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Sharon's Experiment.

Once, just once, she would like to be unexpected by her enemies on a case. As Sharon started to regain consciousness, she wondered how she and the others got into these messes. It was bad enough they were in the business of being shot at, threatened, or near drowned, but when they were gassed it reminded them they could still make mistakes, she just wished those mistakes couldn't get them nearly killed. Somehow Sharon was humbled by that part of the powers given to them, it meant they were still human. Too bad it sometimes had its downsides.

The gas Daniels had spurted at her had knocked her out, but she wasn't sure how much time had passed. She didn't really care much either, she was too busy hoping to get out. Sharon knew the sudden knockout she'd experienced had been telepathically transmitted to Craig and Richard, and it would make them come here faster. She hoped it didn't make them careless; she'd made enough mistakes already without them adding to the pantheon. She'd guessed Glind and Daniels were awake the whole time; they'd been pulling the string for too long to suddenly give in to the urge to sleep, but she hadn't expected this. When she woke up and noticed the chair she was in, she quickly saw the restraints tying her down to the armrests. They were quite strong, however, she knew with some time she could get through them.

Glind was standing next to her, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniels standing a little further behind her leader. The other man was sitting in front of a machine feeding him a steady stream of paper. "Yes, my dear," Glind's smugness oozed from every pore of his body, never mind his voice, "we're no longer concerned with keeping up appearances."

"I'm glad." The relief in Sharon's voice was genuine. "I was beginning to find your charade rather boring."

Glind didn't seem disappointed or particularly bothered that she'd found the play boring. He leaned closer. "These powers of yours, how did you get them?" he asked.

Sharon almost laughed in his face; after telling him before she didn't know, knowing he and the others didn't believe her, and gassing her, he still expected her to tell him that?

It wouldn't do any good if he did know. Even if she told him about the Tibetans and what they'd done, what they'd learnt after realising they were different after that crash, he couldn't just travel there to find them. Richard had found the old man just by chance, but they believed he was waiting in the open for them to come to him, which made sense of why Richard found him after only an hour of looking around.

He wouldn't know where to start, the mountains were too numerous and the terrain treacherous. Besides, he probably wouldn't believe her. Ordinary people were happy to believe in something as obscure or ridiculous as lost cities or civilisations, but hearing the truth about them was something else.

She momentarily wondered how he would have reacted had she told him about the Tibetan civilisation, and she instantly dismissed it. No, she wasn't going to say a word.

"I told you, I don't know," she said at last.

Glind didn't say anything, he just caught the eye of the other man, who shook his head and shrugged. Sharon now recognised the device as a lie detector, and she had to swallow the urge to laugh again. These people were so pathetic it was funny; they were relying too much on technology to tell if she was lying, yet their instincts probably told them she was lying.

"Haven't you any faith in your own equipment, doctor?" she asked.

"No matter. My interest was purely academic," Glind replied evenly, surprising Sharon again. He didn't even seem disappointed or upset she refused to tell him the truth, in fact, he didn't even seem to care despite how often he tried to question her.

"You can't tell me you went to all this trouble for academic reasons," she said, looking around the room, taking in the console, the lie detector, the computers...but she took into account the security here, men with guns run and organised by Cranmore, the meeting she'd had with the man in the taxi which was obviously arranged, that break-in at the research centre, Craig and Richard's involvement, and those other agents here who were duped by Glind. The amount of trouble the scientist had gone to was amazing enough as it was, but that didn't mean she didn't completely understand.

Not yet. What was the point? What was missing from the puzzle?

Glind's smug voice became even more smug. "The reasons for our little experiment are, I imagine, on their way here," he said. "They will come to find you." Sharon knew who he was talking about, but she wasn't going to let him see he'd gotten to her.

What did Craig and Richard have to do with all this?

"They?" Sharon asked innocently, hoping to buy time. Glind's eyes crinkled as he looked at her with something like disappointment. "Surely you didn't think we believed you were the only Nemesis agent with extra talents? We know all about Craig Stirling and Richard Barrett."

