Have we hit the nadir yet?

Rudolfo’s latest assignment comes with a VHS copy of a snuff film. On it, a woman seemingly talks a man to death while babbling about a mother’s love. Dante’s job might be to bring her in. 

Cut to next scene where Dante has brought her in, along with her son, Ajit, to Lucretia’s dismay. This isn’t a passenger ship – lock him up. Those are Rudolfo’s standing orders. Ajit isn’t guilty of anything, but since Nasreen, the murder suspect and her son were alone on Mimas, and the facility is abandoned, with no way off and life support failing, Dante brought the boy along out of humanitarian concerns.

Percy has other concerns about Ajit, as she wipes the metaphorical drool from her face at the thought of a boy being on the ship.

Later, Percy spies on Ajit through the security system while Dante does the same on Nasreen. When Dante goes to deliver food to the prisoners, she manipulates the dolt into defying Lucretia’s reminder that the boy needed to be locked up. Dante sets the boy free and sends him to the observation lounge to get a look at the universe. She also convinces him to come back with better food for her.When Dante sees Lucretia he reminders her, in no uncertain terms, that’s he’s the captain and she’s never to “correct” him in front of the prisoners again.

Percy has learned that Ajit is free in the ship and spends an inordinate amount of time deciding what clothes to wear and exactly what to say to him should she happen to “accidentally” meet him in the observation lounge. Carravagio warns against her actions.

Returning with better grub, Nasreen uses the not-confiscated medical scanner on her wrist to scan Dante – and put the whammy on him. She makes suggestions like, letting her go, and when he disagrees, he gets a headache until he relents. Soon, he’s her puppet. Lucretia protests, but Dante tells her off.

In the observation lounge, Percy and Ajit are getting along famously. Ajit asks for Percy’s help so that he can get away from everyone and leave, Percy thinks that’s a wonderful idea: She’ll let him escape (presumably in the ship’s only shuttle) and they’ll go off together. It’s not what Ajit had in mind, but he’s a teenage boy and she’s throwing herself at him like a cat in heat.

Lucretia is worried and has Caravaggio scan the tape, he finds hidden material which conveniently explains the entire story. Nasreen was working on a project designed to make violent prisoners manageable by altering their brains with magnetic pulses. This lead to the subjects being unable to disobey an order or they would die. The project was ultimately abandoned and covered up. Luckily, Caravagio, a simple cruise liner AI is able to analyze the video tape and develop a defense against the magnetic pulses, allowing Lucretia to be immunized against Nasreen’s device.

Now immune, Lucretia starts by taking Ajit back to a cell… but not for long because Percy lets him out again so she can try to force herself on him. He likes it, but warns her that his mom is dangerous.

Nasreen, fully in control of Dante, seems to encourage her son to “enjoy” Percy, with an implication that soon she’ll be fully controlled, too.  

Caravaggio manages to separate Percy and Ajit by replaying her absolutely cringeworthy prepping for their “chance” encounter. It works, but… Percy, in an act of revenge, reduces Caravaggio’s processing capacity to that of an idiot – exactly the right thing to do to the control systems of your spacecraft.

Nasreen’s control of Dante is so strong that she can simply tell him that he’s dying and he can do nothing else except die. This effectively blackmails Lucretia into surrendering, and then getting an upper hand again. She tries to force Nasreen to undo what she has done, but, she points out, that’s why the project was abandoned – we couldn’t reverse the procedure.

But, if she could, it would only be back on Mimas. Bu they can’t go there because Caravaggio is stupefied. Until Percy undoes what she did. 

On Mimas, Nasreen does the impossible and undoes the damage to Dante – so, obviously, the project should never have been abandoned. Rather than be stuck with his mother anymore, Ajit apologies to Percy and kills himself. Nasreen, disconsolate, zaps herself with the mind control device and, without anyone to tell her what to do, has nothing to do.