10.

Spock sat on a chair in the lab they were being held in, his fingers lightly touching a jumbled spread of wires in front of him, trying to visualise the internal schematics of a standard replicator and reconcile his memory with the chaos he could feel in brief snatches under his fingertips. The task seemed almost impossible, but at least it had distracted their captors from locking them back in the small storeroom, or from threatening them – and at least it went some way towards distracting *him* from the overwhelming vulnerability he felt in this situation.

'This should be the link 17A to the primary molecule resequencer,' he said, running a wire between his fingertips.

'Er,' Kirk began. Spock could feel the bulk of him leaning in close to him, his breath warm on his shoulder.

'It should say 17A both on the cable and on the connection on the board,' Spock said patiently. 'The cable should be light blue.'

'It is light blue,' Kirk said. He hesitated, then said, 'Yes, it says 17A on the cable and the board – but it's been pulled out at the other end.'

'Yes, I know,' Spock nodded, rolling the raw end of the wire between his fingertips. 'You need to locate connection 17B and link the cable to it, being sure to pass it through the resonance coil just above 34E.'

There was hesitation again, and Spock sighed.

'Jim, I cannot find the resonance coil myself. It is too small, and feels too similar to other components. You must identify it.'

'What does it look like?'

Spock pressed his lips together in frustration, resisting the urge to say, *it looks like a resonance coil*. 'It – is likely to be grey, about one inch in length, and – '

'It's that, there,' a voice said from behind him. He had been conscious of someone else behind him, but he hadn't realised it was not one of their three captors until he heard him speak. This sounded like a teenaged boy – presumably the one who had set up the sensor shield. 'There,' he said, taking hold of Spock's finger and touching it to something. Spock ignored the discomfort he felt at the sudden, uninvited touch and let his fingertip move over the object, feeling the smoothness of the material and the ribbing down its length.

'I believe the boy is right,' he nodded. He turned his head towards him. 'If you could pass the wire through it for me – ? My hand is injured.'

'Yeah… I'll need an impulse solderer for the connection at the other end.'

'There is one on the desk,' Spock said.

The boy picked up the tool and moved in close to Spock.

'Does the molecule resequencer look intact?' Spock asked as the boy worked. 'If it is too damaged I am not sure I can fix it.'

'No, I think it's fine,' he said, sounding as if he was concentrating. 'There. That's that connection. I guess you'll want to do the heating circuits now?'

'Yes,' Spock said, tracing his fingertips over the wires again. 'Something is missing… The connection wire between the second resequencing module and its power supply.'

'There's a good supply in the cupboard over there,' the boy said, presumably indicating a direction with his body language.

'We will need at least twenty centimetres of Grade C insulated copper,' Spock said. 'It must be Grade C. If it is too fine it will burn out.'

'I'll go see what we've got,' the boy nodded, scraping his chair across the floor as he stood.

'The boy's good,' Kirk murmured to Spock as he walked away.

'His skill is extremely useful in this situation,' Spock nodded, feeling with great care along the maze of wires surrounding the heating circuits. Whatever Kirk's motives had been in suggesting he try to repair the replicator, he had certainly succeeding in dialling down the tension for everyone in the room, and passing the time with less tedium. 'I do not believe I could have managed this without help.'

'You think the shield generator he built is as skilfully done?' Kirk asked in a still lower voice.

Spock tilted his head a little. 'Before I had met the boy, I would have doubted it. Now, however, I am not so sure.'

******

*Everything is based on assumptions,* McCoy thought helplessly as he looked about himself on beaming down. They had to *assume* that Jim and Spock were still on the same continent, they had to *assume* that they were in the same city, they had to *assume* that their captors were weak enough in their defences that a rescue could be carried out.

Deneva did not look encouraging on this visit. Last time it had been like a film set waiting for the props people to do their jobs before the actors could come in. This time the streets were strewn with looted debris, windows were broken, doors kicked in. Redshirts from the Enterprise seemed to be swarming about the place, peering in through doorways and down alleys, swinging tricorders in wide circles, searching for any reading that might suggest a Vulcan and a human in confinement. He wondered bleakly whether this situation would have ever arisen if the ship's security forces had been deployed with such enthusiasm to help the survivors of the parasite infection.

He looked sideways at Christine. As she had dozens of times before where Spock was concerned, she looked composed and calm, containing her worry in a sheath of professionalism. But he had seen that professionalism crack. Hell, he had seen it crack just a scant week ago when they had operated on Spock to try to remove the parasite. Now, her emotions were closer to the surface than ever. But still, her face was composed and her bearing was steady as she took in the scene around her.