"You'll learn nothing from them," Sharon protested, seeing no point in hiding the fact that not only were the three of them together but knew about their own abilities. To her surprise Glind didn't seem concerned or bothered by the notion he wouldn't get another two guinea pigs to study, not that he'd be able to; both of them had probably seen her be gassed, so the chances of them cooperating with Glind were nil.

"Learn?" Glind echoed derisively as though Sharon had told him something ridiculous. Sharon was surprised, she'd thought the whole point of her being here was to study how her powers worked and to develop the mind from there, surely he'd be over the moon if he'd learnt Nemesis had two other agents like her? He smiled down at her, it came off more as a leer. "My dear Ms. Macready, we already have all the information we require. Every test you took, every move you made, even the way you pretended to believe our little subterfuge." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Glind gesture towards the bank of computers. "All here. All catalogued, analysed and filed, in these computers."

He leaned closer to her, but Sharon almost didn't hear him as her mind was spinning at more pieces of the puzzle fitted together. She'd known they were watching her, known that she and Nemesis would notice eventually what was happening. That business with the research centre had probably been the tipping point, or maybe not, for Tremayne's decision to send her on leave.

Privately Sharon knew Tremayne had sent her out as bait, probably connecting the break-in with the stalkers. But the amount of trouble Glind had gone through... All to get to her, Craig and Richard? Another thing that bothered her the most with the revelations Glind was shoving into her face were the facts of the tests, everything she'd done with the others had been analysed and filed by the computers. It shouldn't have bothered her, logically the same thing would've happened with Marion, Paul and the others.

It was how Glind had emphasised it that worried her like he was preparing something for her friends.

"But if you knew that I didn't believe...," Sharon stopped that train of thought, realising the truth.

"Go on, my dear. Work it out," Glind said, sounding very much like a schoolteacher asking a particularly dim student to work out a sum.

"Then you knew Nemesis was investigating you," Sharon breathed, looking at Glind in disbelief. It all made sense; true, they probably wouldn't have realised it WAS Glind personally who was behind the research centre break-in at first, but that was academic. All that Richard and Craig would need would be a trail of breadcrumbs, a trail left there by Glind and his accomplices - Richard and Craig had passed on enough information to her when they'd arrived at the lodge earlier that Cranmore himself had killed the man in that hospital...and all that time she would be here, at the lodge, and sooner or later her friends would get the right lead, and find her.

But what did Glind get from it?

"More than that," Glind corrected, warming to his theme and she knew she would have her answer in a second, "we intended that we should," he said, though as the jigsaw pieces slotted nicely together, the revelation didn't do much to surprise Sharon. Why do you think I arranged that little, eh, business at the research centre?"

"Then the whole thing is an elaborate trick?" Sharon asked, not saying anything about the research centre. Glind might have guessed she knew about the break-in before she had been sent on 'leave,' but she didn't know and didn't care.

"And the art of the good conjurer is to keep the attention of his victim occupied." Glind's egotistic attitude made Sharon want to rip the restraints holding her down so she could lunge for his throat so she wouldn't have to hear it again, but she held herself back since the longer he spoke, the more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

"The only thing your people have is speed," Sharon couldn't help but point out, deciding to give the good doctor a piece of carrot.

Glind took the bait. "Superhuman speed," Glind was quick to correct her, his smug manner hadn't dissipated and it was grating on her nerves, "with strength and IQ to match. Almost unique." The emphasis on the last two words wasn't lost on her.

"Almost unique, so that's it?" Sharon repeated, looking Glind right in the face as the full horror of what was happening entered her mind.

"Yes, my dear," Glind answered mockingly like a teacher pleased his retarded student had finally caught on, "that is indeed it," and then his whole attitude changed from smugly superior about how well his plan had proceeded to manically hysterical.

"The only people who could stand up, who could jeopardise whatever I wanted to do in the future, who could endanger my creations are Craig Stirling, Richard Barrett, and Sharon Macready."

