A/N: Welcome back to the story! We pick up right where we last left off, so jump right into it! (bonus points if you get that reference ;D)
Chapter 19: Flawed Protocol
The altercation lasted a matter of seconds.
Spock scrambled to Bennet's side, shouting into his communicator for help.
He knelt next to his aide, and looked back at the monster, fully expecting it to obliterate the both of them.
Like a giant parasite, spindly legs supported its reflective, globular centre as the beast scuttled towards him.
Then, he saw a series of cracks feather out from its glass-like centre, followed by the pew sound of a plasma-charged bullet flying through the air.
Idell cocked the rifle, reloading it from her position on the crater's edge.
The creature—whatever it really was—stumbled forward one more step. A green substance oozed through the cracks, trickling to the ground with an acidic sizzle.
The creature's legs gave out and it fell back to the ground, just a few metres from where it had risen.
The crater seemed to expel a huge breath of relief. Spock turned his attention from it to Bennet, realizing how little time had passed for so much to go wrong.
You'll hate me for this, but I promise we will be together again some day.
The last vision Four of Twelve had of their mother was of her eyes. A touch of uncertainty, quickly replaced by reassurance and pride, just in time for the world to go black.
The next time they had functioning optical receptors, all they saw were white pinpricks of light. Stars, they soon realized. They were in space.
Beep.
Four of Twelve felt… bulky.
Before this mission, they'd had arms and legs, and a pair of proper eyes. Now they saw through an optical array and used their engine for movement.
If they remembered what it was like to walk for the first time, they might have likened it to this.
They made each warp with a due measure of uncertainty knowing one wrong move could set them off course for decades.
Four of Twelve remembered one of their siblings saying they had been given legs, but that they'd only be activated once on solid ground.
They were tempted to settle down on a nearby planet, but grew worried that it would result in mission failure.
The years will be slow and arduous, but I believe all of you will prevail. You are the strongest in your corp.
Mother had told them this often. Four of Twelve had always wondered if the last half would ever apply to them.
Their mission was to wait.
To wait, and watch, and to collect information for their resurgence.
And in 100 years, Four of Twelve—and their siblings—would be allowed to return home to wake up their family.
And then they would take their revenge.
Beep.
But for now, they drifted through space.
They drifted past planets and meteors, around research stations and militia outposts. Forever cloaked, forever invisible to the outsiders' many eyes.
The only contact they had with their siblings were the brief, visual exchanges when uploading information to their shared server.
Through their files, Four of Twelve saw where they had been.
Never even close to each other, of course. They'd been sent out in specifically different directions, never to see one another again until the day they all returned home.
The day came when Four of Twelve uploaded docier 8003 to the server. For the briefest of moments, they felt what might have been an emotion.
Grief.
After disappearing on a distant water planet, one of their siblings had not resurfaced.
They were presumed dead. They couldn't go after them. If any of the Revivors were found by an outsider, the others had been instructed to remain cloaked. Any other appearances might reveal the presence of one as more than just a rogue anomaly.
The Revivors—now just eleven of them—all secretly hoped that Eight of Twelve had induced their survival protocol. Whether they were still in probe form or not, that gave them the hope that they might all be reunited one day as a complete set.
Beep.
Time passed, and Four of Twelve continued their endless journey through space.
Cache after cache of information flowed through their sensors, and soon, the thought of some day returning home became but an occasional blip in their central processing unit.
Security system plans, starship blueprints, emergency protocols, safe houses, artillery and intelligence budgets (known and unknown), colonization schedules, diplomatic strategies, election results, confidential communications, court documents, medical data, personal information, and billions upon billions of passwords flowed through Four of Twelve and into their collective intelligence.
The one thing they knew to look forward to was the occasional shot of a far-off planet. Two and Ten of Twelve seemed to visit the most beautiful places.
Four of Twelve's path had led them into the most boring section of the universe. They contributed nothing but gray planetoids with the occasional research station to the visual memory database.
They could practically feel their siblings' sardonic laughter each time it came for them to sync.
Which is probably why Four of Twelve didn't change course when the meteor showed up on their scanners.
It was small enough to only cause minimal damage, but had enough mass to disrupt their trajectory (and cripple their landing gear) completely.
Four of Twelve felt a rush unlike any other as they were pulled in by an unknown gravitational field. The exhilaration carried them all the way dow to its grey, rocky surface, where they crashed and would lie for the next ten years.
A dozen hardware systems had been destroyed in the crash, making flight and communication to their siblings nearly impossible.
