Tuvok entered sickbay to find that the body of the unfortunate crewman had been removed and that Kathryn Janeway's prone form now resided on the surgical biobed. Fifteen minutes ago a frantic Tal Celes had contacted him and told him that she had found the Captain outside of her quarters unconscious. She had gone out there when she heard Janeway sobbing for the children. The Vulcan had instructed that Tal contact sickbay and had the Captain transported there. Leaving the bridge in Harry Kim's care, Tuvok had proceeded directly to see the Doctor. Right now the hologram looked most perplexed.

"Report, Doctor," Tuvok ordered, stepping up to the biobed.

"I wish that I had a substantial one to give you Commander," the hologram replied. "But the truth is I've found nothing to reason as to why she is in this state. Other then the fact that her epinephrine and norepinephrine readings are low; there is nothing wrong with her. I'm waiting for the results on her brain scan."

Tuvok placed his hands behind his back. "Did Kes have any success retrieving Crewman Teller's memories?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No," he said. "Unfortunately there wasn't enough neural activity left to make the link." His eyes lit up for a moment. "But perhaps she could make one with the Captain. Other than the low chemicals in her brain that I told you about there appears to be no neural damage. Of course I won't know for certain until a more in depth brain scan is complete, but I think it will be safe for Kes to try."

Tuvok pondered this for a moment. Kes was still learning how to use her abilities and since she was still young they had yet to fully develop. He would have rather tried this experiment with Sarah Barrett, who although had just discovered her powers, they were as mature as they were ever going to be, she just had to learn how to use them. "I can act as a guide for her through Captain Janeway's memory."

The hologram nodded his head and called for Kes. They quickly began to set up. The Doctor put a cortical inhibitor at the base of Kes' neck and told her that if at anytime he felt she was in danger he would terminate the link. "Kes, I want you to know that this entirely up to you."

"I want to help," Kes replied. "How do I start?"

Tuvok stepped up to the biobed. "Close your eyes and focus on the voices you hear on this ship." He watched as her eyes slipped shut. "Now, I want you to rise above the voices, you should be in a place all by yourself. Are you in that place Kes?"

"Yes," she said with a smile. "It's so peaceful here."

"Good, now, can you hear another voice?" Tuvok asked, "Can you hear Captain Janeway?"

Kes' face contorted with concern for a moment. "Yes, I can hear her."

"What is she saying?"

The look on Kes' face continued to contort from concern to fear. "She's afraid, the children they're in danger and she cannot get to them. The door won't open. She's standing outside the door and she can't get inside. The children are in trouble but she can't help them." Kes' suddenly gasped, the biocomputer next to her beeping wildly at her state of hyper tension.

"What happened?" the Doctor asked, worried.

"There's another voice in the corridor with her," Kes said, breathing heavily.

"What is this voice saying?" Tuvok asked.

Kes shook her head. She couldn't make it out. Suddenly she wasn't in the corridor with the Captain and the faceless voice, she was on the other ship, in a cold, dark room. Reaching out she found a presence that the crew had been searching for the past three hours. "I hear Lieutenant Barrett."

This intrigued both the Doctor and Tuvok. "Where is she?" Tuvok questioned.

"She's on the Excalibur."

"Is she alone?"

Kes' brow furrowed in concentration. "No, I don't think so. I can't hear the others though." Her hands began to shake. "She's afraid, there's something in the room with her, and it's trying to hurt her!" At this thought Kes' blue eyes flew open, the biocomputer now madly screaming in the background. "Get them out of there! It's trying to kill them!"

Tuvok grabbed her shoulders. "Tell me where, Kes! Where is the away team?"

Kes' tried some calming breaths and before closing her eyes again. Reaching out she tried to focus on Sarah's voice again, this time it was harder to find and for a moment she was afraid that the…being had killed the young woman. But after several seconds she heard the voice again, shaky with fear, but alive, and with Tom and Chakotay. The officers were making their way down a turbo shaft, trying to reach a place four decks below them. "Deck four," she said, with certainty. "They're heading for deck four."

Tuvok didn't waste time; he contacted Kim on the bridge and told him to sweep the Excalibur's deck four. The Vulcan was certain that they didn't have a lot of time to get the away team off of the old ship before eventually whatever was on the ship with them killed them. And the sooner they got the away team back, the sooner they could get away from this moon before Voyager suffered the same fate as the Excalibur.


The corridor was colder than the last time they had been there. Tom Paris pulled himself out of the shaft, after helping Sarah Barrett up onto the deck. One thing was for sure, he realized, he wasn't going to have to do any of the Starfleet physical training exercises that were required each month this time around. His muscles were already aching from the climbing of the day and there seemed to be no end in sight to this nightmare. Actually, there was one conclusion to all this, and it wasn't very pleasant. Getting to his feet he reached out and placed his hand on the small of Sarah's back. She had regained some of her composure but the lowered chemical levels in her brain were starting to catch up to her, she was exhausted. And the more he thought about it, he knew that they all on some level or another were exhausted. Fighting for your life had a funny way of doing that to you, Tom thought.

