Old B-movie instrumentals played in the background.
Taking in all the details, B'Elanna could see a black-inked spider drawn on Tuvok's forehead as he returned from the office where he had Satan's Robot occupied at the Doctor's computer terminal. He was dressed in some weird robe, obviously something out of the Proton holonovels.
"A spider minion," Harry explained. "We activated the holograms to make him more comfortable."
"This is ridiculous," B'Elanna said. "Captain, you seriously think this..." she trailed off when she turned to the Captain, who had been transformed into Queen Arachnia by sickbay's hologrid.
B'Elanna glanced down at herself. She wore a skimpy genie costume and a belly-button ring shaped like a model of an atom.
Harry looked her up and down.
"Unattainable, Ensign," Seven reminded him.
"They did the right thing." Janeway circled around, clearly amazed at the detail.
At the sound of the Captain's voice, Tom started breathing heavily and his hands began to tremble.
"Easy Captain," Harry put a comforting hand on Tom's shoulder. "Remember the plan to rescue the princess," he said in a conspiratorial tone. Then, loudly: "Arachnia, you will never get away with this! You're pheromones are no match for Captain Proton's Thunder Rocket of Deliverance!"
B'Elanna heard Chakotay let out a quick snort behind her, but she kept her glare on Harry, who could barely keep a straight face.
Harry diplomatically averted his gaze from B'Elanna by turning to the Captain expectantly.
"You forget, Buster," Janeway chimed right in. "The princess is still in my possession under the influence of my pheromones. Disarm the rocket, and I will return her to you unharmed."
"Alright, that's enough." B'Elanna looked at Seven. "Where's the Doctor?"
"He may be closer than you think, Lieutenant. Now, excuse me while I disarm the proverbial rocket." Seven altered the frequency of the neurostimulator and circled around to the head of the bed to get Tom at a different angle.
"Seven had to download the Doctor into her implants," Chakotay explained.
B'Elanna just looked at Chakotay like he grew a new head. Why would she do that? She decided it best to just focus on her own problems.
"Why are all of you even here?" She circled the surgical bay behind the Doctor/Seven and Harry. "Since when did this become an opportunity for a holo-romp with the entire staff?"
Tuvok followed her. "Lieutenant, try to stay calm."
She turned towards him defensively. "I don't want to stay calm. I want all of you gone."
Tuvok inched his way even closer. The spider on his forehead began to morph into a Klingon cranial ridge. "You're going to have to trust me, B'Elanna. Tom is in the right place. It's just a matter of getting you there as well."
B'Elanna stepped back. "Where's the neurogenic interface?"
"You mean this?" The Doctor/Seven flipped it up like a coin. He snatched it out of the air. "I'll give it to you under one condition."
"What condition?"
"That you take a shot, Lieutenant. Just a mild sedative. Something to calm your nerves."
"The Doctor's right, B'Elanna," Janeway soothed.
Tom's heart monitor began to spike again when she spoke. Janeway quickly shut her mouth and looked to Harry for help.
"Uh... Arachnia!" Harry looked back apologetically. "You leave the princess alone! Better test that medicine, Mr. President. Make sure it's not more of her dirty pheromones!"
The Doctor/Seven rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. "Very well. Hold this." He handed off the neurostimulator to Harry and picked up a nearby hypo insert. "Yup. Looks clean to me." He tossed it over Seven's shoulder and it splat against the wall.
Tuvok ducked in time to avoid getting hit.
Recovering quickly, Tuvok stepped closer and B'Elanna couldn't keep her eyes off Tuvok's forehead. "Trust me, Lieutenant."
B'Elanna stopped moving back when she hit the wall. Tuvok stood right in front of her, blocking her view of the rest of the room, and somehow, in all that mess, he produced a hypospray.
"Get that thing away from me." She glanced from left to right, in search of a clear escape. There was nowhere to run.
Tuvok reached up and, with one hand pressed the hypospray to her shoulder, and with his other hand passed a small metallic device to her.
B'Elanna could feel her knees weakening. She slid down the wall until her butt hit the floor. She glanced down at the Klingon insignia she held.
Before she could say or think anything else, a blinding white light surrounded her. She wished someone would just tell her what the hell was going on...
xxx
Captain Kathryn Janeway had played many roles in her life. Science Officer. Captain. Queen. She never expected that playing a silly holodeck character might one day save someones life.
Particularly the son of Owen Paris.
Owen had saved her life on more than one occasion and she thought herself to be a guardian, of sorts, to his son. She owed it to him. Not only to help save his life, but to reintegrate him into Starfleet and convert him into an exemplary officer. She realized she had been criticized for being so hard on Tom in the past, but where he was concerned, she prided herself on doing what had to be done to ensure he never regressed back to what he was before.