All Four of Twelve had the capacity for was to send out their singular, monotonous, distress call. Knowing that no one would ever answer it.
Beep.
Grey crater walls.
Beep.
Dust covering their solar panels.
Beep.
Energy depletion. Near full system shut down.
Beep.
A muffled world outside. Occasional gusts of wind, but nothing strong enough to clear out their auditory sensors.
Beep.
No temperature.
Beep.
No taste—they'd never even had taste buds.
Beep.
Nothing to see. Nothing on their last functioning scanners. Sleep protocol initiated to protect their longevity.
Beep.
No more scanners. Just their final survival protocol, and they didn't even have someone to use that on.
Beep.
Beep.
Years went by, and then—out of the blue—Four of Twelve blinked.
Beep.
No, wait. They weren't capable of blinking.
One of their scanners had just been wiped clean. The soft rays of a distant sun filtered through their solar panels and into their battery. Four of Twelve hummed as they felt the first proper charge they'd had in years filter through their core.
Their thermal regulators came back online, followed by most auditory functions. Their communications inventory overwhelmed them with an overhaul of messages, but they'd have to address that later.
Their ocular scanners flickered, giving them a glimpse of just who had been responsible for this awakening.
They surged to life, lumbering up to their full height on barely-functioning legs (the same landing gear broken so many years previously). Grey dust and rocks spilled off their back, and Four of Twelve focused in on the first life form.
Human-5618, male, one-point-eight metres tall, slightly lower ranking, but more surprised. Not that one.
Vulcan-3259, male, one-point-eight-nine metres tall, high-ranking, surprised.
There. Him.
The crater walls stretched high into the sky, boxing the three of them in together.
Four of Twelve surged towards the Vulcan male, and time slowed down. The human got in the way.
Running out of time, Four of Twelve used one of their claws to hoist the human into the air. Without a second thought, they sliced off the hand, then the forearm intending to shoot them. They felt thei landing gear buckle. Structural integrity compromised. They didn't have time for this. The human would have to do.
A needle protracted from one of their spindly stingers and pricked the back of his neck.
For an eighth of a second, the human's eyes flashed a bright green, then faded to a dull grey as Four of Twelve threw him across the crater.
As the man reached the peak of his arch, he heard a final phrase before crashing into a pile of grey dirt and rocks.
Four of Twelve let themselves be shot as their three choice words were transmitted into his brain.
Resistance is futile.
And Four of Twelve woke up in a strange room, bandaged so tightly he could barely breathe, with a stump where his right hand had once been.
"I should have warned you. The frequency… it was all there. How could I let it all get swept away from me..."
Dillan and Spock sat on a bench outside of medbay. Dillan had her legs tucked up into her chest. Spock had his at a perfect ninety degrees with the floor. Dillan rubbed the crown of her head with a fist. The hair was just starting to grow back.
"There is no possible outcome where you could have known this was going to happen," Spock said. "I take full responsibility for this incident."
Incident didn't even begin to describe what had happened. Failure, catastrophe, disaster—to name a few.
Their mission disrupted beyond all repair, a forced retreat back to the Enterprise, leaving all that they had needed—still needed—boxed up in that crater.
Now, they floated in the planetoid's orbit, awaiting the humiliating arrival of their rescue team so they could be towed the rest of the way to Somerdale. Starfleet wasn't about to risk its prize ship over-extending her reach—not when she was already on the brink of self-destruction.
Venter and Idell had been checked out of med bay the day of the incident. That had been two days ago.
Spock had sustained minimal injuries, now just waiting out the recovery of his aide-de-campe.
Unprompted, Dillan had brought him lunch, and proceeded to annoy him until he ate what she deemed enough of it.
The tray of food sat, discarded, at the other end of their bench.
"It's not just-" Dillan began, but stopped when the doors to medbay opened.
Harrev stepped out, the skin around his eyes puffy and dark. His shoulders slumped when he saw who was waiting.
Before either of them could say anything, he turned and walked away. His movements were slow and directionless, leaving them to wonder what he'd seen inside.
Dillan looked at Spock. His face had hardened into a flat mask.
"Maybe we should go in," she said.
He stood up, and after a moment, went inside. Dillan waited a minute, then picked up the lunch tray and followed him in.
Bones and Nurse Grey stood on either side of the bed. Spock joined them, holding onto the end frame for support.
Dillan saw someone gesture with one hand, then point to where the other one should have been. She instinctively reached to touch where her upper arm met her synthetic limb, the skin scarred, but clean.
Bones shifted to the side just enough so that she could see Bennet sitting up in his biobed, a serious look on his face.
