By William Lindsay and Keiran O'Sullivan
10318.2030
After Pygmalion’s Project
10318.2030
After Pygmalion’s Project
-=Main Brig: USS Poseidon=-
The cell that imprisoned them seemed to be growing smaller by the moment; an effect enhanced by the increasing annoyance Keiran felt as a single sound assaulted his ears.
William Lindsay was snoring.
It was a familiar noise, one he'd suffered through many times and that was only slightly muted by the growing volume of the warning ringing in his head; words that told him time was running out on them.
That overriding plea was conveyed by the voice of the woman he loved, and it also told him that she needed his help if she was going to get out of this alive. Now of all times he needed Will to be quiet.
“Will,” Keiran whispered sharply, attempting to rouse his friend back to consciousness.
Accepting that they wouldn’t be getting out of here any time soon, Will had lain back on their single piece of furniture in this cell. Generosity would have been calling it a seat. A far greater generosity would have been to call it a bed. Yet he had in his time slept on far rougher surfaces and in far worse company than one worried Irishman. So he’d let himself close his eyes for just a few moments that had turned into many more while Keiran stood watch.
It was clearly not a particularly deep sleep though as he shifted far more uncomfortably than he should have just because of his sleeping condition alone. Now his thoughts played out in his head as something not quite a dream, but more just repetition of his worries and regrets. Will didn’t regret many of the things that people said he ought to. He did regret, however, though Keiran wouldn’t say it, that had he not been so eager to get to the corruption then they wouldn’t be here on this ship.
It wasn’t that he regretted his choice to take action, but he did wish he’d just told Liis and Keiran to sit this one out. In fact he shouldn’t have asked but he should have ordered them. Liis may well have taken one of his extremities for giving her an order, and probably one of his favourite ones at that, but he felt he should at least have tried.
“Will.”
Again Will shifted in his sleep, murmuring as he did but still not moving.
“William!” Keiran said more forcefully as he shook the Scotsman’s shoulder. “Will ya bloody well wake up, man?”
Finally Will’s eyes cracked open, blinking defiantly against the harshness he found even in the comparatively low level of light. He brought his hand up to protect them.
“Better be important,” Will grumbled.
“Someone’s comin’,” Keiran added suddenly, and Will’s eyes now really opened as he picked up on the footfalls Keiran had heard before.
He quickly swung his legs over the side of his seat as the door to the room outside their cell opened and a short, shadowed form appeared.
At first the light from outside, so unkind to their unadjusted eyes, made the person’s face too difficult to make out, but as the door closed automatically behind them, familiar and worried features came to be clearer.
It was Denise Moreno taking hurried steps toward them, and now Will truly regretted having woken up.
She analyzed both men and shook her head as she approached the powerfully charged barrier that separated her from them. "So, there is such a thing as a jail that can hold the legendary Lindsay and O'Sullivan. I though you'd have figured a way out by now. I'm a little disappointed."
Keiran's jaw set but he held his tongue, there was no point on wasting words to reply.
“Whatever ya want, yer not gettin’ it,” Will said simply, making no secret of exactly how he felt about the woman right now.
Denise saw no use in trying to convince him he should feel in anyway different.
“Will, just listen,” Denise pleaded. Her voice dropped as she looked towards the door and back with marked agitation. “We don’t have much time. Brody can’t know I was here.”
Denise knew that Will felt betrayed and wouldn’t be easy to get through to.
Keiran however was not so ready to just turn away and he instead tilted his head to indicate he was listening.
"Show of good faith," Denise said, answering his unspoken question. "I'm coming in."
She held up a small and particularly vicious TI issue hand phaser on display. "I'm bringing this with me. If either of you try anything, I'll kill you."
Will and Keiran exchanged a look; the Scot remaining where he was, the Irishman stepping back a pace and holding his hands out to the sides in a gesture that he understood her.
"You've been warned," Denise said, her voice uneven as she used the remote in her pocket to disengage the forcefield for an instant so she could step beyond it.
The second she passed the threshold she hit the button again and the field crackled back into existence. She gripped the weapon tighter and fingered the trigger, another unspoken warning that neither one had better think about trying to overpower her. "Now listen to me, the both of you. As I said, we don't have much time."
“I’m not interested in an'a'thin' you have ta say,” Keiran declared, concern deeply permeating his words. “Not until I know that Liis is alright.”
Though she’d just arrived in position to be able to look Keiran in the eye, Denise wished now for all she was worth that she could risk looking away. She knew she dare not and so settled for clearing her throat in a futile attempt to try to dispel her anxiety.
“I’m sure she hasn’t been harmed,” she answered, in a way that proved that no matter how big the deception you were involved in it didn’t make you a good liar. “But I can’t guarantee that she’ll stay that way much longer.”
