(DISCLAIMER: I don't own any part of the Star Trek franchise, and these are not my characters. I'm just really into messing with and ruining their lives. So uuhhh... yeah. That's it. *awkwardly clears throat* Disclaimer over.)
Arc #1: Absolute Zero
Chapter One
It was bad enough that he was stranded on the dark side of a tidally locked planet.
It was even worse that he'd been captured by evil human-impersonating aliens, but hey, that was pretty par for the course, right?
Right. Jim sighed, sitting down and leaning back until his head struck the metal-and-concrete wall of his cell. "Anyone else in here?" he called out into the semi-dark silence; although he couldn't see anything beyond the bar-less, windowless walls of his solitary room, he silently hoped, with a pang of debilitating guilt at his own selfishness, that he was not the only one who had been captured.
At least that way he might have someone to talk to while figuring out how to get out of this latest clusterfuck.
He waited, tilting his golden head, but there was no answer. Letting out his breath in a soul-deep sigh, he let his blue eyes slide shut, and his shoulders relax. Think, he commanded himself. There's gotta be some way out of here. No windows, no doors. How did they even get me in here?
Outside, the dull clump clump of approaching footsteps had him sitting up straight, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. His hands, bound painfully tight behind his back, clenched into bloodless, numb fists.
"Open the door," a voice said, and Jim was surprised to hear the familiar inflections and tones of English. The words were followed by the loud clacking of a key being forced into a lock.
The light that spilled like golden honey into the darkness of Jim's cell was blinding. He squinted against the glow, straining to make out his captors as one of them stepped through a previously hidden doorway, and into the confined space. "Get up," the man—and it was a man, at least in appearance—said.
"What if I don't?" Jim replied, and holy fuck, why the hell was he making this harder than it had to be?
The man bared slightly yellowed teeth, eyes narrowing as he glared down at his prisoner. He opened his mouth, and for a moment Jim thought he was going to spit an insult—or just spit—but then a booted foot was raised, snapping through the air to collide with Jim's ribs. Jim collapsed forward, curling instinctively into a ball to protect himself, and let out an involuntary groan of pain. All the air left his lungs in an agonizing whoosh, leaving him breathless and gasping.
"That is what happens if you don't," his captor said. When Jim looked up at him, the bastard was smirking.
"Get up." The alien-in-human-form repeated, sneering. "Or do you want me to ruin your pretty face, pretty boy?"
Jim shook his head. He didn't quite trust his voice; his lungs were still painfully devoid of air.
As his captor moved forward and seized his upper arm, Jim tried to elbow him in the ribs. Give some, get some. But all this did was earn Jim a solid backhand across the face. He reeled, stars dancing before his vision as pain blossomed in his nose and behind his eyes. Blood dripped, hot and sticky, from his split bottom lip. Aw, fuck.
"Don't try anything again, Captain," the man holding Jim snarled, shaking him like a life-sized rag doll. "If you do, I will break something."
Jim didn't grace the threat with a show of fear. Instead, he summoned his best fuck-you grin, and did his best not to lurch or stumble as he was roughly dragged from his cell and into the hallway outside.
Beyond the prison block where he had been being kept—or stored-for the past two and half days, was an enormous blank room. The only ornament in the room was an ornate throne, set on a raised platform at the far end.
"Alikar. Norwind." A figure, graceful and slender as a reed in the wind, rose from the throne. She was beautiful, Jim thought, if you were into tall, dark, and evil. Her hair, the color of a starless night, was cropped to her shoulders. Her skin was a deep beige, while her eyes were dark and severe. She wore a flowing gown of ebony silk, embroidered with gold and white. She greeted Jim's two captors with a slight dip of her head, and the faintest hint of a smile. "Elikithrian amaleen a'aka." Whatever that language was, it wasn't one that Jim recognized.
"I'm Captain James T. Kirk," Jim said, not waiting for her to acknowledge him before speaking. He stood up as straight as he could, given the weight of the hand on his shoulder, and offered up his most charming smile. "My ship, the USS Enterprise, flagship and pride of Starfleet, is currently in orbit around this planet." He paused, gauging her reaction. "I wouldn't piss me off, if I were you."
The woman regarded him coldly for a long, tense minute. Somehow, Jim had the distinct feeling that she was looking through him, rather than at him.
