AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many cannibal tribes do not eat human all the time; mostly it is for ceremony and they do not actively hunt other humans. Usually it is an elder, and they allow that corpse to decompose for several days before preparing the flesh to eat. The meat is fixed with oil and herbs and then roasted; it does not taste very good, but it is done for a rite and not for pleasure.

Bones reentered the Med Bay, he found the nurse on duty and was brought up to speed. He grumbled because Chekov's fever was spiking again, but other than that nothing had changed. Bones needed to rest he was exhausted, and hungry; he would be useless to Chekov if he didn't take care of himself. He checked in on the kid, who was busy working on his PADD, and he could see the pain etched on the youngster's face. He decided to let the kid work, and he went into his office and shut his eyes.

A few hours later he woke up to the sound of retching; he got up and saw Jim throwing up into a collection bag.

"Now what?" Bones asked. "You sick again?" He asked.

Jim shook his head looking pretty green around the gills.

"Oh he found out what the meat was they had fed him." Uhura was smiling, and looking very smug.

Kirk puked again very loudly.

"Well what was it?!" Bones asked.

Kirk turned to answer but his face screwed up and he hung over the bin again. "Get me stomach pump!"

"Apparently it was the flesh of one of their elders who had died several days ago…" Uhura started and Kirk puked loudly. "The let the body decay in the sun, and then prepared it for the festival." She continued. "Since Kirk is a leader he got to eat it, but not us, since that is the tradition." She finished.

Kirk rolled his eyes. "You're enjoying this too much."

"Oh stop it you big baby! Serves you right, though it doesn't explain why he's sick and you're…well not…sort of." Bones said.

Bones handled Kirk; while he was retching the CMO hypoed the Captain in the neck as punishment. Uhura visited with Chekov; she marveled at his glowing eyes; she had a nice visit, and she and the Ensign communicated fine. She filled him in on what Bones had done, what everyone was doing, and on what Kirk had eaten. Pavel had discovered he could still type in Standard on his PADD; he shared this with Uhura, Bones, and Kirk. After a few minutes Bones declared visiting hours over because the teen needed to rest, Chekov let himself have a little down time only because he knew it would be a few hours before Spock would have any biological results.

The next symptoms rocked everyone world. The Ensign couldn't bear light higher than 20% and he couldn't speak at all. Whatever was attacking him was wreaking havoc on his brain; Bones wondered how he would be able to examine the kid in the ambient light. The rash had spread and was glowing making him look like a glow stick. What was most troublesome was that his fever was spiking; it was rising into the danger zone.

Chekov was starting to feel like an animal in a zoo, but he didn't blame anyone when was the last time you saw a human glow from something internal. The room felt like it was over 100 degrees, but he knew it was really him. He was looked at the data of the glitter; it was a bacterium of some sort but on initial observations of its' neutralized form it seemed benign. His equations utilized the cross table data of and called out similarities between it and cyanobacteria, as well as similar alien species from across the galaxy. He then thought about the fact that Captain Kirk ate an alien race; he let that thought mull around in his mind, and he reasoned that their new inductees to the Federation were cannibals.

Spock was in the room watching him from a spot beside the bed; he noted that the human was sweating, and he could feel the heat rolling off his skin. He had tried to let him rest, but Chekov insisted he was fine and that he could think fine despite the fever and pain. Bones reentered the room and sighed.

"You know you didn't have to deliver the data in person; as I understand all these things are connected." He said while shaking his PADD.

Chekov looked up, and after a moment his eyes got all wide.

Spock nodded. "I wanted to see his symptoms myself, it is truly fascinating."

Suddenly Chekov got excited he tried to show them what he thought about; there was a connection between the ceremonial meat and the bacteria glitter. Spock and Bones did not understand his gesturing; he rapidly tried to type out what he was thinking, but he kept making typos. As he was finished up he started to feel strange; it was getting hard to focus, and see. Alarms started to go off behind him as he felt like he was falling into a black pit. He struggled to get his limbs to work to give the PADD to Spock or Bones. His head became a white hot helmet of pain, and then he knew no more.

The Commander and Doctor watched as the Ensign became excited; he had tried to pantomime what he had come up with but neither man got what he was trying to show them. Quickly the teen was typing on his PADD when the alarms on the bio-bed sounded off; Chekov's fever had reached a dangerous high. The teen started to convulse and his PADD slipped off the bed and on to the floor; Bones called in his staff and one of the nurses pushed Spock away so they could work. Spock watched the medics, and he wondered what the youth had been trying to tell them. Spock moved forward and collected the discarded PADD; he over road the Ensign's password and security scan with his own Authorization code. On the PADD was a detailed explanation; typed by the young man, Spock looked up wide eyed. The human was truly brilliant; Spock left to verify the findings.

Bones and the nurses injected the teen with anti-seizure meds and more fever reducers. They needed to lower the kid's temperature before his brain roasted in his own skull. Once he stopped convulsing, they moved him from the bed in to a cool bath and monitored his temperature. It had dropped some, but the kid had fallen unconscious which worried Bones to no end.

"Come on kid, don't you give up on me, I still need to ask you about your childhood." Bones whispered while holding on to Chekov's head so it didn't fall into the water. "Were you born? Hatched? Made in a laboratory somewhere in Siberia?" Bones continued. "I order you not to die, and I never order anyone to do anything. I'm just a simple country Doctor from Georgia who hates space." He told the comatose teen. "But if it means anything, as the Chief Medical Officer, I command you NOT to die" He finished.

He used a cooling cloth and pressed it to Chekov's head; the kid was still too damn hot. The teen had lapsed into a coma, but Bones honestly hoped he would have replied in Russian, or even just nodded his head. After many touch and go hours, Chekov's temperature dropped enough, and he was placed back on the bio-bed with strict instructions to monitor him closely.