Had Moreno been a man Keiran would've reacted so quickly she'd never have seen him coming. He would have wrenched the weapon from her grasp and grabbed her by the throat. He would have lifted her into the air until her feet departed the deck.
With Liis' life at stake, in desperation he wanted to shake Moreno like a rag doll until she either decided she was going to help him or dropped dead in his grasp and no longer constituted an obstacle between him and Liis' freedom.
Will recognized the look in Keiran's eyes just as Denise did. She raised her weapon higher, aiming at his head.
Lindsay sighed with irritation and spoke a sudden, authoritative warning. "Down, boy."
Keiran's eyes flashed with fire. Had the words come from any other man that man would barely have lived long enough to regret them. He clenched both hands into fists in utter frustration.
"What do you mean you can't guarantee it? You're in command here, aren't ya? Jesus Christ," Keiran barked. "I don't care what happens ta you or to me, Moreno, just tell me this. Who is if not you can guarantee that my wife will get outta this alive?"
"Keiran, shut up." Will snapped, and then his tone changed, softening into one he hoped would serve to reignite some sense in Denise that he could still be trusted, yet. "Denise, what's going on?"
"The way things are going, I'm not sure any of us will get out of this alive," Denise answered gravely, her complexion taking on a pall that Will had never seen in her before.
"Denise," he repeated her name intentionally and leaned forward but did not stand as he observed the phaser still trembling in her hand. "I can't help ya without knowin' the truth."
"It's Brody," she confessed at last. "He's supposed to be working for me but it seems his priorities and mine have...diverged."
"That's what happens when ya trust a snake. Ya get bit," Will replied sadly. They both knew that he was referring less to her experience with Brody, and more to his similar experience of being betrayed by her.
"We don' have time for this!" Keiran's anger boiled over and he grabbed Will by the front of his shirt. With amazing strength and one quick yank, he hoisted the Scot to his feet.
With a great shove he sent Lindsay reeling toward Denise, counting heavily upon the fact that any woman alive would be hesitant to shoot William Lindsay. "You two bloody well better quit dancing here and get on with it!"
Sure enough as Lindsay careened into Moreno she dropped her weapon. Will kicked it away.
"Level playing field," he declared, as he locked his eyes onto hers. Denise couldn't stop color from flooding her cheeks. "Denise, we're going to have to help each other. Bring all this to an end, before everyone gets killed."
"I can't just set you free." Denise trembled as Will's hand brushed against her arm and with surprising speed she slipped from his grasp. In the same motion she pulled another phaser from behind her back and pointed it at him. "Please, Will. Don't make me use it."
"I did not think you’d see reason ta bring a second phaser," Will admitted with a regretful shake of his head, as knowing her, truthfully he hadn't. He was internally cursing himself that even still he was underestimating this woman, and that touch of bitter anger could be easily heard in his tone. "You really are full of surprises, aren't ya?"
Anger or no though, there was nothing he could do about his mistake now. He backed up and Denise skillfully moved toward the discarded phaser on the floor, keeping the one she held trained on the pair as she carefully retrieved it.
"Whatever it is you plan to do once you get the temporal drive on this beast runnin' right, Denise, you're never going to get to do it. Not if Brody is already plannin' ta take over," Will concluded.
"Planning? He's already trying,” she answered in a tone that said that trying felt a hell of a lot more like succeeding. “That's why I came here, but I think I've made a mistake."
She clipped the second phaser to her belt and then backed toward the forcefield.
"Another in the series, ya mean," Will whispered and Denise gulped deeply.
The sound of his whisper weilded more power over her than any shout she'd ever heard. A lifetime of being shouted at by one powerful man or another however, let her steel herself against the effect for the time it took to exit the cell.
She felt that she could breathe a little as the field snapped back into place, knowing that they were on the other side of it. With nothing in between them they were a danger to her life and yet it was not that which truly frightened her. It was that in the cell she was no longer in control which made their chance of escape into one more complication among the mountain that had built itself on top of her.
"You're not going to help me unless I let you out and if I let you out you're going to try to stop me,” She realised. “I can't risk that you'll succeed, no matter what Tucker Brody is planning."
She retreated toward the exit, knowing that being found here was yet another risk she couldn’t afford. However when almost at the door she was abruptly stopped, as she heard O'Sullivan make a declaration she couldn’t in her lifetime have expected.
"I don't care what you're tryin' to do here,” he said with frightening honesty. “Make the jump and go back to make yourself the Queen of the bloody Federation. All I want is my wife."
Though at any other time she might have taken this for merely a ploy, Denise was unable to stop herself from turning until she had found all the conviction she’d heard in his words in Keiran’s face. It seemed Will saw it too.
