A/N: Lo and behold, it's time for some answers! You guys deserve it. Can I just say that writing Trip is so much fun... what a good thing I didn't knock him out for too long. Yet.

Time to end the chamber play and start with the space opera! Let me know what you think!

STRINGS ATTACHED

CHAPTER SEVEN

Trip's head hurt.

Grimly, he repositioned the ice pack he was pushing against his bruises, glared at the osmotic eel in its tank on the other side of sickbay, and corrected himself mentally: Trip's head hurt, as well as his face. And his shoulders. And his neck.

Worst of all, though, his pride hurt.

Trip had been punched in the face a few times since joining Starfleet, which was in and of itself a disconcerting fact, but being knocked out by your former best friend and Captain was a new one. Although the baseline – headache, metallic taste in your mouth, the steady urge to touch the swelling and then cursing yourself because it hurt – was pretty much the same, the emotional component was definitely different. It was bitter.

Gritting his teeth, then regretting it because his freaking jaw hurt like hell, Trip pressed the button on the PADD he was holding and watched the video again. He had seen it a few times already, as it was the only thing distracting him from his hurt pride or the fact that they were going Warp 4.1 and the ship shook and groaned regularly.

He had felt a soft rumbling before, and when he was in the brig the rumbling had changed into a tremor. Now, it was a full-fletched shaking, and Trip couldn't for the life of him understand why they wouldn't slow down and check the coils because there was obviously something wrong with his beloved coils and for the love of God, if he had to throw out the coils again just because no one listened –

Trip took a deep breath, remembered that frowning hurt, and turned his attention to the PADD again.

On the bright side to all of this, he was now in possession of a video made from the surveillance camera of the brig. It showed Archer's outburst in an angle that hid Trip's face (for which he was very thankful), and then showed how out of sudden, Malcolm ninja-ed his way into the cell and, in one fluid motion, knocked out the Captain so hard that Trip could almost feel the camera shaking. Unceremoniously, Jon went down in a heap of limbs, and Malcolm pushed him out of the way without even looking at him again to reach Trip.

He hadn't expected that watching his boyfriend sucker punch the Captain into oblivion was beyond hot, but hey, what had gone as expected this week? Seriously.

Trip watched it again.

Maria Flores had given him the PADD when he had been properly responsive again. In his memory, she had been next to him most of the time since he woke up, but he really didn't have a good grasp on the passage of time right now. He was feeling much better already, but to be perfectly honest Trip didn't even remember how he had gotten to sickbay. Apparently, he had walked, but Trip heavily doubted these scraps of memory; The colors and shapes of sickbay had moved so quickly back then, he couldn't imagine standing, let alone walking. Not with that concussion that was still mauling his brain, courtesy of the nice lump at the back of his head that happened when it had collided with the brig's wall.

Of course, he remembered that perfectly.

He watched the video again and felt better instantly when Jon hit the ground.

Readjusting his ice pack, Trip looked at the door Phlox had disappeared through. He needed to be cleared by the Doc before he could leave sickbay and knew for a fact that Phlox had instructed Flores and Heston, who were waiting outside, not to let him go.

Just then, another door opened, and Malcolm walked in.

He looked all serious, but as soon as he spotted Trip sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, the Engineer could see the relief washing over him.

"Commander," the Lieutenant breathed and jogged over to the bed.

Really, Mal? Trip thought but decided not to comment on it. He was too happy to see Malcolm again, and if the Brit felt that heightened secrecy was important right now, he wasn't going to complain. Not as long as he was sitting in sickbay with a concussion.

Malcolm had reached the bed and laid a hand on his shoulder, looking worried. "How are you?"

"Alright, I guess?" Trip smiled slightly, trying not wince as his face stung with the motion. "Could've been worse."

Malcolm ignored him, of course, and instead zeroed in on the bruise, gently touching his cheek. "Didn't Phlox give you something?"

Trip felt a slight tremor in Malcolm's hand and knew immediately that a chorus of guilt and reproach had to echo in his boyfriend's head. Malcolm always blamed himself when anyone of the crew got hurt.