It was, to put it lightly, slightly unnerving.
When she spoke again, it was in flawless English. "James T. Kirk," she said, "your ship is not in orbit around this planet. A large asteroid shower has rendered it impractical—and dangerous-to remain in orbit around Gemini II for the next five days." Her lips, painted the color of raspberries, turned up at the corners. "You are stranded, Captain. There is no help for you now." She looked up, and made eye contact with the man standing behind Jim. She jerked her head once: up and down.
This must have been a cue, because as soon as she did, the guard holding Jim tightened his grip on Jim's shoulder, and began to steer him away from the throne.
"Get off," Jim complained, rolling his shoulder and doing his best to duck away from the painfully tight grip. His attempts to gain even this small degree of freedom were met with two quick, sharp blows to the side and stomach. Gasping, he doubled over, blinking as pain blossomed in his abdomen.
"Next time," the alien-in-human-form hissed, "I'll break your legs."
After that, Jim figured it was better to go along with it and wait for the opportune moment. He really didn't want to have to factor in broken legs to his escape equation.
Past the throne room was another, smaller room. This one, unlike the Queen's Hall (as Jim began to think of it), was well-adorned with furniture of various sizes and shapes, and filled almost to overflow with people. People, and aliens, all of them shrinking back from the guards with fear obvious in their wide eyes.
Jim was thrown, none too gently, into the midst of this frightened hoard. With his hands still tightly bound, he had no way to stop his fall; he collided painfully with the stone-tiled floor face-first. A sharp shockwave of pain shot through his skull; he closed his eyes as red spread across his vision.
The guards left the room, slamming and locking the door behind them. The crowd was so still that Jim could make out the fading clunk clunk of his captor's heavy, booted feet as they walked away, leaving behind an atmosphere of tension and terror.
As soon as the footsteps had faded completely, the collective room let out a long, relieved breath. "I thought they would take more of us," a female voice said, her tone wavering tearfully. "I thought they would take me!"
"Hush," another woman said. "We don't even know what they've done with the others. Maybe they're releasing the ones they take."
"No way," the first woman said. "That's such bullshit."
Slowly, with the room still spinning sickeningly around him, Jim managed to roll onto his back. He blinked as the world came back into focus. He found himself looking up into ten pairs of curious, wide, colorless eyes.
"Are hurt?" one of the humanoids in the group asked Jim in broken English. The alien male was tall and slender, with slit pupils and no nose. His skin was dark gray, and his ears were slanted back and down into long, slim points. All around him were others of his kind, their dull white eyes watching Jim with a kind of detached wariness. Whatever they were, Jim didn't think he'd encountered their species before.
Jim shook his head, and immediately felt nauseous from the movement. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself a second to regain his composure before speaking. "Fine," he replied, once his ears had stopped ringing and his stomach had settled. He offered the watchful, strange gray-skinned aliens a slightly pained smile. "Someone want to help me up?"
The alien male who had first spoken glanced at the female beside him. Jim immediately recognized the uncomfortable confusion in his gaze.
"I mean," Jim amended, speaking slowly and clearly this time, "will one of you-" he nodded at the group, "-help me stand back up?"
"Ah!" the alien mimicked Jim's nod, mouth twisting into an approximation of a smile. He reached down at once, grabbing the starship captain by the front of his uniform and hoisting him bodily to his feet. "Now fine?" he asked.
"Yeah," Jim agreed. "I'm fine." He shrugged his shoulders, trying in vain to regain some feeling to his still-bound hands. "Anyone have a really sharp knife or something?"
The gray humanoids exchanged another round of confused glances, murmuring something in a soft, flowing foreign tongue. Jim let out his breath, fighting back annoyance. After all, it wasn't their fault that he didn't even understand the few words in their language that they did in his.
Turning around, Jim held out his bound hands for the aliens to see. "I can't get them off," he explained, wiggling his bloodless fingers for emphasis, "and my hands are gonna fall off if I don't get them off soon."
The alien male, who seemed to be the leader of the group, looked shocked. He said something very fast to the female beside him, who put one hand over her mouth.
Jim sighed, and warred for a moment with the urge to roll his eyes. They probably wouldn't even get the gesture, anyway, he thought, but restrained himself nonetheless. "Not literally 'fall off'," he said, "well, not for a long time, at least. I just meant that…" Okay, how the hell was he supposed to explain exaggeration to this lot? They didn't even understand the majority of what he was saying, if their expressions were anything to go by.
