Jim hated sitting still. Or sitting on his hands. Inaction and ineffectiveness were more frustrating to him than just about anything else and he couldn't help the way his leg was bouncing constantly as he sat manning the Communications station. There were no reports coming in, no signals to trace or track, and it felt like all he was doing was occupying an otherwise empty seat, staring at a screen, and accomplishing absolutely nothing in the process.

How long would it take Lucas to find what they needed to get underway and get something done? It would take as long as it took, he knew, and there was no way around that, especially when Lucas was the only one on board with the smarts and resourcefulness required for the job that he was performing, but that didn't make it any easier for Jim to take. Sitting still. Doing nothing.

One of their own was out there somewhere, God only knew where, facing God only knew what, alone. He needed backup, he needed their help, and sooner rather than later.

The fact that he had failed to catch up to Miguel and stop him himself was still gnawing at the back of Jim's mind but after hearing Dagwood's story about the Sensor Chief practically begging the GELF to let him leave he had to wonder: what would he have done? Would he have been able to do what Dagwood had done? If Miguel had looked him in the eyes and pleaded with him to be allowed to leave, would he have been able to find it in himself to do it? Just let him go like that?

Jim sighed.

No. He didn't think he would have. He would have held on tightly and insisted to Miguel that they could help him, and it was entirely possible that in doing so he would have made things that much worse in the process. Who knows what that crazy psychic would have done to Miguel if he hadn't been able to get off the seaQuest?

Could she have killed him? Flicked some kind of mental switch and shut everything down in order to protect herself?

Jim closed his hand around his leg, just above the knee, to stop it from bouncing.

Yes. Probably. From what little he knew of the woman she sounded not only capable of doing something like that, but perfectly willing as well.

"Lieutenant?"

Turning his head he saw Captain Bridger looking at him, a frown furrowing his brow and narrowing his eyes slightly.

"Everything all right?"

Jim gave the beginnings of a nod that he really didn't feel and then fought back another sigh. "I've never been good at the whole waiting game thing, sir," he admitted, the undercurrent of frustration in his voice edged with an apology that he hadn't realised he felt he needed to make.

"I don't think anyone's enjoying that right now," Bridger returned, his own tone understanding. "But until we have something to go on—"

"We're flying blind," Jim interjected, nodding his head with more conviction then. "I know, sir." For a moment he worked his jaw, turning the whole situation over in his head until he couldn't hold his tongue any longer, saying, "What happens when we catch up to them?" Perhaps this was a discussion best saved for a more private setting, like the Captain's ready room, or the ward room, but would it really be so bad if they had more than just the bare minimum of minds to work on this problem? What harm could it do at this rate to have more people weighing in on the whole mess? "If this woman really has used this mind control thing on Ortiz then what do we do about that once we track them down?" He glanced over to the attack board, where Ford was watching him with a serious sort of interest, his frown betraying the fact that he was deep in thought. "I'm guessing it's not going to be as easy as flicking some kind of off switch."

Ford made a low sound, like a hm, curt and unimpressed. "And there's every chance she'll take full advantage of it if we do track them down."

Bridger glanced at the Commander. "When, Jonathan."

"When, sir." Ford nodded, conceding. "When we track them down."

With a sigh of his own the Captain sat back in his seat a little, one hand lifting to his mouth and playing there lightly, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. "I don't see why she wouldn't utilise something like that," he said after a while spent considering the issue. He sat forward in his seat again. "And that presents another problem in and of itself."

"We'd have to fight one of our own," Jim provided, though he knew it really wasn't necessary for him to do so. They were all on the same page.

"And we'd have to try and do it without hurting him," Ford added, brows lifted almost sceptically as he glanced to the Captain. "I'm not even sure that's possible, sir."

"Doctor Smith might have something we can use." Bridger glanced between them. He didn't sound convinced of the words he had just spoken, obviously waiting for objections or arguments from his most senior officers.

"Like a sedative?" Jonathan didn't sound convinced. "That's always a risky play. You usually only get one or two shots, and this psychic? She'd see that coming a mile away."

Jim couldn't help the irritation in his voice when he said, "Literally."

"That doesn't leave us much in the way of options." Bridger looked at Jim specifically then. "Ortiz is one of your core ground combat team members," he said. "How would you rank him as a hand-to-hand combatant?"

Jim's instinct was to smirk and say he could handle it, no problem, but this wasn't the time. The stakes were too high for any displays of ego or arrogance, no matter how light-hearted they might be. "Honestly, sir?" He gave a small shake of his head and looked across the central command hub to Jonathan. "There's a reason Miguel's one of the core members." He glanced back up at Bridger. "He's not especially fast, but he's strong. And he knows what he's doing." In part because Jim himself had made sure of that, but the man in question had already had a decent foundation to build on going in. Jim remembered being relieved that they wouldn't be starting from the ground up, just as he remembered being impressed by the physical strength the Sensor Chief possessed.