'You'd make a Vulcan proud,' McCoy muttered, not unkindly.

She looked at him, and said questioningly, 'Doctor?'

'That poker face,' he smiled, nodding his head towards her.

'I have a lot of practice,' she said dryly. There was a grim tone to her voice, but no trace of her earlier shaky anxiety.

McCoy nodded again, the startling realisation coming over him of how similar she was to Spock in many ways. He had seen her bury her emotions, again and again. He had seen her push aside personal feeling to perform her duty, tending to the injuries of her friends and comrades, even pulling up the sheets over their faces and manoeuvring the dead weights onto trolleys for the morgue, without her emotions interfering once with her ability to do as she needed to do. Inevitably he saw those bursts of joy or tenderness or sadness at times – but never to the detriment of her abilities as a nurse.

He smiled at her again, touching her arm briefly in reassurance, then looked about until his eyes fixed on Security Chief Giotto, who stood some way away staring at a datapadd.

'Commander!' he called in a ringing tone, raising a hand.

The chief looked up, then jogged over to him.

'Doctor, it's not advisable for you two to be here,' he said without preamble. 'We've already got one hostage situation.'

'Well, we *are* here,' McCoy said gruffly. Giotto always managed to rile him somehow – perhaps it was that stalwart adherence to the law of the phaser that irked him, or that he always looked straight to the captain without considering any other advice, no matter how expert. 'With full clearance from Commander Scott as acting captain. We might have another way to find Mr Spock.'

'All right, Doctor,' Giotto conceded in an unconvinced tone, looking over towards a small group of his men. 'You use your medical scanners, we'll use our security ones. We'll see who finds them first.'

'Fine,' McCoy nodded. He wasn't about to correct the security man, and tell him that in fact they would be using the Vulcan ability to form strong mental links during sexual contact to aid in the search.

'You're armed with a phaser?' the chief asked.

'Of course,' McCoy nodded, touching his hip to be sure, then glancing sideways at Chapel. She was wearing a wide black weapons belt about her usual nurse's uniform, and although her medical kit was fixed to one side, on the other side her hand was resting on the butt of her phaser with a determination that chilled him a little.

'Fine. Report in every half hour.'

'Mr Scott has already requested that,' McCoy said, a little stiffly.

Giotto nodded again, then turned back to his men and jogged back over to them. Chapel caught McCoy's eyes, and the brightness that he was used to lit her face for a moment as she smiled and said, 'Subtle, isn't he?'

'As a Klingon battle cruiser,' McCoy grinned back.

He had spent many hours in the last few days wondering what it was in Christine that had attracted Spock to her. He had settled for her intellect, her dedication to duty, her ability to control herself when needed – all things that Spock would admire. But perhaps it was also that same trait that seemed to attract Spock to Jim – the ability to smile and light everything up around her as long as the smile lasted. Perhaps, without the ability to make such gestures himself, Spock simply liked to be around someone else who could.

'Come on,' he said, touching her arm warmly. 'Let's find somewhere quiet and calm, and you can see if you can hear him.'

'How about over there?' she said, nodding her head towards a bench a hundred yards away that was both struck by the sun, and shaded from the eyes of most of the security personnel by a high concrete planter behind it.

'Looks perfect,' McCoy nodded, wondering just what *was* perfect for what they were about to attempt.

'Do you have any ideas on what to do?' Chapel asked as she sat on the sun-warmed bench. 'I've looked at lots of texts on the Vulcan mind techniques, but you've spent more time with Mr Spock than I have.'

'He doesn't exactly go around melding with everyone he sees,' McCoy said dubiously. 'It's a private business. It usually involves a desperate situation or a very close relationship.'

A slight smile quirked at the corners of Chapel's mouth as he said that, as if he had just given her a compliment.

'Just - try and find out where they are,' McCoy said. He didn't want to think too hard about the physicalities of the relationship that was obviously going on between two of his close friends.

She closed her eyes, her forehead creasing with the depth of her concentration. Eventually she shook her head in frustration. 'I don't know how to do this,' she said wretchedly. 'I don't know how to make the connection.'

'Well, it looks like you're trying to contact him with your facial muscles,' McCoy pointed out. 'Now, Spock never looks like he's making a physical effort. If anything he looks more relaxed – glazed, even.'

'It's – a little like trying to wiggle your ears,' she explained. 'You try, but every muscle *but* those ones start working.'