"And the experiment?" Sharon asked, though now she had all the basics of the puzzle together, she could pretty much guess what Glind had in mind for her and her friends; she wasn't naive enough to believe he was going to just let her go, especially if he planned to kill Craig and Richard who were Nemesis agents, and if they'd gone back to Tremayne, then the head of Nemesis' operations would know precisely where they'd gone missing, and would start a witchhunt for Glind.

She knew both her friends well, they would have told Tremayne who they were dealing with, and unless Glind really was that complacent and inflexible, he wouldn't get far. But Sharon still wanted to know one more thing.

Now that she'd gotten Glind to peel off the dead skin to reveal the rot beneath, she didn't for one moment believe that he was conducting a major experiment for the sake of it; anyone could gather smart security agents from all around the world to develop ESP by forcing them into situations that would tax anyone, and Sharon hadn't seen anything that resembled anything complex or unique enough for Glind to be this smug, the encephalograph boosting the brain didn't really count since it was well known it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Too bad Glind had the wrong hands. But what really disgusted her, besides the way these people disregarded the lives of those they used, was how they saw herself, Craig and Richard,, but truthfully when Glind's words replayed themselves, she wondered what he meant by what he wanted to do in the future, it left a lot of open territories.

"To give all the facts to the computer," Glind said and wheeled her around to face a squat green computer and walked towards it and rested his left hand on top of it, "and from those facts, let it devise a way, a perfect way," he added and jabbed a finger in her direction for emphasis, "of killing you all."

Sharon watched coldly and angrily as the scientist pressed a few controls and waited for a long sheet of paper to roll out, it was covered by complex diagrams. Glind tore the sheet off and studied it for a second before turning it over and holding it in both hands. "This way," he said triumphantly.

Sharon just glared at him.

"They're in the grounds now?" Glind asked the white-coated man from his position behind Sharon; whatever he was doing behind her, Sharon didn't know and frankly didn't care. All that mattered to her at the moment was escaping and foiling Glind's plan. Cranmore had regained consciousness after a good few hours, and he didn't look worse for wear.

She ignored his presence; he might be armed, but he wasn't really a problem for her. The white-coated man glanced over his shoulder from his monitors. "Over by the West wall," the man replied.

"Good. You'd better start the final process," Glind said, presumably to Daniels who was still in the room. But the female scientist didn't leave at once. "What about these figures?" Daniels asked in that quiet grating way of hers, "If I use this much power, our people will burn out in a quarter of an hour." Sharon licked her lips, knowing what Daniels was saying.

The encephalograph. Glind hadn't shown her too much of the plan his computers had come up with to kill Craig and Richard and herself, but she knew there was no way any of the agents in the house would do it without outside influence; Glind wasn't their boss, he had invited them here to partake in a scientific experiment, not murder. They wouldn't kill two people, not without reason, but if they were controlled somehow…..

Glind had found a way to boost their speed and strength by using the encephalograph, just like that man Richard and Craig had met at that hospital before his death. The fact Glind and Daniels, both doctors and scientists, were willing to do this was enough to make Sharon sick. Glind's reply only made her realise how far he was willing to go, and his complete apathy for life upset her.

"They need only 5 minutes to accomplish their task," he said.

"It's a good team," Daniels chided - Sharon didn't know if the woman genuinely cared or if she was just bothered about the time it took to train other people.

"We can train others."

Daniels tried once more to make Glind see that all this effort wasn't needed, but Sharon knew he would ignore it, place all his faith in his precious computer's plans.

"We wouldn't need this much speed if we gave them guns," she said.

Sharon rolled her eyes, this woman had the same subtlety as a bulldozer.

"The computer chose the weapons, and the method," Glind argued back, "it's too late to change it now."

Sharon heard Daniels heeled shoes head to the door and leave the room, closing the door behind her. Over her shoulder, she wasn't surprised when Glind walked over to Cranmore, who'd spent the last few minutes standing close to Sharon and holding a gun.

"Go with her," he ordered briskly, clearly referring to Daniels, "make sure she follows instructions."