Chakotay was leaning over the body of Crewman Edwards, still twisted just outside the turbo lift, scanning him with his tricorder. "Just like I thought, there are low levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine readings. And high theta wave activity."

"I have a feeling this isn't a coincidence," Tom said. "But I understand why Sarah's theta wave activity is high, but Edwards? He isn't telepathic, that we know of."

"The alien has telepathic powers," Sarah said. "I've felt it since Voyager came across the Excalibur."

"So are we hallucinating the whole thing, all of us at the same time, or just one of us?" Tom asked. This was getting harder to get a handle on the more they uncovered.

"No, I don't think so," Chakotay replied, "Some of this is hallucination, but what parts I don't know. We already know that the Excalibur went missing sometime in the twenty third century, so at least the ship is real. However, all that's happened here, who knows where the line has been drawn; none of this making sense."

"Commander, since we've been dragged into this quadrant, very little has made sense," Tom pointed out which emanated a grunt from the first officer. He pulled his large form up, still looking down at the body and walked away silently.

Chakotay led the group towards the panel where Sarah had accessed the captain's logs from before. The answers to all of this were in those logs. Pulling out his tricorder he started to scan the panel. The systems were starting to degrade, they had been for years. There were traces of the noncoporeal being in the computer. It was if it had become a part of the ship and was purposefully blocking their access to the logs and ship's systems. Chakotay wondered how many wayward ships had passed by here, checking out the distress signal, only to succumb to the horrors of this alien being hunting and stalking them. "It's going to take a while to get through all this degradation."

"Something tells me we don't have that kind of time," Tom quipped.

"Be thankful that Sarah's attempt earlier has already repaired some of the damage," Chakotay replied, getting to work. The last thing that Edwards had uncovered before he and Sarah had been attacked was the sensor logs. There appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, just the fact that the ship's mysterious disappearance from the Alpha Quadrant didn't seem to be explained in those sensor logs. That is until Chakotay began to scroll down more and saw what he had been dreading all along. This ship had detected a beam scanning them, the same kind of beam that had scanned his ship and then Voyager before they had been pulled into the Delta Quadrant. "Did Captain Janeway ever mention how long the Caretaker had been pulling ships into the Delta Quadrant?"

Tom shrugged his shoulders. "Not that I can recall," he said. "Why?"

"Because I think the Excalibur got here the same way we did," Chakotay said, grimly. "Unfortunately, they didn't have our luck."

"Luck? You call all that's happened to us, luck?" Tom scoffed, glancing at the console. Something caught his eye. Letting go of Sarah, he started to work at the panel as well. "Commander, this is interesting. The gravitational pull, it's really a tractor beam."

"A tractor beam that isn't detected until it's too late because you've moved in to investigate a distress call," Chakotay said. "In other words, a modern day booby trap."

Tom grunted as he continued to work. A booby trap that they had fallen right into with the promise of finding a way home, and now they had learned that the there was no way home, just a horrible death a waiting them. If there was only a way they could get in touch with Voyager, let them know what was going on, perhaps the crew could be saved. "Commander, I'm trying to access the sensors, maybe Voyager isn't caught in the gravitational pull yet, maybe there's a chance that we can send them a message."

Chakotay shook his head. "No, the communication array is…gone. There's no other explanation for it."

"Anything could have happened to it," Tom said, frustrated. He jumped when a voice filled the corridor. He had accidentally stumbled upon the logs of the captain. The man's voice was unusually calm for a captain that had been torn from his home and was now facing a terrifying death. "Um, Commander," Tom said, backing away from the screen. "I think I found something."

The first officer stopped what he was doing and turned to face the screen. "We're all but gone. We've lost main power; we have no way of pulling out of the gravitational pull of the moon. We attempted to send out a message buoy; it was destroyed. If anyone uncovers this log, stay away from this ship! Destroy it if you must! It is a death trap!" The screen went black and the officers found themselves standing in stunned silence. None of this was making any sense. Was the captain suggesting that the creature fed off of fear? Sarah's lowered chemical levels after the incident in the ready room on the bridge could be evidence of that and Crewman Edwards had died of a heart attack, but he too had low levels of chemicals usually heightened when people were afraid.

Sarah let out a shuddering breath as an image of the captain of the Excalibur passed the screen. "It doesn't like that," she stated. "I don't know why, but it doesn't like us digging around in the captain's logs."

"Well," Chakotay said, "that's where we're going to dig."

He continued to uncover more of the logs. For the most part it was nothing but an increasingly hysterical man wondering why they had been ripped from their home and carried more than seventy thousand lights years away from Earth only to be hunted by a monster. Chakotay felt a chill creep up his spine. He didn't need to be telepathic to know that the creature was coming. And then something caught his eye, a flash of dark matter bursting from behind the bulkhead. It hit him square in the chest and he heard Sarah and Tom both gasp in surprise as he went crashing into hull plates. He felt his lip split open and blood began to trickle into his eyes from a head wound. Pushing himself up onto his elbows he tried to find the others in the dim light of the wrist torch.