"Keiran, wait," Will stepped forward, alarmed by the fact that in this moment he couldn't be certain as he might have been in days of old that Keiran was only talking a good game. Here and now, after all he'd been through to finally get back to Liis, it seemed as likely as it was not that Keiran truly meant every word that he was saying.
“I have no interest in power,” she insisted softly, but in the faces of both men she found that they didn’t even consider believing her. Her tone lost its softness with that realisation. "This isn't about power!" she objected, "Not for me."
"What is it about then?" Will asked in the way a man did when he expected to hear a lie but just hoped this was the lie where the other person realised it was useless continuing on doing so.
Denise opened her mouth to speak, with so many crystal clear justifications in her mind, but she hesitated as she realised they were justifications only to herself. The reality was a truth so fundamental and universal to all life that even they who play with Time couldn’t yet truly find the words for it.
"You wouldn't understand," she said softly.
Keiran clearly didn’t have any patience to try to understand anyway.
"I don't care if he understands you! I don't care if he's willin' ta help you or not!" Keiran's voice crept up in volume with each word, so much so that Denise nervously looked over her shoulder to check and make sure that no one had happened to hear. "I am willin' ta do whatever ya want if you promise me that my wife will live."
"Keiran, think about this," Will warned, his words almost a plea for Keiran to stop to truly consider what he was offering and just what Liis would say if she knew of it. Keiran however apparently knew he could not afford to stop for anything.
"You." Keiran spun on Will and again grabbed him by the shirt. "You are the reason Liis is in danger to begin with. As long as I’ve known ya you’ve been bloody taking risks without thinking a second ‘bout who’d pay for them. Ya almost got the both of us killed more times than I can count. Then every time like a bloody idiot I forgave ya. Yet you repay me by delivering Liis in to clutches of that madman,” Keiran’s eyes was now truly furious and rather than just fearing what he was intending, Will was now afraid for what he’d do this second. “You've nothin' more ta say about this."
Will's adrenaline surged as he locked eyes with Keiran, trying one last time to ascertain whether or not he was still in possession of his faculties. "O'Sullivan..."
"Not a word, William. Not a bloody word."
"Brody's obsessed with your wife, Captain O'Sullivan." Denise said softly, stepping closer to the field once again. "I don't know why. But that obsession might provide us all with the distraction we need to take him out of this equation and out of your lives permanently." She looked up, and up, into O'Sullivan's storming blue eyes. "If you were to...escape," she paused, "what would you do?"
"I'd protect my wife from Tucker Brody." Keiran replied simply, adding with complete and chilling certainty, "until my dyin' breath."
Slowly Denise exhaled, almost shaking with the rapid assault of conflicting thoughts, as she tried to balance everything out in her mind. Either choice she made could very well be the one that ruined it all. It would be the one that cost her everything, especially those things she didn’t even yet have.
“You really mean that, don’t you?” she asked, but the Irishman knew she wanted no response. “And what about you?” she glanced at Will, whom O’Sullivan had now released. “You can’t expect me to believe that your only priority is rescuing another man’s wife.”
Keiran’s eyes turned back to Will as if his glare alone would somehow force him to promise Denise things they both knew he couldn’t.
“No, I can’t,” Will admitted, sad eyes looking back on O’Sullivan. “But if ya know me at all then ya should believe meh first priority is takin’ care of my friends and getting them off this ship.” Will heavily exhaled as looked now to Denise, knowing Keiran was unable to offer him any reaction until he knew if the woman believed him. “I owe them that, and loyalty still means somethin’ ta some of us.”
Denise knew that the last remark was yet another one directed at her. She also knew that what Will had said was true and that there was no way O’Sullivan would be allowing him to deviate from a moment in his efforts of rescuing Liis in order to sabotage this ship. If there was one thing she knew it was the single-mindedness that came when you were trying to save someone you loved.
She reached into her pocket and brought out the remote again, examining it in her hand for an eternal moment as if she was looking upon every choice in the rest of her life. As she asked herself if she was sure about this the only answer could be that she definitely couldn’t be. Yet she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
With the reluctance of a woman attempting the first step onto a bed of hot coals she altered a few settings and then she pressed the button. Though nothing happened in the room, the pain in Denise’s eyes was as though she’d just done one of the hardest acts of her life.
“It’s on a five minute delay to give me a chance to get away from here before you’re released,” she explained, before finally looking up again and finding herself confronted by two faces no surer of her than she was of them. “Please don’t make me regret this.”
********************************
-=/\=- Keiran O’Sullivan
Security LiaisonThe Alchemy Project
and
Captain William Lindsay
Interim DirectorTemporal Investigations
-=/\=- Keiran O’Sullivan
Security LiaisonThe Alchemy Project
and
Captain William Lindsay
Interim DirectorTemporal Investigations