the sad truth of it all was that this wasn't even the first time she had been proven wrong in that claim. Clay had been perfectly capable of using his abilities to harm others without suffering for it, or so it had seemed to her, and now this psychic as well was lashing out at others without cost. She could have argued that the distance, however they were traversing it without sacrificing their strength, made it easier to be unkind, but something told her that that wasn't the case. And what did it matter? They were being unkind, cruel and even outright vicious, and it had taken its toll on the crew, none more so than the man before her.
Miguel was on the ground, lying on his side with his back to her, and when she spoke his name again there was no reaction that showed he had heard her. When she walked around to see him from the front she saw why. He looked unconscious, his black hair toppled carelessly across his face. Wendy could see blood. It looked, for all intents and purposes, as though Miguel had been in a fight, or at the very least on the receiving end of someone else's aggression.
And that wasn't all. That wasn't even the worst of it.
At first she hadn't seen them, whether because she hadn't looked closely enough or because they hadn't actually been visible right away she couldn't say, but as she stood before him where he lay, crumpled, on the ground they came into a loose kind of focus. The longer she stood there the clearer they became. Around his wrists and his ankles were cuffs, manacles, solid bands made not of metal but some kind of unrecognised material. It was almost like energy. As she took one step closer and lowered into a cautious, wary crouch, she watched as links materialised from those cuffs, strongest at the point where they joined the manacles and fading, almost ethereally, into little more than faint impressions as they trailed and wound away across the ground.
Wendy shifted her focus from those restraints to Miguel's face and spotted something else. Something chilling.
Around Miguel's neck was another band like the ones circling his wrists and ankles, solid and secure despite its eerie wraithlike appearance, and though she couldn't see links of chain leading off from it she knew, somehow, that they existed. Just as she knew what she was looking at. What it meant. It was a collar. Meant to restrain and confine and control, as well as degrade and demean. That cold sensation in the pit of her stomach shifted and changed, becoming something akin to nausea.
"Miguel?" Wendy reached towards him with one hand then, wanting so badly for the Sensor Chief to open his eyes, look at her, anything that would tell her he was still with them in some small way. "Miguel, can you hear me?" Her hand was getting closer. She thought perhaps she would move his hair out of his face, or perhaps just lay her hand on his shoulder. She hadn't thought that far ahead. She certainly hadn't expected to find him like this. "It's me. It's Wendy." Closer. "We're here, we know what's happening to you. We're going to help you."
Only then did she see some signs of life in him, his eyes just beginning to flutter open with a small, weak groan knotting in the back of his throat. God, what had happened to him? What had been done to him? The mind was supposed to be a sanctuary, an escape from troubles and torments, but whoever had a grip on Ortiz had made sure that there was nothing of the sort to be found here.
"Wendy?" The voice was weak, thin and fragile, little more than a whisper.
"I'm here, Miguel." She reached for him properly then, no longer feeling any sense of trepidation or reluctance. He needed help, and he needed it now.
But before her hand had even made contact with his shoulder she felt a charge rush through her outstretched fingers. It raced, startling and painful, all the way through her palm and wrist and then up her arm to her shoulder. With a ragged gasp she recoiled, stumbling onto one hip as she tried to catch her breath, cradling her hand to her chest and waiting for the needling ache to lessen and fade.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to touch what doesn't belong to you?" The voice drifted out of the dark, almost as if carried on a wind that Wendy could neither feel nor hear. It was unnerving. Almost unnatural.
"Wendy." His eyes were open a little more now, but he was still struggling to properly come back to himself. One of his hands shifted against the ground, and she noticed then that his other arm was not moving so much as it was shaking. Another look at Miguel's face told her that he was in pain. A lot of it.
"Who are you?" she demanded of the darkness surrounding them. "What have you done to him?"
The blackness before them almost seemed to part then, like a veil or the heavy curtain of a theatre, revealing the tall and predatorily graceful figure of a woman. Part of Wendy had been hoping to recognise her but there was nothing familiar about her. Her cropped blonde hair gave her a severe look only emphasised by the strong line of her jaw, and her pale eyes fixed firmly and unwaveringly on the new arrival, scrutinising and unwelcoming. She walked out of the dark with all the confidence of someone at home not only in their own skin but their surroundings, and she came to a stop less than a foot behind Miguel's crumpled form.
"Nothing he didn't invite upon himself," the woman said, breaking her gaze from Wendy's to drop it to the man before her. When she smiled there was nothing warm about it.
"How can you do this?" Wendy demanded, the feeling having finally returned to her arm, allowing her to straighten it as she slowly rose from the ground, keeping her eyes on the woman. Something told her that breaking that gaze, even if only for a moment, would be dangerous. At the blonde woman's quirked brow she went on, "You're a psychic. How can you do this to anyone? Don't you feel what you're doing to him?" Because Wendy certainly could, now that she was in here. Outside and beyond the confines of Miguel's consciousness she hadn't been able to sense a thing that was out of place but now that she was within its walls? The desperation and grief and frustration and loneliness—they were almost choking.
The woman smiled. "Of course I do." She sounded almost proud of herself. "But like I said, it was nothing he didn't invite upon himself. He had his chances and he wasted them."