While he spoke to Bones and Nurse Grey, his gaze flickered over to Dillan for a moment and she found herself frozen in place.
Bones glanced over his shoulder at her, his gaze softening, but also turning surprised.
Dillan looked away, her hand falling to her side. She left med bay with over a dozen questions, but not a single answer.
"Who was that?" Four of Twelve asked.
Bones frowned to where he'd been looking.
"Just a cleaner," he said. Spock's grip on the bed frame tightened.
Four of Twelve hadn't gone by a gendered pronoun in decades. Had he ever any reason to? Did anyone? He supposed it made organizing things easier—even if there were only a few groups among billions of life forms.
"Now," the Doctor said. "You were telling us what you said to Harrev. Maybe that could help us understand why he left in such an emotional state."
"Of course," Four of Twelve said. "I did not mean to hurt him: I only said that I did not know who he was."
Honestly, he didn't know. He had his own memories from before, and the reactions of those around him to go off of. Not to mention the woman who'd been staring at him. Something about her seemed… familiar.
The Doctor and Nurse looked at each other. Four of Twelve noted the surprise in their eyes, then raised his stump.
"Do you know what happened to my arm?" He asked.
A beat. Then, "It was severed."
The newest person to come and inspect him. His body's former superior. The Vulcan. Suppressed emotions and yet he felt the despair coming off of him in waves.
Four of Twelve hadn't intended on selecting a damaged body, but, he supposed that in this case it was his own fault, so he'd have to make do with his mistake.
The Doctor steeled himself by pressing his padd against his hipbone. "You don't recognize the Orion who was in here before?"
Four of Twelve shook his head. They kept pressing on that issue.
The Nurse took a step back from the biobed, looking to the Doctor for confirmation.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "Not to beat a dead horse, but do you know who any of us are?"
Four of Twelve looked up from his stump at the vulcan. His name was on the tip of his tongue. Someone—the man who used to inhabit this body—shouted it from inside a crater on a planet thousands of kilometres below them, but it only ricocheted off the walls and out of the room, far beyond his grasp.
"No," Four of Twelve said, squashing the man down to a barely-recognizable pulp of neuro-matter. Present, but only just. Practically a figment of his subconscious.
The Doctor nodded. The Nurse retreated from his bed to go over the brain scans one more time. She wouldn't find anything. Four of Twelve was very thorough.
The Vulcan stood shock-still, gripping the bed frame with the intent to break bone.
"Cadet!"
For any other title, a dozen heads would have turned. But cadets rarely existed outside the academy.
The back of Dillan's neck lit up, followed by her scalp. Luckily, the latter part was covered by a woollen hat. The temperatures in the thermal hub of the Enterprise tended to fluctuate, so they were allowed small deviations in the uniform.
The five other engineers took turns staring at her as she made her way down the ladder and across the promenade.
Bones waited for her outside the exit.
In the weeks since her demotion, the ship's life support systems had developed more and more malfunctions.
Their stop on the grey dot had been a last-ditch effort to garner some much-needed repairs supplies, but they all knew how that had turned out.
The repairs shifts had doubled in size, now occupying nearly half of engineering's time. Each time they closed the door on one problem, three more burst wide open.
Dillan had yet to build up the courage to ask Scotty about being reinstated, and thus, was stuck with the duty of de-mucking control panels and long-forgotten ridges inside various Jeffries tubes.
Dillan exhaled as she stepped out of the temp hub. The engineers stopped pretending not to stare. Bones put his hands on his hips.
She rubbed the back of her head. "What can I do for you?"
Bones saw her as a shrunken version of her past self. The way she stood, how she held herself—or didn't, in this case. The fuzz that he knew was growing back on the left side of her scalp, even though she tried to hide it underneath the hat.
In an instant, his chilly exterior dissolved.
Dillan couldn't see it by looking down at her feet, but all he wanted to do in that moment was wrap her up in a Starfleet-issue safety blanket and give her a mug of hot cocoa.
"I'm sure by now you've heard what happened to the landing party," he said.
Of course she knew. She'd been at the back of the crowd that had surged forward to receive them. She'd sat with Spock outside of the waiting room for an hour.
She'd gone inside, only to—
"And you saw what happened to—"
"-Bennet," she finished. "Yeah, I saw."
Even when bandaged—hidden away, essentially—the sight of another stump made her stomach roll. It made her think of things she tried to avoid at all costs.
"So, uh, listen…" Bones looked from her to the busy crew of engineers. "You're not doing anything important at the moment, are you?"