'Then maybe you shouldn't try so hard, Christine,' McCoy said softly. 'Just open your mind and let him come in. If I know Spock you're probably somewhere in his thoughts right now. He's capable of holding so many things in his head at once. Just try to find that part of him that's thinking of you.'

'All right, Leonard,' she said with a smile. She closed her eyes again, and let her mind relax…

******

In the lab, Spock straightened up suddenly, his eyes widening instinctively as a certain knowledge entered his mind. Nothing as crude as words, it was an intense perception of Christine Chapel's mental being, running into every thought in his head and replacing it with the essence of what she was. Then, just as quickly, it was gone, leaving him with a buzzing nothingness something like white noise.

Kirk's voice cut through the haze, asking anxiously, 'Spock? Did you touch something? Did you get a shock?'

Spock blinked, forcing himself back into this reality, saying, 'Oh – er – it was a wire, Captain. I pricked my finger.' He could not tell Kirk what had really startled him – not under the watchful eyes of their captors.

'Let me see,' Kirk said quickly, touching his hand. Spock let him lift it and examine his fingers carefully. 'No blood.'

'No,' Spock said distractedly. 'No, it startled me – nothing more. Francis,' he called to the boy beside him. 'Would you put my hand back to the pattern buffers? Circuit 7C.'

'Sure – it's just here,' the boy said, touching Spock's finger to the correct circuit.

Spock was still feeling wire by wire through the internal electronics of the replicator, determining what was and was not damaged, and how to fix it. The boy Francis was invaluable. He freely admitted he would not have been able to fix it himself, but he understood just enough about the workings to help Spock and to fix what the Vulcan could not manage without sight.

Spock slid his fingers along another wire in the sequence. They were close to finishing their task. This area of the replicator was relatively undamaged, and he was performing little more than a fingertip check, automatically comparing what *should* be there with what *was* there.

He set a part of his mind to continuing his task, and simultaneously relaxed his mental barriers, reaching out for that mind that had so obviously been reaching out to him. He caught the tendrils of her thoughts, slipping past him like mist. He latched onto them, focussing his mind, trying to grasp the thoughts as he would grasp the hand of someone falling from a cliff. Carefully he eased his mind closer, and closer, until suddenly….

He was overwhelmed with a relief that was not his own, and a happiness that felt like bright sunshine, and an abrupt unbounded urge to laugh out loud with the release of tension.

*Christine,* he thought steadyingly, impressing upon her the need to focus and control her thoughts. Gradually he began to pick up an idea of what was in her mind as the swell of emotions settled. The fear and joy and anxiety slipped away from the solid substance of what she was trying to communicate to him. She was sitting in a warm breeze and warm sunshine. She was with McCoy. She was searching for him. She needed to know where he was.

A feeling of helplessness washed through his mind at that, although his hands kept moving over the replicator wires without pause. He was sitting in semi-darkness, in the place where he had woken up from unconsciousness. He was not the one to ask.

Her reassurance came like a warmth spreading through his thoughts. He saw what he had already told her – the replicator he was working on, the lab equipment, the hollow sound that footsteps made on the floor in the large room. The scents of cleaning fluid and solder and wooden furniture.

'Hey!' Francis said suddenly, gripping his wrist and wrenching it away from the wires. 'You almost touched a capacitor.'

Spock blinked, then realised that in his preoccupation he had begun to rewire a damaged part as if he could see what was in front of him. Perhaps he would have been able to safely reattach the capacitor, but he could only be grateful to the boy for his observance.

'Thank you, Francis,' he nodded, removing his wrist from the boy's grip. 'Perhaps you could attempt that part for me?'

'Spock, what were you thinking?' Kirk asked as Spock moved sideways to let the boy in. 'You could've killed yourself!'

'I – confess I was not concentrating on the task at hand,' Spock said sombrely. He could still think of no way to communicate what he had sensed to his captain. He sat in silence for a moment, then said casually, 'The sun is bright, is it not? It must be a cloudless day?'

'Yeah, pretty much so,' Kirk said. Spock could tell from his voice that he had turned his head towards where he suspected the windows to be. So that much was settled. They were in a room with windows.

'But windy. I think I can hear wind in the trees.'

'Maybe,' Kirk nodded. 'We're just above the tree-tops, and I don't think they'll be very happy if I start standing at the window. I can see a wind-turbine going at a fair lick on the building opposite though.'