"Could you take him?" That came from Ford, and without a single trace of provocation. His expression was serious, just like his voice.

He thought about it. "It's possible." He looked from Captain to Commander. "If I could get the drop on him and get the upper hand early on?" As he had in Lucas' room, something he doubted either other man had forgotten. He nodded, but only briefly, before saying again, "It's possible." At Bridger's questioning look he went on, "I'm faster, but—" as loath as he was to admit it, "—Ortiz has got more power." He tipped his head a little. "It wouldn't be a sure thing either way, sir." His ego had been set well and truly aside. Now was the time for honesty, blunt and clear. That would help them more going forward than any arrogant assurances that he might not be able to back up later.

"Well," Bridger said, but it was more sighed than anything. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Jim was hoping it wouldn't come to that, but if it did? He would do everything in his power to take the other man down and keep him that way. All things considered he suspected Miguel would thank him for it in the long run, especially if it kept him from hurting anyone else while under that woman's control.

His jaw was aching. Not just aching, actually, but throbbing. If he didn't know any better he might have thought there was some kind of hairline fracture along the bone somewhere, the pain was that fierce, that constant, that persistent. It was enough to make his eyes water, a stinging burn that came and went in waves. Just when he thought the worst of it had passed it would sweep up again and he would have to hold his breath and squeeze his eyes shut against the worst of it until it eased. It was a struggle not to bite down on the thickly twisted cloth that had been forced between his teeth in order to try and combat the pain. He had already made that mistake once. He was in no rush to make it again.

With no way of knowing just how long he had been in this room, what had obviously once been an office of some sort judging by the size of it and the fact that there was still an old cork board on the wall with three pins left sticking out of it in random places and obvious fading where old notices had hung for years, it was all too easy for him to lose track of time. It could have been as little as a half hour since Evan had brought him in here, or it could have been as much as hours. There might have been a clock on that wall at one point but it was long gone, along with just about everything else.

Miguel tried to shift in his seat, hoping to make himself less uncomfortable, but the sharp burn around his wrists at the slightest movement pulled him up short. The rope Evan had used to bind him to the chair was rough and chafing, already threatening to rub his wrists raw after only a short time spent struggling against it, but they obviously weren't worried about leaving marks anymore. Their secret was out, seaQuest at the very least knew of Irina's existence and her capabilities, and that she had used one of their own against them. That thought, that fact, cold and hard and indisputable, still left a distinctly sour taste in his mouth.

It wouldn't be long before Captain Bridger had no choice but to pass that knowledge along to the UEO as a whole and his career, his life as he had known it, would be over.

That grim prospect unsettled and actually upset him more than he had thought it would. The idea of losing everything he had ever known and being forcibly torn away from the life he had spent years working on building from the ground up filled him with a sense of dread and grief that he was ill prepared to face, let alone deal with. It was taking a good deal of what strength was left to him to keep himself any kind of composed, knowing beneath that anxiety and alarm that he had to hold himself together.

The crew of the seaQuest would do everything in their power to find him, somehow, and they would need him to hold on. They would need him to keep himself from falling apart long enough for them to get here and bring all of this crashing down around Irina's ears. Evan's as well, hopefully.

"I love a man with optimism."

The voice came from the door, which had been locked since Evan had left him alone, and Miguel wasn't surprised in the least to see Irina standing there. She was leaning in the doorway, the door itself swung open all the way, her pale eyes watching him calmly and keenly. With a slight cant of her head and an upward quirk of her brows she went on, "I don't have much time for it myself, but it's a good quality in a man." She smiled. "An attractive one, on the right man."

He tried to keep himself from feeling the revulsion and indignation that swept up in the immediate wake of her words but there was no use. It surged up and sat heavily in the pit of his stomach, a miserable weight that was almost powerful enough to make him grimace. He just managed to avoid giving in to that impulse. It wouldn't be worth the pain in his jaw.

With a theatrical sigh she rocked her weight away from the doorframe and sauntered into the room, approaching him at an almost leisurely pace without losing any of her cool confidence in the process. "Even after all of this," she said, "you're still resisting." Irina shook her head. "You would think given the alternative—" at that she looked him up and down, "—it wouldn't be such a terrible thing to consider."

Miguel didn't have to ask what she meant. He knew very well what she meant, and he didn't try to hide how it made him feel to consider it for so much as a second: it made his skin crawl, his stomach roll, and every fibre of his being was repulsed by the mere suggestion of not only getting close to her but being any kind of intimate with her.