They were rushing to help him get up. At the end of the hall they could see that the creature was rounding on them. Chakotay stood up, and reached for the panel again. He didn't know if that was the answer here, to not let this creature feel their fear, but he was not about to give up, not yet. Sarah may have walked away at first because she didn't think she had a choice, but Chakotay was not about to back down. He hit the button to play the next log. The captain's voice filled the corridor. "I am the only one left. The creature has hunted us all down, fed on our fears. He will get me, but I will make sure that he doesn't get anyone else."

Chakotay was slammed with a force that was unlike anything he had ever felt before right in his chest. It sent him flying back into Tom and the two were crushed against the hull plates. As they tried to untangle their limbs from the other's the creature moved in, Chakotay felt his heart thundering, blood rushing his ears.

Tom was stumbling away from him, the look of a frightened animal that had just been cornered. Sarah was cowering against the hull plates across the corridor. The first officer saw Tom move towards the panel, trying to access the communications array that they had just determined was down, in his panicked state. There was a beep from the computer and Tom tried to get a message off before the creature struck him square in the chest. He went flying through the air, landed on his side, rolled and got up trying to find a place to run and hide.

By now the creature was shrieking, in anticipation of the kill. Chakotay was breathing hard. In all his time with Starfleet and then the Maquis, he had never felt so afraid then he did at that moment. It was apparent that Sarah and Tom felt the same way. "We have to get off the deck!" he screamed, getting to his feet. He tried to move towards Sarah to help her up, but the alien threw him back again with a deafening force. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he realized who the creature had picked as its first victim.

It stalked towards Sarah now. She tried to crawl to get away from it, crying out in terror. Chakotay felt his heart start to race faster than a starship at warp; his head began to spin as the alien engulfed Sarah, swallowing her whole. The last image he had before he passed out was her screams mingled in with the cries of the creature, the strange sensation that his limbs were being stuck with a thousand pins and needles, and then all went silent.


"I've got them!" Harry Kim yelled triumphantly from operations.

B'Elanna Torres threw him a smile across the bridge from the engineering station. Tuvok had only given him a few minutes to locate the away team and beam them back to Voyager. Harry hadn't been sure if he could do it, the transporters were still malfunctioning, and to all their knowledge had not been fixed yet. "Everything seems to be in working order," he reported now. "It appears that we didn't lose anyone else on this transport. I've also located two of our missing crewmen. They're on the Excalibur as well."

B'Elanna ran her fingers over the controls of her station. "I'm isolating the targeting scanners, Harry; you should be able to pick them up just like you did the away team." She leaned back in her chair, feeling the first signs of relief that she had felt all day creeping over her. She didn't know how Tuvok had known what deck to isolate the targeting scanners on but she was sure as hell glad he did. Another few hours and the away team may have frozen to death over on the Excalibur.

"Good work, Mister Kim," Tuvok said evenly. "Tuvok to Kes, can you report on the condition of the away team?"

"All of them are unconscious right now, Commander, but preliminary scans show no signs of permanent damage," Kes' voice filled the bridge. There were several smiles breaking out on the crews' faces, happy that their senior officers had been found alive. "I'm going to have them moved to sickbay so the Doctor can examine them."

Tuvok straightened his shoulders. "Very well, keep me informed, Tuvok out." He went back to his work, asking Baytart to move the ship at a safe distance from the moon so they would not get caught in the gravitational pull that seemed to be getting more intense by the hour. Tuvok felt that they were safe from whatever was on that ship and would wait for Captain Janeway to give the command to continue on their course. She had been released from sickbay just before he came to the bridge, but to his surprise, she had refused to go to the bridge and instead retreated back to her quarters. Recalling what Kes had said during the link with Janeway, Tuvok was sure she was going to make sure the children were safe, even if the Doctor, himself, and Kes had all reported that there was not even scratch on them.

He would give her some time to relax, and then report to her that the away team was back safely. For now they were out of danger.

It took a few moments but Chakotay slowly became aware of his surroundings again. Opening his eyes he found that the ceiling of sickbay was staring back at him. For the first time in hours he felt the tension leave his body as he realized they were safely back on Voyager. The strange pins and needles sensation he had felt just before blacking out must have been the transporter beam. Rolling his head to one side he saw the Doctor pressing a hypospray to the neck of Tom Paris. The pilot was sitting up, a glassy look in his eyes, but he was alive, and that was all that they could ask for after what they had been through.

Struggling with his body, which suddenly felt heavier than ever before, Chakotay sat up on the biobed. The movement must have caught the eye of the Doctor. The hologram was turning towards him, hypospray in hand. The First Officer felt it pressed to his neck and immediately he didn't feel as tired anymore. "This will make up for the lack of chemicals in your system," the Doctor explained to him. "You and Mister Paris are free to report back to duty."

"Lieutenant Barrett?" Chakotay questioned, eyes moving about the room to find her. She was laying on the surgical biobed, blanket covering her. The faint beeping of monitors suggested that she was fine, but he was concerned that she had not woken up when both he and Paris had. "Is she…is she going to be alright?"