Dillan crossed her arms. "That's pretty much my job description at this point."
"Right, well…" He glanced over his shoulder, then back to her.
Dillan sighed as his gaze went from her head, to her arm, to her leg. "Alright: what do you want?"
"Your prosthetics," he said.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Not in that sense-" He raised his hands. "It's just… Bennet." Bones shook his head. "I still need clearance from Jim, but I'd like your help in re-acclimating him to, well, life."
"Life without a hand, you mean."
She saw something fall in Bones' eyes. Before he could say anything else, she held up a finger.
"Humour is my coping mechanism, and also, no."
"Well, that's perfectly reasonable—wait, what?"
Dillan crossed her arms. "I won't do it. Talk to him, that is."
A few of the engineers quieted their work so they could better eavesdrop in the conversation.
"You can't just—" Bones took a moment to compose himself, considering the most drastic methods he could take without breaking any laws to get her into med bay.
"Listen," he said.
"Stop telling me to listen, my ears work perfectly fine," she said, while also making a mental note to adjust the sensors on her right ear.
"I need your help, Dillan," he said.
"So, this is for you."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"So you were talking about Bennet when you said 'I'."
"Yes, I was talking about Bennet—and the state of our entire damn crew!" Bones exploded. "We can't lose anyone else. Not so soon after… after…" He looked from Dillan's deflated smirk to the number of engineers decidedly not listening to them instead of doing their jobs.
Dillan flinched back as Bones stepped towards her, but he still managed to get a grip on her wrist.
Mouth opening, she tried to pull away from him.
He held fast. "Listen here, you smug princess. I wouldn't be here if Bennet hadn't asked for you. You're not a licensed professional—you're not even part of the science division. But you're the only link we have to any sort of recovery for him, so that makes you our last resort."
"He- he asked for me?" Dillan barely even knew him.
"Yes, so quit your whinin' and get your butt down to psych," Bones growled. Upon Dillan's horrified look, he said, "Oh, calm down, we're not locking you in there just yet: it's just for a debriefing."
Bones, Kirk, and Spock all watched from behind the observation window as Dillan opened the door to Bennet's room. For the time being, she kept her expression kind, her motions smooth, just as she'd been instructed.
Bennet sat on his bed, facing their window, but away from her. When she moved the single extra chair in the room to face him, he turned at the added noise.
He raised an eyebrow. In recognition? She hoped so.
"Hi," she said. "My name's Dillan."
Bennet looked her up and down methodically. "You're not a doctor."
The red uniform tended to be a dead giveaway. "No, definitely not."
"An engineer then," Bennet suggested. He kept his hands on his knees, palms facing downwards.
Dillan shrugged. "Trying to be. They have me scrubbing floors for now."
"That sounds boring."
Dillan tilted her head. "It's given me time to reflect."
"On what?" He asked.
"Lots of things…" She sighed and glanced down at the smooth white floor. Then back up at him. "I've been told you don't know your name. Is that still true?"
Bennet looked down. "I can't tell you who or where I am. How long have I been here?" The look he gave her told her he knew he had, just couldn't tell how long.
Bones had told her it could be some kind of acute stress disorder. In any normal case, that's what it would have been diagnosed as immediately. But since his amnesia had lasted for longer than one sleep cycle, and didn't look to be improving, it lead them to believe it could be something much worse.
"Not too long," she said, cracking a smile. "We're doing our best to make your stay as short as possible."
"But it would be easier if I remembered who I was, wouldn't it?" Concern flashed across his face, and Bennet didn't meet her eyes.
Dillan forced herself to laugh it off. "I mean, that would, in any case. But we'll make do with what we've got right now."
"Really?" Bennet said. "It didn't seem alright to them before hand. The doctors, I mean."
"Yes, well," Dillan swallowed, glancing over Bennet's shoulder at the wall. "It can be a bit unnerving when someone you've known for quite a while doesn't recognize you…"
Bennet's shoulders sunk even further. "So I did know them."
Dillan nodded. She had no idea where to go from here. He was broken, and something about their shared connection with amputation had made Bones think they could have a constructive conversation, but she wasn't so sure about it—never had been.
"They told me we're on a starship," Bennet said quietly. Almost child-like in his innocence.
Dillan was tempted to ask if they'd told him who he had been before. "Mmhm. Have they already asked you what year it is?"
"All of those regular questions," he said, then added, "2261," when she prompted him.
She nodded. "How did you feel right before I got here?"
Bennet sighed. "At peace, I think. It was the first hour I'd had to myself in the past week."
