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Know Thyself
Chapter One

Death came in a sensory overload. The bright sparks that danced around her created floating pinpricks of blindness across her vision; and the sizzle of arcing electrical current filled her ears until she heard nothing else. The smell of her own burning flesh was almost eclipsed by the physical pain that sent pulsing spikes through every part of her body. There was even a taste: flat and metallic, unpleasant and, like every other part of this experience, more intense than she'd thought the human body could bear.

Katrina had no idea how long L'Rell held her against the power stanchion before letting go.

It really didn't matter. As her legs buckled and she fell to the floor, her entire awareness was consumed by the fact that electrocution hurt everywhere, leaving her with no part of her body she could focus on to seek respite. There wasn't even anything available within her mind: her disjointed and hazy thoughts kept her from forming more than the most fleeting thoughts. It was impossible to build up any barriers strong enough to push the pain aside.

But she shouldn't need to, should she? The pain was supposed to give way to a white light, a sense of peace, an end to all feelings of physical suffering.

In the early twenty-first century, medical researchers had learned that consciousness often survived for seconds or even minutes after physical death. The discovery had explained the phenomenon of near-death experiences, but her understanding had always been that the brief period of awareness after death was painless. Anecdotal evidence had been nearly universal about that, long before reliable technological sensors had confirmed it.

So why was she still hurting so badly?

A fresh arrow of pain shot down her spine without any warning, dragging her away from her thoughts about the moment of death. It was followed by the feeling of something jerking, but that faded before she found the strength to even open her eyes, replaced by scraping sensations on her face and arms. They weren't pleasant, but compared against the pain she'd felt moments before, they were bearable.

There was still no white light, but perhaps, she thought, the lack of pain once someone died was subjective. Dying simply hurt so much that death was a relief; and unlike most, she wasn't dying in a hospital with its bright lighting.

It was the first coherent thought that Katrina managed to form and keep long enough to hold on to. But it was enough, and it carried her through as her conscious awareness wavered and faded. Despite the fact that she knew it was the last time, she didn't fight it. She could give in. She could allow herself emotional peace.

This was a more than fitting end for a Starfleet admiral.

There was something on her cheek.

The automatic pull of her facial muscles into a frown was agonizing enough to drag her back into her surroundings. But this wasn't right. She was dead, wasn't she? There shouldn't be any perceivable consciousness left. Even some of Earth's major religions taught that human awareness in the afterlife worked entirely differently than it did before death.

Katrina had never been religious; she'd only studied the topic in the context of its usefulness for clinical treatment. As such, she hadn't really believed there was an afterlife. But she'd never dismissed the idea completely, either. Perhaps this was, indeed, some sort of altered state of consciousness that humans entered after death.

There were all sorts of theories about those, both secular and otherwise.

None of them, though, had suggested that physical sensation might continue, leaving the pressure against her face unexplained. It was light, but definite, as it moved from her cheek to her chin, tilting her head back and tugging her mouth open.

The feeling of something sealing around her lips brought with it the sudden need to breathe. The first inhale was a gasp and felt like knives slicing through her chest from the inside. It was enough to not want to do it again, but the autonomous reflex took control and her lungs kept reaching for air anyway. She choked and spluttered, trying and failing to curl up on her side to relieve the pain, and only then realized that the pressure had moved back to her forehead.

"That's it. Come on, breathe for me. Good. Good."

First touch, then breath, and now hearing? This was nothing like any afterlife she'd ever heard described. Surely there should be something she'd read about before, shouldn't there?

"Guess you didn't need to do the rescue breathing after all, sir."

There was a chuckle. "It figures. She'd never have forgiven me for the embarrassment."

The spasms were fading, and Katrina's body settled back against whatever it had been lying on. She concentrated on her breathing, listening to the sound of her own breath as it whooshed in and out, trying to ignore the awful smell that was filling her nostrils. It wasn't the burned flesh she expected. It was something wet, fetid and rotting, and it was completely entrenched in her surroundings.

Could it be hell? She didn't believe in that, either, but she if she'd been wrong about an afterlife, she might have been wrong about that. Still, there was no fire, no brimstone, no bite of acid or sulfur against the back of her throat. And weren't the condemned supposed to know, beyond a doubt, that they had been banished? She wasn't completely sure.

Gradually, she became aware that her own breathing wasn't the only one she heard. She listened cautiously and thus was able to figure out there were at least two other people near her. One of them was clearly having trouble breathing. The other wasn't, but the pattern was still ragged and uneven, hitching every few breaths. As she listened, it slowly smoothed itself out.

Then there was the sound of cloth rustling, and the hand on her forehead slid upward, stroking her hair for a long moment before it withdrew.

"Sir? Do you think we should try to wake her the rest of the way up?"

"No, she's fine now and look: there's movement underneath her eyelids. She'll come out of it on her own when she's ready. We probably shouldn't try to force it unless she stops breathing again." There was a long sigh. "You know what's ironic? She's the one who taught me that."

