The away team moved cautiously through the lightless dome, each door the encountered hissing open automatically, each corridor narrow, with the ceilings high enough that they were almost beyond the reach of the torch lights. Their own bodies cast long, distorted shadows against the gently convex walls.

Following the route traced out by the scanner, they moved towards the life-sign, eventually arriving at a sealed door, their target reading a few metres beyond it. Unlike the other doors, this one did not open automatically. Neither did it open when Trip experimentally tapped at something resembling a key pad.

"Can you open it?" Phlox prompted the engineer, who was considering it ruminatively, while Malcolm was engrossed in trying to make sense of the readings in the room beyond.

Trip considered the controls with a half frown and reached into his kit for a hypo-spanner. "Should be able to…"

"Wait," Malcolm called suddenly. Trip and Phlox turned to stare. "I think I might know the code," he continued weakly under their glares and then reached for the key pad, each consecutive symbol only occurring to him after the last was entered.

Trip sighed and turned away. "Fucking hell, Malcolm. You are so fucking quarantined when we get back…"

Trip's voice died away when the door hissed open and Phlox's torch light illuminated the space beyond. The engineer started forward at the sight of another child, which could have been the twin of the one they had just met, bruised and dirty, and anchored to the floor with a heavy chain.

Malcolm was only just able to stop Trip in time, catching him by the waist and pulling him back so sharply that they almost both ended up on the floor. No longer blocked by the heavy door, the readings had coalesced on his scanner, but, if he was honest, the realisation had sprung into Malcolm's mind before he'd had time to take in the readings on the screen.

…Intense heat. Rushing air….

"Pressure plate," he whispered sharply to Trip as he helped him upright and pulled him back a few more steps away from the edge of the thing. The child before them trembled at the sound.

"Wired to what?" Trip asked in reply in the same low tones.

Malcolm didn't answer aloud, but held his scanner up for Trip to see while blocking Phlox's ingress into the room with his other arm. The scanner showed that under the floor there was a pressure sensor and a large volume of explosives.

"Oh, I've never seen an Andorian before in real life," Fabrecia said, as she helped Liz, in her bulky suit, lift the child into the 'pod. "They look bluer in pictures." Then she smiled down at the child. "Hi there, kid, what's your name?"

"He's Aenar," Liz explained, opening her helmet to enjoy a few minutes of 'pod air, before she would need to trek back across to the dome. "We don't think he can speak. Or see, for that matter. But that's normal for Aenar. He seemed to sort of communicate psychically with Lieutenant Reed before, although, honestly we aren't really sure what happened."

"Oh. You must have a name, though," Fabrecia said, then catching sight of the wound on the child's abdomen she gasped. "Oh, how did this happen?"

The ailing child leaned into Fabrecia's arms and, without thinking, she reached to brush back some silvery white hair from his face. As her finger tips brushed along his forehead, Fabrecia was suddenly overwhelmed with the sensation of falling and a heavy painful sensation in her abdomen; pain that shattered almost immediately as if it had never been.

Struggling to catch her breath, she realised that it was a memory;

...

when she had been about twelve years old Fabrecia's feet, clad in her new silvery blue shoes, had become tangled on the stairs and she had fallen forward into space. She had collided with her mother's arm, outstretched to catch her. The force had been enough to fracture the arm and her mother had missed five nights of gigs before it was fully healed, an event significant and unexpected enough to derail the precariously balanced family finances and almost see Fabrecia ejected from flight school. She had never been blame, but still shuddered at the memory.

...

"You fell," she whispered through dry lips. "You fell and collided with something."

Weak and feverish, the child did not visibly react, but Fabrecia knew somehow she was correct. Something else appeared in her head as well. A string of symbols in an unfamiliar script. If it was a name, she did not know how to read it.

"Are you okay?" Liz asked, voiced heightened in alarm.

"Yeah, I think," Fabrecia said. "That was a bit weird, but I think it's over now."

As she pulled herself straight, the shuttle's comm unit, honed tightly on the EV suit frequency band crackled to life.

"Ensign Boschmann, you there?"

"Receiving you, Commander. Crewman Cutler and the child are here."