"It's not that bad," he lied, therefore. "Most of the Doc's happy juice would make me drowsy, and we thought that might not be good right now..."

It was only a white lie. The concussion wasn't too serious, and Phlox had given him something to stop his brain from swelling. Honestly, Trip was feeling better by the minute. The headache was bad, but he had much worse. He wouldn't be winning a beauty contest right now, with half of his face swollen and discolored, but he could live with that. Especially since the alternative would mean bathing his face in one of the osmotic eel's oh-so-useful secretions, and Trip had learned early on his voyages not to let strange alien stuff touch your skin directly unless you wore some sort of protection.

…That argument hadn't convinced Phlox, but in the end, he had been fine with not drugging Trip, considering the circumstances. The fact that the ship had made a lunge to the side and almost made Phlox slam into his Pyrithian bat had helped.

"Have you been briefed?"

"Not really." Trip tried to remember what Flores had told him but that kind of hurt his brain. "I know that the Captain's insane and that we are burning my engines."

"I think it's my fault," Malcolm said, sitting down on Trip's bed. Of all things, Trip hadn't expected that. "He knows about us."

Trip furrowed his brow, not really getting the connection. "Huh?" he asked therefore, intelligently.

"He saw your uniform in my quarters and put two and two together. I don't really know why, but he exploded." Malcolm sighed. "He confined me to quarters and left. I guess he went straight to the brig. I've never seen him so angry."

In Trip's jagged memory, a few of the sentences Jon had said to him in the brig lightened up and started to make more sense. He had talked about them; about showing them that he wasn't all that...

"Trip?" Malcolm asked, worriedly, and Trip realized that he must have zoned out for a moment. He also realized that he was shivering all of a sudden.

"I'm fine," he said automatically, concentrating on the here and now. "He was spitting mad at me." He distinctly remembered his own voice now, asking 'Who are you?'.

"We relieved him of duty," Malcolm whispered gloomily, and Trip did a double take. "I talked to Hoshi. We took over, then I knocked him out. There was no other choice… Trip, things have been crazy."

Tell me about it, he wanted to say, but the door to inner sickbay hissed open just then and Malcolm was suddenly standing again, a respectful meter away from his bed. Trip tried very hard not to roll his eyes.

"Ah, Mr. Reed, good that you're here," Doctor Phlox said nonchalantly, moving over to Trip's hospital bed. "How nice of you to check up on the Commander even before I could call you."

Malcolm, red as a beet, stammered away. "I just... Mr. Tucker needs to be informed..."

The smile on the Denobulan's face was a tad broader than the one he usually wore for his patients. Trip thought he could see a mischievous grin in there. Paired with the steam that was practically coming out of Mal's ears, Trip suspected that Jon wasn't the only one who knew about their relationship now. In contrast to the paranoid Brit, though, that thought didn't bother him at all. Of all people on Enterprise, he worried least about Phlox' opinion about them: Knowing the Doctor, the Denobulan would be exhilarated at the news. And very curious.

At least, Phlox decided to leave Malcolm alone and turned to Trip, who felt his lips twitch as he tried to act oblivious. "Commander, how are you feeling, hm?"

"I'll be fine as soon as I know why we are going well over Warp 4 when the ship is shaking."

Instead of answering, Phlox held the scanner in front of Trip's face, waited a few seconds, and finally nodded approvingly. "The medicine is working well, Commander. You'll have a headache for a while, but as long as you don't suffer additional symptoms, I'm inclined to declare you fit for duty, given the circumstances..."

"Great," Trip slowly stood up from the bed, testing his balance. "What are the circumstances? Where's the Captain now?"

As Malcolm turned to Phlox, Trip deducted that Jon was still somewhere in sickbay and not in the brig, probably behind that door Phlox had disappeared through earlier. Nodding seriously, the Doctor walked over to the screens above his medical machinery, typing something onto the screen.

"I think it's obvious that this is not the Captain Archer we know. I've been keeping him unconscious and have been running quite a few tests simultaneously."