Miguel made a low sound, a pained and almost pleading sound, and Wendy couldn't help but drop her eyes to him then. She wanted so badly to help him, to take hold of him and get him out, but a cold ball of dreadful fear had taken shape in the pit of her stomach. It told her that any attempts to do so would only make things worse.
"You're damn right."
Wendy's eyes snapped up to the woman and she couldn't keep the surprise, the alarm, from her face. Had she—
"That's what we do, isn't it?" the woman returned, almost derisively. "We're psychics." She paused and her smile grew. "Well," she went on, looking Wendy up and down, "I know that's what I am. You're little more than a glorified carnival act." At Wendy's frown she laughed and went on, "You shy away from your powers and keep them locked up in this tiny little box just so you won't hurt or frighten anyone." She scoffed. "You have no idea what you're really capable of because the sad truth is that you're afraid. And that fear limits you, it makes you small and weak." With an animalistic tilt of her head, calculating and judging, she said, "How else could I so easily deceive and defeat you?"
She lowered then, her motions smooth and controlled, as graceful as any dancer but that elegance was anything but beautiful. It was sinister and seductive and so very dangerous. Like the Serpent who had tempted Eve. Wendy fought to suppress another shudder. The woman ended up in a crouch behind Miguel, laying one hand on his arm possessively, her fingers curling around his bicep. Claiming. The image before her brought to mind pictures of wild animals hunched over their prey, fending off scavengers and rivals, teeth bared and eyes blazing.
"He is mine," the woman all but growled, tightening her grip on the man on the ground. Wendy heard the soft gasp of pain slip past bloodied lips and she couldn't help but tense, wanting so badly to rush forward. And then what? She had never been a physical sort of person and she knew that she was anything but formidable. She had never learned how to fight. She had never needed to.
"Get out of here," the woman went on, her voice still low.
"Who are you?" Wendy countered, because if she didn't get something out of all of this then what was the point? She had to get something, anything. The woman's cold, hard stare told her plainly enough that she would get nothing just by asking and so she reached, as far and as deep as she could, and with as much speed as possible.
"Get out." The danger in the woman's voice was growing and she was tensing, her muscles tightening. As Wendy stared at her the woman slid her hand from Miguel's arm and out of sight behind his back. "Now," she hissed, even as her arm jerked and Miguel's whole body seemed to follow suit. Another ragged gasp was wrenched out of him, this one more of a choke than anything, and that one hand that had shifted against the ground moved suddenly towards his neck.
Wendy stood her ground, fighting not to feel Miguel's building fear and the crackling beginnings of panic. She stood her ground and pushed, her hands balling into fists at her side as she found a wall and pressed against it with all her might.
The woman bared her teeth then, looking more and more like that wild animal threatening to snap, and with another jerk of her whole arm she rose from her crouch. As she did so Wendy could see the strange energy coiled around her hand and wrist, the same energy that tightened around Miguel's neck and hauled him up from the ground. It was so violently undignified that Wendy almost lost her nerve at the sight of someone she knew, someone she cared about, being yanked up like some kind of unruly animal.
Like some kind of pet.
Dragging her eyes from his face and the pain contorting it even as he reached with that one arm to try and loosen the choking grip around his throat she looked at the woman, meeting her gaze squarely and defiantly. And she pushed. Hard.
A creak. A crack. A fracture. So small, a tiny thing, but if she could just—
"Get. Out." The woman's voice seemed so loud all of a sudden, thunderous, and it came from all around, booming from every direction. Her grip tightened again and Miguel let out a strangled cry, pulled up even higher but struggling against it. His knees had been heaved off the floor now and he dangled from the woman's grasp, powerless to escape it.
God, she was so strong.
But she couldn't give up. She couldn't fail. Even as she became dimly, shakily, aware of the ragged and frail quality of her breathing outside of this hopeless and endless space, and the distant call of her name in a worried tone, she pushed and she shoved and she pounded.
Just as the woman's voice raised again in a vicious, seething snarl, Wendy felt something give and saw the first glimmer of something hidden behind that wall. She reached that tiny bit further and latched on to it in the same instant that the woman unleashed with a savage cry that held no shape beyond the fury that powered it. It cannoned into Wendy and unsteadied her with so much force and so suddenly that she was out in the real world again before she even knew what was happening, before she could even realise that she was being expelled.
Miguel's mind slammed shut with a distant, echoing boom and she came back to herself gasping and shaking. And sweating, she realised, feeling the dampness of it all over and the way it hugged her blouse to her skin and stuck her bangs to her brow.
"Doc? Doc? Doc, answer me!"
That voice pierced through the thick fog of disorientation that had closed around her in the wake of her expulsion and she gasped more violently, remembering just where she was and why, and with whom. "Jim?" She found his face as her vision cleared and she saw the worry etched upon it. Behind him she could see movement but she ignored it even as other voices start to reach her ears. "I—I need—" Her voice was shaking. Badly. "Nathan," she gasped breathlessly. Her whole body trembled and she gripped the edge of the bed before her, looking down at the unmoving figure upon it as she found enough strength to say, just loud enough for Brody and perhaps even O'Neill to hear, "I got something." She lifted her gaze and found the Lieutenant's, using it to steady herself. "I got a name."