A/N: Thanks again to all of my lovely reviewers and followers! And now for the "morning after"...
9. Space Seeds in Unstable Ground
(Listening track selection: "Unstable" by Anberlin)
Catherine awoke on her couch late Sunday morning. As tempting as it was for her to go crawl into bed, she knew that she would probably only feel worse if she overslept. Sitting up gingerly expecting every muscle in her body to ache, she was surprised to discover that she felt fine. "That's odd," she thought as she stretched her arms above her head as she yawned.
"Wait a minute, what about my wrist?" she looked down at it after noting she did not feel it throbbing and that she had forgotten to put a brace on before she fell back asleep. She noted that there was no swelling or bruising. "Now I know without a doubt that I hurt it again yesterday. What in the world?" She then pulled up the legs of her pants to look at her knees only to discover that they were healed and that the scabs were already starting to peel off.
Catherine jumped off the couch and ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror. A small amount of dried blood remained in the corner of her mouth, but the split in her lip was gone. Her cheek had a pale yellow tint to it showing the remains of the bruising that should have been a fresh purple. "Okay, Catherine, you're either losing it, you were trapped in a time loop, or you're Rip Van Winkle," she thought as she lightly touched her cheek. "John?" Running into her living room, Catherine picked up her PADD and typed a quick message to Janice.
"Janice, please tell me what day it is!"
"Sunday, why? How are things? I haven't heard from you since last week when you got to London. Were you out clubbing or something?"
"No," Catherine typed as she confirmed the stardate on her PADD with Section 31's chronometers, "just lost track of time. Sorry I haven't had a chance to talk. I'll call you as soon as I can."
Catherine put the PADD aside and picked up the empty hypospray off the table where John had put it after he had injected her with it early that morning. Pulling the empty ampule off the end of the device, she looked at it closely noting that there was still a small amount of a dark red substance pooled and dried up at the bottom. She took a whiff and noting a deep iron scent immediately felt a sense of dread inside, "Blood?"
Grabbing her tricorder, she scanned the ampule and found traces of O+ blood from an unknown male human donor. "Dear God, he injected me with blood!" she dropped the equipment, jumped up, and started to pace back and forth. "Whose blood? His blood? Why blood? I didn't lose that much blood yesterday! What the hell?"
Catherine would have continued her panicked ravings if it was not for her stomach growling and protesting quite loudly causing her to take notice. She had come to the realization that she had next to nothing to eat the day before. Calming herself down she made a small breakfast and sat at her kitchen counter to consume it.
"There has to be a reasonable explanation for this," she tried to rationalize as she stirred some granola into her yogurt with a spoon. "Maybe I should ask Dr. Smith for help before confronting John."
After finishing her breakfast, she went to her desk and thought how best to address the situation before establishing a comm link with Dr. Smith. "Hello, I'm sorry to bother you on our day off," she apologized as he answered.
"Are you okay? You seem upset," Smith furrowed his brow noting she looked distressed.
"Well, something really weird happened last night. I think that it would be better if we discussed this in person," she looked down blushing.
"Sure, where do you want to meet?"
"I think the lab would be best."
Meeting at the cryogenics lab at the mutually agreed upon time, Catherine brought her personal medical equipment with her so that Dr. Smith could scan them in person to verify her concerns. She briefly explained the situation without going into detail about John's brutal training regimen and the event in the alleyway that had led up to him taking her home.
"He trained me so hard yesterday. As usual, I was clumsy and got hurt, scraped my knees and landed face first into the ground, split my lip," she lied. "I think I also broke my wrist again as it was very swollen and painful. I was so exhausted, and he ended up carrying me part of the way home. I had fallen asleep and woke up after he injected me with my hypospray. He told me it was just an analgesic for my pain, but I think he lied. Can you scan this empty ampule and confirm what I scanned with my tricorder?"
Smith quickly scanned the ampule and reported, "It is O+ blood from an unknown male human donor."
"That's exactly what my-"
"Wait!" he interrupted her. "My tricorder just synced with the Section 31 database. It matches a sample just added to the database last week. What in the world?"