The hologram glanced over his shoulder. "When she was transported back to Voyager she was close to cardiac arrest, but Kes managed to stall it long enough to get her to sickbay and I treated her. However, I'd like to keep her for observation."

Chakotay felt his own heart start to race. If Voyager had not beamed them back to the ship when they did, then Sarah would have died on the Excalibur, in the same fashion that Crewman Edwards had died. Suddenly he remembered why they were all in sickbay in the first place. The alien being could quite possibly be moving in to stalk them now on Voyager. Kathryn needed to be notified that her ship and her crew were in grave danger. "Where's Captain Janeway? I need to speak to her right away."

"I'm afraid that the Captain is unavailable at the moment," the Doctor reported. "You weren't the only one that had a…scary day Commander. In fact this whole day has been nothing but mystery after mystery."

The First Officer jumped down off of his biobed. "What kinds of mysteries, Doctor?" Chakotay wasn't sure why, but he had a feeling that the experiences of the crew and that of the away team were similar. He didn't know how, but that made him feel even more anxious. The little information that they had gathered about this alien was that it was noncoporeal and that it somehow fed off of their fears, or the chemicals produced by their fears. Then there was possibility that the alien was not alone on that ship, perhaps it had a mate that had been feeding off of the fears of the Voyager crew. Of course him, Paris, and Barrett, had been easier targets because they were alone, with no contact from their shipmates. The alien had fabricated scary situations on the Excalibur for them; it was plausible that it was responsible for the transporter malfunctions, the away team's separation, and the transporting of Edwards to the old ship. Spirits, we're dealing with an intelligent monster.

"Crewman Teller died from a massive coronary. I still haven't determined what triggered it," the Doctor replied. "Then the Captain shows up unconscious with low levels of epinephrine. And now you all show up, unannounced, and with Lieutenant Barrett in a condition that could have been far more serious if she had not been returned to the ship when she was. You're lucky you got transport back to the ship when you did, or she would have died. I don't know what the hell happened over there, but it appears that it was no joy ride."

"You can say that again," Paris mumbled.

Chakotay's palms suddenly felt clammy. "Doctor," he said, tensely. "Have internal sensors picked up any…unexpected guests?"

The hologram frowned. "No, that that I've been made aware of."

"Chakotay, that thing manipulated the systems on the Excalibur," Paris said, jumping down from his bed. "I think it's safe to say that it could do the same to Voyager's."

The First Officer rounded and faced Kes. "Kes, you've shown telepathic tendencies in the past. Can you feel anything…and I mean anything out of the ordinary, right at this very moment?"

Kes shook her head. "I felt something was wrong in Engineering, but it by the time I arrived it was too late, Crewman Teller was dead. And when I made a telepathic link with Captain Janeway to access her memory I felt a presence in the corridor with her, but it only happened when I saw the memory. The only thing that I've been attuned to is the presence of the away team since that moment I was in Captain Janeway's memory. I felt Lieutenant Barrett was with the presence, in a dark space, it was trying to hurt her."

When she was trapped in the ready room, Chakotay mused. "Tom, download the Excalibur's logs into our systems, I want to replay that last one, before we were attacked the final time."

Paris nodded his head and took his tricorder to the nearby console. He placed it against the computer and began to download the little bits and pieces of the logs they were able to come up with before the alien had tried to kill them. The captain of the Excalibur soon appeared on the screen, repeating the information that Paris and Chakotay had heard on the ship just moments before if felt like. But this time both found that they were able to listen to his words carefully and not with a sense of urgency and panic. When the log ended, Paris looked at Chakotay for a moment, waiting the first officer's orders.

Chakotay stared at the blank screen. He was about to issue an order when Barrett sat straight up on the biobed, a cry on her lips. Paris was immediately at her side, the Doctor running a hand scanner over her. Chakotay moved towards the surgical area and waited patiently for a report. He was more interested in what Sarah had to say then he was the Doctor, but unfortunately the hologram was the one to give him a report first.

"She's fine," he said, simply, "bad dream I suppose."

Barrett looked straight at Chakotay; her sapphire eyes turned to ice and made his blood chill. "The Excalibur, it has to be destroyed. I don't know how, but…their soul so to speak…is attached to that ship. I…spoke to their captain. Michael told me three days ago he saw a man in his quarters; it was the captain of the Excalibur. He's been a presence here since we entered this system. He's been trying to protect the children from the alien, but he says he's running out of time. Eventually they'll overpower his presence. They've picked their next victims. If we don't destroy the ship, Chakotay, they'll kill the children and we'll only get pulled in deeper until we're all dead, just like the crew of the Excalibur."

Chakotay felt his heart stop for a few seconds; a horrible vision of Michael and Ava going through what he had gone through on the old ship flashing across his line of vision. And then anger took a hold of him. I won't let them hurt your children, Kathryn. "Sarah, Tom get to the bridge, have Tuvok load all weapons, I'll use them all if I have to! I don't want any trace of that ship, or that distress signal left behind."

