Tim couldn't believe what he was hearing. As much as he understood the words that had been said to him he was failing to comprehend them even a full minute after Doctor Smith had spoken them. "Why would he do that?" he said at last, not even attempting to hide the incredulity in his voice, noticing with a flicker of guilt that Wendy frowned almost ruefully. "Tell Dagwood to let him go like that." The clarification of what he had meant hadn't been necessary, he knew, but it had tumbled out of him all the same. The GELF in question looked his way, looking just as remorseful as Doctor Smith had a moment ago.
No, more so. Much more, actually. Tim silently chided himself, wishing he had chosen his words more carefully. If nothing else he could have been gentler in his delivery, he knew. He really needed to be more conscious of his tone. It wasn't really all that long ago that Henderson had told him, none too pointedly, how he came across sometimes. And when it came to people like Dagwood? Those who took things to heart and were pained by words much more than actions? It was even more important to be mindful. "I'm sorry, Dagwood," he said to the large man who looked his way, still appearing cowed and regretful. "I didn't mean—you didn't do anything wrong. Okay?" He held the GELF's gaze, glad that Dagwood felt comfortable doing the same in return. "You tried to help. That's a good thing."
For a few moments there was nothing said, and Dagwood appeared thoughtful and uncertain. Eventually though he gave a nod of his head and saw fit to settle himself onto a stool nearby. Tim took that as a sign of acceptance as much as the nod. If he was comfortable enough to sit down then that was good.
Doctor Smith seized the opportunity to respond to Tim at last, saying, "He must have thought it was safer to go than to stay." She sounded sorry, as though she had something to be sorry for. As far as Tim was concerned nothing could have been farther from the truth but he could understand why she would feel that way. Not only was she a deeply emotional person, feeling and sensing those emotions keenly, but he knew she was blaming herself for not recognising the presence of another psychic before it was too late.
Wendy looked him in the eye then. Knowingly.
Tim felt a flush of shame, certain that it coloured his cheeks if her soft smile was anything to go by. With a brief clearing of his throat he got them back to the matter at hand, "Safer for who, though?" Any way he looked at the situation they had all found themselves in it was awful and dangerous and unpredictable. "For him?" Tim shook his head. "It sure doesn't sound like it." Especially not if Miguel was hurrying off to meet up with this Irina woman, the one behind this whole mess.
"No," Wendy agreed, matter-of-factly. "But I don't think he did it for himself," she went on, sounding certain. "I think he did it for us."
That was it. Right there. The moment when everything clicked into place and just made sense. Doctor Smith had hit the nail on the head and Tim couldn't believe he hadn't seen it sooner. Because of course Miguel would have done it for everyone else, for everyone but himself. Of course he would have thrown himself on the proverbial sword to try and save everyone else. They had been friends for years now and Tim knew the sort of man that Miguel Ortiz was. Selfless, thoughtful, considerate, and determined.
Of course he had sacrificed himself to protect the rest of the crew.
That didn't make it any easier to accept though. If anything that made it even harder, knowing that his best friend had sent himself off to face God only knew what kind of danger, and alone at that. Hadn't he already put himself through enough by this point? Even if his actions and motivations were noble, honourable, the sort of thing they had all come to expect from the seaQuest's Sensor Chief, that didn't make them any less terrifying to come to terms with.
"So—" Tim had to take a breath, regretting the forced depth of it as his abdomen twinged painfully. "What now?"
"Lucas is hoping to find a way to track this implant that we think she's using." Doctor Smith lifted her brows and shook her head a little. "After that? Who knows?" After a brief pause she went on, "I'm sure the Captain will do everything in his power to help Ortiz."
From his place on the stool nearby Dagwood said, "We have to save him."
Wendy turned her head to look at him. "We will, Dagwood." Tim noticed she said will instead of try. "We're not giving up hope."
Dagwood's utterance of a simple, "Okay," was quiet and almost a little uncertain, but he went back to sitting silently and doing his best to stay out of the way.
Tim couldn't help but share Dagwood's concern, and his doubt. As many times as the seaQuest and her crew had faced the odds, oftentimes insurmountable ones at that, and overcome them, things felt different this time. More uncertain, more dangerous, and that much more frightening as a result. Even without his faith and all the fears and anxieties that that added to any situation Tim would have been scared of what might happen next. He wasn't only afraid for himself, something he was all too used to at this point in his life, but the rest of the crew as well.
But mostly it was for Miguel and what might happen to him if they couldn't get to him in time.
They had to. They had to make it. Tim couldn't bring himself to believe anything else. He couldn't bear to think of any other outcome. Anything else was just too terrifying to consider, and therefore, something he just couldn't face.
