Olduvai, Mars

"Let's go get you cleaned up," McCoy chuckled, once he calmed down a little. The laughter had released a lot of the stress that he'd been building up. It hadn't touched his anger at Sarge or what had happened here all those years ago, but the stress of knowing that there were other people at Olduvai and that he would have to take care of the problem was gone.

Now there was just Sarge left to deal with and he could be dealt with later. He'd already waited two centuries to take care of that problem. An hour wouldn't make any difference right now. Spock and Stormskies' health and safety took precedence over that matter. There was a locker room with shower facilities near by and that was where they went. McCoy wanted to make certain that neither Spock nor Stormskies had been injured during the short fight, especially Spock as he was covered in contaminated blood.

Each of the Grimm twins had gotten one of the showers running and shoved their respective partners under the water, much to the evident distaste of both the desert bred Vulcan and the feline Meroraw. Absorbed in making sure that neither had been infected by their exposure to the C24 in the blood of the two monsters they had killed in the sewers, the twins made a mistake. They were not paying attention to their senses and that allowed Sarge to sneak up close. He crawled along the ceiling crawl space, and when he'd reached the showers, he swiftly reached down and grabbed Reaper by the chin and neck, and dragged him up into the space between the ceiling and the rock tunnel.

Reaper dropped his tricorder, clawing at the mutated hand and kicking his legs in a futile effort to prevent his capture. He was dragged along the crawl space on his back and his equipment harness holding his weapon, extra ammunition, med kit and other sundries as well as the back of his blue uniform shirt was scraped off of him at the high rate of sped Sarge was traveling. Grabbing at the walls, ceiling or floor for something to hold onto proved futile as well. He could only hope that Sam would find him quickly.

Sam and Spock, hearing the commotion, (Reaper's loud kicking, muffled cursing, Sarge's laughter and Stormskies' yowls,) raced out of their shower stall, grabbing their weapons. By the time they'd reached the stall where McCoy had been checking Stormskies for injuries he and Sarge were long gone. Stormskies, who looked the very definition of a drowned cat, was attempting to claw her way into the hole in the ceiling where McCoy had disappeared.

"Don't!" Sam ordered, and gently tugged Stormskies down from the ceiling. "Spock, Stormskies, beam back to Enterprise. All of the civilians are accounted for. We even managed to save one. In this situation, that's a miracle."

"We have not yet completed our mission," Spock stated, and pulled on his rinsed out silk thermal under clothes. Fortunately his uniform had taken the brunt of the damage caused by the contaminated blood. Stormskies clearly made her feelings known, moving to stand slightly behind and off to the side of her superior officer. They both had no desire to return to the Enterprise without Doctor McCoy.

Sam chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, trying to remember if there was anything in either of their cultures that would explain why she was ordering them back. She found one in the honor codes they both had coming from warrior, (former warrior in Spock's case) cultures. She looked them both in the eyes to reinforce her words. "Sarge is the only one left. Unlike the civilians, he is a family matter."

Stormskies' posture slumped, understanding the difference. Although she was a revolutionary where her own people were concerned, she really did not wish to change things very much. She merely wished for her people to recognize that some situations called for group hunting such as this. However, Sam's explanation turned this from a group hunt to an honor hunt, and that was always undertaken only by those who were involved.

Spock nodded, the gesture full of respect and retrieved the rest of his equipment. In the Vulcan culture a person who was ill, such as with mental disorders, was the responsibility of that person's family, especially if the only way to deal with the madness was a fight to the death. There was no question that Sarge was mentally ill, or that the Grimm twins were the closest thing he had to family now.

"Hit the sonics, then quarantine yourselves for the next three hours just in case. Enterprise, two to beam up," Sam ordered. Once the sparkles of dematerialization had vanished, Sam jumped up catching the edges of the hole in the ceiling and pulled herself through. "I'm coming John," she said, knowing that everyone could hear her, including her brother and Sarge over John's comm.

The ironic thing was that it was now her turn to chase after her twin when he was being threatened by the same monster who had stolen her from his side as he had gone through the C24's death coma all those decades ago. The same monster who had made it impossible for her to do anything other than join John in his immortality by breaking her back over two centuries ago. All three of them were bound together by this place and the horrors that had happened here. It was fitting that they should face down Sarge together here, and she had a good idea of where he was taking John.