This was already turning into an awkward culture-clash mess, and he'd only been in the room for three minutes.
"Never mind," he finished lamely, giving up completely. "Just get me out of these?"
"Yes," the gray alien agreed, and nodded again. Reaching forward, he began to untie the knots binding Jim's wrists with sure, agile fingers. He struggled for a long moment, before retracting his fingers with a shake of his head. "No," he corrected himself, looking sad.
"Well, fuck me," Jim swore, then quickly amended, "not literally!" when the aliens looked at one another with blatant shock. It seemed that, although they understood much of what he was saying, it was simply difficult for their oddly shaped mouths and tongues to form English sounds. Goodtimes, Jim thought. This should be really simple. Bet I'll get out of this one with no trouble at all.
Okay seriously, that snide, sarcastic voice in his head needed to go.
"Ah!" the head of the gray alien family exclaimed suddenly. "Doctor help, maybe?"
There's a doctor here? Jim looked up at the tall, solemn, gray-skinned group surrounding him, and cocked one eyebrow. "What doctor?" he asked, and then realization dawned on him, wrapping tendrils of tentative hope around his pounding heart: Oh god, please let it be Bones…
It was.
Which was both a blessing, and a serious pain in Jim's already bruised and beaten ass, as it turned out.
"Jim?" Bones said. The surgeon's voice was rough with barely veiled tension as he pushed his way through the crowd, elbowing aliens and humans alike out of his way with vicious intent. "Where is that stupid kid; I'm gonna hypo him into next century if he's even got a scratch..."
Jim never got to find out how that threat ended, because at that moment, the Enterprise's CMO burst through the watchful crowd and came to a dead halt directly in front of Jim. Bones stared at Jim in a moment of abject silence. "Jim," the doctor said, somehow sounding relieved and furious all in one breath. "I thought you were dead!"
Jim shrugged one shoulder—the one that didn't feel as if it may or may not be partially dislocated from being manhandled by aliens—and offered up his most charming smile. "Sorry to disappoint, but I think I might be allergic to death."
Bones made a sound of disdain, but beneath his friend's disgruntled expression, Jim caught the faintest trace of amusement. "Damn, kid," Bones said, and put a hand on Jim's shoulder. Jim winced, and Bones frowned, shaking his head. "Wish I had my tricorder and med kit. I'll need to get a good look at you anyway, though. Supplies or not."
Jim shrugged the doctor off. "I'm fine," he complained. "Mom."
Bones opened his mouth, eyebrows contracting dangerously and hand raised threateningly to point at Jim's chest, but he was cut off before he could reply by the door at the far end of the room grinding open on rusted hinges.
"Ah, shit," Jim swore, turning to see that their strangely stone-faced captors had returned. "Save me," he whispered to Bones.
Jim's CMO rolled his eyes. "What did you do to piss of the native fauna this time?" Bones said in an undertone as the human-looking aliens scanned the crowd with narrowed, cold eyes.
Jim cocked an eyebrow. "You have to ask?"
"Fuck me," Bones growled. "You better have one hell of a plan to get us outta here, Jim, or I'll kick your ass myself."
"Are you implying that you would hurt your own captain, Bones? Because I'm pretty sure that Starfleet regulations explicitly state..." Jim began, grinning widely.
Bones cut him off with a snarl. "I'm not implying shit, Jim. Now shut up and look scared before you get both of us murdered."
Jim turned his attention back to their captors, who had begun walking through the crowd, heads swiveling and cold eyes sweeping over the down-turned faces. Aliens and humans alike shrank back as the silent, prowling Impersonators (as Jim had begun to call them in his head) approached, leaving wide isles of empty space through the over-packed room.
When the guards reached him, Jim didn't move. The first of the guards—the tallest, and most stern-looking—came to a stop right in front of him, glaring down his nose at the captain with open hostility. "Move," the guard snarled, baring worn and yellowed teeth.
Jim was vaguely aware of Bones pulling on his sleeve, and growling something in his ear, but the vast majority of his attention was focused on the alien-man standing before him. "No," Jim said, and crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child. "Unless you want to make me?" He cocked one eyebrow and smirked: a blatant challenge.