"That... that wasn't him," Trip agreed. "There's something wrong with him."

"His body is flooded with adrenaline, for one thing," the Doctor said. "Much higher than any levels I've ever seen in a human. Cortisol, as well."

On the screen, a scan of a human brain appeared, some parts of it colored.

"Since Mr. Reed had been quite rough in his handling of the situation in the brig, I decided to perform a brain scan." Phlox threw a glare at Malcolm, who only shrugged. Fondly, Trip remembered how exactly Malcolm had 'handled' Archer, and assured himself that he still found it very, very hot. "Since the Captain's adrenal glands are inconspicuous, I took a closer look at the pituitary gland that should have balanced the high levels of hormones..."

He zoned in on one of the colored regions of the scan, and automatically Trip and Malcolm moved closer until they joined him on the screen. When they were close enough, Phlox pointed at a small discoloration.

"And here I found this, neatly tucked away in the Captain's limbic system between the pituitary gland, the hippocampus, and the amygdala."

On the screen, the image of the brain disappeared, and a gray 3D scan of whatever Phlox was talking about magnified. Trip watched the structure turn, a numb feeling spreading through his body. "What is that?"

"All I know for sure is that it doesn't belong there," Phlox said, voice deadly serious. "I have never seen anything like this. It emits low electromagnetic impulses. My analysis shows that it influences the Captain's emotional responses and thus the adrenal glands. The pituitary gland controls the flow of hormones, the amygdala is involved in our most basic emotional responses."

"Like anger," Malcolm whispered, torn somewhere between awe and dread.

"You're telling me that this... thing controlled him?" Trip asked, a glimmer of hope flaring up. He felt giddy all of a sudden. He had been right – that hadn't been Jonathan. Jon wouldn't ever behave this way on his free will. "It produces emotions?"

"That might be a bit of a, huh, strong word," Phlox mused, nipping his hope in the bud immediately. "If my interpretation is correct, it influences him. So far my best guess is that it more or less feeds of existing emotional responses from the amygdala and then suppresses or enhances them."

The Doctor smiled at him sympathetically, probably knowing that this was not the answer Trip had hoped for. So these emotions Jon had felt had been real – all the hatred and anger Trip had seen in his eyes… Trip felt his throat constricting as reality sunk in. So far, he had been able to believe that all of this would find an explanation that solved the tension between them. Now, he had it in writing: even though Jon had been influenced heavily by this device, it didn't make up his emotions. Ultimately, there was at least a small part of Jon that apparently wanted to bash his brains in.

Trip swallowed hard and was more than relieved when Malcolm took over the conversation.

"Where did it come from? How long has it been there?"

"I don't know," Phlox shrugged. "From the level of adrenaline in the Captain's blood, I'd say it's been active for at least two weeks."

Trip stared at the rotating 3D model on the screen and tried to place the faint feeling of familiarity as he studied it. The image was crude, a quick overlapping of images taken from different angles. Apart from the main body of the device, Trip was able to make out a few blurry lines on the surface that looked like a geometrical pattern.

"Can you remove it?" Malcolm asked meanwhile.

"Well, it had to get in there somehow, so I guess I will be able to extract it again."

"Do it," Trip ordered, probably superfluously, and wondered how his voice managed to sound so confident. "Run every test that you can. I want to know as much about this as you can find out."

"I will start right away," Phlox smiled at him gently. "The equipment I need for the surgery has been unimpaired, luckily."

"We need to know who did this," Trip said, and only then registered Phlox' words. He pried his attention away from the screen and turned to the Doctor and Malcolm. "Unimpaired?"

"There are a few things you don't know yet..." Malcolm stepped up, sighing, and Trip stared at him incredulously.

"Apart from the Captain being manipulated from within his brain?"

His voice had risen dangerously at the end of that sentence, but Trip didn't care. Seriously what had these people done while he was confined? The Captain was brainwashed, literally, Malcolm had led a mutiny – Malcolm! – and his ship was shaking ominously. Judging from the way the Lieutenant shuffled, it wasn't the end of things. Maybe he was still concussed and unconscious, and when he woke he'd realize this was all just a dream.

