Gabriel Lorca lay curled on his side, on the floor of a holding cell, wishing he was dead.

At the moment, he wasn't in the Agony Booth—a device whose name made up for its lack of creativity with its stunning accuracy—so he supposed he had that much to be thankful for. But his body was still a twitching, painful wreck. He couldn't move, not voluntarily anyway. Yet every few minutes his breath hitched and muscles spasmed, as hellish aftershocks ran through him. The tile floor was cold, making him shiver and robbing him of any chance at what he wanted most: sleep, oblivion.

The holding cells were arranged with an excellent view of the agony booths—lest one forget their ever-present threat. He would never forget. He hadn't thought that kind of pain, for that duration, was even possible. It was incomprehensible. Like being repeatedly electrocuted, but with none of the numbing that normally comes after the initial shock; like having each piece of you torn apart continuously, yet somehow stay together inside your skin. And no matter how much you pray to pass out, it never lets you rest, not even for a moment.

As a torture device, the agony booth was ingenious; as an interrogation device, it left something to be desired. Michael had paused it three times (after how long, he had no idea) and asked him questions. The first time he couldn't even focus his eyes on her or understand what she was saying; the second time, he tried to speak, but found that his brain and mouth were no longer connected. Finally, the third time she stopped the machine, she pulled him out of it:

Retching on the ground at Michael's feet, he managed to croak, "Stop."

"Will you tell me what I want to know?"

He nodded meekly, "I'll try."

"Who are you?"

"Gabriel Lorca."

Michael moved to put him back in the machine, so he added quickly, "Just 'cuz you don't like an answer doesn't make it false. To the best of my knowledge, my name is Gabriel Lorca. Has been for more'n fifty years."

"I've known Lorca since I was a child. You are . . . different. Ever since I beamed you off the Buran."

Sticking with name, rank, and serial number would just land him back in a world of hurt, so he elaborated a little, "I'm having trouble remembering things." He paused as a tremor ran through him. "Started just before you rescued me."

Michael looked at him thoughtfully. "So, you are either the man I know and someone has altered your mind, or you are an imposter who believes he is Gabriel, or you are lying to me."

"That about covers it," he sighed. "And I'm not lyin'. So how are you going to figure out which it is? You don't really think this is a problem you can torture your way out of, do you?"

He was trying to appeal to the smart woman within the child-eating monster. It seemed to be working. "There are some things I can investigate," she mused, pulling him to his feet.

Then she shoved him back inside the booth, shut the door, and walked back to the control panel.

"No! Please—I'm telling the truth," he said, voice rising.

"My Gabriel would never beg," came the cold reply.

"Then your Gabriel is a damn fool."

Her eyebrows quirked, a trace of a frown. Ah, there it was: she was fond of "her Gabriel" but perhaps not as much as he was of her; at the end of the day, he was expendable. She would seize power with him, or without him.

"Captain Tilly will take charge of you. If I find you are who you claim to be, and restoring your mind is feasible, I'll be back."

She pushed the button. White-hot agony swallowed him whole.

Eventually he'd been released from the booth and dumped in the cell. A technician came in and scanned him thoroughly, taking skin and bone marrow samples. She murmured something about anomalous readings at the sub-atomic level and exited, leaving Lorca sprawled on his back, panting against rising nausea. He made a herculean effort and rolled from his back to his side, then lay there, depleted and shaking. The leather coat the tech pulled off him for the exam had been dropped carelessly a couple of meters away; it might as well have been light-years away.

The worst part for him wasn't the physical pain, however, or its debilitating after-effects. It was the creeping certainty that his own mind could not have produced such suffering. That meant this wasn't all in his head. It was real. He told himself: Well, I could still be in a lab somewhere with an evil scientist stimulating my pain receptors. But he couldn't make himself believe that. If it was real, then the Buran was really gone, his crew was really dead, he had really failed them. The anguish was overwhelming, but he didn't even have the energy to grieve properly. He lay there, eyes half open, staring blankly at the base of the agonizer, trying to mentally recite the name of each crew member on the Buran's manifest. Exhausted, he kept losing his place, starting over . . .

XXXXX

There were no clocks and the lights were always on, so it was hard to measure the passage of time. Based on the light scruff that now covered his chin and a vaguely perceived shift change, Lorca estimated that his ordeal with the agonizer had taken place over the course of about two days and that he'd been lying in the cell for a few more hours after that. Moving was still not something he even wanted to think about, but he was becoming more aware of his surroundings. The cell he was in was 5 meters square, white, and featureless except for an open latrine in the back corner. The front of the cell was a clear force field. There were cells on either side. He couldn't see inside them, but could hear voices and sometimes saw prisoners being tossed into them.