"Jim!" hissed Bones. "What the devil do you think you're doing?"
"I dunno," Jim replied, holding the intense eye contact with his captor unblinkingly. His smirk widened as the alien guard drew himself up to his full height, snarling like a wild beast. "Just getting you into trouble, Bones. Like always."
The guard threw a punch, and Jim faked a block, feinting to the side at the last moment. Jim felt knuckles graze his cheek, but he came away unscathed, blood burning with the thrill of fresh adrenaline.
Jim grinned, playing at cocky and unruffled. "That the best you can do?"
The next blow caught him squarely in the chest. He felt the air rush out, and choked on nothing, crumpling like a deflated balloon as he sank to the tiled floor. He swayed, blinking up at the guard, who was now sneering down at him triumphantly.
"Is that the best you can do?" the alien-in-human-form said. He spit on the floor beside Jim, before moving past the sprawled prisoner toward the door at the other end of the room.
But Jim wasn't done yet.
Lifting his head, he reached up, hands clutching at his chest, gasping in increasingly shortened breaths and clawing at his throat with his fingers. "Fuck," he choked out, head falling back against the floor with a dull thud. He coughed, biting his tongue hard as he did. Flecks of bright red spattered his lips: perfect.
Bones was on him in an instant. "Jim," the doctor said, urgency lacing the name like poison. "Jim, what the hell…?!"
Jim looked up at his friend, panic in his expression that didn't reach his eyes. As the alien guards turned toward them again, cold gazes sweeping the scene, Jim offered Bones the faintest, most subtle hint of a smirk: It's just an act, man. Chill out.
Jim saw realization rush into the ship's surgeon expression like sunlight piercing dark waters. Bones' eyes narrowed as if in concentration and concern, but Jim could see the exasperation and silent, unspoken "you-had-better-fucking-know-what-you're-doing-kid" hidden beneath his worried facade.
The guard who had punched Jim was at Bones' side in two quick strides. "What's wrong?" he sneered. "Did I hit the little girl too hard?"
So these fuckers knew how to employ stupid macho insults, Jim noted. Fascinating, as his First Officer might say.
As Bones pretended to fuss and argue with the guards as he "stabilized" Jim, Jim himself was hit by a painful wave of homesickness: he missed Spock, he realized, and the rest of the bridge crew. A week in various crates, boxes, and lightless rooms had not done his sanity any favors, it seemed.
As he closed his eyes and pretended to slip into unconsciousness, Jim hoped desperately that Spock had managed to get off-planet along with Scotty and Uhura. Given the crew's streak of absurd bad luck during the second half of their five year mission, however, even that small favor seemed too much to ask of the universe.
After a few minutes more of muttering and poking, Bones finally gave up his efforts to 'resuscitate' Jim. "He's dead," the doctor declared. Jim felt the vibrations of his CMO's footsteps as Bones rose to his feet and spun to face their alien captors. "Damn it, man, you killed him!"
"How?" the alien replied, and beneath his cold, calm tone, Jim sensed the first hint of discomfort. "I only hit him once!"
"Yeah, but he's human," Bones said, like this explained everything. "You hit him right in the goddamn heart. You stopped his heart, you dumb sack of pig shit!"
Jim heard the aliens snarl furiously in response to the insult. "Keep your mouth shut, scum," one creature growled, "or I'll put you down the same way I did him."
Jim felt rather than saw the man beside him tense with aggression, and imagined Bones physically restraining himself from hurling another mouthful of biting Southern scorn at their captors. Or maybe throwing a punch. Or both. "Fine," Bones said after a long, tense moment. "My medical kit was confiscated with our weapons. Bring it to me; I might be able to revive him. Assuming your mistress in that damned throne room out there will kill you if her most valuable prisoner fuckin' dies?"
Jim didn't move. He didn't even crack his eyes open. If the guards realized he was faking, it was all over. For both of them. So, as curious as he was to see the situation unfold, he forced himself to remain still and silent as the grave.
A fitting turn of phrase, as it were.
"Get him the kit," the guard snapped at one of the other aliens. "Now!" There was a muttered reply in some language that wasn't English, and then the sound of retreating footsteps.
A moment later, the door on the other end of the room creaked open, then slammed shut.