"You know this admiral, sir?"

"Yeah." The dry chuckle came again. "Oh, yeah. I know her. But I have no clue what she's doing here."

There was something about that drawl, something achingly familiar, but she rejected her mind's first conclusion as being impossible and instead focused once again on her breathing. It was easier, now, and with a long sigh she let herself slide back into unconsciousness. Maybe she'd see the white light when she fully woke into the afterlife.

Except that nobody had ever told her the dead could dream.

The light, when it came, wasn't white. It had a distinct yellow-orange tint, and was so bright as to be blinding. She reached full awareness with her own scream echoing above an incredible roaring in her ears, feeling an excruciating tightness around her upper arms and under one knee. Hands? No, she thought. This was far too painful for that.

"Shh. Shh. It's okay. We're only trying to help you — damn it, Katrina! Stop fighting!"

There was a tremendous jolt near her tailbone, as if she'd landed hard, and then another one at the back of her head. She grayed out for a split second but came back almost immediately.

"…wasn't such a good idea after all, sir," came another voice. She'd heard it before, and recently. But it was nowhere near recognizable.

"Yeah, well, we can't just leave her lying on the deck like that." This voice, the first one, was the one she had recognized before, the one she'd assigned an impossible identity simply because it was the only way her mind could make sense of all this madness.

That was the most logical explanation, anyway, and the pain was beginning to subside into a dull throb, freeing her mind enough to start forming more coherent thoughts. She managed to push enough air through her lungs to whisper it out loud. "I'm not dead?"

"Ah, God." Another rustle of cloth echoed through her ears, and there was that pressure on her face again, the briefest trace of fingers against her jaw. Pain arrowed in its wake. "You're awake."

"Not dead." She made it a statement this time.

"No. You're alive." There was a sigh. "Though I don't know if that's actually the better option right now."

So that was why there hadn't been any white lights, any peaceful feelings, the end of any pain. It took an incredible effort to open her eyes, and an even harder one to keep them that way once the light burst in through them. She felt tears beginning to leak from them. "Lights. Down. Please."

"Would that we could. But it's not that bright in here."

"Very. Please." She closed her eyes again, trying to drag a hand up to cover them. The light. The light. Was this what Gabriel had gone through, after the Buran exploded?

A hand settled on her shoulder. "It probably doesn't help that you're looking right up at them. C'mon, Kat. We've got to get you sitting up. Can you move?"

Kat. There was only one person in all the galaxy who called her that. But he couldn't be here, her mind insisted. He couldn't.

Another set of hands fell on the opposite shoulder. "Are we going to try again, sir?"

"Yeah. You in, Katrina?"

But her legs wouldn't move. In fact, she wasn't even certain the right one was still there, although there was no question that the left one was. Every time she so much as tensed the muscles in it, pain arced from the hip to the toes. Had some sort of an electrode gotten embedded in it somehow?

Someone shook her, gently. "Katrina? Admiral Cornwell?"

"Can't…" speaking was still a tremendous effort. "My legs."

"All right. Just try not to fight us, then. Chen, on three. One, two, three."

It was inelegant, and she wasn't entirely sure they got her completely off the floor since she there were scraping and chafing sensations on her back. The electricity must have burned her skin. But it was also blessedly brief; a quick moment of motion, and then feeling support against her back as she was helped into a sitting position. She was panting as her arms fell weakly into her lap.

But she was also fully conscious and aware. This wasn't death. It wasn't anywhere close.

Taking a deep breath, she forced her eyes open one more time. Several blinks passed before she was able to actually focus them, but apparently the electrocution hadn't left her completely blind.

Or had it? She knew only one man who had eyes that blue: the same one whose voice spoke with that lazy, familiar drawl she'd already recognized.

Katrina had had no illusions about whether or not he'd follow her orders about dialing back, but it was far too quiet in here for active combat to be going on outside. Absent that, being in Klingon space defied common sense, and while he would ignore orders without a second thought, he rarely ignored that.

"Discovery?" she asked, still unable to do more than whisper.

Her companion, who she could now see was the older of two, shifted position and stretched his legs out. The way he moved was as consistent as his appearance and voice. Every bit of evidence supported it: this was him. Except that Gabriel Lorca had been the one who sent her out here in the first place!

"I doubt there's much chance of that," he said now, apparently not noticing her ruminations. "It's been what, three months? Four? I've lost track of time, but it's got to be at least that long. Starfleet would've found me by now if they were going to."

That statement made no sense, but words still weren't coming easily. "Ship."

He looked away for a long moment, visibly fighting for control, and when he spoke again his voice shook. "I had to, Kat. There was no other way. I might not have gone down with the Buran, but I made damn sure the Klingons only got one prisoner off of her. Just one." He raked a trembling hand through his hair. "Me."