Cranmore nodded, handed over his gun to Glind, and walked out of the room, leaving Sharon alone with Glind and the other scientist who hadn't said a word to her in all the time she'd been here. She wasn't really surprised by Glind's lack of faith in Daniels keeping to her orders, or Daniels trying to force a quicker and cruder solution; she was that type of person.

How she became a scientist, Sharon didn't really know.

"Are you sure they'll obey your orders, doctor?" Sharon asked.

"They can do nothing else, Ms Macready," Glind said, believing that she was referring to the agents whose brains were about to be emptied of what made them who they were, clearly not realising her question also referred to Daniels and Cranmore themselves, who probably preferred the less scientific route than Glind. Sharon had already gotten the impression Daniels didn't really care about science all that much; true, she hadn't spent much time with her to get a true feel for the other woman's sorry excuse for a personality, but Sharon felt the woman would've been happier hearing people scream in agony.

Glind's methods weren't her preference.

Cranmore wasn't a scientist and probably didn't give a thought about his employers' methods, but compared to Daniels, Cranmore was more levelheaded. Glind went on, "Whatever, whoever, they were, they are now completely under my control."

The smug way he said that had Sharon turn to him in disgust; she'd wanted to know if Glind had any faith in his cronies to get the job done. It was clear he didn't trust them that much. "And do they know that fifteen minutes later they'll be mindless?" she asked in disgust.

"No. But you won't even be that Ms Macready," Glind replied smugly and then he went and sat down at the console next to the other man.

Sharon thought quietly for a second, trying to think of a way of getting through to Glind before it was too late. Only one thing sprang to mind, it was a long shot though, but it would be a good way to buy some time. She flexed the muscles in her wrists, testing the strength of the restraints again. They'd been unbelievably tight when she'd woken up, and they'd needed a bit of flexing just to allow her the room she needed to snap them. Now they were ready.

Good.

"I know a lot more than you think, doctor," she began conversationally, turning her head so she could look at Glind. He wasn't looking at her, not that it mattered. "I know you've adapted the encephalograph to boost the electrical energy in the brain, and I also know it doesn't last, that your computers have miscalculated badly."

"Nonsense," Glind replied, staring at her coldly for her attack on his precious computers. Sharon would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious. This man considered himself a scientist, and yet he was so dependent on a bank of adding machines to do his thinking for him! She narrowed her eyes at him though he didn't see it.

"It's calculations were based upon my reflexes, plus speed and the element of surprise." Her voice became even more sly and calculating as she put forward a hypothetical scenario for Glind to consider, hypothetical for him but factual for her. "Suppose your computers haven't had all the necessary information? What if I do know how I got my powers?" She smirked inwardly when Glind stopped what he was doing at the console, and turned to face her with an expression she couldn't decipher. Glad she had his attention she carried on.

"And what if those same powers have enabled me to fool your machines?" Her voice lowered a fraction to drive it into Glind's head. "Suppose Barrett and Stirling are not surprised?"

Glind continued to stare at her, she could now see it was disbelief or even worry for what would happen if she was right and he was wrong. She didn't understand his reaction - Sharon was sure Glind had realised she was lying about her powers, or else she wouldn't have been pressed by him, but why had he taken the risk she didn't know and inputted it into the computer? Part of Sharon hoped Glind would call this off, see sense before Daniels finished what she was doing; she didn't even know how many of the agents the other scientist had gotten through already, but she just hoped it wasn't all of them.

The white-coated man spoke, breaking through Glind's thoughts much to Sharon's annoyance. She'd hoped she was getting through to him to stop all this. "I'm getting interference from the main hall," the white-coated man said.

Forgetting what Sharon had just said to him, Glind ordered, "Contact Daniels."