"Sir," Paris interjected. "Do you honestly think it's a good idea to provoke them? We don't even understand how they operate."

His eyes glowed with a dark luster. Chakotay snapped, "Those beings have declared war against us for all I care! They've already killed two of our crewmates, and now they threaten innocent children! The line has been drawn and they've crossed it!" His eyes were raging with an anger that none of them had seen before, it was quite possibly the type of anger that had made him a good leader in the Maquis, and if the aliens had reared this side of him, then Paris knew they had good reason to fear him.

Barrett's calm voice brought them all back down to reality. "Sir, the aliens are going to put up a fight. It's possible that they'll try to induce another telepathic horror to the entire bridge crew."

A shiver formed at the base of his spine. "As long as one of us is available to push the trigger, then they lose." The red alert klaxons began to blare; Chakotay sprinted towards a panel, while pressing his combadge. "Bridge report!"

"We are under attack, Commander," Tuvok's stoic voice reported. "I request yours and Captain Janeway's presence on the bridge."

Chakotay stood rigid. Was this all alien allusion? "I'm not picking up any ships from here, are you sure Tuvok?" It didn't feel like the ship was under attack by…conventional weapons. His eyes flickered up towards Barrett, she had a glassy look in her eyes, her skin had turned a few shades paler and was it his imagination, but the room was colder. "Lieutenant?"

Her words were an icy death sentence. "They're here."

"Then we don't have much time to destroy that ship," Paris mused, trying to sound braver than he really felt at that moment.

"Get to the bridge," Chakotay ordered the other officers.

"Where are you going sir?" Barrett asked, hands shaking as her and Paris began to move out of sickbay with him.

Chakotay set his jaw. "To the Captain."


Kathryn Janeway tried to immerse herself in her work, anything to keep her mind off of the terrifying hallucination of earlier that day. Nothing, not even coffee ice cream shared with Ava was working. It had been her worst nightmare, fully real to her; her crew dead and her children trapped, in need of her, and she couldn't reach them. When she woke up in sickbay Tuvok, the Doctor, and Kes had all reported that the children were fine, Voyager was not under attack and the crew was not dead. It had not satisfied her. She had rushed back to her quarters as fast as she could to make sure that the children were safe. She found them eating dinner with Tal, blissfully unaware of their mother's ordeal.

"Mama," Michael said from his bedroom door, "I can't go to sleep."

She sighed, glancing up from the report she had been trying to focus on. "Michael, I've searched that room three times with my tricorder. There is no one in there with you. Now, please, just go lie down, close your eyes, and you'll fall asleep, I promise."

The child looked over his shoulder tentatively, then back at his mother. "Can I sleep in your bed?"

Kathryn nodded her head, pushed her tired body off of the sofa and followed her son into her bedroom. He was pulling the sheets down and climbing between the covers, pulling the blanket up to his chin. Kathryn sat down on the edge of the bed and brushed the stray pieces of hair out of his sleepy eyes. She tried offering him a reassuring smile, but his fears just could not be put to ease, and they had started when Voyager had entered range of this old starship. Blinking for a moment she wondered if it was coincidence or not. "Tell me about the man," she whispered, suddenly more curious about the whole thing. "What does he look like?"

Michael looked at her puzzled. "You told me that he wasn't really there."

"I know," she said, gently. "Please, honey, just tell me about him. What did he look like? Was he tall?"

"He had blonde hair, and he was kinda short," Michael replied. "He had a uniform on."

"What kind of uniform?" Kathryn asked, gently stroking his cheek with her finger.

"The kind that Tom showed me, in a history lesson," Michael said. "Tom said it was an early Starfleet uniform, from the twenty third century. He had a gold shirt and black pants."

Snuggling the child closer to her, she felt her mind start to reel. Was it possible that Michael had been seeing a ghost from the Excalibur's past? Kathryn had never been one to believe in such things, always sticking to scientific reason as to why people thought they saw apparitions. But she couldn't think of any at the moment, she doubted that it was a trick of the light in their quarters, or on the whole ship for the matter since Michael had seen this man in more than one place. He seemed to be following her children. But why?

Even as she pondered the answer to this, the door chime rang. Michael had started to drift off to sleep and Kathryn felt it was alright to leave him in her bed, snuggled underneath the blankets. Silently she went to answer the door. Chakotay was standing there, with the look of a feral animal. Behind him she could see the red lights flashing and it scared her that she had not been aware that the ship had been put on red alert. She felt her breath quicken as he pushed his way past her, phaser drawn. "Get the children, Kathryn."

"Chakotay, what's going on?"

"Kathryn, please don't question me," Chakotay said, scooping Michael up into his arms. "Just get the baby."

There was something in his voice that compelled her to trust him. Moving from her spot she hurried to the baby's door and typed in the access code. Stumbling in the dark she made it to the crib and grabbed Ava, blanket and all, and rushed back out into the living room. There was something different; she felt the change in the air. It was a familiar chill, it had happened before in the corridor just before she had collapsed. No, not another hallucination! Was this really all a delusion? Was Chakotay even real? "Chakotay, please, tell me what's going on?"