It worried her on quite a few occasions that Tom had developed an interest in B'Elanna and eventually married her. She was fierce, intelligent, and brave, but sometimes B'Elanna didn't exactly make the best decisions. Although B'Elanna had never done anything to put the ship in jeopardy, she was still wildcard.
Kathryn was relieved that Tuvok had sedated her, but she was a little bit stunned that he had gone so far as to put her to sleep. It made her nervous. How long could they sustain Tom's life until they were able to safely wake her up?
She pulled herself away from the hologrid panel she had opened right after that energy surge. The whole room had turned into one big, bright white light. She wanted to know why but couldn't find an answer.
She motioned Tuvok over to where she joined Chakotay. Keeping her voice low enough to not frighten her con officer, she asked, "Vorik's still confined in his quarters, right?"
Tuvok raised a brow and nodded. "I could check to make sure."
"Don't worry about it. It was probably just an overload in the hologrid. Sickbay was never meant to sustain this much holographic activity. Was Satan's robot really necessary?"
"It was Ensign Kim's idea. He may have gotten a little carried away."
Kathryn glanced over at Harry. He glared back at Tuvok, clearly annoyed.
"I'm going to go run a diagnostic on the sickbay hologrid while we're waiting. It'll give me something to do to keep my mind off this whole mess."
Tuvok nodded. "Shall I have Ensign Kim assist you?"
Kathryn shook her head. She didn't want to have to cope with Harry's concern as well. "I'll have Chakotay assist me. Have him stay with Tom. His presence seems to have a calming effect on him."
"Understood, Captain. Anything else?"
"Contact me when the Doctor is finished. I want to talk to Tom before we put the neurogenic device back on her." With that she motioned for Chakotay to follow her into the corridor.
Something didn't seem right at all.
"Opinion, Commander?" Kathryn asked as they headed towards the lift.
"They shouldn't have sedated her like that."
She could tell by his stiff demeanor that Chakotay was pretty ticked. "I'm not going to argue about this, Chakotay. B'Elanna needed to calm down."
"Then let's not talk about it, Captain. Clearly we aren't going to agree so it's better to just drop it."
They both entered the lift. "Bridge," she said.
Chakotay wasn't just ticked. He was royally pissed. She hated when he would do this; how he would make her feel so small for making the correct decision. Even though she wasn't the one to physically sedate B'Elanna, she decided she might as well own it since that's what she would have done anyway. "It's what's best for Tom," she told him.
"What about B'Elanna?" Chakotay shot back. "What's best for her? When does she get her moment of clarity?"
"Chakotay…"
He blocked her from leaving the lift when it halted. "We're not in the business of imposing our terms on the sex lives of our crew, Captain."
How could he say such a thing? Kathryn just glared at him to keep the shock from spreading across her face. She always prided herself on steering clear of that kind of business. "Are you finished, Commander?"
Chakotay nodded and stood aside. "I've been finished."
Kathryn stalked past him, went to the ops station, and quickly began her diagnostic of the sickbay hologrid. She stopped caring if he was going to help or not.
xxx
B'Elanna expected to be knocked unconscious. But sometimes what a person expects and what a person experiences are two different things.
She had been injected with a placebo and then transported.
She glanced around, taking in the interior of the escape pod. Near the navigation console, Billy Telfer lay unconscious. He was beginning to move like he would regain consciousness at any second. She had no explanation as to why he was there.
Then, she remembered Tom in the middle of sickbay. Her anger returned.
She looked down that the Klingon insignia she held. It didn't surprise her at all that it was actually Tuvok's comm badge. He had passed it to her to initiate transport. What was it he had said? You're going to have to trust me, B'Elanna. Tom is in the right place. It's just a matter of getting you there as well.
She muttered a curse and turned towards the tiny aft cabin where the sleeping cots were. She looked through the archway and saw Tom in a ball on the deck, sweating, in the throes of some hellish nightmare.
And it really was a nightmare. He wore only one neurogenic device. Prince Charming didn't have the foresight to present her with the other one.
Or did he?
She turned from the cabin and moved quickly towards the main hatch, but stopped when she saw, in the corner of her eye, a tiny blinking red light on the communication grid of the main console. Without even thinking, she rushed over to it and pressed the icar to playback the recorded message.
"Greeting's B'Elanna." Neelix's concerned expression filled the comm screen.
"I don't have time to explain. If you need to sedate Telfer again, just use the sedative in the silver hypospray insert in the bag right next to him." Neelix glanced around nervously. "The other neurogenic interface is in there also."
The screen glitched for about three seconds, flashing the figure of a strange, dark warrior.
When B'Elanna blinked, it went back to Neelix. "The Doctor said you should have five more hours of use before it needs to be recharged. Hopefully, we bought you enough time. Neelix out." The comm went blank.
