Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009.
I'm dedicating this chapter to Sherrie H. for giving me the kick in the butt I needed to get started on the third installment of the Sister Series! Enjoy and please read and review!
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Something was wrong; he could feel it. The energies swirling around him, housed inside the confines of humanoid flesh, were changing. Weakening. Dying. He stretched the boundaries of his awareness and opened himself to the lives on the station. Yes. Yes, there was the problem. Many decks below, in the station's engineering section. Gases were flooding the surrounding sections too fast to counter and engineers were dying in an attempt to contain the disaster. But it was too late. Vapors from the deadly anti-matter coolant leak had already seeped into the environmental systems.
A decision had to be made.
Burrowed inside his borrowed home, he could feel the shallow rise and fall of his host's chest and sense the dreams blossoming from her subconscious mind in slumber. But she wasn't just any host. She was the one he needed, the perfect choice for the role she would eventually fill. But more than that…he cared for her. Over two years spent inside her warm, gentle and accepting mind had inspired deep fondness in him. And not just for her, for the boy too.
His people were natural observers and along with that role came strict rules of non-interference. But he had broken the rules once before and to save these two, he would again. In an instant, he seized control of the woman's body while her psyche slept on.
Under his direction, the woman's eyes snapped open and her arms threw off the covers. There was no groggy awakening, only alert and watchful attention. The natural grace of her movements was replaced by stiff efficiency. She moved swiftly into the adjoining room and removed the sleeping child from his bed, holding him to her with protective intention. Her pace quickened as she ran out of her quarters and through the dark corridors of the station.
"Mommy?" the child asked sleepily, jostled awake by the uneven movements.
"Go back to sleep, baby." The entity replied, using the same inflection and loving warmth that the boy's mother would.
"Where are we going?" the little boy questioned.
These questions were interfering with his single-minded determination and he could not risk the child's intuitive perception being focused on him. He extended the woman's hand and stroked the boy's hair, allowing some of his own energy to calm the child's mind into a deep sleep. The woman's body continued to run through the corridors, but the gases were spreading with silent and deadly efficiency. Many had died already. Many more would die. There was nothing he could do for them.
Finally, their destination was in sight. At the end of a long corridor was the outer hull of deck ten, where the escape pods were docked. But the gases had already flooded that corridor and the woman's lungs were gasping against the intruding poison. The entity pushed her through at a break-neck pace, all the while clearing her system of the toxin and repeating the procedure with every breath. She opened the hatch to the first escape pod; gas from the hallway immediately rushed in. The child was choking and coughing in his sleep as the woman lay him inside of the pod. It would offer little protection, though, if the gases were not evacuated from its environmental systems. The procedure could be done, but only from the outside. There was no choice now. The woman sealed the pod with her sleeping son inside. Ripping off the access control panel, the woman's fingers performed complex calculations and ordered the computer systems to vacate the poison gas from the pod. It was done and the boy was safe.
As for the woman, he would keep her alive. He knew he could. Her anatomy, while easily damaged, was also easily repaired. He laid the body of his host down in front of the pod's hatch and left the warm, safe space of her mind. He spread his energy over her body, saturating every cell and repairing her body continually. As soon as the gas caused damage, he fixed it. He processed the air she was forced to breath, filtering out and absorbing all harmful elements. Her consciousness remained unaware, even as her breathing became shallow and peaceful again. The entity within her continued to maintain her systems and he watched her dreams as she slept.
And he waited, patiently. He waited for someone to find them.