"I understand, Major," Hugh says. "Family is important to me, too."

He steps towards the exit.

"Now, come on. The sooner your family is safe, the sooner we can start making these sons of bitches regret they ever laid hands on you."

Dyer gets up as Hugh opens the door. "Thanks, Captain," Dyer says.
"Don't mention it," Hugh replies, and steps out into the hallway.

The first and only warning that Hugh gets that something has gone very, very wrong is the telltale pop of a Taser cartridge going off behind him, and two electrodes flying past his head and embedding themselves in the door in front of him. Before Hugh has a chance to react, a second pop sounds out behind him, and this time he feels the sting of the electrodes embedding themselves in his lower back, just before his whole world explodes in pain, and his legs instantly go limp, dropping him to the floor.

Hugh tries to get up, spin around, kick off, do anything, but his legs not only don't respond to his commands, they're the only part of his body that isn't hurting like crazy at the moment. He can feel the electrodes in his back - by sheer luck, the second shot straddled his spine just above his ass, and the shock must have temporarily paralyzed him.

It says something about Hugh that his first thought at this turn of events is "Don't tase me, bro." We're not sure what, but something.

Still, Hugh's no stranger to pain, and he knows that his best shot at getting something done is now, before they shock him again or close in. With that in mind, he rolls onto his back, fumbling to grab the TASER wires and yank them hard, hopefully enough to break the connection. Knowing that he's not likely to get a second good breath, he uses what air he has to shout "Help!" as loud as he can.

Hugh feels the wires tear their way back out of his skin, and manages one good shout of "HELP" before a bare foot kicks him square in the face, and Hugh's vision swims as his mouth suddenly loses the ability to form any further words.

What he can still do, though, is feel the pistol pressed against his head. "Shut your mouth, Captain," Dyer says. "Play nice. You've just had a bad case of heat stroke, and these two paramedics are taking you to the hospital." Dyer walks back into the steam room. "Thanks for telling me the room was wired for sound. I assume that Davis and his alien bride are listening, along with the other alien bitch, the walking carpet, Riviera and Stanhill - or whatever that robot calls itself. All of you need to know: don't come in here, don't call the police or security, or else I upgrade Verrill from heat stroke to lead poisoning."

The kick to the face doesn't smart half as bad as knowing he couldn't see through Dyer's lies. Of course the whole thing was too convenient - but Hugh's always been able to trust his gut on people, and this guy read as 100% sincere. Hugh will have to ask him for a few pointers on that later.

For now, Hugh rolls his eyes back and goes limp. He keeps pretending to be unconscious while one of the goons manhandles him into position to slip on a pair of zip cuffs. He's in no shape to fight back right now, and even if he was, he's unarmed and outnumbered.

Then again...that anger filling his belly should count for something. Hugh keeps it nice and hot, hoping he'll catch them slipping somewhere.

The two goons, which Hugh can see when he sneaks a peek are dressed as paramedics, manhandle him onto a stretcher as Dyer closes the door to the steam room behind him.
"I'll join you in a minute. Make sure you strap him down tight," Dyer says.
Hugh feels himself be strapped down. With his hands pinned behind him, the straps on the stretcher are just one more obstacle making his escape more difficult.

"Hey, is everything all right?" a woman's voice asks. Hugh recognizes it as the woman at the front desk.
"Yeah, my friend here passed out, we think it's heat stroke," Dyer says.
"Don't get any ideas, Verrill," one of the goons whispers in his ear.
"What?" Hugh says loudly, opening his eyes. "Hey, who cuffed me? Was that a taser in my back?"
"What's he saying?" the woman asks. Hugh can see her and Dyer at the end of the short hallway that leads back into the rest of the spa and from there into the mall.
"Nothing, he's just confused from the heat stroke," Dyer says.
"Okay..." She still looks at Hugh, not quite sure what to think.
"Oh, please," Hugh says. "You saw us coming in five minutes ago. Even if I had a heat stroke the second we walked into the spa, the ambulance wouldn't be here already. Look at me. I'm still sweating, I'm lucid, I'm obviously fine. Not to mention that real paramedics wouldn't be trying to sneak past you without a word."

Dyer sighs as the woman says, "I'm going to call the police -" That's all she manages to get out before Dyer pistol-whips the woman in the back of the head. She drops straight to the floor, unconscious, but Dyer hits her one more time to make sure, then stuffs her underneath her desk. He storms over and smacks Hugh across the face. "That one's on you. I guess you really will put Earthlings in danger to save your own ass."
"You kidnapped me, you assaulted her," Hugh said. "She's seen all of you and sooner or later she'll either wake up by herself or someone will go looking for her, then the cops will have a witness. Unless that little stunt of yours fractured her skull, then you're all going down for felony murder."
"For someone so intent on destroying our way of life, you sure know a lot about our laws," Dyer sneers. He points his pistol at Hugh's head again. "You pull that stunt one more time, I kill them and kill you. Got it?"
"Nice rationalization," Hugh says. "It's all my fault that you're acting out, is it? Is that seriously what you believe? Come on, you can't help being a limpdick idiot, but at least you could have a spine and take some goddamn responsibility for all the people you hurt."
"Which I wouldn't have had to do if you hadn't tried to sacrifice her to save yourself and your mission," Dyer spits. "We know who you are, and know what you're here to do. We will do what is necessary to save our planet."

He turns to the other two. "Take him out of here, now. I'll meet you at the loading dock. If he says another word, kill him."
Hugh shuts up. He's not really any closer to freeing himself, but Dyer sounds like a true believer - the kind that's easy to wind up. Too bad the two goons didn't speak up. He will have to gauge how deep they are in this before making any further moves to upset their team balance. The two goons wheel Hugh out the back door and towards the loading dock in silence.

----

As he hears Dyer speaking over the audio feed, Luis slams down his fist on the dash of the van. "Davis, tell me you have a plan, we can't just let them take him."
Davis' stare doesn't move from the flat-screen TVs he's been pretending to browse for the last ten minutes. His jaw sets and his voice hardens, but he doesn't move. "I do. We let them take him."
"What?" Arketta shouts, then lowers her voice to a hiss as she starts to walk towards the spa entrance. "No way we just -"
"Garrett is right," Ngawai says. "They caught us out of position. They have a gun to Hugh's head, and know who we are. We show ourselves, they'll just kill Hugh and call it a day. We have to let them go."
"Damn it," Luis says. "Then what are we supposed to do?"

"Let me think," Davis says. An idea pops into his head, and he snaps his fingers. "Luis, can you get into the DC traffic camera system?"
Luis thinks for a moment. "I think so. You want to see where they're taking him?"
"Exactly," Davis says. "They're not going to take him out through the mall, they'll take him out of the loading dock. See if you can follow them through the cameras, and at least we'll get a rough neighborhood to start searching from."
Luis nods. "Give me a moment."

Arketta stops in the middle of the mall. "Luis, are we really going to let them just take Hugh?"
Luis sighs, starting to work on gaining access to the DC traffic camera network. "Davis is right. I don't see any way we can stop them from taking him, but we can make sure they don't get away with this, and we're going to get him back."
Arketta turns and starts to haul ass back to the exit, along with Davis. "I know we will," she says, bashing through the doors into the parking lot with Davis close behind. "And these scrofa-born bastards aren't going to make it to the adjudicator."