B'Elanna spotted the bag where Neelix said it would be.
Telfer stirred.
Not wanting to have to deal with him, B'Elanna fished through the bag and quickly found the silver hypo insert, the actual hypospray, and the neurogenic interface. She loaded the hypo with shaky hands and, once she was finished, pressed it to Telfer's exposed neck, deciding it best to put off questioning her morals until later.
Torn between getting back to Tom and replaying the message, she went back to the console.
With the neurogenic interface clenched tightly in hand, she hit "replay" and put it in fast mode.
"Computer, freeze playback," she said softly once she reached the glitch.
She felt the blood drain from her head when she saw the face of the forlorn warrior who peered back at her, through her very soul.
He had a name.
"Kortar," she whispered.
xxx
Neelix stopped short in the corridor in front of Vorik's quarters. He was but one person doing the job of four. He needed to enlist help, but the fact that it had come to this was just… sad. It wasn't only that he needed someone who knew the situation, it was more of the fact that he needed a master saboteur.
He rang the chime.
"Enter."
Neelix didn't waste any time. He crossed the threshold and halted in front of Vorik.
"Yes?" Vorik queried.
"Look, I know we aren't the best of friends right now, but if you respect B'Elanna as much as you say you do, you better help me right now."
"I don't take kindly to emotional blackmail."
"I don't have time for this, you slimy little…"
Vorik literally sighed. "If this has anything to do with ending the rumors that you caused, then you can spare me the impetuous theatrics and just tell me what you have planned. I have enough motive to help without the added histrionics."
Neelix held back a venting growl. "Oh, really? How far are you willing to go?"
Vorik raised a brow. "How far have I gone already?"
Neelix released his breath with a chortle. "Alright, Ensign. Then answer this one: how fast can you evacuate an entire deck to the escape pods?"
xxx
Kortar's face didn't so much as move, but when he spoke, B'Elanna resisted every urge to run screaming from the pod.
"Kill the illusion, vIlle'," he said. "I set you free from Gre'thor, though you are still bound to me."
B'Elanna shook her head, hoping to rid herself of the hallucination. She looked back at the screen but the Klingon still stared at her, frozen in time.
Kill the illusion, he had said.
What better way to kill it than the press the "off" button. She slapped the console hard, then turned to where Telfer slept. Embedded in his chest was the same bloodied bat'leth she had seen on her wall.
Her world turned to black and white when she saw it.
In her mind she could hear the same B-movie instrumentals that played in sickbay and when she looked around, the whole pod was decked out in knobs and wires from the Proton simulation.
She pulled the bat'leth from Telfer's chest and, in a sudden burst of fitful rage, swung it around to where Captain Proton stood behind her.
He didn't stand a chance. Before she even realized what she had done, he collapsed to the deck with the bat'leth embedded in his gut.
The body mutated into Steth, then burst into dust.
Stunned, she stumbled into the aft cabin to find her husband, Thomas Eugene Paris, curled in a fetal ball, on the precipice of Gre'thor's Gate.
xxx
Kathryn ran the diagnostic twice to be sure that there wasn't so much as glitch in the sickbay hologrid, let alone an entire overload. It was frustrating as hell not finding what she expected.
"Are you certain you didn't see anything else, Chakotay?" She kept her voice low so the night watch couldn't hear their conversation.
He shook his head, but Kathryn was in complete scientific mode. Observations were not just limited to sight. "What about smell? Or hear?"
"Nothing," he said. "And those loud, obnoxious instrumentals."
"You really smelled nothing?"
"In the corridor, I told the Doctor that he was smelling sex, sweat, and Tom's aftershave. But in sickbay, I really smelled nothing. It was sterile."
Janeway paced. "And you heard those loud instrumentals? Even during the disruption?"
Chakotay looked as though trying to remember, and then nodded.
Kathryn could feel the irritation growing. "The music would have stopped if there was an overload in the grid. That bright light was part of the program, Chakotay."
Alarm spread across Chakotay's face. "Captain, are you suggesting that Tuvok and Harry went behind your back and…"
"Captain!" Lieutenant Ayala looked up from the tactical station. "Twenty-one escape pods just launched."
"All stop, Ensign!" Janeway stalked over to tactical to confirm it, then cursed. It could take them days to retrieve that many pods. "Report, Lieutenant. Who authorized it?"
Ayala quickly called up the information of his console and answered. "It was Commander Tuvok, Captain. They launched with his security code."
"Chakotay, you have the bridge." Kathryn headed towards the lift. "Start organizing a retrieval. I want a full detailed report in one hour. I'll be in sickbay. Tuvok damn well better have an explanation for this."