Malcolm crossed his arms and ignored Trip's flirt with hysteria. "More and more of the ship's systems failed while you were in confinement. The Captain thought you had sabotaged Enterprise and insisted on finishing the overhaul." Trip nodded at him to continue, calming down again, but inwardly gagged at the idea that he would purposely damage his ship. "In the end, Hoshi found out that we weren't even going where we thought we were going."

"I never knew where we were going…"

"He told us we're going home to have you court-martialed. But he lied. We're heading in the wrong direction."

Malcolm's eyes had darkened as he said it. Trip felt the uneasiness clinging at his heart again, just when he had talked to Hoshi and they found out that they were the only ones feeling the ship move. It even matched the indignation that had spiked when he heard the word 'court-martialed'. That bastard...

"So where are we going now?" He asked instead, pushing the thought away. He was in charge now, he needed to get a grip to lead them out of this mess.

Phlox and Malcolm exchanged a look Trip didn't like at all. "We don't know."

Trip stared at them. "Come again?"

"We don't have external sensors. Navigational data is all garbled." Malcolm rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Trip, we can't even get the engines to power down. We've been trying for an hour. We don't have control."

For a second, Trip wondered if the concussion was back. He felt dizzy again. They were flying with Warp 4.1 to some unknown location, without control? Had this been Archer's doing?

"Engineering's been working for a day straight." Malcolm looked at him intensely. "We need you down there, Trip."

No shit. Trip closed his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts. "Doctor, call me as soon as you have results. Malcolm, fill me in on the way to Engineering."

"Ah, just one second, Commander," Phlox turned to Malcolm. "How's that hand of yours?"

Only now did Trip notice the bandage that was sloppily wrapped around Malcolm's hand. Wearily, he thought that he should have noticed sooner, and that it really had been a while since he slept properly. "You're hurt?"

"I'm fine," Malcolm shrugged, of course, "We already put ointment on it."

Phlox carefully inspected the bandage and read some data from the scanner, humming satisfied.

"How did that happen?"

Malcolm looked positively contrite. "I grabbed the electronic conduits to open my quarters' door. I… I fear I damaged inner automatics on B deck along with my hand. Do you think you can have a look at it, all the doors are opening and closing randomly…"

Trip buried his face in his hands and groaned.

"Baby, what did they do to you?"

Carefully, Trip peeled the first layer of lagging away and cursed at the damage. The relays were fused, the smell was overwhelming. As Trip stared at the control panel, a little bit of smoke escaped from the mess of cables and coils.

He had arrived in Engineering three hours ago and had since done nothing but trying to obtain an overview over the situation. The ship was a mess. Engineering didn't manage to gain back control, and their engines were slowly but steadily burning up. The reports were piling up, more and more systems unresponsive or malfunctioning.

As he reattached the lagging over the damaged parts of the panel, Trip sighed deeply… and vowed to get back at whoever did this. Punching him in the face was one thing, but damaging his lovely external sensor array panel like that? That was a whole different thing.

Trip had a hot, exciting fling with the external sensors, kind of an on and off affair ever since they had been installed and beeped at him for the first time. The technology fascinated him, and he could spend hours watching the intricate way the sensors picked up the different data input, processed it, and then poured out mathematically correct and precise formulas and tables. The transmission speed was breathtaking. When the formulas weren't as correct and precise anymore, though, the sensors' petulant refusal to tell him what's wrong riled him up like no other piece of technology could.

But now, external sensors wouldn't even spit out nonsense. They didn't talk to him at all; some of the screens blinked irregularly, but none of that initial spark was there. Trip swallowed hard before leaving her to examine the next department.

"I'll be back for you soon, promise."

He had seen most of the damaged departments by now, lamenting over the unresponsive state of his beloved machines, though he had yet to visit his one true love, the warp drive. Truth be told, Trip didn't feel up to par right now, with Jonathan's surgery and what it meant on the back of his mind, his head and face still hurting pretty badly, and their destination still unknown. If the warp engine was just as damaged as the rest of the ship, he didn't know if he could stomach it.

