I do not own Star Trek 2009 or Supernatural
Enterprise
Lucifer loved it when his playmates hated him. He liked to imagine it left a tangible aroma in the air, a tension that he practically fed off as he tugged strings and ruined lives.
Right now, both Sammy and Spock hated him a lot. He preferred to think of it as denied love. He was a Renaissance man, someone who was enlightened enough to allow his darker desires to run free, unfettered. Someday everyone would understand how very liberating it could be.
He expected Sam and Spock would come around eventually, even if only in death.
Lucifer grinned widely at his captive audience. They were seated on opposite ends of the bridge, securely tied to the bridge railing as holographic Enterprise crew members bustled around them, flipping switches. Chekov sat at his navigation console, Kirk swivelled back and forth in his chair, Uhura chattered into the communications headset and Scotty's Scottish voice burbled from the speakers occasionally. "Pretty cool, isn't it?" Lucifer drawled, very proud of himself. The technology was still a little glitchy but he didn't think Starfleet would have the time to look close, especially when the Enterprise would soon be wreaking unholy havoc on her beloved Federation.
The thought gave him the most delicious shivers. He laughed and watched Sam Winchester flinch at the harsh sound.
Sam was starting to unravel and Spock was simmering.
Lucifer mentally took back his previous conclusion about boring Vulcans. Right now he wasn't sure who would be more fun. It was like choosing between decadent chocolate and fine wine.
Hopefully he'd get both.
In the meantime, he hummed happily as he poked and prodded at the Enterprise's vulnerable computer, rewriting formerly harmless programs into instruments of fire and destruction. The biggest bang would be the warp cores. Earth would get one. Probably Romulus. The new Vulcan colony, for sure and whoever else pissed him off. The planets would be rendered instantly inhabitable, millions screaming for a bare instant in their death throes before everything fell permanently silent.
Lucifer stripped a wire to the jaunty tune of Yankee Doodle. Of course the sensors had to be tuned to catch everything in slow motion. After all, these would be his finest moments and it would be such a shame if he didn't immortalize them on video.
Three hours and counting. Three hours to the end of the world.
Lucifer stopped humming and started whistling.
Romulan Shuttle
"All right, listen up," Cupcake ordered briskly. He was trying not to step on Dr. McCoy's toes as the doctor was technically the most senior officer on the expedition. At the same time, Cupcake recognized that Dr. McCoy didn't exactly dabble in planning away mission ops. Not that Cupcake thought he couldn't do it. But it was the security officer's job and it looked like the CMO understood that, silently sitting back with a neutral face.
The team sat up and listened attentively as Cupcake laid out the plan. It was straightforward and simple to counteract what was going to undoubtedly be very complicated countermeasures. Sulu had sharp eyes and solid danger skills – he had point with Cupcake. McCoy was set as middleman – the CMO might hesitate to shoot first but he was damn hard to rattle even under the heaviest fire. Chekov (whom Cupcake was beginning to privately think of as the crazy Russian) was settled beside McCoy, who would keep the kid on a sensible leash. Scotty would cover the back as the independent, pragmatic rear guard.
And the Impala's security team, solid and seasoned, filled out the rest of the formation. Cupcake had every faith in them, in the men following him. It was himself he was doubting. He tried to convince himself it was just pre-mission jitters, the type everyone except maybe Captain Kirk and Commander Spock suffered from.
A little niggling voice at the back of his head said he was lying to himself. He was in charge of the very impossible mission to save two captains, both of whom were wholly capable of pulling themselves out of situations that had killed far bigger and more indestructible men.
The shuttle scuttled across space without any problems, which had Cupcake frowning. He hoped the captor holding the captains was busy for the right reasons – i.e. Kirk or Winchester was merrily handing the bastard his ass on a shiny silver platter.
