"Did you think we wouldn't be watching Daniels' quarters?"

I'm a Section 31 agent.

Lying comes as naturally to me as breathing.

The Suliban aren't stupid, though they're probably not what you'd call intellectuals, but they're dealing with an alien species they've very little knowledge of. And my predatory instincts tell me Silik is panicking over his inability to find Jonathan Archer.

As panic is bad for him, it's also bad for me now I'm his prisoner. So this is where my facility for lying will come in very handy. I can lead him in and out of the Scottish bluebells and up and down the garden path, and not a word I say will be the truth, and while he's trying to sort out fact from fantasy his friendly accomplice won't beat the crap out of me, because I'm co-operating.

This is, of course, an excellent plan. And if I hadn't happened to have had thirty-six hundred albatrosses hanging around my neck, I'd have been more inclined to follow it.

Instead, when they captured me (exactly as intended), I acted like a frightened, guileless Starfleet officer in over his head, too shit-scared to think up a plausible story but too stubborn to admit what he was up to. Now they're interrogating me I grunt at the impacts to my ribs instead of wailing so they think I'm hurt more badly than I am and ease up. I glare defiance instead of cowering so they think I'm beaten and ready to talk.

Thirty minutes.

You can time it by your pulse but it's hard when some fucker is using you as a punch-bag. After a few minutes I realise I'll have to guess.

I've been beaten up in the captain's chair, of all the bitter ironies, though that last punch knocked me out of it. They'll have to clean the bloodstains off before he sits in it again, that's if we manage to get him back – though T'Pol did sound reasonably confident. I hope she's right, because I'd hate to waste all this effort.

Not wholly wasted, though, even if we don't. Who was it said that pain expiates guilt?

I've wasted a few more seconds lying here whimpering. Twenty, maybe, though I have to fight against the temptation to be too optimistic.

Time to pull them back onto me. "I guess I wasn't thinking."

They pick me up like a sack of flour and throw me back into the chair, which whooshes the air out of my lungs and sets me gasping with more than the pain. It saves them having to hold me up, but I spare a thought to be thankful they're not punching me in the kidneys any more; there's a limit to what Phlox can do.

Silik leans over me. "I guess you weren't, but you should be thinking about what will happen to you if you don't answer my questions. Are you thinking about that, Lieutenant Reed?"

Fucking Starfleet amateur, giving them my real name! But as my resistance starts crumbling with the pain and fear my ill-advised heroics have brought upon me, I nod, cowering away from this brutality that nothing in my training has prepared me for.

"Good. Now tell me what this is. What does it do?"

My stupid, obvious, valiant lie in return earns its own reward. The impact of yet another fist sends me sprawling over the side of the chair, and a rib that's already broken digs into my lungs like a dagger.

"What does it do?"

I watch the blood splat on the floor and lie again. "I don't know!"

They pull me upright again, choking me with the front of my own uniform. I squirm with terror, gagging for air; there's only so much a weakling like me can endure, and I let out a pitiful sob. "Please!"

Please don't hurt me any more, please, i'll tell you whatever i know if you just stop hurting me…

Broken and shaking, I slump in the chair. I daren't meet Silik's eyes any more, except in terrified glances that look to see I'm giving him enough information to save myself.

"Yes?" The drawl again. Satisfied contempt, now he's back in control of the situation.

A swallow buys a few more seconds and is plausible. I'm trying to pick a way through the minefield like the good little Starfleet officer I am, giving away only what I have to. It's the story I've been ordered to feed him, but I had to resist enough to make him believe he's forced it out of me; information offered voluntarily would be suspect at once. "I was told to destroy it. I don't know what it does."

"Who told you to destroy it?"

"Captain Archer, before he left. He didn't want you to find it."

"And why would that be?"

"He thought you would use it to contact someone." My voice rises with panic and an artistic touch of righteous indignation; I'm co-operating, aren't I? "I don't know who!"

It's quite like old times. Radiating fright that my stupid burst of effrontery may have undone all my surrender, I'm almost weeping with dread at the prospect of more violence. "I swear it!"

There's a palpitating pause, filled only with the noise of my own uneven, heaving breaths. The last breath the Paraagans took would have filled their lungs with fire, cooking every surface of the tiny, delicate alveoli.

"Have the lieutenant returned to his quarters."