They had to make it. They just had to.
It was the harsh impact against the floor that woke him, not all the way at first but enough for him to hear someone say, in a dry but oddly fond tone, "Now, now, Evan. Easy with the merchandise." There was a moment of quiet before the same voice added, "We wouldn't want all of our hard work to go to waste, would we?" After that the sounds wavered and dipped out for a while, becoming distant and echoed and hard to make out. For a while, there was no determining how long, everything drifted away and faded to black.
And then there was a pressure around his waist, uncomfortable enough in the position he had been dropped into that it roused him to the point where he could open his eyes and see a face looking down at him.
Irina.
Dread raced through him, chased quickly by the knowledge that he had done this. He had come here. If nothing else he had convinced Dagwood to let him go, let him get into the launch, and then he had surrendered to the fierce onslaught of Irina's power as she fought to take control.
"Welcome back, handsome." She was smiling, showing teeth, and she used one hand to brush his hair out of his face. His attempt to shy away was futile, given her position on top of him, crouched astride his waist and pressing just enough of her weight down on his hips to remind him who was in charge in this situation, at least as far as she was concerned. Her hand moved to his jaw and took hold of it on either side, holding his head in place and making sure he looked her in the eye as she said, "You're damn right I am."
With her other hand she jerked down the zipper on his jumpsuit and reached inside, retrieving the data packets. She released his jaw only to crack the palm of her hand across his face in a hard, harsh slap. By the time he recovered enough from the force and shock of it to open his eyes again she had risen from her crouch, applying just enough pressure as she did so to ensure he felt it in a low, dull ache through his pelvis. Miguel groaned and struggled to roll over, to get his hands and knees to the ground so he could push himself up off the concrete. Easier said than done, he realised, as his body protested with aches and jolts of pain, lingering souvenirs from the fall. A glance to his side told him just who had dropped him, and why it had been such a heavy fall. The man Irina called Evan wasn't small by any stretch of the imagination. He was big enough to give someone like Dagwood a run for their money.
Somehow, despite feeling like he couldn't catch his breath, despite the aching in his chest, he managed to say, "That's it."
From somewhere nearby Irina said slowly, "I beg your pardon?"
He wasn't going to be able to get all the way up off the ground yet, he knew, so he settled for getting his knees under him and pulling himself up into something at least resembling a dignified position. It wasn't much, but he was going to have to take what he could get. Miguel knew that. "I said that's it," he told her, breathing heavily. "You've got what you wanted." He did his best to inject as much resentment as he could into those words, but all things considered, taking into account what she now held in her hands, it didn't feel like much at all.
Irina's brows rose as she walked back towards him, covering the distance in steady, easy strides. "Oh, I did, did I?" She backhanded him that time, a sharp strike that almost threw him right back down to the floor. By quickly and awkwardly planting one hand down against the concrete he was able to keep his balance. Just barely.
"Don't presume to tell me what I want." Irina's voice had more of an edge to it now, her temper riled. Instead of striking his face again she caught her fingers through his thick hair and pulled his head back, making him gasp. "I like you, Miguel," she said to him, but it was with a trace of that feral growl that she did so, "but you're on thin ice right now. Very thin ice, in fact."
He could have grabbed at her wrist, or her arm, or even tried to lash out at her some other way but he knew better by now. It would be wasted effort and all it would really accomplish would be the provoking of more ire, perhaps not just from Irina herself either. Evan was watching everything, Miguel had noticed, every muscle in his large frame poised and ready to strike at any moment. For all of his own combat training and experience Miguel didn't think he would last five minutes against the other man, especially not in his current condition. Maybe, when he was at his best, he would stand some kind of chance, but now? There was no way.
Irina held his gaze for several long moments, her expression severe and unwavering, before she used her grip in his hair to toss him aside. It was more of a painful shove really, her fingers catching sharply in his hair with the rough motion, and he managed to catch himself with his hand again. For a few seconds he stayed like that, bowed halfway over, his jaw clenched and teeth gritted, breathing heavily through the worst of the indignation and frustration.
"You can resent me all you want, Miguel," she said to him, sounding more controlled and composed now. "But the fact of the matter is you helped me to get this information." That made him lift his head, at least enough to throw a glare in her direction. She laughed, low and quiet. "You can blame me and my abilities until you're blue in the face, handsome, but let's not pretend that you didn't make a conscious choice to acquire these." She held up the data packets then, still safely sealed in their airtight and waterproof casing.
"You threatened my friends. My family." That hand on the ground curled inward, forming a fist.
"Yes," she agreed, almost indifferently. "I did." She regarded him levelly, tilting her head just a fraction. "But I only acted on that threat when you forced my hand."