Spock raised his eyebrow at the amount of information he had garnered from that one statement. They were above the first floor level, they were reasonably close to another building, and there was a wind-turbine on top of it. Perhaps there were wind-turbines on every building, but if not the information could be vital. He considered asking the boy what the name of the school was, but he could already sense the suspicion from their captors. Asking innocent seeming questions about the view was one thing, but asking for concrete names and places was quite another.

'This is a physics lab, is it not?' he asked. The fact he could not smell chemicals and that there were the correct tools to fix the replicator pointed toward that fact.

'Hey!' Brown said suddenly. 'You're asking too many questions. What does it matter what kind of lab it is?'

Spock raised an eyebrow. He didn't want to give an emotional excuse, but it was one this man might understand. 'I am almost totally blind, sir,' he said coolly. 'Is it beyond you to imagine that I might wish for some description of totally unfamiliar surroundings?'

'Maybe so – but you're too sharp,' he said, moving closer. 'I'd rather you were kept in the dark. You're fixing that replicator. If you want to ask questions, ask about that.'

Spock pressed his lips together, then turned back to the replicator. 'Francis, what progress have you made?' he asked quietly.

'Capacitor's back in,' he muttered, sounding as if there was something held between his lips. 'Just – ' His voice suddenly became clearer. 'Just fixing the connection to the primary power switch. We – are in a physics lab,' he added in an undertone. 'It's the Advanced Study lab. I take classes here three times a week. And – I'm sorry you can't see.'

'It cannot be helped,' Spock said truthfully. 'If you have reattached the primary power switch, we should be finished,' he said. 'Unless I have overlooked something?'

There was a long pause, and Spock could feel the boy's focus and concentration increasing. Then he said, 'Nope, I think that's all fixed.'

Spock nodded, standing so he could run his hands over the front of the unit, reassuring himself that the control mechanisms were not damaged as well.

'Then perhaps you could attach it to the power supply and attempt a replication?'

'Yep, hang on,' he muttered, manoeuvring the unit across the desk. 'Better stand back – it might spark…'

'Perhaps the captain should – ' Spock began, moving cautiously backwards until his hands touched the next bench behind him.

'No, it's fine,' the boy said. A low electrical hum began simultaneously with the sound of a plug clicking into its socket. 'We should try some replications.'

Spock nodded, then turned to Jim. 'Captain, perhaps you and Francis could attend to that? I have found this process – quite tiring.'

'Of course,' Kirk said understandingly. 'You sit there for a bit, Mr Spock. Rest.'

Spock nodded, grateful that his excuse was accepted without question. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and focussed his thoughts again on that mind that sought his own mind out.

******

On the bench in the warm sunshine McCoy watched his head nurse intently, trying to work out what might be going on in her mind. Vulcan melding techniques had always made him uncomfortable, and the vacant look on Christine's face did nothing to dispel that feeling. He held out a scanner towards her, watching the readings as they came up. Pulse – slow. Breathing – slow. Brain activity – feverishly fast… No wonder Spock went on so often about the dangers of the meld with minds that were not Vulcan.

'Christine,' he said finally, in a low voice. She seemed not to hear him, and he put a hand on her arm, shaking her lightly, and saying forcefully, 'Nurse Chapel, report.'

She uttered a startled, 'Oh,' blinking slowly, before her eyes drifted closed again.

'Christine, have you got him?' McCoy insisted.

'He's – not alone,' she began slowly, as if she was talking in a dream. 'Three men – angry men – and the captain, and a teenaged boy. The boy's not a threat. The men have - phasers, and – some more physical weapons – perhaps a makeshift club or something. Brown, Artois, Shelley.' She was silent, then continued, 'He thinks they're in a school building. He's pretty certain of that. He's in a physics lab with wooden desks and chairs. There's sunlight coming in from his left – it's warm as well as lighter. The captain says it's almost cloudless. They're on the second or third floor – just above the tree-tops, the captain says.'

'Are they even in this city?' McCoy asked, suddenly realising how big their task could be if the hostage-takers had access to transport.

Her forehead furrowed for a moment, then she said, 'He – thinks it's most likely, but they were both unconscious when they were brought there. It's – it seems to be the same time of day. He thinks the brightness of the sun there would correspond to what we can see. The captain says there's a building opposite with a wind-turbine on top of it. Oh…' She shook her head, uttering a noise of frustration.

'What is it, Chris?' McCoy asked.