Sharon turned out of the whole thing for a minute, though she was aware of the lab-coated man speaking to Daniels through an intercom, and her telling him she was ready. That meant she'd processed every agent in a short amount of time. Sharon wondered how she'd persuaded them to undergo the procedure because she decided it made little difference now. Every agent who would soon lose their minds in a quarter of an hour. Carefully Sharon moved her wrist around, using her strength to wear down the restraint; they'd certainly decided to take no chances with her, but that wasn't a surprise. But they'd made the mistake of thinking that her strength had limits. Granted, it would take time for her to snap the restraint holding down her left wrist, but it was better than watching Glind and his white-coated assistant leaning over a monitor like spectators at a boxing game. She watched as Cranmore walked in with Daniels.

"How is it?"

Glind's face was alight with excitement. "Perfect. Every move is perfect," he gushed in awe. Sharon kept one eye on the screen as she saw her friends take on the charged agents, but she didn't really pay it much attention as her mind was working on the details of the rushed plan she was trying to come up with.

She was aware when someone - it looked like Lang - charge Craig, who caught him in an armlock...just as Marion threw a knife. Craig used Paul as a human shield, and surprised Marion, though that had more to do with the fact what Craig had just done went against the program Glind had put them through. The agents were like computers, Sharon realised, programmed for a specific task without any kind of variable or contingency in case something like this happened.

By that point, Sharon had managed to snap the belt around her wrist and used her free hand to untie the other. It had taken longer than she'd expected to snap the tie, and she didn't have any more time to try it on the other. In the meantime Glind didn't seem to like the direction this fight was going, Sharon didn't blame him, but he was more concerned about the time factor than anything else.

"It's taking too long," he shook his head, the expression on his face as much as Sharon could see was perplexed. She knew he'd hoped, expected, this fight to be much shorter, and from the slight whirr of the computers, she guessed they were recording the fight for analysis to make the next generation of superhumans he was planning to create when this batch died even stronger. She hated to admit it, but this was a good way of testing her far his creations could go, but it was disgusting the way he was callous towards them and their mental health.

Glind's overconfidence and apathy over what was going to happen any moment made him repulsive. "Paul's dead," Cranmore pointed out, sounding as unconcerned about the knowledge someone he'd known was dead as Glind probably was, sliding his gun from under his jacket. "I might be able to even things up?" he suggested evenly.

Glind was silent at that, and Sharon didn't need to see his face to know he didn't like what was happening on the screen, and he liked Cranmore's suggestion even less. Sharon wondered what he would decide to do, and when he did respond she wasn't that surprised, knowing that he was desperate.

"Alright," he replied, "but keep out of their way." Cranmore left the room to carry out his self-appointed mission, the others not bothering to see him leave the room, all their attention was focused on the screen.

Sharon tried not to look at it in case it would be the last time she saw either Craig or Richard alive, but she couldn't help it; she winced when she saw Jean stab Richard in the arm, the Frenchman would've killed Richard if Craig hadn't attacked him and pulled him away and into another room nearby. Glind and Daniels crowded around the screen, making it hard for Sharon to see it clearly even as she braced herself, but she could see Marion, Jean, and Susan crowded outside the door to the room Craig and Richard had gone in to escape. And to assess their wounds.

The two men might be higher than the three brainwashed agents, but Sharon knew the energy boost they'd gotten from sealing themselves off gave them an edge.

"Now, don't wait!" Glind hissed as they started smashing the door to get to their victims.

That was it, Sharon leapt from her chair before Glind or Daniels could react, and shoved the white-coated man to the ground. Glind took out the gun Cranmore had handed to him earlier and levelled it at her chest. "One move," he warned quietly, his voice low with anger at her interference. "The slightest move..."

"You can't win, Doctor," Sharon said.

"Can't I?" Glind's smug demeanour had returned in full as he smirked at her. "One wounded, the other exhausted. It's too easy."

Sharon reached behind her for the microphone controls, she had scanned the console when she'd made her break away from the chair, so she knew where the controls were, and she had placed her fingers as close to the mike controls as possible. "There isn't time. You know your team is due to collapse any minute," Sharon wondered how long it would take for Glind and Daniels to realise she was so close to the microphone controls.

"Five minutes is time enough," Glind said, unaware for the moment the microphone was now open.