"Whose blood is it?" she demanded he tell her. He turned the screen of his tricorder to face her, and she was met with John's personnel picture staring back at her. "Why would he do that?"
"Hold on a minute. You said that you were hurt, but I do not see anything wrong with you. Your wrist looks fine."
"I'm not crazy if that's what you're insinuating!"
"No, calm down, I'm not, but with all of the odd things going on around here, I want to do some scans on you to see if there were any negative changes caused by him injecting you with his blood."
"Okay, for peace of mind if anything," she agreed.
Dr. Smith led her into the infirmary and had her get onto the biobed. Starting up the sensors, he started by scanning her skin. "According to my scans, the skin cells on the surfaces of your knees are brand new. Same with your lip, only a few hours old but fully mature." He then scanned her wrist, "The scans show that, compared to your original ulnar fracture, there are new microfractures stemming from the original break that weren't there on Friday when I checked up on you, but they are completely healed. They look even better than if I had used the osteoregenerator on them!"
"Anything in regards to his blood?"
"Well, there are no diseases detected, so no worries there. Being O+, he's a universal human blood donor, and I detect no adverse reactions to your mixed human-Betazoid blood. In the grand scheme of things, it was, after all, a very small amount of blood," he noted matter-of-factly.
"But it still does not answer why he did it nor why my injuries practically disappeared overnight," she sighed. "I want to confront him, but I think it would be reasonable to wait until your DNA analysis is completed."
"I agree, there is no sense in making accusations just yet. Besides, the infusion did help you and did no harm."
"Yes, you can't argue against that," she admitted.
Catherine and John mutually distanced themselves from each other following their interaction at her quarters. Catherine carried out her scans on him with as minimal interaction as needed, and John busied himself with his work and largely ignored her presence. She could sense that something weighed heavily on his heart, and as much as she wanted to comfort him, she felt like part of her could no longer trust him due to him lying to her about with what substance he injected into her using her hypospray. Aside from the blood incident, she did not, however, sense anything else bizarre or mentally unstable about him, which made the incident all the more confusing to her.
One morning a few days later as Dr. Smith and Catherine worked together in the lab, they received a surprise comm signal alert from Section 31 headquarters in San Francisco. One of Admiral Marcus' staff members notified them that Marcus would personally be in London that afternoon to discuss the next phase of the cryogenics project with them. Dr. Smith was not even sure what the next phase entailed despite his leadership on the first half of the project.
Admiral Marcus arrived with two chief Section 31 staff members, a Denobulan physician, Dr. Zineeri, and a bioengineer, Dr. Uzumaki. After the necessary introductions were made, the group gathered in the small conference room attached to the lab and sat down to discuss the future of the project.
"As you are both aware," Marcus started out, "the cryotubes we discovered were found on the ancient Earth ship the Botany Bay. I had mentioned that these tubes, like the tube that we modified to use for Harrison, were unoccupied. What I failed to mention at the time was that there were other cryotubes that we found on board, and these particular tubes were in use."
"How exciting!" Smith leaned forward in his seat. "Any survivors?"
"Yes, most of the occupied cryotubes did in fact contain survivors."
Dr. Uzumaki picked up, "We never would have expected 300 year old technology to be so advanced let alone effective, but needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised."
"We, of course," Dr. Zineeri added, "have not yet tried to reanimate any of these individuals. We wanted to use the empty tubes to perfect our understanding of the technology and the methods they used before even thinking of attempting to try to do anything with one of the occupants."
"He is lying through his teeth. They have tried to reanimate someone. I wonder if they were successful," Catherine thought to herself sensing his deceit."This is where we come in, I presume?" she glared at the high-ranking officials sitting in front of her.
"Yes, Lieutenant Troi," Marcus smiled. "Your Betazoid intuition is correct. All of the tubes are actually being stored right here in this base in a secret warehouse vault, but for now, we are only going to have a couple transferred to your lab for you to study."
"Our objective?" Dr. Smith folded his hands.
"For now, we want you to monitor and study our sleeping friends while they're in stasis. And, ideally, we want you to figure out the safest way to reanimate them," Dr. Zineeri explained.