'I'm – no – he's frustrated, because he can't help but put an image to the things he's describing, and he knows it can't be the right image,' she said. 'He's afraid it's going to confuse matters. It's – it's odd. The classroom in his mind has Vulcan writing on the board…' She turned her head slightly, looking as if she was trying to recall a stray memory. 'He's trying to shut down his visualisation, but – it's part of how he's communicating to me. He's giving me images and feelings…'

McCoy put a hand on her arm reassuringly. 'Just – tell him he's doing well,' he said, suddenly struck with a surge of affection for both the Vulcan and the woman beside him. 'Tell him to keep trying. Let us know all he can.'

******

The trial of the replicator was met with startling success. Better even than scavenging around for suitable material to put into the matter converter, Francis had disappeared into the school's kitchens for ten minutes and come back with a bag of replicator pellets – completely inedible in their raw state, but with all of the precise elements needed to produce human food by replication. He had filled up the hopper with pellets, shut the cover, and picked up the first of a stack of discs he had found.

'Would you like to, sir?' he asked Kirk a little diffidently, offering him a bright yellow disc. He had struck up a remarkably good working relationship with Spock, but he still seemed nervous of the good looking, charismatic starship captain. 'It's just something simple, for testing.'

'Of course,' Kirk said with a smile, touching the necessary buttons, and waiting as the hum built and faded away. He opened the hatch and took out a plate containing nothing more than a crusty bread roll – but it was the most perfect bread roll Kirk had ever seen. He picked it up, and split it in his hands, forgetting for a moment that they had rebuilt the replicator at phaserpoint and only caring that they had *done* it. The roll was still a little warm from the processing, and smelt of fresh baked bread. He turned to Spock with a smile on his face. 'Spock, you did it! It works perfectly!'

The Vulcan did not respond, and Kirk stared at him for a moment, then asked, 'Spock, are you all right?'

Still there was no response. Spock simply sat on the chair, his face slack, eyes closed, his chest moving lightly up and down as he breathed. Kirk put the bread roll back down on the plate, and touched Spock's shoulder. Still he didn't respond.

Francis turned to look at him too now. 'Is he – asleep?' he asked curiously. 'Is that how Vulcans sleep?'

Kirk looked at the boy, then looked quickly over towards their captors. Brown and Shelley were sitting together at a table, playing some kind of card game with cards they had made out of the paper from text books. Artois was looking their way, though, his eyes narrowing. He stood up as Kirk looked over, moving across the room with the look of a cat stalking its next meal.

'What's he doing?' Artois asked, suspicion flooding his face. He stalked closer to the Vulcan, staring at him.

'He's resting,' Kirk said tartly.

All the same, he glanced at Spock again in concern, aware that the look on his face indicated something far different to resting. The only times he had seen a look like that before was when he was engaged in the Vulcan mind meld. This time, however, Spock was touching no one, moving his long fingers on no one's face. His hands were resting on his knees, almost totally relaxed, but for a slight tension about the knuckles. His face was blank, his eyelids unnaturally slack, but, like his hands, Kirk could see the hints of a tension in his lips, as if they were pressed together in concentration.

'What's he doing?' Artois repeated, moving closer. He had left his phaser on the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom, but his eyes lit upon a laser cutter on the workbench, and he picked it up, holding it tensely in his right hand. 'Hey!' he said sharply, shaking at Spock's shoulder. 'Snap out of it!'

Spock inhaled suddenly, his eyes snapping open, and he gasped as if he had just surfaced from the depths of the ocean.

'What was that?' Artois asked aggressively, turning the laser cutter towards Spock's face, his thumb moving nervously on the control dial.

The Vulcan seemed dazed. He moved his lips, but he didn't speak. Kirk realised he was barely aware of the seriousness of the situation. He didn't seem to realise precisely where he was, and he certainly could not be aware of the laser cutter inches from his face.

'Get away from him,' Kirk said in a growl, barging Artois sideways with his shoulder. The thought flicked through his mind that this could be an opportunity to turn the tables – grab the cutter and hold Artois as Artois had been holding them, before Brown and Shelley realised what was happening. But abruptly pain seared through his body, and he only connected it with the cutter that Artois held as he collapsed to the floor, the pain causing everything else to blank out around him.

Spock leapt to his feet, coming out of the meld-induced haze as if he had been slapped, turning towards Kirk just as Brown and Shelley closed the gap across the room and grabbed him from behind. He was not entirely certain what had just happened – all he could be sure of was that Jim was gravely injured, and unresponsive, and that he needed help, urgently.