"Good. We've got a problem though, Ensign."

Fabrecia frowned. "Sir?"

"Another child. This one chained to a bomb."

Fabrecia fought a sudden urge to clamp her hands over the ears of the boy in her arms. "I take it, you aren't speaking figuratively, sir? What do you need?"

"We need Cutler back. And I'm grounding you until we know what we are dealing with. I don't want this thing going off while you're in the air above us."

Fabrecia cast an anxious eye over the child. Deep blue blood was now seeping through the dressing, pooling visibly under the impervious outer layer. "I can alter my flight plan, sir. Take off away from the dome?"

"Put a pin in that for now, Fabrecia. Keep an eye on a med scanner though. We'll risk it if he starts getting worse. And send Cutler back, ASAP."

"Copy that." Fabrecia looked over toward Cutler, to ensure that she had heard and was surprised to see her attention elsewhere.

"Did you feel that?" Cutler asked, brow furrowed, when their eyes met.

"Feel what?"

"I thought I felt…I don't know. A vibration?"

Fabrecia's eyes widened as she spun to look at the dome, but it appeared unchanged. Shooting a reassuring smile at the boy, who she'd momentarily forgotten couldn't see, Fabrecia leaned on the comm.

"Shuttlepod 2 to Commander Tucker?"

"What's up, Boschmann?"

Sighing with relief, she explained. "Crewman Cutler said she felt a vibration. I wanted to check that…"

"It wasn't us. Anything on 'pod sensors?"

"Sensors are still off sir," Fabrecia replied uncertainly.

"Of course they are, Ensign. Sorry. Have you…"

"There it is again," Cutler said sharply, and this time Fabrecia felt something as well.

"Still there, sir? We just felt it again…"

She was interrupted by a beeping sound from the 'pod's console.

"Sir, we have an urgent message from Commander T'Pol from junction F56-R."

Jon, only a few minutes returned from that very place, turned from his moody contemplation of the viewscreen to face Hoshi. The ship-wide comm system was still deactivated, but in recognition of the impracticality of transporting messages by PADDs around the ship, a simplified text based communication system was in operation. It was not as secure as Jon would like, and took some getting used to, but it was at least serviceable. "What is it?"

"She says that the latest sensor sweep of the planetoid suggests an increase in seismic activity near the location of the dome. She's in the process of taking another scan, but…"

"You said we have an emergency protocol in place for contacting the away team?"

Hoshi nodded. "Yes sir. Morse code, sir. On a pure, unvarying frequency. It's our belief that the telepresence technology relies on complex subspace frequencies so, in theory at least, it's safe."

"Then let them know. And send a message to Lieutenant Hess. Tell her I want the transporter targeting scanners isolated from the main computer as soon as possible, and additional firewalls around the pattern buffers. Tell her an operational transporter is her first priority."

"Aye, sir."

A fucking earthquake. Unbelievable.

"Shuttlepod 2 to Commander Tucker?"

Trip heard Malcolm mutter under his breath at the interruption. Together, they were trying to piece together the details of the explosive device without the need for closer scans, which, Malcolm was highly concerned, might trigger it. The hope was that they would be able to disarm it, or at a minimum, be able to move onto the pressure plate to render first aid to the obviously injured child. Phlox and Cutler were bunkered several rooms away for safety.

"What is it, Fabrecia?"

"Sir, we've had a message from Enterprise. 'Beware increasing seismic activity.' About a minute ago"

Trip locked eyes with Malcolm. "An earthquake going to trigger this thing?"

"I would say it's a distinct possibility, yes," Malcolm replied tersely.

"What do we do?"

"Finish before one hits."

Trip exhaled, surveying the child's eerily translucent skin. Not allowing himself to notice the heart-rending, cherubic face, or the tiny clenched fists. "There are four other children in this building, as well as the four of us. What happens if this thing does go off?"

"The initial blast would kill anyone still in this room, from what I can tell. The walls are heavily built so it shouldn't spread much more than that, but…"

"But what?"