"We'll have a couple of the cryotubes delivered tomorrow morning, and, if those two don't work out, we've got plenty more," Marcus informed them as the three got up to leave.
"Wait, Admiral Marcus!" Catherine ran up to him.
"Yes?"
"What about John?"
"Harrison?"
"Yes, sir, Commander Harrison. Are we still going to be following him and monitoring for any long-term effects from his time in cryostasis?"
"Of course, yes, you will still be performing those tasks. Why do you ask?"
"I just wanted to be sure to have that clarified as I think it would be wise to continue to follow him," she felt as if she had just slightly lied as she was unsure of her intentions for wanting to continue to see John on a daily basis.
"Right, those are legitimate concerns as to why you should continue to follow him. Besides," he leaned in closer to her so the others could not hear, "I want you personally to keep an eye on him. He's been a little unstable lately, and you're the best person to keep tabs on him if you know what I mean."
"Yes, sir, I understand," she nodded her head.
"Let me know right away if there's anything I should know about," Marcus advised her before turning to rejoin his comrades as they left.
"Well, I'm excited about this turn of events," Dr. Smith noted after the pair were once again alone.
"Me, too," Catherine smiled. "Just think, people from the past! My history professors would be so jealous if they knew about this," she thought aloud before pausing. "I just don't like that they deceived us."
"I don't either. I really don't see the point of hiding that information from us beforehand."
"No, it's just another thing to add to my list of doubts about them."
"Do you think there's more going on here than what we've been told?"
"From the very beginning when they brought me on, I've had this sense that they're hiding something. And this new revelation only makes me wonder if there's even more they're not telling us."
The next morning, as promised, a set of occupied cryotubes was transported into the cryogenics lab. Catherine immediately set to work scanning one tube while Dr. Smith took a look at the other. The cryotube she had selected contained a tall woman of African descent. Catherine thought that she was beautiful but that she also looked strong and fierce. "She looks like she could have been a warrior," she thought to herself. Dr. Smith's cryotube contained a man of Hispanic heritage.
Ensuring that the two sleeping individuals were stable after the move, Catherine took her leave to go and do her daily check on John. Although she had kept her distance recently, she felt excited and found herself anxious to tell him about their new assignment. "Good morning, John," she slightly smiled after he had given her permission to enter his lab.
"Good morning," he flipped up the welding mask he was wearing before taking it off.
"What time did you start your work this morning? You look like you've been hard at it for a few hours already."
"I did not go home yet."
"You've been up all night? You're going to work yourself to death!" she sighed.
"I'm fine," he insisted before his stomach growled loudly.
"When was the last time you had something to eat?" she put her hand on her hip.
"Truthfully?"
"Yes, please be honest with me."
"I do not remember."
"John!" she put a hand to her forehead. "Sit down, I'm going to get you some breakfast," she instructed before walking out of the lab. She soon returned from the cafeteria with a tray full of food and a large cup of fresh Darjeeling. "I'm going to sit here and watch you eat everything on this tray," she threatened.
"As you wish," he sat down and started to eat some oatmeal.
"We'll have to get together and train again sometime," she commented as she watched him eat.
"Yes, we should, as long as your wrist is better."
"Oh, it's fine, good as new," she felt awkward and decided to change the subject. "So, what have you been working on?"
"Much of the same."
"I see." Sensing that he was not in a mood for chitchat, she sat quietly making sure he finished his meal. As he got close to finishing, she got up to start her scans. "Your heart rate and blood pressure are a bit high today. I'm detecting high levels of adrenaline. Are you feeling alright?"
"I'm fine," he lied as he got up to continue his work.
Following him, she pressed further, "John, you need to take better care of your health. I think you are experiencing too much stress and overworking yourself. Are you absolutely certain you feel fine? If Admiral Marcus is insisting you work like this, I can put in a word for you."
"Damn it, woman!" he snapped at the mention of Marcus and slammed his fist into a glass case covering a model of a ship startling Catherine. The glass shattered and blood began to drip from his clenched fist.
"John!" Catherine ran to his side and gently took hold of his forearm. "Come on, we need to get you back to the lab so I can tend to your hand."
