Something was happening.

Something terrible.

It had started in the very back of his mind, right in the corners, in the smallest recesses and hidden spaces where only the deepest and most subconscious of thoughts and ideas dwelled. From there it had crept outward, slowly at first but building momentum before it blossomed with a terrible ferocity and speed. At that point Miguel felt with a cold and iron certainty that there was nothing he could do. There was no way he could hold it back. No walls he could build, no doors he could slam closed in its path. It was like a dam had broken, catastrophic and devastating and unstoppable. Everything in the path of that terrible tide would be swept away and there would be no stopping it.

He could feel himself getting smaller. It shouldn't have been possible, he knew that, he knew it as surely as he knew his own name, but it was happening. He could feel it. He couldn't stop it.

How many other impossible things had he seen, felt, experienced before this?

So many. Too many.

Wells of psychic energy, time travel, artificial intelligence, aliens, ghost ships, sentient and carnivorous plants, giant prehistoric reptiles, cursed relics from Atlantis, actual gods. Anything and everything that he once would have thought of as unbelievable and impossible before his service aboard the seaQuest, he had seen and lived through every single one of those experiences along with the rest of the crew and there was no denying them now.

And yet, even with all of that in his past, all of those unbelievable and surreal experiences, it still felt too much. Too big, too strange, too terrible.

It was not only the strangest thing he had ever felt but also the single most terrifying.

And yet, even with that icy certainty that had built up inside of him in the face of that crashing tide Irina had unleashed Miguel tried to fight. Because he had to. Because not fighting was even worse. No matter how exhausting, how damaging, that fight ended up being he had to keep it up. He couldn't give up, he couldn't give in. Not now. Not after everything he had already fought so hard to endure and overcome.

They were coming. The crew. His friends. They were coming to fight her, to save him, to stop all of this once and for all. He had to hold out until then even if it took every last scrap of strength that he possessed. Even if it took more than that.

But it was so much. Too much and too fast, too hard, too heavy. It hammered on and through and anything Miguel tried to throw up in its path was wiped out in the blink of an eye. All at once it was like being caught in the blinding oncoming lights of a speeding train, unable to think, unable to move, just waiting for the inevitable.

Miguel tried to scream but nothing came out.

And then it was over.

"Captain, come on."

Nathan turned to look at the young man who had come up behind him, the sound of Lieutenant Brody's voice carrying clearly and easily over the buzz of activity in the launch bay. With a shake of his head he said, "It's too dangerous, Lucas. I don't need to remind you of what happened the last time you came up against this woman, in any form." His gaze ducked distinctly to Lucas' neck, where the evidence of that encounter had come to present itself in a grim, ugly bruise where Ortiz's hand had been clamped, tightly enough to choke, perhaps even tight enough to kill if given enough time. "And don't even get me started on Clay Marshall," he pressed, feeling just for a moment that the comment might have been unkind, especially when he saw a flash of what may very well have been pain through the teenager's blue eyes. But it was a cruel to be kind sort of situation and he only wanted what was best for the young man standing before him now.

He turned to face Lucas properly. "While you're on this boat your safety is my responsibility." It had started out as an obligation, one that they had both been very aware of and varying degrees of bitter about, but fairly quickly it had become so much more than that. In more ways than one Nathan had come to feel like more of a father to the boy than the man who had married his mother. That man had taken this brilliantly clever and creative boy and unceremoniously dumped him wherever he thought he could cause the least trouble to his own work and potential successes. Out of sight, out of mind, for all intents and purposes. In the time that Lucas had been aboard the seaQuest he had grown far more than anyone could have thought possible but he had also been in great, grave danger more times than any of them could count. Far more than any child, of any age, should have been. It was the thing Nathan hated the most about the whole situation and even though the young man standing in front of him then was smarter, wiser, and humbler now than he had ever known him to be that didn't mean he was in any rush to expose him to any more danger.

If anything were to happen to him—

Unbidden, unwelcome, and thoroughly beyond painful, Robert's face flashed through his mind. A bolt of pain flashed through his heart in the same instant.

He would never forgive himself.

Lucas knew all about those pains and losses from his past but even with that knowledge he held Nathan's gaze, fiercely determined and unwavering. "What if it doesn't work?" he said, and even though it was clearly phrased as a question it was intended to be rhetorical. "What if you need someone to adjust the parameters on site?"

They had discussed the possibility of using the Gabrin device against Dvornikov, tapping into the frequency Lucas had managed to track and pinpoint and disrupting it so that she could no longer take advantage of it. It might not give them any kind of edge but it would hopefully rob her of any upper hand she thought she might possess with one of their own at her beck and call. Nathan knew that there was every chance that it might not work, that she possessed enough power even without that device to keep her claws in Ortiz's mind anyway, but with very little else up their sleeves they were intending to go ahead with it regardless of the potential for failure. Lucas had already rigged a portable device of his own for the job.