Sharon sneered at the scientist with disdain, "If they knew you'd destroyed their minds, they'd be hunting you, Doctor Glind."

"But they don't," Glind replied complacently, "and by the time they find out, it would be too late."

Sharon said nothing for a second since she'd gotten what she'd wanted; Glind's confession, unintentional as it was since he had no idea she'd relayed it to the surviving agents, but then she'd dropped the coup de grace. "You'll condemn them all to a living death."

She knew she was taking a chance, but she was sure the survival instincts of the agents would break through enough of the brainwashing to make them change their focus from killing Craig and Richard and herself towards Daniels, Glind, and the others before their brains burnt out completely. It was a long shot, it might not work, but she hoped for Craig and Richard's sake it did... Glind still hadn't noticed the microphone had been switched on. "They're all volunteers, just the same as you," he said, unaware that his words could be the final nail in his coffin.

Letting herself be held prisoner was harder than Sharon had expected, but she didn't want to be in that chair again. She didn't move or say a word as the white-coated man sat back down at the console. As he did Daniels noticed something that made her cry with alarm, and made Sharon smile smugly herself. "Doctor, the microphone's open," she cried in panic.

The fear that materialised on Glind's face and was already present on Daniel's leathery features told Sharon her thoughts on whether her little play wouldn't succeed were flawed. After a brief stare of panic, Daniels rushed to the door and threw it open - what she hoped to accomplish when she was clearly implicated as well, Sharon didn't know, but she imagined the sour woman was planning to escape - and jerked back with a grunt, and she collapsed to the ground with a knife in the breast.

Sharon stood still as two figures - Jean and Marion - walked slowly into the room. Sharon couldn't see Susan Francis anywhere, though she knew she'd been with her friends when Glind's confession had been relayed through the lodge. Her heart ached at the implications of what had happened to her, though there was nothing she nor anyone else could do to help her.

"I was lying to her, giving you time," Glind tried to bluster, but neither brainwashed agent showed any hint of believing him; Sharon had no idea what he expected. He'd had them brainwashed in a process that would leave them as vegetables, and he'd just admitted they were expendable to them. Was he really that stupid? Glind proved he was truly stupid when it came to his own self-preservation when he jabbed the gun in their direction - it wouldn't do him any good, they were too fast and, truthfully, what did they have to lose when their brains were burning out already?

"Get back, go on get back!" This was too much for the white-coated technician, and he got up and tried to make a dash for it. He tried to get past Marion, forgetting she saw him and Glind as the reason for their present mess, and she chopped him twice with the final blow to the neck killing him. Seeing his only living ally cut down literally made Glind panic as he shot blindly, and caught Jean in the shoulder as the agent lunged for his throat. As much as she wanted to see him pay for what he'd done, Sharon wanted Glind to live so he could be put into prison.

She tried to pull the angry brainwashed man off Glind even as Jean methodically used the last he had to choke Glind to death. The scientist spluttered as Jean bared down on him to stop any attempt to try and break free. The feeling of hands firmly ripping her away Jean made Sharon look into the eyes of Marion; she could almost see a glimmer of the former woman before the brainwashing, and that made her stop. Glind spluttered and gurgled as Jean finished strangling him. The scientists' death seemed to be the trigger for the collapse of the agents. Jean staggered around looking before he slid to the ground, taking out the knife he had in his belt and just idly played with it, and Marion let go of Sharon, like a puppet who'd had her strings snipped. Except this puppet was a living human being, Sharon thought sadly when Marion slowly sank to the ground, her mouth opened and her eyes sightless. She turned when she saw Craig and Richard come in, Richard still sporting that injury he'd received when he'd been stabbed, just gazing at the sight in front of them. "It's all over, Craig," Sharon said once she'd made her way over to them. Craig nodded and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Yeah," he said quietly, "it's all over."

But as they walked out of the mansion, Sharon wondered if it was still over. There were other people like Glind, Cranmore, and Daniels all over the world studying telepathy and superhuman potential, but after what happened tonight, she and her colleagues would be ready for them.

What do you think?