Alistair
Alistair scowled at the monitor. Captain James Kirk lived up to his rather impossibly impressive reputation. It had taken the clever human exactly thirty seven seconds to wire up an electric net capable of zapping the lethal poison drones chasing him. Then he had done something to the cameras Alistair still couldn't undo and he was currently staring at disturbingly blank screens as his computers ran diagnostic after diagnostic.
This wasn't his area of expertise. Certainly, he enjoyed watching prey run around like miserable, mindless rats in a pre-determined trap but his true passion was the personal touch, the closeness that allowed for him to practice his artistry. Like with Captain Dean Winchester. The thought of the brash man brought a thin touch of smile to Alistair's lips.
He was going to be Alistair's greatest piece.
As soon as Alistair managed to corner Jim Kirk. Kirk wouldn't be as beautiful when he was done, if only because Kirk had no family to twist him into a caricature of himself. But he would do for the experimental first subject.
Alistair scowled and punched a new string of code into the computer, smirking as the cameras flickered back on reluctantly. He decided to end this now. Alistair didn't like using the electricity grid but at this point, it seemed to be his only option.
He watched with deflated interest as Kirk jumped, shook and collapsed to the ground, jittering as electricity crackled through the entire station. Alistair shook his head. The only room in the station that wouldn't get zapped was the one Alistair as currently sitting in. The beauty of electricity was that by the time you noticed, it was already too late.
Sure enough, Kirk dropped like a stone and Alistair spun out of his chair.
Time to go to work.
Alistair allowed himself the liberty of gleefully rubbing his hands together. He couldn't wait.
Dean stared blearily up at the dingy ceiling. Clearly Alistair didn't care about making his guests comfortable. He also wasn't a fan of modern innovation – no easily shorted out force fields or laser containment. Dean was strapped down to a steel rack, broad flexible plastic cuffs holding his ankles and wrists down. Steel would have been a cinch to break out of, he cursed bitterly as his head pounded and various new bruises made themselves known. Sure, he would have lost some skin and probably dislocated a thumb, but he'd be loose. The plasti-stretch clung to his skin like a lover and he glared at the strong buckles holding the plastic together.
Blood and other bodily fluids were abundant in this room, probably left to stain the walls because Alistair liked it that way. Shelves and hooks hung from the walls, littered with assorted sharp implements, ropes, chains and several things that Dean couldn't even being to identify but looked suitably cruel and life-threatening.
Dean's stomach clenched in self-loathing and a very small dose of fear. He'd been an idiot and probably deserved to be strapped to the table for underestimating Alistair, for running into the station like a hero. His friends were in trouble and he had the stupidity to get himself caught by a sociopath who wanted to turn him into a Frankenstein or something equally horrific.
The door slid open and Dean craned his head up.
Alistair dragged a very limp Jim Kirk into the room by his thick blond hair. "I brought a playmate," Alistair grinned. "You can watch. I imagine you'll take comfort from knowing the process. He's just the guinea pig, after all. Unfortunately," Alistair shook his head sadly, "you won't be able to appreciate it in all its glory. I do have to start on you as soon as the first stage is finished on Jim here and I'm afraid it's rather painful."
Alistair's mad grin widened. "And of course I won't wait for your buddy here to wake up. He's been rather clever for a human and I don't need to chase him down again. It's so pedestrian." The Romulan hummed thoughtfully as he surveyed his inventory of torture. With smooth, practiced motions, he selected a pair of steel shackles and snapped them around Kirk's wrists.
It was effortless for him to lift a dead-weight Kirk onto a hook via those shackles, leaving the Enterprise captain to dangle helplessly, his feet barely touching the ground. Dean's body raced with adrenaline and he howled curses at his captor, spitting defiance, death and pure vitriol until Alistair laughed joyfully and Kirk groaned, slowly returning to the land of the living.
"Wakey-wakey," Alistair crooned and Kirk jolted awake. To Dean's immense satisfaction, Kirk tensed his entire body in a flash and a tough Starfleet boot crashed into Alistair's jaw like a freight train.