Malcolm always mocked him about his tendency to anthropomorphize his ship, but the Brit had no idea how it felt to be in sync with an engine, to feel the life of a ship you took care of under your finger tips. Enterprise had a pulse, a respiration and one hell of a character, and Trip had been in love the second he had set eyes on her. The feeling was mutual, whether Malcolm believed it or not. They took care of each other. There had been days in the past, in the Expanse or after Charles had died, when Trip hadn't been sure who kept whom going. If the ship was damaged, Trip felt it himself – and now he had to find a way to repair her, to gain back control.

'Doctor Phlox to Commander Tucker,' a voice called through the ship.

Dreading what was to come, Trip went to the nearest communication panel, jerked away from the electric shock he received when he touched the button, and made his way to the next panel, cursing.

"Tucker here."

'The surgery was successful. The patient is resting now.'

Trip soaked up the good news like a sponge. Thank God. "That's good. Send all the data you found to Malcolm. I'm about to catch up with him."

'Yes, Commander.' Trip thought he could hear the grin on Phlox' voice and rolled his eyes. 'Maybe tell him to come see me again, he was quite flushed back in Sickbay.'

"Call me as soon as your patient wakes up. Tucker out."

Under normal circumstances, Trip would have been down with mocking Malcolm about his Britishness, but his head swam with obligations and unanswered questions. At least Phlox still had enough energy to perform brain surgery and pry about relationships of his fellow crewmembers at the same time – it was oddly relieving.

They were careful not to let too much information about Jon's status roam the ship. The crew was scared and tired, and as long as they didn't have a clear story to tell, they had decided to keep the news about the device in the Captain's brain among the Senior Staff. It was difficult enough with the crew on the verge of exhaustion, the ship obviously in distress, the Captain out of commission, and Trip himself reappearing with half of his face black and blue.

As he made his way to the impulse rocket drive where Malcolm was waiting for him, Trip pondered how easily the crew had accepted his return and his claim to command. Jon had really pushed them too far; Trip's first order had been to send anyone who had worked longer than twelve hours to rest, and apparently that had been enough help them decide which dismissed commanding officer to trust.

When he stepped into the impulse drive chamber, Malcolm didn't so much as crack a smile in greeting. "We found it," he said instead.

"Found what?" Tiredly, Trip walked up to him and followed his gaze and almost stumbled. "What the…"

Earlier, Malcolm and his crew had found a strange, low data current running from the weapons' system to the Impulse drive engine. The two weren't usually connected, and first they had thought it was only one of the many changes they had implanted due to the overhaul's power issues. Trip didn't remember ordering these specific reconstructions (whatever that was worth nowadays) and told them to follow the conduit. They found a plethora of new conduits and provisory overrides, running all through the ship's body, connecting and overriding various compartments, systems and grids. Engineering had known about some of these changes, but many were unaccounted for.

"It's connected to all major operations of the ship," Malcolm said. "I think this is what's keeping us from controlling Enterprise."

His team had exposed the innards of the impulse engine and dug deep into the mess of cables, conduits and relays. Right in the middle of a retrieved bundle of circuits, connected to it by a dozen small joints, a small, foreign object shimmered in the light.

Trip stared at it, dumbstruck.

Malcolm kneeled and inspected the object. "What is it?" He pushed some cables out of the way to get a better look, and Trip's eyes widened in recognition. Oh hell.

"That's the disk," he said hoarsely. "Silik's disk."

Malcolm looked up at him sharply. "The data disk from the alien compound? I thought we left it at Starfleet Headquarters."

"Did you check? Because I didn't." Trip heard that edge of hysteria in voice again. If he was right about this… his stomach churned. "Lieutenant, get a PADD. Now."

Malcolm moved immediately and vanished out of sight, and Trip took his place. With trembling hands, he touched the disk and pulled it nearer, using his scanner to analyze it. The data he got was a mess, unusable.