"It's too dangerous, Lucas. I won't put you in harm's way like that." It was a fight to keep his son's face out of his mind all of a sudden. Across the bay he saw Doctor Smith's head turn in his direction and did everything in his power to bring down the shutters and walls and barricades, whatever anyone wanted to call them. That pain was his, and his alone. It was no one else's burden to bear.

Lucas' expression was a touch pained as well then and he gave a small shake of his head, stepping closer and lowering his voice to say, "I can help. I want to." There was a touch of regret in his voice. Regret, and something like pleading, even before he added emphatically, "Please."

Before Nathan could form a response a larger figure moved up close behind the young man and a voice far too soft for such an imposing frame said, "Dagwood will protect Lucas, sir, Captain, sir."

Lifting his eyes to regard the GELF quietly, Nathan noted the quiet intensity in Dagwood's expression. The determination, the passionate desire to help, do what was right, earn his keep and support his crew. His friends. His family.

All of a sudden, even though there were only two of them facing him, Nathan felt ridiculously outnumbered. There were more than a dozen conflicting and clashing thoughts clattering around in his mind and it was a struggle to quiet them. There was no sense in trying to organise them right then. For just a moment he felt not only tired, but outright exhausted, and he couldn't help the sigh that preceded his words. "All right." Even as Lucas' eyes lit up with surprise, relief, and a kind of youthful anticipation, Nathan pointed a finger at him. "But you do exactly what you're told, either by myself or Lieutenant Brody." For just a second he flicked his gaze, as well as his finger, up towards his self-appointed guardian. "And you stick to Dagwood like glue. You don't leave his side, no matter what." His brows quirked sharply upward. "Is that clear?"

Lucas' nod was firm. "Yes, Captain." He pulled in a breath. "Thank you, Captain." And then he tossed a glance back over his shoulder at the GELF, giving him a nod as well, one that was returned, albeit more slowly on the larger man's part.

"Go on then." Nathan waved them towards the launch, which was ending up more and more like a can of sardines than anything else, turning to watch them go as they hurried off. Lucas had a satchel hanging close against his side, Nathan noticed then, and he couldn't help the momentary huff of laughter. Had the teenager known that he would get his way? He couldn't have. But he must have suspected, otherwise why bring the bag?

The flicker of amusement died out as he watched the teenager and his protector head up to the hatch leading down into the launch. Concern came crashing over him again, thick and heavy, and he hoped beyond hope, to whatever higher power might be listening, that he hadn't just made a huge mistake.

The world had dropped away and in its place had come a sense of terrible weightlessness before something so big and so powerful that it was beyond comprehension had surged up to take hold. The sensation that swept over him then was so familiar but so sudden and so overwhelmingly strong that it took him far too long to understand what was happening. But when that understanding came it did so with cold and iron certainty, closing around him so tightly that there was no escaping it.

Falling. He was falling.

Was he falling? Or had he been thrown? Hurtled.

Did it matter?

Whatever it was it felt like it would never end, that he would just fall forever, for the rest of time, and that he might very well go mad in the process.

And then it was over.

The landing was hard, rough, painful, shocking him to the core and robbing him of all breath and sense for what felt like an eternity. When it came back it did so with a screaming intensity, overloading and overwhelming and leaving him trembling and sweating on the ground.

Black ground.

Black and endless, stretching on and on and on, a bottomless chasm gaping wide like a great yawning mouth threatening to swallow him whole.

The first fine threads of fear bubbled up from the pit of his stomach and started to creep slowly but surely outward.

Struggling to breathe and fighting against the searing burn of agony in his arm and through his ribs Miguel lifted his head. When had he hurt his arm? In the fall? He couldn't remember. Past the loose curls of his messy hair he managed to focus his wavering vision enough to see what lay before him.

Blackness.

Endless blackness.

"No—" The word choked him on the way up and he coughed raggedly, roughly, painfully, fighting and failing to haul himself up off the ground. He put pressure on his bad arm and it blazed and he gave a short shout of agony, collapsing back to the ground. That was where he stayed for what had to be several minutes, shaking and shivering in equal measure, fighting to catch his breath and collect his few scattered and chaotic thoughts. The arm was broken, he remembered, shattered so effortlessly and so completely by Irina when he had angered her with his defiance.

When he lifted his head again, black hair cascaded and tumbled across his eyes, his vision watery and unsteady, he looked around again, hoping against hope that it had been a terrible nightmare before, that he hadn't really seen what he'd feared he had.