Another theatrical sigh, and then a whisper of a laugh as she came to stand in front of him. Miguel kept his eyes forward, his gaze fixed somewhere around her abdomen, but he wasn't really looking at her. He was very pointedly not looking at her, in fact, and doing his best to imitate the stoic kind of severity that Jonathan Ford always managed so well, and seemingly at the drop of a hat.

Irina clucked her tongue, disapproving, and touched her hand to his face. Miguel jerked his head away, rewarded instantly with a burning flash of pain through the stricken side of his face, the entirety of his jaw on that side feeling as though it were aflame. Fresh tears stung his eyes immediately and the pain was actually enough to make his breath catch in his chest. A tight, strangled groan knotted in the back of his throat.

He didn't so much hear her sigh as he sensed it, somehow, he didn't know how, feeling her fingers play lightly through his hair as he fought through the worst of the pain, his eyes still squeezed shut.

God, he hated her.

"That's a choice, Miguel." Her voice was surprisingly patient, the words spoken as if by someone with all the time in the world and not a single problem with which to concern themselves. "Like everything else, it's a choice that you make, perhaps not consciously but it is possible to change it. Make a different choice. It's not too late." And it was at that point that she took it upon herself to sit down, but the only chair in the room was the one to which he had been bound. She easily straddled him, settling herself in his lap, taking her time with it, her movements decisive and steady.

Miguel groaned again, his hands balling into tight fists at his back, that rough rope biting into the skin of his wrists that much more sharply.

"The pain you're feeling right now, for example," she said, her voice lowered now that the distance between them was so small. "That's a choice." Her hand touched under his chin and she used that contact to turn his head towards her. Waiting until he had opened his eyes, still stinging as they were, she said, "You can choose to end it." It was only then, as she lifted it into his view, that he noticed Irina was holding something: a mug.

He couldn't tell what it was, what it might contain, but he didn't want to find out. And even if it wasn't tainted somehow, even if there wasn't some kind of trick or trap to it, he didn't want to accept anything from her.

Her voice was different then, still confident but there was something almost like regret there. "If you think I enjoy seeing you like this, Miguel, you're wrong." That brought his gaze back to her face, his eyes meeting hers cautiously, and he looked for any traces of that smug self-assurance, or keen, almost catlike delight, both of which he had come to associate with her.

But there was none of that.

She used his hesitation, his surprise at the sincerity on her face, to raise her free hand again, using it to pull the gag down out of his mouth. It caused just enough movement to make his jaw burn sharply again and he had to fight not to flinch. There was no keeping himself from wincing though, despite his best efforts. She let the gag fall around his neck, still holding his gaze as he took the opportunity to pull in a deeper breath between his parted lips, using it to try and anchor himself. That sour, coppery taste was still heavy on his tongue, and his throat felt dry, almost sandpapery. Irina must have known that. That was why she had brought the mug.

For a moment she said nothing, simply holding his gaze. And then she said, "That's part of it, yes." Her eyes left his then, drifting a little downward and to the side. When they came back up she went on, "As I said, the pain is a choice." She turned the mug a little in her hand, having settled it easily in her palm, her fingers and thumb curled around the edge of the base and up the sides. "As is trust."

Trust.

He almost laughed.

It was such an absurd thing to have come out of her mouth, such an outlandish subject for her to even so much as touch upon, and part of him wanted to give in to that laughter despite knowing that it would hurt.

But this wasn't funny. Not even a little.

How did she expect him to trust her? She who had latched on to him like some kind of parasite and used him like some kind of thing. An object, a tool, something with no free will of its own. Irina wanted him to trust her but she was the last person he would have trusted. She had to know that. Even without telepathy she had to have known that.

She drew in a breath. "True," she conceded, shifting her weight just a little on his lap and making him wince again. She didn't apologise. "It's a lot to ask, but answer me this, handsome: is it really worth denying yourself even a little relief, just to spite me?" She lifted the mug a fraction higher. "And if I am lying to you?" She tipped her head to the side, a sort of shrug that never touched her shoulders. "Well, at this point, what do you have to lose?"

Damn her. Damn her for getting her claws into him and dragging him down with her. Damn her for twisting the knife. Damn her for her ambitions and greed and dangerous indifference. But most of all, damn her for being right.

The pain in his jaw was almost nauseating, and it was creeping down the side of his neck now. There was a steady pulse of it through his skull already which would have been more than enough to contend with before that devastating hammer-like blow from Evan.

He wasn't Jonathan Ford, even if he had been doing what he thought was a halfway decent job of imitating him. He couldn't just grit his teeth and ignore it.