Still, it was a fruitless gesture and both captains knew it. Kirk slumped in his shackles, boots dancing about on their toes in an attempt to take the weight of his wrists. Dean resumed jerking on his restraints as Alistair picked himself up off the floor, blood-red rage in his squinty dark eyes. "There's no way we can talk about this?" Kirk joked feebly. Alistair picked up a cruel cat of nine tails whip, stained glass tinkling musically as the lashes quivered in Alistair's shaking hand. "I guess not."
He couldn't make up his mind to relax and try to block it out or tense up as was instinct. As he found out, it didn't matter much anyway. After the third strike, all Jim Kirk knew was pain.
Cupcake slammed a fist down on the shuttle door to keep McCoy from dashing out into the Romulan ship and the doctor glared at him. "That's Enterprise's shuttle!"
"It is," Cupcake said thoughtfully. "Chekov?"
"No sign of tampering, ser, on the shuttle or the bay around us. It is secure and safe to proceed forward."
Cupcake nodded. "Good. Let's move. Keep your eyes open."
The team spilled into the bay and towards the hallway. Sulu made it a bare ten feet down the hallway and threw up the signal for a halt. Confused but trusting the sharp-eyed pilot, the team froze. "There's something wrong here," Sulu muttered almost to himself. "The crack in the floor and the footprints – they're the same size as the captain's. He jumped about four feet across that patch of floor. Pavel?"
Chekov had already pulled a panel out of the wall, his personal PADD hooked into various wires and terminals as Scotty hovered over his shoulder, occasionally pitching in advice. "Oh, wery tricky," Chekov complimented dryly. "Lots of traps, lots of nasty things. I vill have the entire system shut down in five minutes. Until then, it is not safe to move forward."
McCoy had the PADD tracking the captains, compulsively checking on the limited stats available every thirty seconds. "Commander," he began calmly, but raw fear hedged further into every syllable. "There's something happening to Jim."
"Faster!" Cupcake ordered and Chekov cursed colourfully before yanking his PADD out of the wall.
"Go!"
Sulu led the charge as McCoy bellowed instructions in a roar designed to cut through the hubbub of an Enterprise medical crisis. Boots thundered down the passages and the security team easily cast wide phaser beams at the sluggish flying droids, most of them already singed by electricity of some sort.
"This door," McCoy finally growled, banging a fist off the stained metal.
Chekov didn't wait for an order, popping the door plate off and short-circuiting wires.
The door slid open and for the first time, McCoy took charge, elbowing everyone else out of the way with the steely determination of a doctor. Privately, Cupcake was glad the CMO was so determined to be first. He could admit he was afraid of what he would find in the chamber of horrors.
"Get in here!" McCoy bellowed and the rest of the team tumbled into the room, security remaining at the door.
A pitiful human figure barely recognizable as Jim Kirk under the blood smeared and dripping from his skin hung from the ceiling, body still swaying gently, breathing laboured and intermittent at best. Someone had beaten the shit out of the proud Enterprise captain, taken a whip to him and then methodically slashed and sliced at crucial points of tendon and muscle until bone gleamed beneath insulted red.
In the small corner of McCoy's mind that wasn't screaming rage and fear, he noted that someone had taken care to administer a coagulant as well as an irritating agent, ensuring that Jim didn't bleed out in seconds on top of being in excruciating pain.
The bloodstained torture rack was empty, cuffs flapping loose as Kirk groaned softly, clinging to a tiny thread of consciousness.
"Bastards," Sulu cursed, darting forward to wrap his arms around his captain's legs, taking the pressure of his arms. Chekov snagged a big security beef and promptly clambered up onto the man's thick shoulders to pick the lock. There was a buzz and the nimble Russian yelped, shaking a hand as the shackles fell open. Sulu and Scotty caught their captain with a grunt as McCoy went to work immediately. Trusting Sulu and McCoy to look after the captain, Cupcake wheeled on a slightly dazed Chekov.