Jim heard Bones let out a long, gusty sigh. A moment later, the doctor knelt beside him, fingers pressing hard against the pulse point in Jim's wrist. "Still nothing," Bones reported to the aliens. "Your man had better hurry up."
The guard who had been sent off in search of Bones' med kit returned in a startlingly short amount of time. The creature shoved its way through the crowd—Jim could hear the soft whimpers of many of the room's occupants as the alien-in-human-skin passed—until it was standing beside its companion once more. "Here it is," the alien said, sounding very slightly breathless. "The kit the human doctor requested."
"About damn time," Bones growled, as if the thirty seconds that had passed had been thirty minutes.
Jim couldn't help it: he tensed ever so slightly as he felt the hypospray against his neck, flinching as Bones injected some unknown liquid into his body. Immediately, he felt a cold, creeping sensation crawl through his flesh, spreading like poison through his veins.
For all he knew, it was poison. He really wouldn't put it past Bones.
"Hold on, Jim," Bones muttered as Jim's entire body began to go numb. Jim felt the surgeon's hand close momentarily around his wrist. Bones leaned down, seemingly pretending to listen for Jim's breath, and hissed in Jim's ear: "Whatever happens, let me handle this. Got it?"
Jim didn't dare respond verbally, or even with the slightest nod of his head; instead, he flexed the muscles in his wrist once to show that he'd heard.
Bones stood up, letting go of Jim's wrist. "He's gone," he told their captors, injecting a healthy dose of weariness and resignation into his tone. "Nothing else I can do."
Jim expected to slip into unconsciousness in the next few minutes, but instead, he stayed fully aware even as the numbing agent spread through his body, freezing his muscles and bringing his heart-rate down to a painfully slow five beats per minute. The substance Bones had forced into his system was immobilizing him without disabling his senses, Jim realized, and felt a sudden rush of respect for his CMO's quick thinking. If something went wrong with this plan—and c'mon, let's face it, there were so many ways that this could go sideways—at least Jim might have the chance to opt out of it before it was too late.
"Get a bag," the taller guard snapped at his companion. "We can't let the body decompose here. It could cause disease amongst the other prisoners."
Thank god, Jim thought. I was half expecting to be thrown in an incinerator.
He wondered if Bones had considered that possibility. Probably, he answered himself, and felt a flash of sudden resentment toward his CMO.
By the time the alien guard returned with the body bag, Jim's eyes had fallen half-open as the numbing agent worked. He'd forgotten, in his act, that dead people usually did have their eyes open. Without the option to blink, Jim soon found that it was incredibly, dishearteningly uncomfortable.
"You're putting him in that thing?" Bones asked, and although Jim couldn't look directly at the doctor, he saw a darker-than-usual-shadow pass over his friend's face.
"Yes," replied the taller of the two aliens. Jim saw a taut smile cross their captor's stony face. "We will seal the body inside to prevent any cross-contamination with other prisoners. And to preserve it, so that we may study it later on."
Jim stared straight up at the ceiling as the shorter of the two guards knelt down and hoisted him up, sliding his limp body inside the black plastic slip. As he watched the zipper on the front of the bag glide up, sealing him in a shell of pitch blackness, he heard Bones begin to protest, and the taller alien's snarled threats of violence if the doctor did not stand down.
"No!" Bones was yelling. "Hold on just a second, you…!"
Jim felt himself begin to move away through the room, still held in the arms of his captor, Bones' cussing ringing in his ears.
"Take him to the morgue," an unfamiliar, reedy voice said as the door slammed shut behind them. This voice belonged to the guard at the door, Jim guessed.
"Aki'i namha ilithia," the guard carrying Jim replied.
Jim felt the body he was pressed against jolt once, and then his captor was in motion again, striding down the hallway beyond the overcrowded room. They were headed in the direct opposite direction from the Queen's Hall, Jim assessed. He made a mental note on the map of this place he was slowly building in his mind's eye.
After a few minutes, the air around his face began to grow hot. And then stuffy. And then it was as if there wasn't any air in the bag at all.
And that's when Jim realized: the dam thing was airtight.
No wonder Bones had been putting up such a fight. It hadn't been because they were going to study Jim, or because they were hauling him away. Bones must have been expecting that.
No, Bones had been flipping his shit because Jim was going to suffocate.
And here Jim was thinking their situation couldn't get any shittier.
He really fucking hated being wrong.