It was pain, and it was sharp and hot and incessant, and he wanted it to stop.

Irina drew in a breath, lifting her head and dipping it slightly in a nod. Instead of making any sort of triumphant remark or rubbing salt in the wound that was his helplessness at that moment, she simply raised the mug to his lips and tilted it just enough for him to get some of the liquid inside.

As soon as he had that first taste his body wanted more, practically demanded more, and he realised he didn't know how long it had been since he had drunk anything. He was desperately thirsty, something which was no doubt contributing more than a little to the droning ache through his skull. As he drank whatever was in the mug more eagerly, with greater need, Irina put her free hand to the back of his head as if she needed to support it. "Easy, slowly," she said quietly, even as she tipped the cup upward as the level of the liquid continued to drop.

Even when the contents were all gone and there was nothing more to drink Miguel wanted more but he managed to pull back and compose himself, his breathing a little heavier after what felt like very real exertion. It shouldn't have been tiring, of course, but he felt as though he had done something much more physically taxing than drink a mugful of—he still didn't know what it had been, but it was too late now and he couldn't bring himself to care. He should have, he knew, but he just didn't have it in him at that moment.

"There," Irina said, glancing into the now-empty mug before bending down enough to let it drop to the ground, making a hollow thunk of a sound as it hit. "That should help." She straightened again, meeting his eyes when he turned them to her face. Whether because she could sense some lingering traces of suspicion in his mind or because of something in his expression he didn't know, but she went on to say, "It was just a painkiller." Her gaze shifted that little bit again and Miguel realised then that she was looking at what had to be a darkening bruise across his jaw from where he had been struck. Her hand reached up and just lightly, just for a moment, she touched the skin there. "You really shouldn't antagonise him." Irina lowered her hand and looked him in the eye. "We can make this work, Miguel," she went on, "but we all have to do our part."

She actually sounded as though she believed that, as if she thought that he was being difficult just for the sake of it, not because his freedom, his free will, had been ripped away from him.

"It doesn't have to be that way." Her voice had lowered again, becoming almost conspiratorial, hushed like she was imparting some great secret. "Not if you make the right choices."

Or the wrong ones. That was what they seemed like to Miguel, what they sounded and felt like.

But Irina obviously didn't see it how he did, and never would. Her way was set, she had made her choices and was determined to stick by them no matter what. Despite that, and despite everything that she had said and done and threatened to do if he didn't cooperate with her, Miguel couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't too late for her.

She had said so herself: everything was a choice.

Irina was watching him intently, so much so that it seemed as though she was looking right into him, when he brought his gaze back to hers. There was the slightest knitting of her brown, the subtlest signs of a frown, but as discreet as the expression was there was a lot behind it. Miguel thought she seemed pensive, but perhaps even a little troubled.

Saddened, even.

Closing his eyes and fighting the urge to give his head a sharp shake, he forced those thoughts out of his mind. Whatever she had put in that mug had to be muddying his thoughts and making everything foggy and slippery. That was the only explanation for it.

She watched him for a few moments longer before drawing in a breath. "If I leave this down," she said, pausing long enough to touch her hand to the twisted length of cloth she had left hanging around his neck, "do you promise not to make me regret it?"

Miguel actually thought about it, using what he could access of his professional and problem-solving mind-set to quickly weigh the pros and the cons of the responses he could give. It didn't take him long. Despite the lingering desire to make her life as difficult as possible he couldn't deny how much better he would feel if he agreed, if he didn't have that thick twist of cloth forced back into his mouth. It wouldn't be to appease her, but to spare himself further discomfort. Selfish, perhaps, but sensible.

So he nodded. It required swallowing what little pride he had left to him at that point but he made sure that there was no mistaking the motion for anything else.

Irina seemed pleased, giving him a slow and steady smile, but there was little of that undercurrent of predatory anticipation in the expression. What little there was though, it was still enough to chase a chill up the length of his spine and have him averting his gaze, as if that would make her lose interest in him when he knew nothing could have been further from the truth.

Lingering for a moment longer, Irina took the opportunity to touch her hand first to the unbruised side of his jaw, and then higher up, on his face. It was a fleeting touch, not long enough for him to react to even if he had got it in his head to do so, and by the time he even really considered it she was scooping the empty mug from the ground and rising from his lap. Without a word she turned and moved to the door, not even so much as glancing back over her shoulder before she stepped through and closed it behind her.

As the lock clicked home Miguel felt a chill beginning to spread in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't whatever had been in that mug, he knew, whatever painkiller she had seen fit to dose him with, but something else entirely. It felt like dread but it was more than that, greater than that. Much more complicated.

Miguel didn't know what it was, exactly. He only knew that it frightened him.