✅ Younger Than You Think?

"G: Midair"

Iriña shifted position a little, trying to get comfortable. It wasn't easy to move, but she could at least move slightly to reduce the itch where her shoulder had been sticking to the plastic part of the child seat for way too long.

"Are you okay, Kelly?" Seamus asked, his eyes never leaving her. Even as a kidnapper, she had to acknowledge that he seemed to be doing his best to keep her happy. Maybe that was to satisfy his employers, or to placate the bystanders around them, but he at least acted like he cared. "Not getting too bored are you? Or sleepy?"

She knew she could have made him worry, but that would have been pure malice. Right now, scaring her captors would have given her no extra chance to escape, so she wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the idea. It wouldn't help her at all. So she just shook her head and tried to present a smile. She was still too weak to make a sound, but exercising her arms and face had allowed her to recover some motion. Maybe he knew what she meant.

"I've been thinking," he sad after a brief pause. "I've got something that might help you to stay awake, if not focused. Maybe help you not get bored. Is that something you could safely try?" He lowered his tablet onto the tray table in front of her, so that she could see the screen. Iriña turned her head to look, but it was still heavy and she knew it would take her a couple of attempts.

"Ohhh, hell no!" Mary answered first, before Iriña could even look at the screen. "You can't seriously think that–"

"I don't want Kelly to get bored and cranky. So why not something entertaining to keep her awake?"

The older woman was complaining, doing her best to phrase her protests in a way that wouldn't mean anything to other passengers who might overhear. It sounded like they were talking about offering her some kind of video game that might get a child upset when they lost. But when Iriña forced her eyes to focus on the screen in front of her, she saw the same pharmaceutical ordering portal she had seen before. It showed the side effects for another drug; one that she didn't know, but had presumably passed the stringent safety standards of some pharmaceutical corporation given the fact that it had been given a snappy name that doctors might easily remember.

Iriña wasn't particularly enthusiastic if this guy was suggesting giving her more drugs to alleviate the discomfort they were already subjecting her to. But if they were going to give her something, with all the equipment they had, she knew she was unlikely to get any choice in the matter. If they were going to do something, she needed to know what it might be. And after what felt like an hour of stories that barely engaged her intellect, she would have read just about anything they put in front of her. It was the same impulse that had started her reading her father's law books when she was two years old.

Sympexial was designed for low level adjustments of a half dozen different hormones. It was supposed to be a replacement for other medicines that could overcompensate, because it would neutralise certain hormones if the levels were unusually high, while having no measurable effect once they reached a normal level. So for someone who didn't have those hormonal issues, it would effectively be a placebo – a use for which some doctors had been known to recommend it. Iriña wasn't quite sure what Seamus was suggesting, until she looked back at the tray table and realised that he had bought her a small bottle of orange juice from the trolley for her. She looked back at the screen.

Sympexial shouldn't be taken with anything acidic, including citrus juices, as this could lead to a number of side effects. Pharmacists were warned to observe patients taking the pills if they believed that someone wasn't capable of following this instruction, If mixed into acidic drinks before swallowing, it could cause mild audiovisual hallucinations, hyperactivity, confusion, distractibility, dizziness, intelligence suppression, and euphoria. Apparently,, there was a common black market supply of the stuff for the use of people who found these symptoms enjoyable. None of them were severe, but it wasn't recommended for continuous use, and she could easily imagine some people using it as a recreational drug. It also listed heightened energy levels and difficulty sleeping; which would probably make it a perfect stopgap measure, if she was actually in danger of nodding off.

Iriña took a deep breath. She didn't like the idea of medicating a problem she didn't have. But on the other hand, if there was a danger that falling asleep would kill her, a stimulant seemed like it would be a logical solution. She really didn't like the sound of dulling her mind, but it wasn't like she was using it right now anyway. She was a super-genius, she'd always known that, but right now al she could do with that brain power was get bored. There was no hope of escape on a plane, not with three people watching her and muscles too weak to move. It might make her look more like a small child if she was suddenly hyperactive and couldn't focus on anything for longer than a few seconds, but that barely made a difference from her current situation. If they were going to give her drugs, she accepted, there could have been worse outcomes. And it was certainly better than the chance that they would take her objection to a stimulant as some sign that she hadn't really been taking trivo.

She reached out with one shaky hand and pointed to the words about intelligence. That was the one that really bothered her. And she did her best to form a pouty face when Seamus looked down at her.

"It's only for a little while," he said. "Just so you don't nod off on the plane. You don't like taking little naps in places like this, do you?"

Iriña couldn't really argue with that. She was actually looking at a drug safety sheet now; a list of side effects. And it was pretty clear that all of the mental effects of this stuff would only last for ninety minutes. There was a chance that it would hit her harder because of her small size, but she was pretty confident that this guy was already capable of working out the doses. Still, she wanted to be sure, and she wasn't able to say anything. She pointed at the table of recommended doses by body mass.

"You're just a little cutie, aren't you?" Seamus answered, and she thought he probably understood. "So small. Don't worry. Do you think that might be fun?"

As much as she hated to do it, Iriña slowly nodded. Seamus pulled a packet out of his hand luggage. It was marked as a migraine medication, but some of the pills inside seemed to be slightly different colours from the others. A clever way to smuggle single doses of a small variety of substances, Iriña guessed. And again, she couldn't help admiring the people who had come up with this scheme just a little. They knew what they wanted, and they had found a pretty smart way to make it happen. That understanding didn't help her, but it told her that if she wanted to outthink them, she would need to step up heer game. Just as soon as her intellect returned.

She watched as Seamus twisted a capsule open and tipped a lot of its contents into the bottom of a small baby bottle. He tipped the juice in after it; Iriña realised he probably knew what she was capable of better than she did herself. She had been expecting him to add the pill to the glass, but she only now saw that she would have been unlikely to manage without spilling it everywhere.

She tried to ignore what she was agreeing to, and took her medicine.