"What was that?" he demanded.
"Electricity," the ensign mumbled. "Programmed the cuffs to hev a zap."
"McCoy, make sure the kid isn't going to fall over." When the CMO didn't budge from the comatose captain, Cupcake snapped, "Now!" His stomach may be tied in knots over Kirk but if Chekov conked out because of too much nastiness, they'd be very screwed. Sulu had been taking hacking lessons from the Russian but Chekov was their wizard.
To his credit, McCoy was quick but thorough. "Electricity. He's fine. Have him sit down for a minute. Now don't bother me."
Cupcake shrugged off the brusqueness and swept the room with a frown. "Where's Winchester?"
The security teams shook their heads as Scotty tweaked with the PADD McCoy had been carrying. "Someone's moving him off the station right now," the Scot snapped shortly, dispensing with cluttered formality.
"Scott, take four men and go. Sulu, I want you with them. Move!" Scott could command a security team as well as any and Cupcake was the only man big enough to carry the captain easily although he had no doubt McCoy would have found a way if necessary. On top of that, Sulu would keep them out of any last-minute traps.
Cupcake hoped they would make it in time.
Hell, he just hoped Winchester was still in one piece and breathing, he thought bleakly as he surveyed the mess that was his captain.
Montgomery Scott pounded through the space station looking very much like the berserker Scottish warrior he usually buried under the persona of an eccentric, amiable starship engineer. Sulu matched him stride for stride, face cold and hard as stone, katana already at the ready. "Jump," the pilot ordered shortly. The team did as ordered, lasers lashing out at ankle level a heartbeat later.
They made it all the way down to the shuttle bay, following Winchester's chip beacon and spotted a shuttle's doors sliding shut, saw a pale, blood-spattered Dean Winchster slumped against a shuttle wall and a dark figure sitting in the pilot's seat. "Ach, nae ye don't," Scott growled, pausing to beat the Romulan computing console into doing what he wanted. Sulu kept dashing forward as the shuttle door as alarms began to whoop and the shuttle bay shut down.
The shuttle rose into the cramped space of the bay and Scott cursed as he realized the thing was still armed. He had no way of shutting the damned thing down remotely and whoever held Dean Winchester captive could shoot the entire rescue team like fish in a barrel. Even though one of Jo's more kamikaze idiots carried a phaser cannon, there was no way of taking out the shuttle without potentially harming Captain Winchester.
So it was with admiring surprise that Scott watched Sulu scramble up the side of a grounded shuttle and bounce onto the landing skid of the enemy ship like a mad ninja. The pilot then proceeded to fiddle with something on the underside of the shuttle and pop the door open. With a disbelieving laugh, Scott and the team watched Sulu swing up into the shuttle. A few seconds later, it settled back to the ground with a complaining whine.
Sulu pitched the skinny Romulan out onto the hard bay floor without professionalism or kindness. "Secure him before I kill him," the pilot requested without emotion, still managing to convey the impression that he was a hair's breadth away from premeditated murder. Then he vanished back into the shuttle and Scott braced himself for more horrors.
He did not want to have to explain to Bobby that he, Montgomery Scott, had lost the captain Bobby Singer considered a son.
Impala (Romulan ver.)
"Cas, doesn't this bucket of bolts go any faster?" John demanded irritably, drumming restless fingers on his chair arm.
The pilot shrugged and poked inquisitively at a few buttons. "I do not know. We could always take the safeties off."
John winced. He wasn't that desperate. Not yet, anyway. He knew Dean trusted Castiel, Ash and Sam to fly the Impala without safeties but this was a Romulan ship, a new one at that and Sam was conspicuously missing.
That still didn't change the fact that he was gaining on the Enterprise at a torturously slow rate. As it stood, the Enterprise was going to be hovering in Federation space for seventeen minutes before the Romulan ship caught up.