There was a commotion out in front of the cells, as a group of eight Tellarites was herded into the brig. Electric prods kept them moving along, grunting and squealing. The guards pulled three prisoners—two Klingons and an Andorian—out of the cell to Lorca's right and moved the Tellarites in there. Then, commenting dryly that "this should be fun" one of the guards forced the three into the cell with Lorca.

Though aware of his vulnerable state, Lorca wasn't afraid. True, the Klingons might hurt him, but whatever they did would be nothing in comparison to what he'd recently been through. And he'd long ago established the habit of worrying about things he could control, not things he couldn't. The fact of the matter was, he was helpless. The newcomers would do what they would do.

The Andorian looked him over with an unreadable expression. Andoria was an ally, yet individual Andorians were known to be mercurial and unpredictable. One of the Klingons spat something in his guttural language. The other actually spat—on the floor near, but not on, Lorca—and growled, "Terran scum."

Lorca met all their gazes boldly, though the onset of a bout of shivering didn't help. Glaring down at him with contempt, the Klingons muttered to each other. One of them laughed derisively. Then they moved away and ignored him.

The Andorian picked up the leather coat and fingered it thoughtfully, antennae dipping in the human's direction. Ah well, Lorca thought, easy come, easy go. Then, much to his surprise, blue hands draped the coat over him.

The relative warmth hit him like a drug. While the muscle spasms continued, suddenly he could sleep between them, sometimes even through them. He was out before he could even express his gratitude.

XXXXX

Lorca woke to sounds of activity at the front of the cell. The guards were distributing food: ration bars and cups of water. His nap had done him good. Standing might still be beyond him, but he was able to push himself up to a sitting position.

"You want?" the Andorian asked. Lorca shook his head. He was pretty sure he couldn't keep any food down just yet, and he wasn't fit enough to defend a stash if he saved it for later. The others scarfed the bars. The Andorian handed him a cup, saying, "You should drink."

Swallowing hurt, but after a couple of sips he was able to rasp, "Thank you."

Feeling not quite as wretched as he had previously, hearing the familiar sound of Tellarites bickering next door, and experiencing the kindness of a stranger, cheered him immensely. God, you're so easy. Life sucks a little less, and suddenly it's worth living again? He decided to reach out to his cellmates, "So, who are you all?"

Predictably, the Klingons scowled. The Andorian was more sociable. "You can call me Otib," he said, "and these fine gentlemen are Huss and Ko'mek of the house—" he was cut off by a growl from Huss—"well, perhaps we'll leave it at that. Best not to be too familiar under these circumstances."

Fair enough. "I'm Gabriel."

Otib told the Klingons, "He tried to convince Killy's friend that he's Lorca."

Apparently Otib had been observing the interrogation. Ko'mek, the younger of the Klingons (maybe twenty, while Huss looked closer to thirty), seemed slightly impressed as he said, "Why? He's the most wanted man in the galaxy."

"Yeah, I hear I tried to whack the Emperor," Lorca commented, dryly. "Tell me: are we on a Federation vessel?"

"This is the Imperial Starship Discovery," Huss sneered. "You Terrans' latest tool of oppression."

Follow-up questions revealed that humans had subjugated most of the known galaxy, with Klingons, Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, and other races banding together to resist them.

Lorca shook his head, befuddled. "That's . . . that's not how I remember it."

The Klingons bristled at the suggestion that they were lying, but Lorca defused them: "I believe you. It matches what I've seen lately." He added softly, "But it's not the world I know."

His distress must have shown. Otib said, kindly, "My people have an old folk tale about a boy who falls through the ice and emerges in a different world, where the snow is a different shade of white."

Humans had such stories, too, about children who travel through mirrors or wardrobes or tiny wormholes, arriving in fantastical realms. Lorca recalled a darker take on this theme. When he was five, he'd swiped a PADD from his older sister and found the story Coraline. It scared the pants off him, but he kept reading it anyway, late into the night. Ended up in his sister's bed crying that an evil clone of their mother was going to sew buttons in his eyes.

He wasn't a child now, and he wasn't expecting help from any magical lions. But thinking of his current situation as a world—like his own in some ways, different in others—helped him wrap his head around it better.

