"When she and Miguel got to engineering all the poor surgeon could do was identify what was left of the remains as Andrea." Travis said, continuing his narrative.

Elizabeth Cutter made a face as she continued to stab at he fire with her stick. The rest of his audience seemed poised for him to continue. This was the kind of attention he liked. Travis took a breath and forged on.



Isabel was in shock. It was the second crewmember to be lost in that many months. Tessa's death was still fresh and now this.

She nearly punched the COM button by which Andrea had met her end.

"Vilula!" she yelled into the link,

"Yeah I'm here, what is it?" came the instant and startled response of her best friend.

"Put our guests," she spat the word, "in the brig, on the double, now." She terminated the link and turned quickly to Miguel.

"How?" she asked him in a neutral controlled tone.

He looked at her in shock, actual shock. She didn't think him capable of the emotion; he always seemed almost Vulcan in his responses when it came to work related matters. Which included death and disease. He hadn't even showed this level when he had had to come down to engineering to treat Tessa, and they had been cousins.

"She was torn apart." At Isabel's seeming lack of reaction he continued. "Violence doesn't even describe it, captain, its beyond obscene."

Isabel looked at her feet, and anything but the remains before her. She should really be thinking more clearly. All she could think was how they so rarely called her captain anymore, only when things were really bad.

Then something clicked in her mind.

"The growl." She said under her breath. It had to be the most bizarre disease, and it had to come on her ship.

A chime came on the COM panel before Miguel could ask her to explain.

"Yes." She answered.

"Guests secured." Came Vilula's somber voice. "And strangely subdued." She added almost as an after thought.

"I'm coming up." Isabel hit the switch again. " And so are you." She told Miguel. "Its not good for anyone to be alone with that." She motioned to the remains and Miguel put up no fight at all.



"Can I ask what all of this is about Isa? It's not like you to go around locking people up." Vilula said. She had met them at the lift as was walking with them to the brig.

"Andrea's dead."

Vilula stopped mid stride and paused for a heartbeat before her company command training took over and she fell back in step with her captain.

"I see." She said, and moved the rest of the way in silence.

The same bored eyes met Isabel as she entered the brig and gazed through the door at the two inside. Now, though, more menace seemed to dwell beneath the surface.

"What happened?" asked Elisa calmly.

"One of my crew is dead, care to explain?" she didn't even attempt to be civil.

"No."

The answer nearly knocked her off her feet, it was so blatant.

"No?"

"No."

Isabel glared in pure malice at the two pairs of insolent eyes that stared back at her. The woman seemed wholly unmoved; the man simply repositioned himself to sit more comfortably on the bench.

She turned to Vilula. "Top security on this cell. Charge the door and change the access code every ten minutes. Have someone in here to check on them every hour on the hour. They can pass the whole trip in there, then they're off my hands."



"She was just going to leave them in there." Ethan asked. Travis loved it when people actually got involved. When he was young the other children always used to beg him to tell his tall tales or scary stories. After awhile he had searched them out at each port so he would have fresh ones to tell them.

"What else was she supposed to do, carry out an execution?" trip asked, taking up the conversation.

"Such an act would seem illogical with out the proper authorities." T'pol added.

"See. It would have been illogical to do otherwise." Trip answered Ethan.

"Are you done now?" Elizabeth asked them. "Please continue." She said after everyone, except T'pol, had nodded.



The next day they were back on course, lights were well on their way to being back up and the deck had been cleaned. They went on rotation; everything was supremely routine, so as to reduce stress levels, all by the book. Peter, the xobiologist, was the next scheduled to check on the prisoners. So far, though, there had been no problems there.

Isabel was stepping out of the shower when the call came for her over the COM unit.

"Yeah." She answered distractedly.

"I would like to get out of here. You have to let me out of here."

It was Elisa's voice on the COM. It had its usual boredom, but now it seemed lased with just a hint of urgency. She was still thinking this over when she heard it. The howl, crystal clear over the COM.

"Computer authorize sonic burst cell one." Isabel yelled at the automated defense system as she threw on her cloths and ran for the brig.

When she arrived she saw it hadn't helped. This time there were two undistinguishable piles of flesh and not just the one. When Miguel ran in her stopped right beside her before he went to the task of identification. There was nothing else he could do obviously.

"They must have turned on each other." She commented in a flat tone that she had been using far to often lately.

"How did they get out?" Miguel asked her at last.

Isabel was stunned, she hadn't noticed it before, and the cell door was wide open and one of the remains lay outside of what should have been an inescapable prison.

"Its impossible." She said in no less flat a tone.

Miguel finally went over to the bodies, having paused his duty long enough. He bent to examine the remains with his bulky scanner.

"This one is Elisa." He said of the one inside the cell.

He bent to examine the second and dropped his head when the answer came in.

He turned and stood looking her in the eyes.

"This is Peter."