His eyes turned towards her, alive with anger and fear. "We have to get out of here Kathryn; we have to stay one step ahead of them."

"Who's them?" Kathryn hiccupped as he grabbed her with his free hand and pulled her out into the corridor.

"You don't want to meet them Kathryn," he responded, coldly, moving along.

Kathryn noticed that the corridor seemed to be in a state of disarray. There was debris littering their path. Grasping tightly to Ava, who had stirred and was whining, she felt her heart beating wildly in her chest. It looks just like before, she recalled. Breathe Kathryn, the children are with you, they're safe, and you can see them. So why did this make her feel just as terrified as before? "Chakotay, where are you taking us?"

"The Bridge," he replied, stopping just outside of the turbolift. He knew that the bridge crew was going to need all the help they could get when they attempted to destroy the Excalibur, he didn't want to bring the children there, but it was the only way for Chakotay to protect them. Perhaps the presence of the Excalibur's captain would aid in their fight too, since he seemed fond of keeping Michael and Ava safe. For a moment he pondered what to do next, recalling what had happened on the Excalibur in that turbolift. "We're going to have to take the Jefferies Tubes," he announced, turning around, gently leading Michael by the hand. "It's safer that way."

By now she was trembling. He wanted her to climb up three decks, with her small children, for reasons unbeknownst to her, and he considered it safer than the lifts? "Chakotay, I don't understand," she whispered, her voice coated with her terror. "What are you trying to protect us from?"

Chakotay shook his head, trying to keep them moving. If they stopped to talk about this, the aliens would have time to catch up with them. He had to stay ahead of the game. "I can't explain now, Kathryn. You just have to trust me."

They were rounding the corner, the hatch to the Jefferies Tube was in his sight when he felt the same force that had slammed into him on the Excalibur, hurl him into the wall. He heard Michael scream, Kathryn gasp, and Ava start to wail. Rolling onto his side he could see the dark mass circling, rounding like it had when it went after Sarah on the old ship. And now it had Kathryn and the children in its sight. No! Fumbling with his phaser he set it to kill, knowing that it would have very little effect on the creature, but praying it would stall it's rapid progress towards Kathryn and the children, who were trapped against a bulk head with no where to run. He fired the weapon hitting the creature dead on. It shrieked and turned towards him. "Come after me you monster!"

The creature didn't seem interested, and Chakotay knew it was because he was no longer afraid of it. It turned again, moving again towards Kathryn and the children. Michael was clinging desperately to his mother, who looked horrified. Ava was sobbing loudly. Chakotay fired the weapon again. "Leave them alone!"

Chakotay's phaser firing distracted the creature for a moment, long enough for the Captain to act. Kathryn was moving, which caused Michael to start crying. Ripping open a panel, she grabbed a hold of wiring and tugged hard on it. Sparks flew as she pulled the wires from their home and turned towards the alien as it closed the gap on her and her babies. She plunged the wires deep within the creature and Voyager's energy spilled into it, causing it to cry out in pain. Grabbing a hold of Michael and Ava she dove away from it as Chakotay fired the phaser again, igniting the electricity within the beast. It erupted into a ball of fire. Chakotay was hit dead on, falling back onto the deck with burns on his face and hands. Kathryn threw her body over the children before she too was hit by the fire and rendered unconscious.


The turbolift suddenly skidded to a halt and Tom, Sarah, and Kes were all thrown violently against the wall. Tom managed to get to his feet first, reaching for the controls, but he was thrown back again violently. Soon the lift was falling rapidly. Kes screamed as the cab started its free fall downwards several decks. The three occupants could only hold onto the sides of the walls and pray for it to stop. When the cab finally came to a rest all three were laying on the floor, bodies twisted in some odd fashion, breathing heavily. None said a word for a moment, as if waiting for the lift to start falling again.

Finally Sarah managed to find her voice. "What deck are we on, Tom?"

Tom pulled his body up off the floor and tentatively went to the controls. After several seconds of playing with them he determined their location. "We're between decks ten and eleven." He turned towards Sarah. "Do you think our friend is trying to stop us from getting to the bridge?"

Sarah stood, smoothing her jumpsuit, but leaving her disheveled hair alone. "It knows what we're up too, Tom, it's going to do everything in it's power to keep us from the bridge, that means even turning the ship and crew on us." She looked above her and decided their next course of action. They didn't have a lot of time now that the alien or aliens knew what they were planning. "We have to get to the bridge, and if we have to crawl through the Jefferies Tubes, then so be it."

Tom nodded his head and opened the emergency hatch and helped Kes then Sarah through before climbing in himself. He had barely grabbed a hold of the rungs of the ladder when the cab tumbled again. "Good thing we weren't in that," he called up to Sarah, who was several feet above him.

"That's because I made it believe we were," she said. Two could play this telepathic game. "But, I don't know how long it's going to believe that."

"Well," Tom quipped, "some time bought is better than no time, I suppose." He watched as Sarah came to a stop at the doors on deck ten and began to work the controls. As she did so, he heard the cab shuddering somewhere below them. Peering down he realized that it was starting to fly back up towards them. "Ahh, Lieutenant, you might want to hurry."