XXXXX

Lorca spent the next couple of hours peppering his cellmates with questions, some about the world at large, but most about the ship they were on and the routines they had observed: shift changes, guard complements, prisoner movements, etc. The first thing he inquired about, naturally, was brig surveillance, as that would determine what else he could ask. The answer, bizarrely, was that there was practically none. The official reason for not bugging the brig was that the screaming from the agony booths drowned out the audio. That was ridiculous; video alone is useful and sounds can be filtered. The real reason seemed to be a permissive attitude toward crewmembers abusing prisoners and using the agonizer on rivals. These activities were officially prohibited, yet tacitly condoned; hence it was best not to record evidence.

A sudden absence of sound marked the arrival of an important visitor to the brig: Captain Tilly. The agony booths were shut down, silencing their occupants, and the guards snapped to attention. Tilly beamed with delight at the surrounding misery, or perhaps at her power to cause such misery. Along with her personal guard, she came to a stop directly in front of Lorca's cell. He got himself up to his feet, ready to deal with her.

But, it turned out, she wasn't there for him. "There you are—the miscreants who dared try to harm me, who murdered my devoted personal guard!"

Glaring at Huss and Ko'mek, she continued, "I hope you've enjoyed my . . . hospitality," (she ran a loving finger down the glass of an agony booth) "though I hear you haven't been as talkative as we hoped." In the scope of fifteen seconds, her tone had gone from furious, to mock-solicitous, to scolding and pouting.

The Klingons were clearly unimpressed with her creepy-baby routine. Huss shot back, "You attacked our people. Your guard got a better death than he deserved."

Anger flashed across Tilly's eyes before transmuting to glee. "Thank you for helping me decide which of you to dispose of first."

A guard tapped on a control screen to the side of the cell and immediately all of the occupants sat or fell down, lightly stunned. An opening appeared in the force field and a pair of guards hustled Huss out through it, throwing him into the left-most agony booth. Tilly explained, conversationally, "Everybody knows you can die in the agonizer. Really, the trick is not letting the victim's heart give out. But did you know that, at the highest setting, you can literally make someone's head explode? Well, perhaps not literally. Still, it's supposed to be quite dramatic."

"Let's watch, shall we?" she said eagerly, nodding to one of her minions at the controls.

It took six minutes for Huss to die. His head didn't explode, but his face swelled and his eyes bulged out enormously. Blood leaked from every orifice. And the cries he made were inhuman. Of course, he was inhuman. That should have made it easier to watch. It didn't.

Lorca was distracted from the horror by Huss' kinsman, who kept flinging himself at the force field and hollering—at first in English then slipping into his native tongue. Otib went to restrain him, so he wouldn't hurt himself, and got tossed across the room for his trouble.

When it was over, a guard dumped Huss' body on the floor in front of the booth. Ko'mek slammed the force field with both fists, fixed Tilly with a glare of pure hatred, and in a quiet, deadly tone promised to do unspeakable things to her. Lorca didn't need to understand much Klingon to get the gist of his threat. Tilly answered him back in what sounded like fluent Klingon, incongruent against her perky demeanor.

"You know," she mused next, "This was fun. But I think it would be more fun with better company. I was going to do both of you today, one after another, but I think I'll wait a couple of days until our mutual friend"—she looked at Lorca—"is back, and we can watch together. Girlfriend time is so important, you know?"

She spun on her heel and left, instructing the guards to continue as usual, but to leave the corpse for a while so the prisoners could enjoy the aroma.

XXXXX

Hours later, Ko'mek was still livid, still swearing bloody vengeance. Lorca sympathized with him, but the futility of it was starting to get on his nerves. He snapped, "They're out there; you're in here. Unless you have a transporter pad hidden away somewhere, I don't see how you're gonna pull this off."

"I will not die in a cage, like an animal awaiting slaughter! A Klingon must die in battle! With honor!"

At least the guy seemed to get that death was the likely outcome of whatever he tried to do. But that just made it all the more futile. "You can live honorably," Lorca sighed, "Dead is just dead."

Ko'mek looked like he might punch him, then turned away in disgust. Lorca wasn't trying to be obtuse. He wouldn't wish an end like Huss' on anybody, though he knew for a fact that Klingons inflicted torturous deaths that lasted a whole lot longer than six minutes. He would just rather invest his limited energy into figuring out ways to make them all not dead, rather than worrying about how they died. Seeking unlikely vengeance was counterproductive.