"No, no he knew not to open that door, he's not that stupid. How could he be so stupid." She was coming undone. Isabel leaned against the wall and put her hand on her forehead taking deep breaths.

"I'm sorry." Miguel said, he put a hand on her shoulder.

She knocked it off, the last thing she wanted right now was comfort, and she would deal with these things later. "We have to find him now." She said. She wrenched herself away from the wall and went to the COM station. It chimed before she could reach it.

"Isa," Vilula's voice was near a whisper.

"Vi, were are you?" concern was never more evident on her face that at that moment.

"I'm hiding." She said in a 'duh' kind of tone. " He's out, and he's here, I can hear him." Isabel's heart caught in her chest.

"Stay were you are, don't move."

"I wont believe me. I cut my leg getting in here I don't think I could even if I wanted to."

She cut off the link and turned to Miguel. With a nod he followed her to the armory and they proceed to arm themselves, something she had never had to do on her own ship. She gave the surgeon a light pat on the shoulder as she moved past him. "Lets go."

"Wonderful." He commented under his breath.

When they were about to make the turn beyond which lay her best friend, Isabel stepped on something slick and nearly lost her balance. Miguel helped her recover and they both shown lights on what it was she stepped on. They both knew what that was. She shook her head no in the red lights as Miguel reached for his scanner.

"Give it to me," she said. "You go ahead. If this isn't her then you need to get her patched up and out of here."

He nodded reluctantly and handed the scanner over to her. He then trudged forward toward the turn about forty paces ahead of them.

Isabel, for her part, bent over the remains with her scanner and struggled to see the read out in the dim red lighting. She felt guilt at her surge of relief that it was Jerome and not Vilula with her footprint in him.

That's when she heard the howl coming from the other side of the corner Miguel had disappeared around. As she raced to the corner she heard Miguel's scream and then Vilula's. She tripped on an uneven deck plating and cursed to herself as she pushed herself to her feet sporting a growing bump on the head.

When she got to the source of the commotion all that was there waiting for her was an all to familiarly gruesome sight. But there was only one. With weapon in had she scanned the shadows quietly searching.

Then she heard a sob from behind the grating and removed it as quickly as she could. Vilula was scrunched in the small access port hugging her knees to her chest and rocking slightly.

"He's here." She said softly, almost to herself.

"But so are we. Come on lets get you out of there." She reached out and helped her friend out of her secure hiding place, the whole time hoping it was the right decision.

"Where are we going?" Vilula asked, favoring her right leg, which was leaking blood.

"Airlock two."

"But there's nothing in there." She paused as realization flooded her face. "Oh."

"Lets go." Isabel took Vilula's left arm over her shoulder and together they labored the distance to their destination.



"What's in airlock two?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nothing." Travis answered.

"I don't get it." Trip said, a puzzled look on his fire lit face.

"He'll probably explain." Ethan said waiting for Travis to continue.



A trap, in principle, isn't a difficult thing. To make one work is an entirely different matter. But if Isabel had understood the prognosis, then Aden would have to come out some time.

And three hours later he did. He followed the clues effortlessly in to the crate filled airlock. Isabel and Vilula watched in silence from a safe distance as he rutted around carefully among the boxes looking for them. Before he could figure out they weren't in the airlock, though, Isabel released the control and the doors slammed shut closing him in and the silence of vacuum fallowed.

Wordlessly they approached the view port and saw as he and the crates that had been left inside, tumbled end over end through the void.

Almost on queue the lights flickered back on to full strength.

Isabel let out a long needed, well disserved, sigh of relief and turned to her smiling friend who returned her gaze.

Then, her smile never fading, her eyes just as bright as ever, Vilula raised her head and began to howl.



"The end." Travis said triumphantly, as he gazed at the shocked looks around him.

"It just ends like that, she doesn't get away?" Elizabeth asked incredulous.

"I thought Aden was the killer?" Ethan asked over her.

"Actually a quit similar virus dos exist." T'pol commented arresting all attention. "It was discovered by Vulcan High Command on an abandoned Human carrier. It doesn't cause the same reaction in all it's infect ants. In most it produces animalistic violence, in the others, senseless boredom and lose of self-interest. The planet of its origins was documented and a warning beacon set in place. The Virus isn't contagious, you have to catch it at the source."

They all stared at her numbly; Travis nodded as if he had just received a great vindication.

"Oh that's just creepy." Elizabeth said finally.

"I second that, very disturbing." Trip concurred, Ethan merely nodded.

Travis just started to laugh.



Later that evening, before joining Trip in the tent, Travis approached T'pol at the edge of the camp.

"Sub-commander?"

"Yes ensign." She answered in her normal Vulcan tone.

"I just wanted to thank you for making up the back story back there. It made the hole thing much more realistic."

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"I made nothing up ensign. It is documented Vulcan fact." She then simply turned and entered her tent, closing the flap on his shocked face.





THE END

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