Dillan closed her eyes. "Then I walked in and-"
"-Disturbed me," Bennet finished.
Dillan raised her eyebrows, suddenly at odds with him.
He caught her eye and smiled briefly. "Only kidding. You're alright. You barely have a plan—just the one they've given you that you don't entirely believe—so you're basically harmless."
She blinked. "I think I'm more frightened than flattered by that."
"Don't be," he said. "I meant every word of it."
Dillan tapped her fingers against her knee. "Can we talk about how you lost your arm now?"
Bennet took a deep breath, and his chest seemed to sink inwards an impossible amount. Every part of his person—his exuberant atmosphere—seemed dulled. More calculated.
"May as well try."
Dillan twisted her hands in her lap, unaware of how his gaze traveled up her prosthetic leg and arm.
"What—if anything—you remember of it?"
Bennet thought to himself for a moment. "I don't remember much from before." He paused. '"Was there a crater?"
Dillan nodded slowly. "Yes. There was."
He scrunched up his brow, desperately trying to recall anything before he woke up in this bed.
Or at least pretending that he was—for appearances' sake.
He let out a gasp. "I'm sorry. There's nothing else." Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes. Dillan felt a lump grow in her throat. So many people were going to be affected by this.
"What— what do you see when you try to remember what happened?"
Bennet glanced to the side. "Grey. Grey and metal."
"What do you feel when you see the-" She frowned. "The 'grey and metal'." She was never going to be a therapist.
"I feel… alone. And I hurt," he said.
Dillan looked at his left arm, where it ended in a swath of bandages just below his elbow.
"Yes," Bennet said, gesturing to it with his other hand. "Here."
Dillan nodded. The stump was still healing, but it wasn't inconceivable that he would be experiencing some—
"But also below. It still hurts sometimes—where my hand used to be. I injured it as a child, and that pain is coming back somehow."
"Phantom pains," Dillan said. "I still get them too sometimes."
"You know what this is like?" Bennet asked, gesturing with his severed arm.
"Yeah… about that." She didn't want to have to do it, but it seemed like the best possible way to relate to him in that moment.
She pushed her right sleeve up. Then she reached under her shirt collar to her armpit, and unhooked the latch that lay underneath.
Her arm came away quickly, but she caught it before it hit the floor.
"Both this and my leg here," she said, tapping it with the prosthetic arm. "Along with some other parts…"
Bennet stared at her straightly, but with a child-like curiosity. "Where do I get one of those?"
Dillan held her arm close to her core in apprehension. One minute he was a stern parent, the next their wonder-filled child. How did that come out of amnesia? She tried to shake off the feeling, not wanting to project it onto him.
"It was made for me," she said. "Though I've done some modifications over the years…"
Bennet looked at her with hopeful eyes, and she felt a deep foreboding grow in her chest. She sunk deeper and deeper into the mess.
"I suppose, if you're interested… I could try and make one for you?"
This hadn't been a part of her debriefing. She could practically hear Bones and company groaning from where they were watching.
She'd never created a limb from scratch before. Only ever built on her own constructed by the beast.
She'd have to create a budget, take measurements, come up with concepts, make blueprints, gather materials. A proxy would have to take its place for now, while Bennet started up his physical therapy. She'd ask Scotty if he'd ever done something like it. Or if he knew anyone who had. She'd only made the suggestion moments ago, but already felt a whirlwind of ideas flashing through her mind. All the modifications she could make to this arm that she wished she could do for her own.
Bennet stared at her intensely. "I'd like that."
He looked around them, seeming to centre his gaze on the wall where she was sure they were being watched from. "They can see us," he stated.
"And hear us," Dillan said. The way he stared at the wall behind him unnerved her. Like he could see through it and into the observation room.
She grew even more unnerved when he whirled around and leaned right into her face. She moved to get up out of her chair, and out of the room, but he grabbed her wrist.
"Try the raspberry," he said, in a voice that didn't sound like his. A smile spread across his face, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Just a warning. Someone usually spikes the punch about halfway through the night."
Eight of Twelve—because that's who he was certain she was—stood up from her chair. He saw her eyes widen, in spite of how much she tried to hide it. She shifted backwards, tugging her wrist out of his grip.
He wanted to explain everything to her right then. He knew she was just lost and confused, but also unloading everything on her in that moment would probably make her fear him even more.
"I- I need to go," Eight of Twelve stammered. Avoiding his gaze, she made for the exit.
Four of Twelve watched her until she disappeared through the sliding door, wondering just how her survival protocol had become so flawed.
Shoutout to claptrapfan64 for favouriting the story!