Sarah knew that the time she had bought them was not going to be long enough. Furiously she worked the controls and got the door open, throwing herself onto the deck then pulling Kes through the doors. Tom managed to climb out and roll away from the door just as the cab went flying by the open door. Letting out a breath of relief, Sarah got to her feet and ordered that they head for the armory on this deck. If they were going to make it to the bridge all in one piece they were going to need to arm themselves with something better than a hand phaser. It was true that they had no idea if their weapons would work on the aliens but she had to assume it would at least wound them enough to stall their attacks.

They rounded a corner and were surprised to find one of Tuvok's security details waiting for them. "I'm sorry Lieutenant," Lieutenant Baxter said. "Commander Tuvok has ordered us to take you and Mister Paris into custody."

"What for?" Tom cried, angry. Didn't Sarah mention that the ship and crew could turn against us to prevent us from going to the bridge?

Sarah moved in closer to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure Tuvok has a perfectly…logical reason for wanting us in custody, right Mister Baxter?"

As Baxter complied his answer Tom felt something slip into his hand, realizing suddenly that Sarah had given him her phaser. He didn't wait a second longer; he shot it directly at Baxter stunning him. Kes gasped as the lieutenant fell to the deck and the two crewmen in the detail looked just as surprised, pulling their own weapon's in a futile attempt because Sarah had yanked Tom's phaser from its holder and fired it at both of them before they could even respond. Quickly the group moved over the stunned shipmates and kept pressing forward towards the armory. "Damn," Tom said, "the turbolift is trying to kill us, Tuvok's got his security all over the ship ready to arrest us, and now we've just fired on our crewmates; Janeway's going to love this."

"Quiet, Tom," Sarah hissed, as they reached the armory. "It's not like we have a choice." She punched in her access code and stepped inside. She and Tom replaced their hand phasers for compression rifles.

Kes clung tightly to the medical kit she had taken with her from sickbay. "Lieutenant, are you sure those are necessary?"

"We may have to blast our way onto the bridge," Tom said in response. As he stepped out of the armory he quirked a grin. "Commander Chakotay will be proud of us; we must be breaking every Starfleet protocol in the book right now. One could even say that this is a Maquis operation."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Sarah muttered. "Let's get to the Jefferies Tubes; it's a long crawl up to the bridge."

Before proceeding, she stopped at a panel and Tom could see her input an order into the computer before they continued, but what order, he couldn't be sure. Figuring that it was some trick she had learned while on the Borg Project, he continued along silently. "There they are!" Someone yelled and a shot went whizzing by Tom's head. The three scattered behind bulkheads before Tom lined up his shot and fired, knocking the first person in the security detail down. His second shot missed and the return fire came inches from Sarah and Kes.

"They're blocking the hatch!" Tom yelled at Sarah over the weapon's fire. Behind him he could hear a familiar shriek. Damn, not now.

"Computer, initiate Barrett four alpha seven five!"

Tom felt a transporter beam sweeping them up and when they rematerialized they were standing in the center of the bridge. Harry Kim, who was seated in the command chair, looked absolutely mortified that they had shown up this way, bearing weapons. He stood on two shaky legs. "Tom, what's going on?"

Tom chose to ignore him, tapping his combadge, " Paris to Chakotay." There was nothing but silence. " Paris to Janeway." Again more silence and he worried that perhaps the command team had been confronted by the creature or worse yet, killed. They had been hoping that Chakotay and Janeway would have made it to the bridge by now, then again if they had run into such resistance, Tom could only imagine what the Captain and First Officer had come across. There wasn't time to think about all that now. It could all be a simple meddling of the communications systems from the aliens so Tom and Sarah couldn't contact Chakotay. They were going to have to proceed without him.

Sarah's eyes flickered to face the view screen. There were no attacking ships and she wondered if the security details were actually their shipmates or telepathic visions of them. However, their suspicions were confirmed that it had not been Tuvok contacting them at all, because there was no sign of the Vulcan on the bridge. It was indeed the creature trying to lead them into a trap, or rather, creatures. Now that Sarah was back on Voyager,and her mind had had the chance to settle, she realized that she was picking up more than one presence. It was like the Excalibur and the moon around it had become a colony for these aliens. It had to end here.
"Where's Commander Tuvok?"

"He went off duty fifteen minutes ago," Harry reported.

Sarah and Tom exchanged glances. "It's now or never, Tom, set a course, take us within firing range of the Excalibur."

"What?" Harry quipped. "We're going to destroy that ship? We haven't even figured out how it got here!"

"We know enough Harry," was all Sarah said before ordering him to take his station.

Harry reluctantly did so, keeping a watchful eye on her. He found it hard to believe that the Doctor had sent her back to duty after they had all been unconscious just thirty minutes before on the transporter pad. As he took his station he noticed that Sarah was ordering everyone to arm themselves, it was at this time he noticed that Kes had beamed onto the bridge with them, holding onto a med kit. What the hell is going on? He exchanged glances with B'Elanna at the engineering station. She looked just as puzzled as he was. "We'll be in weapon's range of the Excalibur in ten minutes."