Things had wrapped up quickly in 1944, after Trip and Jon had returned to Enterprise. His fellow officers had tried to fill him in, but the story had been so weird and surreal that at some point, Trip had just shrugged and accepted Nazi Aliens from the future on Earth. Shape shifters formerly antagonizing them had now saved him? Sure. Aliens from the 29th century manipulating the Temporal Cold War? Okay. The same Temporal Cold War that apparently could be stopped, or started, or whatever, on Earth. Yeah, why not? Sorting out his feelings about Jonathan's survival had had top priority back then, and to have a piece of future technology dangling in front of his face had been a fine distraction.

The disk Silik had brought back from the alien compound had been a beautiful piece of technology and unfolded a wonderful architectural design full of data their computers had been barely able to display. According to T'Pol, their computers had managed to extract maybe ten percent of the information stored on the disk. They wanted to study it profusely, but between their return to their homes, maintenance work and the nasty questions Starfleet and the Vulcans bombarded Jon with, the disk had disappeared quickly in Starfleet's science labs.

No, Trip thought, with the bile rising in his throat, Jon had told them it had been brought to Starfleet. During a Senior Staff meeting… and then he had rudely cut off Trip and T'Pol's protests.

Malcolm appeared next to him with a PADD. "Commander?" he asked, but Trip just shook his head slowly. The longer he looked, the more certain he grew. He had been pissed at Jon for not giving him more time to analyze Silik's disk, but now everything started to make sense. It was right around the time when Jon's behavior towards him turned downright cruel.

"Phlox sent you data from the device in Jon's head."

He didn't need to give the order, Malcolm powered up the PADD immediately. As Trip kept staring at the disk's elaborate surface design, Malcolm sucked in a breath and then cursed like a sailor.

"That's the same surface design," he whispered, affirming Trip's theory.

On the PADD's screen was a detailed model of the rudimentary 3D design they had seen in sickbay. Instead of a bland gray color with a whisp of lines, the device now showed a sleek black surface with the same golden and green pattern – just like the disk. At least on the surface, both disk and manipulation device had the same origins.

Trip felt the hair on his neck tingle. "Jon's overhaul implanted the disk. Now the disk is controlling the ship."

"You think they're connected?" Malcolm looked at him, his expression mirroring Trip's own fear and disbelief. "I thought Daniels said we saved the timeline."

But Daniels had been wrong before. And the Temporal Cold War had, obviously, taken a few unexpected turns and sidesteps before. Or after. Or… at the same time? Trip's headache made a comeback and reminded him why he always sympathized with the Vulcan's clear stance about time travel, even though he had always mocked T'Pol for it on principle.

"We never knew for sure what they wanted," he whispered, overwhelmed. "We never saw their technology."

What was he supposed to do about technology from 700 years in the future? Every time Trip was sent to look at the technology of another alien race now, he came back humbled, awed, and sometimes even depressed. There were species out there that crossed the stars in the blink of an eye, created holographic images that were so real you basically tasted the salty sea water, or built shuttles that were able to fly through stars – while humans couldn't even power up their own engine to Warp 5 for more than 20 seconds before blowing up their own reactors. Now, the same technology from the 29th century that was buried deep within their own ship had also been buried within their Captain.

Trip had read Jon's detailed reports of the events on Nazi occupied America and had shaken his head at the cryptic hints the temporal agent had dropped in the end. Even though they couldn't trust Jon's report anymore, Daniels had always been invested in the Captain's and ship's fate, but never specified why Enterprise was so important in the Temporal Cold War. When it came to their episode in 1944, they never really knew what exactly Vosk had wanted from them. Time travel stealth technology – Trip distinctly remembered snorting at that phrase… He didn't feel like snorting now.

Enterprise shook slightly right then, a low rumble running through the ship as if she wanted to remind him that she didn't like losing control. You and me both, honey, Trip thought and felt oddly relieved that, at least, the two of them were in sync again.

-tbc-

Ok hands down – who saw that coming? R&R, pls!