Miguel couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had heard it before of course, in that endless black expanse in his mind where she had cornered and confronted him while they were separated by not only countless miles but several thousand feet of ocean. There was no point in trying to change her view on the subject, he knew, as much as it boiled his blood to be blamed in any way for her decisions to do what had been done to Tim and Wendy, and Lucas as well, even if that attack had been interrupted, and ultimately averted. Thank God.
"The question is," Irina said, narrowing her eyes, considering him carefully and at length, "is that lesson well and truly learned now, or are we going to continue to have trouble?"
That stopped any thoughts he might have been having dead in their tracks, just about derailing them altogether. "What?"
"Well, like I told you before, Miguel, I'm a businesswoman." She gave him a smile. "I'm not about to discard a perfectly good asset when it's right in front of me. That would be foolish of me, not to mention wasteful." Her smile grew as she took in the dawning realisation that swept across his face. "What?" she asked him, feigning innocence. "You didn't really think it was going to be over and done with, just like that. Did you?"
He almost told her that she had promised him, that she had assured him she would release him once she had gotten what she wanted, but it felt so childish and pitiable that he didn't even bother attempting to shape the words. Instead he found himself realising with a sense of sinking dread that she had never specified exactly when she would have everything she wanted from him. She had specifically, cunningly, left that part out. "Maldito seas," he ground out at her, fully expecting her to comprehend what he was saying by using those wretched powers of hers and from the look on her face that was exactly what she had done.
Just when he had started to think it wasn't possible for him to hate her any more than he already did.
"Don't be nasty, Miguel," she said to him, adopting a tone that wouldn't have been out of place in a classroom, with a teacher chastising an unruly, disrespectful student. "It doesn't suit you."
Insults and curses wouldn't help him, and they wouldn't faze her in the least, he knew that, but it felt better than staying silent. She would take that not as a sign of strength, but instead as a show of weakness. Submission. Surrender. And Miguel wasn't going to let her have that. "I won't help you anymore."
"Isn't that what you said last time?" She was right, of course, he had said that to her before, but he had fought her. He would do that again. Irina's smile took on an almost pitying edge. "And look how that worked out for you," she added, her tone once again matter-of-fact, but with just a hint of derision, as if it was foolish of him to even try and refuse her.
Miguel shook his head, his frustration simmering, well on its way to boiling point. "What do you expect me to be able to do after this? My UEO clearance will be stripped, I won't be able to access anything of value." How she couldn't see that for herself was beyond him. She had targeted him because of his clearance, because of what he could access as a result of that. Without that surely he would be useless to her.
But Irina didn't seem troubled in the least. "Not officially, no," she said, sounding confident and at ease, comfortable in her surroundings and the situation at large. "But you've already proven yourself to be more than resourceful, Miguel. I have no doubt you'll continue to do so, even without that uniform." Irina's smile became almost suggestive then, one brow quirking upward to make the expression that much more so.
Miguel felt his stomach threaten to turn.
Her smile grew wider. "Oh, don't give me that look. You didn't have a problem getting up close and personal with me when we met, remember?" She obviously picked up on the sense of shame that surged up in him then, if her widening smile and accompanying laughter were any indication. She quickly sobered though, at least enough to sound almost business-like when she said, "And I gave you the opportunity to make things easier on yourself by just cooperating early on. It was your choice to do this the hard way." Her brows lifted and she inclined her head, silently scolding. "Now," she went on, pausing just long enough to draw in a breath, "we can either continue to do this the hard way, or you can not only accept your situation, but embrace it. Just like before, handsome, the choice is yours. Not mine."
He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she was delusional, out of her mind, possibly the craziest person he had ever had the misfortune of not only meeting but dealing with, but he knew, in spite of how passionately he felt every last bit of it, it would all fall on deaf ears. She wouldn't listen, and she certainly wouldn't accept any of it. In her mind she was right and he was wrong and that was that. People like her never listened to reason when it was presented to them because they believed with full conviction that they were already being reasonable and rational and logical. People who always believed themselves to be in the right wouldn't hear anything else.
"You might as well say it, Miguel," she told him then, her expression growing weary. "For poor Evan's sake if nothing else. I can read your mind, but he most certainly cannot." She canted her head slightly to one side. Slightly, but pointedly. "You're just being rude otherwise."
Miguel glanced to the man in question, noticing that Evan was looking his way for a change. He had noticed that the other man spent a great deal of his time watching Irina rather than anyone or anything else. What exactly that meant he couldn't be sure yet but it was worth noting. "He must have heard it all before," he ended up saying, glancing back at Irina. "At this point I'm thinking he's the only person who doesn't think you're out of your mind."