Ko'mek explained in a low growl, "A warrior can only enter Sto-vo-kor if he dies in battle. Instead of letting us do so, the Terrans capture us and then execute us. Twelve others were taken with me. None of them died well."

Religion. Lorca came from a part of the world that clung to it longer than most. So he should have known better than to argue. Apparently he didn't. "Doesn't seem fair," he countered. "What if a warrior steps away from the battle for a moment and, I don't know, gets squished by a falling rock?"

Ko'mek didn't catch the sarcasm. He answered, "Legend has it that Kor'lang was waging a decade-long war against his enemies, but suddenly became ill and died. His son took up his father's bat'leth and slew the rival leader, dying himself in the process. Father and son toasted the victory together in Sto-vo-kor."

This wasn't getting them anywhere. "I don't suppose it would help if I killed you?" Lorca offered, half-serious.

The Klingon laughed humorlessly. Otib explained, "It's my understanding that if he died in personal combat with you, that would count. However . . ."

"If we fight, you die, not me," Ko'mek snorted.

Lorca was annoyed at their assumption that the Klingon could kill him easily, but he had to admit that was the most likely outcome.

He turned their predicament over and over in his mind, but kept coming to the same conclusion: there was no way he could save Ko'mek, Otib, and himself, before Michael returned in a couple of days—which would trigger the Klingon's death and possibly his own. No-win scenarios stymied people because, when they realized they couldn't win, they stopped thinking. Rookie mistake. The fact that you can't win doesn't mean you can't lose less badly or nudge the odds slightly in your favor. And there might be a course of action whereby Ko'mek would get his honorable death, while increasing the chances that Otib and Lorca would survive. He didn't love the idea of sacrificing Ko'mek for their benefit. Yet he liked it better than wasting the guy's death. And, despite his irritation with the Klingon's fixation on manner of death, he did respect his right to choose how he dies.

Lorca waited until two agony booths were running, to provide auditory cover if necessary. Then he addressed Ko'mek quietly, "I can't get you a shot at Tilly. But I think there's a way you can at least go out fighting. Here's what we're gonna do . . ."

XXXXX

After the three of them hashed out the details of the plan, there was nothing to do but wait for their window of opportunity. Otib had a better sense of time than the others; he estimated they had about seven hours. Enough time to rest, prepare mentally for the action to come. Otib lay on the right side of the cell, perpendicular to the front. His antennae continued to move around long after he looked like he was asleep, but eventually they stopped. Lorca lay on his side near the rear of the cell, facing the front—the direction from which any threat might come. Hardly the cushiest of accommodations, but he'd survived worse.

The problem was Ko'mek. He stayed at the front of the cell. Pacing back and forth none-too-quietly. And muttering under his breath. And lashing out at any guard who came near the cell by slamming the force field and snarling.

Basically, driving Lorca crazy.

Maybe it's time to reconsider killing him myself.

Or maybe he's a scared kid, who is likely going to die tomorrow, and I should stop being an ass about it.

Whoa—where did that come from? Am I supposed to care about the Klingon's feelings now?

Dammit.

Lorca whispered, "Ko'mek. Come here."

After a sullen pause, the Klingon came over and stood looming over where Lorca lay. "What?" he demanded.

"I ever tell you about the Battle at the Binary Stars?" asked Lorca.

"You don't remember? You've known me for less than a day." The young man seemed appalled that he was going to put his fate in the hands of such a dotard.

Lorca rolled his eyes. "Figure of speech. It means 'sit down, shut up, and listen'."

Reluctantly, Ko'mek sat. Speaking quietly, Lorca launched into a blow-by-blow description of various clashes between the Klingons and the Federation that he'd participated in or witnessed. He focused on the ones that the Klingons got the better of, or at least fought valiantly and died in a blaze of glory. Had to be the weirdest bedtime story he—or probably anybody—had ever told.

After a while, he glanced over at Ko'mek. The Klingon was sitting with his knees pulled up and elbows resting on them, entranced and relaxed.

"I wish I could go to your world," Ko'mek said softly, wistfully.

Lorca pointed out, "You know, you and I would be enemies there. Opposite sides of the war."

"That's alright. I would be pleased to slay you in battle."

Lorca grinned. As death threats go, that was actually kind of sweet.

XXXXX

Note: Yeah, I know, not much action in this chapter, as it all takes place within a 15'x15' cell. But I wanted to get some character stuff in there :-)