But there it was. In all its dark, inky glory, the black spreading out in every direction. Nothing but cold empty black devoid of all life, sweeping out as far as the eye could see. In his gut he knew what it was, where it was, but he didn't want to know that. He didn't want it to be true. More than anything he had wanted to be wrong. Never in his life had he wanted anything more.

But there was no denying it. No refusing it. Because it was there, in front of him. All around him. Everywhere.

No.

"Irina—" He coughed again, a harsh sound, an even harsher feeling, wincing fiercely against the pain that flared with the sharp motions of his chest. When he had enough air in his lungs to manage it he tried again, louder this time, hearing his own voice echoing all around him and out into the black. "Irina! Irina!"

Nothing happened. No response.

Nothing at all.

"No." A shaky whisper that time, the growing fear sliding icily through his veins and making his heart beat faster and harder. Struggling, stumbling and groping for balance, he found his way to his feet despite the pain and the dizziness and the nauseated tumbling of his stomach. "No, no, no." He turned on the spot, looking around, looking up, hunting desperately for something that was nowhere to be seen. Anything at all. Anything.

Anything to tell him that this wasn't it, that he wasn't lost here, that he hadn't been hurled down into the empty waste of his own deepest, darkest subconscious and abandoned once and for all.

He called and shouted until his throat was hoarse, until his voice was raw, and he ran aimlessly through the black to find—he didn't know what he might find and he didn't care, so long as it was something.

But there was nothing. Nothing and no one.

Miguel was alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

Wendy sat in the passenger compartment of the launch while the hustle and bustle of a mission already underway carried on all around her. People were talking amongst themselves, finalising plans and running through contingencies for scenarios that other members of the team tossed into the mix, others checked instruments and weapons. Up at the helm Henderson and Nathan were quiet, concentrating, while Lucas sat in one of the rear seats working furiously at a device, over which he had been huddled since they had set out from the seaQuest. Lieutenant Brody was across from him in the other rear seat, watching the teenager work but not saying a word, turned enough in his chair to listen to his men discuss the mission among themselves, poised and ready to jump in if he felt it was necessary to do so.

Dagwood had taken it upon himself to sit beside her. Not too close, so as not to make her feel crowded, but close enough that she felt comforted by his presence, and he too by hers she suspected. He had volunteered to come along in order to protect Lucas, she knew, but he was nervous. She could feel it, the crackle of those anxieties thick in the air when they were sitting this close. There was no mistaking it.

He kept it to himself though, as he so often did, wringing his hands in his lap and trying not to draw attention to himself. He silently watched the activity and listened to the conversations without really understanding any of it and she was overcome by the sudden compulsion to set her hand on his arm.

And so she did.

Dagwood's mood changed instantly, a good deal of the building confusion dropping away and those anxieties quieting to little more than a background hum. Wendy too felt more settled by the contact, and she took her eyes from the far wall where they had focused, not really seeing, to give the GELF a small smile. He did his best to return it, but she saw the strain of it. Dagwood didn't think he ought to be smiling, and so it was short-lived. That was understandable. Wendy let her own drop away as well.

Unlike the large figure to her side Wendy didn't have any real skills to protect herself or anyone else in the situation they were preparing to face, and yet, in a way, she was better suited to what lay ahead than anyone else in the launch. No one else here had any real psionic ability, though her gaze briefly shifted to take in Tony near the back of the launch who was paying close attention to one of Brody's men as they ran through a crash course on the weaponry they had brought with them. He had shown promise in the past, something she hadn't picked up on herself until it had been all but yanked, roughly, to the surface by her former mentor. And lover. She shut out that little voice instantly, with as much force as possible, and focused on Tony once again. His ability might have been minor, underwhelming in many ways, if not most, but the potential there was very real. She could sense it now in a way she hadn't been able to before, now that the heavy cover had been so unceremoniously torn from it, and she knew better than anyone else never to underestimate those things which might at first glance seem so insignificant.

What little power Tony had might just make all the difference in what was to come.

It hit her then like a sudden wave crashing over her and her hand on Dagwood's arm tightened, her fingers closing around him as she gasped, the shock of it making her sit bolt upright. Several pairs of eyes turned to her in the back of the launch and the conversation dropped to little more than a smattering of hushed whispers.

"Doctor Smith?" Dagwood sounded uncertain and troubled and his own much larger hand came to rest atop her own. "Doctor Smith, what's wrong?"

But she couldn't hear him. Not really. Her mind was somewhere else, somewhere far away, somewhere very dark and very cold and so very, very lonely.

As tears stung her eyes and an icy chill crept through her veins she felt a heavy sense of dread settle over her like a shroud.

Something had happened.

Something terrible.