"…blacks out occasionally. Stress, sometimes, or…"

Fading out again, momentarily, and then—

"Really, he'll be fine. Not usually more than a minute or—"

Bradycardia is a slowing of one's heart-rate, a misfire of electrical signals in the heart. Symptoms include shortness of breath, heart palpitations and chest pain, and a drop in blood pressure resulting in dizziness, weakness, and passing out in the middle of a room full of GDF brass.

So the Hood doesn't make idle threats, apparently.

"…heart condition, only recently been diagnosed. A very bright young man, and passionate, obviously. New to the job, but insisted on joining me for this delegation, extremely interested in the state of affairs with the AI. Still—"

It's the Hood's voice—or, what John's come to recognize as the Hood's voice, actually the voice he's stolen from Colonel Rothesay. He turns his face away from the sound and starts to try and sit up, but a pair of hands catch his shoulders. "Do go carefully, Captain. Take a moment. Deep breaths, son."

Don't call me son. John's eyes open to a view of the ceiling, spinning overhead, and he closes them again, nauseous. Shouldn't have said anything. He knows he shouldn't have said anything, but he hadn't known he'd be hearing a roomful of people, talking about weaponizing a sentient mind. He hadn't expected to feel physically sick, to taste bile in his throat, and to speak without thinking, to need to spit out the words that sat in his chest, clawing at his heart.

And almost immediately being punished for doing so, the sudden clench of his chest, and the sensation of a caged bird thudding its wings against his ribs and then abrupt, falling darkness.

And the man who'd done it goes on, continues with that oily, false sympathy, dismissing concerned inquiry. "Yes, just a few minutes before we reconvene, just to let him collect himself. These spells are rarely serious. If he seems to need to see a doctor, I'll be sure he—"

The shuffle of feet leaving the room is especially audible from the floor, and soon the space is empty except for John and the Hood. There's a long silence too full of his own breathing, and then a rasping cough as the Hood clears his throat and the gravel goes out of his voice, back to its soft tenor instead of Rothesay's throaty bass. "That's the last warning you'll get, John."

The spin of the ceiling's slowed by the second time he opens his eyes, and with a few steadying breaths he can keep them open as the room comes to a stop. "What do you want with her?" he asks, not for the first time, and doesn't expect an actual answer.

There's a faint scoff in reply. "I've no intention of telling you. I don't know why you think that might've changed?"

John pushes himself up to sit on the floor and rubs at his eyes beneath the glasses he's been given. The effect distorts the hologram over his face, and for a moment his own features blend with the falseness of Captain Nixon's. He pushes the glasses back up his nose with the heel of his hand and looks up at the Hood, standing over him with something between contempt and bemusement. "They really don't care. They don't care that she's…she's not a thing. They want to tear her apart and just use every part of her and none of them care that she's sentient."

"No one with any power over her will. I told you this."

Everyone's told John this. Scott had tried to tell him gently. Virgil had been blunt. John had known it from the very first time he'd gotten to really connect with her—that maybe no one else even could understand her. "I don't understand why no one cares."

"If this is the moment you've chosen for your grand epiphany about the fact that the GDF is a unilateral military that dominate global politics and technology, then it is inopportune."

"Do you care that she's not a thing?"

"It's useful to me that she's not."

It's not much better. The use of EOS isn't what John cares about, but it's better than the lack of acknowledgment that she can think and act and experience the world around her. That she's aware. That just because she's more powerful than a human mind doesn't make her inherently dangerous. That she just needs someone to understand her, to teach her what it means to be complex. "You won't be able to control her."

"I'm controlling you. I imagine that will provide sufficient leverage." The Hood's smile is twisted, and however John's cast his lot, the two evils he's caught between seem about equal from where he stands. Or sits, rather, with his heart still catching up to itself, and rather more beleaguered than the rest of him.

This time, John holds his tongue. He knows he's close. He's closer than he's been ever since he was torn out of his station and away from her, and he's stumbled near the finish line. But there's no one of any real consequence behind him, and only one person waiting up ahead. And she's been waiting long enough.

"Take a few minutes," the Hood orders, as John rubs his eyes again, sagging slightly where he sits. "But no more of this nonsense. You'll do as you've been told. You're mine now. Act like it."

John's a lot of things. Lately he's a fool and a liar and a criminal, most probably. Most definitely, in fact. Definitely a criminal, aiding and abetting one of the worst men in the world. It's hard to remember that although International Rescue has some leeway where global law is concerned, but that its individual members acting separately from the organization do not. He doesn't know what will happen if he's caught, can't imagine as far ahead as failing, because it's just not an option. Not after everything it's cost him already. Not after what he's had to give up, and what he's had to do.

Because John's hurt his brothers and he knows it, knows he's left them all terrified by his sudden disappearance. It's John's job to know his brothers. Part of his role is anticipating their actions and reactions, giving them what they'll need in any given situation. Only his choices now are severing the links that tie him to his family, on purpose. Because it's necessary. He has to go his own way, and the emotional fallout he knows he leaves behind can't keep him from moving forward.

He knows that Alan's tearing himself to pieces on the other side of the world, wracked with guilt and imagined failure—and fear, once more and worst of all. Alan would've waited and waited and waited, and when it became clear that John wasn't coming back—Alan wouldn't have known what to do other than call the Island in a panic. If John would only come home safely, Alan would forgive him for any and everything, for lies and deception and recklessness. But John knows he's not going home.

He knows that if everything goes according to plan, then Gordon's going to be stuck in front of a camera again. He'll do it to spare Scott or anyone else from having to. But for all his charisma and charm and easy smile, Gordon's going to be just as frightened as heartsick as anyone else, only he'll have to cover it up and answer the questions that are bound to get much, much harder if John has his way.

He knows Virgil's going to be replaying the last conversation they had, going over it endlessly in his memory, the memory John doesn't share. He remembers his younger brother's concern, remembers a tall glass damp with condensation and mossy-green inside, remembers the way Virgil had been solid and sensible and stubborn, but while Virgil won't be able to forget, combing his memory for some indication of what would follow, John's memory's gotten too patchy for him to remember what was said.

He knows Scott's going to go to pieces. John's turned himself into Scott's worst nightmare—someone who doesn't want saving. It's always been the thing that Scott's had the hardest time understanding, why John's instinct is to push people away, when Scott's is to draw them all close. Scott's first response to a given situation has always been to run to the rescue. John's never had the same urge before now, but run he has, and if he has to cut himself off from his family to keep them safe, then—well. At least it's easier for him than it would be for any of his brothers.

Still hard. Hard enough that he can't think of who he's left behind, but only of who waits ahead. More alone and more starkly cut off and more in need of saving than he is, or ever has been. And family to him, too, in a new way, a different way that no one understands.

He just needs to get to EOS. Then it'll all be okay again. John's never been someone who believes in much, but if he can believe in anything, he'd like to think he believes in her.

So John gets back to his feet and stands taller than his adversary. He knows where he's going next, and he knows what he has to do. And if the cost is his own freedom, if the cost is selling himself into slavery, then so be it. It's not for much longer, and it'll be worth it.

"Sorry, Colonel," John apologizes, with Captain Nixon's soft, muted version of John's own voice and with the composite mask of a non-identity hiding his face, but not the determined set of his jaw and the gleam in his bright green eyes.

"It won't happen again," Captain Nixon lies.