Chapter 21
Another four Earth hours of immeasurable suffering, condensed in sixty Earth seconds. Spock promised himself he would watch the recording in full, hour after hour, second by second, when he was back on the Enterprise, when the Captain was safe again. As a pilgrimage, and also, he thought with deliberate force, as a punishment.
For he had failed to watch over his Captain. He had failed to overcome his own pain to see the unfathomable pain eating at his friend. He had failed to take action until it was almost too late. Maybe too late.
And he had failed to sense any of this while it was taking place. How could that be? All this time he had thought that his link with Jim Kirk was severed the moment Kirk was gripped by his seizure on the Copernicus. He remembered now with painful vividness the first days after that crisis. He had thought the Captain dead. He had rebelled against the idea that a virus could do this. But somehow he had let exhaustion and grief lull him into accepting the explanation that the virus had caused it by ravaging the Captain's brain.
Now he was convinced that the link was broken before then, before Kirk's torture ever began. But how? How could he not have felt the severance? How could he not have felt the absence of the link when the Captain arrived at the pickup in the dessert and boarded the shuttle?
None of this absolved Spock of his guilt. In fact, all these questions removed him even further from that path to self-forgiveness.
And in the meantime, brutal reality did not stand still. On the screen a green coat approached and Spock was forced to switch to normal playback.
The lever was pushed and as soon as he was free of the Sintin, the Captain was given a battery of injections. Spock surmised they were to stabilize his brain against seizures, to calm his muscle cramps, to keep him conscious. The head restraint was removed and a small amount of water was poured between his lips, which were now bleeding. Kirk endured it, unmoving, unspeaking. He was so weak he couldn't even swallow the water.
The Vulcan approached. He immediately found the meld points on the Captain's glistening, flushed face. The contact enlivened Kirk. He squeezed his eyes shut and set his jaw to the line Spock knew so well.
"Our minds are one," the Vulcan chanted.
Kirk remained silent. He no longer had the strength to speak.
"Our minds are one," the Vulcan spoke again, louder. "Our minds-are-one."
What was Kirk doing? Spock was sure that this time the Vulcan would not allow Kirk's pain to enter him. But Kirk was putting up a fight. And the Vulcan was losing.
"Our minds!" the Vulcan raged, "are one!"
The Captain opened his mouth and Spock drew a small breath, fearful of the words Kirk was about to say.
Then Vulcan and the Captain spoke as one.
"Yield" – "Yield."
"Yield" – "Spock!"
The Vulcan disengaged, spun around and stumbled toward the wall, bumping into it.
Kirk's chest rose and fell as he drew shallow, laborious breaths. He was still conscious, but only because of the drugs. This time there was no laughter.
"I've never-" the Vulcan on the screen grunted, then he stopped. He straightened, turned back toward the room, and in an instant his face was cold again. "He has little strength left. And I will not underestimate him again. Another three hours."
Spock saw a glimmer of despair on Kirk's face, but it was instantly suppressed.
"We have reached phase three," the green coat observed.
"Infect him, then," said the Vulcan with a surprising amount of spite. "A pity. It might kill him and all our work will be for naught."
He walked back to Kirk, who was lying very still, almost cataleptic.
"You are strong," murmured the Vulcan, very close to Kirk's ravaged face. "But defeat is inevitable for you. Surely you know that."
Kirk's lips moved. Spock rewound, zoomed in and read Kirk's lips.
"Running out o' time," the Captain whispered. "My crew-"
"How much time do you think has past, Captain?" the Vulcan sneered. "Not even eight Earth hours. We have all the time in the world."
Kirk minutely shook his head. "Die first."
It was too desperate. The Vulcan had sowed a seed of doubt in very fertile ground and he knew it.
"You wish for death now, do you?" he whispered, smiling. He was so close his lips caressed the Captain's cheek.
Spock's head swam.
Kirk's tormenter straightened.
"In any case," he declared coldly, "we continue."
The green coats descended on the Captain again. One replaced the strap, another administered more drugs, and the third, without further ado, filled the gutter.
Kirk's shredded scream rent the silence. His voice was utterly ruined, but still he screamed. Even when, very soon, it became soundless, even after Spock muted the playback, the word echoed over and over again in Spock's mind.
Spo-ock! Spo-ock!
0000000000
Chapel smiled fondly when in the corner of her eye she saw the Captain finally nodding off over his paperwork. It was incredible how long that man could go without sleep. Doctor McCoy had given up and had gone, hours late, to his own bed, but not before insisting the Captain move from the office to a bed in the Recovery Ward.
Now the Captain's eyelids fluttered and slowly his chin sank down, down, down. Chapel stood frozen to the spot, waiting for him finally to drift into sleep so she could make him more comfortable.
His head jerked upright as he leapt back into full consciousness.
"Oh," he said, seeing her startled face. "I-I really don't want to go to sleep."
"I've noticed that," Chapel said, a little severely.
"I don't want to dream. Don't want McCoy to be right," he explained with a sheepish smile.
Chapel knew the dreams somehow brought on the seizures. She nodded to show that she understood.
"I can give you that sedative now, to get you past the dreaming stage."
Kirk scoffed weakly.
"We've tried that before," he murmured.
Chapel was about to say something about him needing to sleep at some point, when she heard the swish of the Sick Bay doors.
"Excuse me for a moment," she said, and left to see who had just come in.
She drew a breath. It was a Vulcan! And so like Spock, too.
"I apologize, I didn't mean to startle you," the Vulcan said.
Chapel instantly revised her comparison. This Vulcan wasn't like Spock at all. He was smiling at her, and not pleasantly. It made her skin crawl.
"I am looking for Doctor McCoy."
"He's off duty. May I-"
Her words were turned to air in her mouth. The Vulcan's rude gaze had left her. She turned to where he was looking with such fascination.
Captain Kirk was standing in the doorway, holding on to the jamb.
Chapel felt something was terribly wrong. For one it was inconceivable that the Captain would show himself, in Sickbay clothes, so vulnerable. But there he stood, trying very hard, and failing, to hide his pain.
"Commander Varek," Kirk began.
Varek smiled.
"Captain? I didn't know you had taken ill."
What a slimy worm, Chapel thought.
She rushed to the Captain, intent on extricating him from this demeaning situation. When she put her hand on his arm he tore his eyes off the Vulcan and looked at her.
"To the floor," he whispered, and the fear, pain, and confusion in his eyes turned over into something dark. He let out a soft moan and sank through his knees.
She couldn't bear his weight and had no choice but to let the Vulcan assist her. Together they gently lowered the Captain to the floor, where he folded into the fetal position and started shivering, like he was suddenly very cold. He was conscious, his eyes staring with desperate concentration. Fighting it.
Hating to leave him literally in the hands of that Vulcan, Chapel ran to the com console and yelled, "Sick Bay to Doctor McCoy! Emergency!"
"What is happening t him?" the Vulcan asked.
"He's seizing," she yelled at him.
She grabbed a hypo and hurried back to the Captain's side. The Vulcan, taken aback by her vehemence, stood up and stepped away.
"Hold on, Captain," Chapel whispered to Kirk, administering the Asinolyathin.
He seemed to nod, but it was hard to tell. Then the shivering turned into shuddering, and the Captain was wracked under her hands, and all she could do was hold him down.