"I'm sorry, Catherine," he apologized for his outburst. "No, please, it is not necessary. Here, I'll just clean it up myself," he went to a sink and began to rinse the blood off.
"No, there are shards of glass embedded in the tissue. Please, come with me. Let me help you," she gently put her hand on his shoulder. She felt him slightly shudder at her touch before he turned to look at her.
John left his hand under the running water as he turned and gazed into her eyes. Studying her countenance for a moment, he finally conceded. "Very well," he turned off the faucet as Catherine shrugged off her lab coat and gently wrapped it over his hand to keep it from dripping blood all over the floor on their way back to the cryogenics lab. "You're going to ruin your coat," he noted as she led him down the hallway.
"Getting the blood out should not be a problem, but if it is unsalvageable, I have plenty more." Arriving to the lab, she led him to the infirmary and had him sit on the biobed with his hand resting on a bedside table.
"Are you sure you can handle this? I thought only doctors could provide care for wounds such as this."
"John, all nurses are qualified to handle basic wound care like this. Have you been living under a rock?" she smiled wistfully as she got out her equipment.
After attaching an ampule of analgesic to a hypospray, she injected the medication into his hand near the open wounds. The worst of the bleeding having stopped, she gently began to extract the shards of glass from his knuckles holding pressure on new areas of bleeding as they arose. Performing a scan to ensure that all of the glass was removed, she then gently cleaned the wounds before using an autosuture device to close the open cuts.
"Your skin is going to be rather fragile the next couple of days, so you may reopen the cuts if you are not careful," she explained as she gently rubbed a growth stimulating cream on his newly repaired hand. "Would it help you to remember to be careful if I wrapped your hand?"
"That may be a good idea," he sighed.
"I was thinking," she sensed that he was relaxed and calm as she started to wrap his hand with some gauze, "that it might be good for you to get away from your lab for a little while."
"I have critical deadlines to meet," he started to protest.
"I understand that, John. It would not have to be a long time, just a couple of hours."
"What do you suggest?"
"Well, I was thinking that maybe we could go out for something to eat tomorrow night. I really have been craving Indian food and was hoping you could show me a good place to go. We could see if Dr. Smith wanted to go, too, that is, if it would make you more comfortable," she lightly blushed.
"No."
"Oh, it's okay, I understand," she frowned embarrassed at being rejected.
"No, I'm sorry. What I mean is that we do not have to have Dr. Smith come along. I would be happy to show you my favorite Indian restaurant," the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile.
"Thank you!" she smiled as she finished wrapping his hand. "Oh, I almost forgot! Admiral Marcus has us starting the second phase of our cryogenics project. You have to see this!" she took his uninjured hand in her own and gently pulled him off the biobed, out of the infirmary, and down the hallway. Entering her security code, the doors to the lab containing the two occupied cryotubes swooshed open. "You were only asleep for two months, but this man and woman have been asleep for around 300 years. Isn't it amazing?" she beamed.
John pulled his hand out of her gentle grasp and walked closer to the cryotubes. He stopped and studied the occupant of one cryotube before studying the other. With his back to Catherine, standing in between the two cryotubes and placing a hand on each, he bowed his head in silence. She could sense rage building inside of him, but she could not understand what was causing him to be so angry.
"John, what's wrong?" she asked quietly.
"This is wrong!" he shouted as he turned to face her with his eyes full of fury. "They shouldn't even be here!"
"We're not doing anything harmful to them. We're monitoring them and trying to find the most harmless way to reanimate them. They're safe with us," she tried to explain.
"How long, though, until Admiral Marcus orders you to do more? They are vulnerable in this state, and he could ask you to do anything to them in the name of science!"
"I wouldn't do anything to hurt them, and I wouldn't dream of allowing someone to treat them as animals either!"
"How do I know that?"
"John, don't you trust me?"
"You're just one of Marcus' puppets after all!" he fumed before storming out of the lab.
"No, John, please don't go!"she called after him as she started to cry, but her plea was too late as he was already gone. "He is so unstable, but I do not sense that this is his true nature. Something is wrong. Why would be so angry over a couple of strangers? Should I tell Admiral Marcus?"