It happened so fast, so utterly without warning, that he didn't even realise he had been struck at first until he felt himself hit the floor, hard. The single blow had caught him across the face, snapping his head to the side and completely shattering what little balance he had managed to scrape together. Miguel tasted blood in his mouth and screwed his eyes shut tightly against the painful and disorienting ringing in his ears, even as the pain of the blow throbbed through first his face and then his entire skull. A thick groan rolled at the back of his throat and he hissed through his teeth, struggling to collect himself both physically and mentally.
God. It was like he had been struck with a sledgehammer.
"If I were you," came Irina's voice from not far away, managing to pierce through that ringing that was stubbornly refusing to lessen, let alone cease. "I would watch what you say around Evan." Her voice was much closer then when she said, "He's rather protective."
A hand touched to his hair then, his face turned downward towards the ground. Miguel couldn't help but flinch, startled and discomforted by the contact, very much the latter once he realised whose hand it was. He moved his arm closer to his head, shielding his face that little bit more, as much to conceal that discomfort as anything else.
But there was no fooling Irina, whose laugh was a low, almost catlike roll of sound. "You two will learn to get along, I'm sure," she said, her tone unnervingly fond, her hand once again touching to his hair. It took Miguel a moment to realise she wasn't just touching his head, but stroking it. Involuntarily he shuddered, curling that little bit more into himself where he had buckled down to the ground. The taste of blood in his mouth was getting thicker and heavier. He would have no choice but to cough or spit it out soon.
"Now," Irina said, business-like once more as she rose from what Miguel presumed was a crouch, taking her fingers from his hair but not before she gave the curled lengths a short but sharp and decidedly pointed tug. "Are you going to behave yourself, or do I have to take precautions?"
Precautions. There was no telling what she really meant by that but just by letting his imagination run for a minute Miguel could take a halfway decent guess. Nothing he imagined appealed in the slightest but neither did the idea of behaving himself, as Irina had put it, and simply going along with her idea of how things were going to be now.
Irina sighed. "Fine," she said. "Have it your way."
A large, strong hand, possibly the exact same one that had landed that devastating blow, caught and twisted in the back of his uniform and gave a single upward tug that easily brought him back to his feet. Miguel struggled to get them under him properly, his skull still ringing and throbbing, and unconsciously he grabbed at the arm that was holding him up. If Evan was bothered by that he didn't show it, obviously confident that there was nothing to be concerned about.
There was a spatter of blood on the ground, Miguel noticed once he was fairly sure his legs weren't going to fold underneath him. When Evan had pulled up, roughly and forcefully, he had coughed a mouthful of it out onto the concrete. The taste was still strong in his mouth, strong enough that he suspected that single blow had been hard enough to slice the inside of his cheek open against his own teeth. A moment of careful exploration with his tongue confirmed as much and he couldn't help but wince at the sharp stinging pain that lingered there.
Irina was in front of him then, having moved without him noticing while he was distracted by the blood and its origins. When she reached up he tried to shy away but Evan gave him a single jerk in his grasp that warned him to stay still. Miguel almost struggled instinctively despite himself but the power behind that single blow made him think twice and he caught himself before he could make things worse. With a smile Irina laid her hand on his face, her fingers on one side and her thumb on the other before the latter moved and ran across his bottom lip. Another involuntary flinch caused Evan to give the back of his uniform another warning tug which stilled him long enough for Irina to close what little gap there was between them and press a brief but firm kiss against his lips.
Miguel felt Evan's other hand close, vice-like, around his wrist, and it was only then that he realised he had been about to use his free arm to shove or strike at Irina. Evan wasted no time in twisting it up behind his back and pinning it there. His shoulder ached hotly and his elbow followed suit moments later and he gasped despite himself.
"Things would be a lot easier, not to mention less painful," Irina said, "if you just behaved yourself." She touched her hand to his face again, sighing softly and shaking her head with an air of disappointment. "Just keep that in mind, hmm?" And then with another light slap of her palm against his cheek, this time more to lightly chastise than to sharply reprimand, she glanced above and behind him to Evan and gave a slight nod.
When the large man forced him into motion then there was nothing Miguel could do about it, no way to twist or buck free of the hold those strong hands had on him. Instead all he could do was try to keep his feet under him and struggle as little as possible, despite his instincts screaming at him to do otherwise. Because he didn't doubt Evan would break his arm, likely effortlessly, and then he would be that much closer to powerless. And that was something he couldn't bear to think about. He was already much too close as it was, and as Evan forced him through a doorway to a room branching off from the main factory space he realised, with a sinking sense of dread and alarm, that he was even more dangerously close to it than he had first realised.
He needed help. And fast.