Malcolm sighed. "But the hydraulics…..right through all the walls there are these hydraulics, maybe they have some sort of other purpose, some sort of circuitry? But the point is that they're flammable…fuel. And with the high oxygen levels, there's amble oxidant…"

"….and with an explosion for ignition, we are three for three. There's that fire you were worried about," Trip finished tersely. "So what do we do?"

"His arm is broken…. Badly. He turned a little before and I'm pretty sure I saw bone."

"What do we do, Malcolm?"

"We get the other children out first, the rest of you leave the building…and then I try to figure something out."

"The remaining four are through there."

Faced with another door that would not open, and having left Malcolm, unfathomable code guessing ability and all, tensely monitoring the explosive apparatus, Trip turned to Phlox and Liz. "Either of you care to try to guess the code to this one?"

After a tense grimace from Liz, and no notable reaction from Phlox, he set to work on the hydraulic lock, prizing of an access panel and immediately making a mental list of tools he wished he had brought when confronted with the labyrinthine workings behind it.

"Door's warm," he murmured after a moment.

Phlox consulted his scanner. "Indeed Commander. The ambient temperature is considerably higher in the chamber beyond. Approximately 45 degrees Celsius."

"45, huh? That must be pretty uncomfortable for kids from the pole of an ice moon."

"From the little experience we have with Aenar, it would appear that they, like Andorians are capable of tolerating a relatively wide range of temperatures," Phlox observed mildly. "However, it is curious. It would take energy to heat this chamber to this temperature and it has presumably not been done for the comfort of the children within it. Are you alright, Commander, you yourself look a little heated?"

Trip smiled grimly, tilting his head to try to follow the path of circuitry beyond the small access panel and up into the wall. "It's not the heat, Doc. It's more the fact that I'm working on circuitry the likes of which I've never seen before and I've got an officer and a kid sitting on a bomb a few rooms away and the ground itself could be getting ready to open up and swallow us."

"So you would say the circuitry you see here is unlike the circuitry which you and Mr Reed saw aboard the Romulan Drone Ship?" Phlox replied. "I would have assumed it would be similar."

Trip sighed through the hypospanner he was currently holding between his teeth. "Sure this is similar in the same way that a warp engine is similar to a toaster oven."

"Oh? My understanding was that the drone ship was particularly sophisticated."

"Not really. I mean the telepresence transceiver unit was, obviously. And the multispectral emitter and weapons were a sight to see. But most of ship, the relays controls, and nuts and bolts were pretty basic. Like they were fixing to turn out a few thousand of them. Whereas this circuitry on the other hand seems to have some sort of complex, three dimensional, sorta-isohedral superstructure, which... Wait a second, Doc. Are you actually interested in any of this?"

"I did ask, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but... You aren't, are you? You're trying to distract me from thinking about how many of us are going to be killed if I make a mess of this, or if my hand slips..."

Phlox raised his eyebrows. "Well, I do have something of a personal interest in preventing that explosive from detonating. Perhaps not to the same extent as Mr Reed, but, if I were to have my preference..."

Trip carefully redirected a circuit, not entirely certain that this relatively simple solution would be effective. To his delight however, the lock disengaged with an audible thud. "That oughta do it."

Without the aid of the hydraulics, it took most of their strength to pull open the heavy, uncomfortably hot doors, after which they were all but struck in the face with the not only stiflingly warm but also oppressively humid air. A moment later a fetid, sulphurous stench bombarded their nostrils. Liz doubled over, gagging and soon retched up a small volume of clear fluid, the thin acidic odour of which actually managed to improve the noxious miasma.

Trip, his faced turned instinctively from the noxious air, heard Phlox's exclamation before he'd had a chance to survey the room beyond. However, the ludicrously restrained "Oh, dear" did nothing to prepare him for the sight.

About the size of a cargo bay, the space was filled with rows of ovoid pods. Judging from the six clustered to the away team's right, the pods were supposed to be a glowing translucent white and lit with a gentle glow, the fluted bases and tops somehow grown into the honeycombed structures in the floors and ceilings. Within those four of those six, they could just make out the forms of antennaed children, floating serenely in the milky liquid within. But the other pods - and Trip was unable to stop himself from counting ten rows and twelve columns - the other pods, were darkened, putrid and dead.