Bridge, Enterprise

"Mr. Spock and Ensign Stormskies have reported to medical Captain," Uhura said quietly. An almost unnatural hush hovered over the bridge. Normally a place of quiet, routine conversation, (punctuated by short amounts of explosions and yelling when trouble came knocking) Uhura was sure that she could have heard the proverbial pin drop on the carpet at the moment. No one wanted to give Sarge the satisfaction of hearing them fret over Doctor McCoy's fate.

Over the last year Uhura had begun to think of McCoy as a friend, an older one she could go to for advice or to relax with when being among the more hormonal members of their young crew got to be too much for her. Now that she knew the key to his past, a lot of things made sense that had puzzled her before. McCoy was an officer and a gentleman in the oldest sense of the phrase.

If you'd screwed up, McCoy would verbally rip you to pieces, making sure that you never made the same mistake again, while he patched up whatever you broke with gentle hands. He never, not even when he was in one of his worst moods, ever mistreated a woman or a child. In fact, Uhura had seen several occasions where he'd prevented such mistreatment, stepping in to take the abuse on himself before 'thrashing', as he'd put it, the abuser.

McCoy regularly used such terms, causing his speech to be a combination of modern English and almost ancient phrases. She'd heard him call himself 'nothing but an old sawbones' and every spaceship he happened to be on was called a 'tin can' at least once. Uhura had been forced to look those phrases up in her historical texts. A 'saw bones' was a term that was over 300 years old that meant a country doctor – one who was not particularly adept at high society, and 'tin cans' hadn't been used to store food in for at least a century!

At the time she'd thought that perhaps he was one of those who romanticized the past, deliberately sprinkling such old terms into his speech patterns. Now she knew that he'd picked them up from having lived through many of the years when those terms had been used in every day speech. Uhura kept her eyes on the life signs for Doctor McCoy and Doctor Grimm, praying that they would survive the upcoming fight.

"Thank you Lieutenant," Kirk murmured. It was all that Jim could do to keep his composure after Reaper's killcam showed that he had dropped his weapon and the rest of his gear. Bones was now out there all alone with that crazy, mutated ex-CO of his, and he couldn't even say anything to encourage his friend without Sarge hearing him as well. And the last thing he wanted was for Sarge to know that Samantha Grimm was on her way to rescue her little brother.

Kirk would have teasing material for years over that one. He knew perfectly well that Samantha Grimm was only two minutes older than Bones, but the very idea of the ex-Special Forces soldier being rescued by his big sister was far too funny for him to not tease his friend about. He'd keep it strictly between the two of them of course. He was reckless, not stupid. Bones would have Jim at his mercy the next time something went wrong. It was a fact of Jim Kirk's life that something always went wrong sooner or later, and Bones would have no trouble at all using every medical excuse there was to make his life miserable.

Up on the viewscreen, Sam's killcam showed that she had reached Reaper's equipment. Without slowing she reached down, picked up the belt it was all attached to and slung the broken belt over her shoulder, attaching the broken ends to her own belt one handed. She didn't bother with the remains of McCoy's shredded uniform shirt.

"Doctor Grimm, he seems," Uhura began.

"I know where Sarge is taking John," Sam interrupted. She was absolutely certain. Sarge was insane, that was true, but there was still a lot of the Marine that he had once been left in the way he thought. John had told her a lot about who Sarge had been before Olduvai when they had both been grieving the loss of their friends and respective chosen families. The man had been pure alpha male. He wouldn't be able to accept that his once second in command had fought him to a standstill, forcing him into exile here in Olduvai for two centuries. He'd have convinced himself that it was a fluke, something that had only happened because his body had been mutating, shifting into his current form.

Sarge had already begun to punish Reaper for his new loyalties by killing and eating F'rik'. Now he would want to finish Reaper's punishment by beating him to death, even if it wasn't really possible. Sam still occasionally had nightmares about Sarge shooting The Kid point blank in the throat. Sam reached the Ark chamber and everyone could hear inhuman roars of rage coming from the inside.