"Arm all torpedo bays," Sarah ordered.

"Aye, ma'am," the young crewman at tactical managed to squeak out.

Great, I need Tuvok right now, Sarah thought as she watched the Excalibur get larger on the viewscreen. Behind her she heard a scream, whirling about she saw a black mass moving across the bridge, pouncing on top of the young crewman at tactical. Aiming her phaser rifle she fired at it and hit it dead on. The compression rifle seemed to be more than it could handle and it was gone. "Harry, transfer tactical control to your station!" Sarah screamed, running to check on the crewman who was now lying on the floor. He was alive, but unconscious. "Kes, can you treat him here?"

Kes nodded her head, calmly. "I think so."

"Lieutenant," Harry said, nervously, grabbing her attention. "There's another ship out there. It's…its Borg ma'am!"

Clever, but not clever enough. "Maintain our course, Lieutenant Paris."

"Are you crazy? That Borg ship will destroy us!" B'Elanna shouted from the engineering station. Her heart was racing. They had just witnessed one of their shipmates being attacked by…well she couldn't sure what it was, and now there was a Borg cube moving in on them, and Sarah was continuing to press forward to destroy the Excalibur. It didn't make any sense. Captain Janeway would never do this. "We have to retreat!"

"No!" Sarah yelled.

"The Borg ship is within ten kilometers of us," Harry reported. "And closing in fast!"

"Tom how much longer until we're in weapon's range?"

"Five minutes," Tom said, in a rational tone that irked B'Elanna. How the hell could both of them be so calm at a moment like this? "We just have to hold them off until then."

B'Elanna felt her heart race. "This is crazy!" She said, fingers running over her console. She had to get helm control. She had to get the ship away from the Borg cube that was moving in on them. Before she even knew what was happening she realized that Paris had pointed his phaser at her, with an apologetic look on his face, he stunned her. With helm control safe for the time being, Tom returned to his station, looking regretfully at Sarah then at Harry, who opened his mouth to say something, when the crashing of hull plates could be heard.

Clutching tightly to her phaser Sara felt another presence, not the one they had wounded before, moving into position to make the kill. And she knew its target. It was whoever had tactical control. Which at that moment was Harry; as she realized this and turned about, phaser pointing towards his station, a fire erupted behind him. Harry cried out in pain as his arms and upper body were engulfed in the flames. Someone, Sarah wasn't sure who, tried to put the fire out. Terrible cries, unearthly ones, filled the bridge and the crew began to lose whatever control they had over their fears. A force more powerful than a hurricane wind knocked into her and the phaser went flying from her hand. Ayala was shooting, but he was so panic stricken Sarah was sure that he didn't know what to shoot at. Gasping for air suddenly as the viewscreen seemed to rip off the ship; she grabbed a hold of Janeway's command chair. "Tom!"

"We're almost there!" Tom choked out over the gushing of colliding oxygen and space around him. He kept telling himself that it was all delusion that there was no damage at all to Voyager, and that he wasn't about to be sucked out into space. It didn't stop his heart from beating wildly though as he noticed that more and more of the bridge crew were succumbing to the fear. He peered over his shoulder to see Sarah struggling to get up and get to the panel between the command chairs. Suddenly he felt like he had been picked up by his collar and was flying backwards, through the air towards her.

Tom landed on top of her and both of them stumbled out of the command chair, trying to catch their breath. He heard the conn beep that they were in weapon's range. Now if only Sarah had managed to get tactical control to the command panel. He sprinted towards his station, lights flashing, the air swirling about, to keep Voyager steadied, while Sarah fired the torpedoes. "Sarah! Do it now!"

Wiping blood from her lip, Sarah crawled back up into Janeway's chair, her hand reached out to press the button that would end all this. A terrible cry emitted from the back of the bridge. The alien was moving at her at a frightening pace and she was reminded of the corridor back on the Excalibur. It wretched her away from the panel and she watched from her back as it plunged something resembling a limb into the command console. It exploded in a brilliant flash of red and orange. Sarah dashed for tactical as fast as she could, noticing Kes standing there eyes wide with fear, not sure how to react.

Tom was firing the compression rifle at the alien, trying to buy her more time, but another one appeared out of nowhere and struck him in the back. Screaming in agony he hit the conn face first and fell unconscious.

Sarah was almost at tactical when both the creatures reared around and went straight for her. Trying to regulate her breathing, she was thrown back down the steps. Crawling across the command station she tried to get to her rifle but she could feel her energy draining as she lost vital chemicals. "Kes!" she cried, realizing that Kes maybe their last chance. "Fire the torpedoes!"

Kes moved quickly form her spot; hand reaching the console as the aliens let out a cry of what Sarah hoped was terror. Collapsing at the base of the command station, her last fleeting thought was an image of the Excalibur exploding on the view screen before everything went dark and she plunged into what was now a familiar abyss.