Assuming of course that they weren't blasted into bits just on principle for a) flying a Romulan ship or b) being Starfleet fugitives.
With nothing else to do but wait, John took the time to wonder how this was his life.
Enterprise
If the captain were present to describe Spock's state of mind at the moment, he might have gone so far as to say the Vulcan was praying.
Praying Sam Winchester, his Impala equivalent in practically everything except copper-based blood, was still conscious enough to help Spock take the ship back.
Spock knew it was a gamble, knew that most Vulcans would consider him mentally unstable for relying on a semi-conscious human but something had to be done and he could not expect assistance from outside the ship.
Sam's head lolled on his neck as Spock tapped a finger gently against the floor. Dark hazel eyes swivelled about woozily as Spock stared intensely, knowing that Lucifer was far too busy giggling over his asinine plans to notice Spock's subtle movements.
Then Sam spotted the code. Morse code. Spock was keeping it simple and if anyone asked why he didn't use anything more imaginative later, Spock would offer to personally allow them the pleasure of his concussion and situation to allow them the educational experience in preparation for a similar position at a later juncture.
He yanked his train of thought back into line with rigid discipline, musing that as expected, concussions had a negative affect on his ability to think concisely and clearly. Still, Spock knew he was in better shape than a battered, emotionally wounded Sam.
Tap tap tap.
Sam slowly pulled his head up to rest against the post behind him and his unbroken hand tapped back in return.
Spock almost allowed his relief to break through. Sam was still coherent. Now what the human asked silently. Knock him out, Spock tapped back.
Sam didn't need a finger to express his incredulity.
Sleeping gas. Untripped prank planned next mission. Console behind you under keyboard.
Sam craned his head around gingerly, spotting the tiny spray capsule taped under Spock's science station console. When they got out of this, he realized with a thread of humour, he absolutely had to pester the story behind the prank out of Spock. Judging from the set up, all he had to do was bump the little thing.
His unbroken leg wasn't close enough. He'd have to convince his broken knee that it really did want to lift up enough to break the gas out into the open. How long he silently asked Spock.
Four hours. Sealed bridge ventilation systems while you were out.
Oh great, Sam cursed. So the bridge wasn't getting any new air. It was possible that they'd die in here when unconscious, without ever knowing they passed from the realm of the living.
Sam's eyes drifted from the bent-over figure of Lucifer to Spock, who shrugged.
No other choice.
Sam gritted his teeth and slammed the tip of his boot up to the console. He didn't have time to hear the little bulb break because his knee was driving him back into the darkened realm of unconsciousness.
Spock watched Sam slump to the floor and swallowed another heart-burning bubble of anger. How much more would his friend have to suffer, he wondered as he began to feel light-headed.
Then, to his satisfaction, Spock watched Lucifer's head snap up. Their captor took a few wobbly steps, glaring at Spock. The Enterprise's first officer wondered if the half-Romulan would manage to cross the room and kill him before the gas took effect.
But Lucifer wavered as his eyes rolled back in his head. Spock's anger clenched into a small twinge of satisfaction. Naturally, he knew his gasses and when Chekov asked for a highly effective, harmless gas, Spock had obliged (the rare book of Vulcan poetry had helped. Not that it was a bribe. Chekov explained the logic of purchasing and receiving very carefully. Spock had been impressed). The Russian had asked him for help with the prank, saying he just wanted to knock everyone out for a minute. With the highly efficient ventilation systems, the little bubble of gas should have cycled out in less than that.
But once the bridge was sealed like a coffin, the gas would circle around in its limited confines, the final defence of the Federation possible because of a childish prank between an ensign and his best friend.
Spock postulated that the conclusion was not as negative as it could have been. They had just bought the Federation a few more hours. Additionally, he now had empirical evidence indicating that 'pranks' were not, as the Vulcans had decided upon first contacting humans, a waste of intellect.
A faint smile curved his lips as his consciousness sank into oblivion.