As her vision cleared, she looked around. She was in some kind of laboratory, and held to a flat piece of metal on the floor by shackles of some kind. Twisting her head to the left, she caught sight of Jessie and Kristian in similar positions. Looking the other way, she saw May. All were unconscious. Of Steve, Michael, and Lia there was no sign.
She wiggled her right wrist in the metal band, trying to find some kind of release mechanism. But before she could move far, the doors whooshed open. Startled, she looked up.
There were three of them, all humanoid. They looked like a cross between a Borg and a Ferengi, with a bit of Klingon mixed in. Big ears, ridged foreheads, and mechanical prosthetics covering almost everything else.
They stepped closer, and one pulled out a tricorder of some kind. They peered at her through bright blue eyes, taking readings. They did not speak or make any sort of threatening gesture, but somehow Allison knew they weren't planning on being very nice to her. And she was going to be the first...for whatever they were going to do.
"You are a human," one of them said in monotone, barely understandable, English.
Startled, she answered automatically. "Yes. I'm Allison."
"Your name is irrelevant. You are to be our first subject of experimentation," the first one said. "You are to be the base mutant for our project."
"Mutant?! Project?! You can't do this to-" One sting of a hypospray interrupted her, and her vision collapsed into darkness.
~~~~~~~
When consciousness returned, the first thing she noticed was the background hum of a force field. I'm back in the brig, she thought groggily. Then another thing occurred to her. What had they done to her?
She slowly sat up, putting a hand to her forehead as if it would dispel her headache. In doing so, her hand brushed her right ear.
It was pointed.
And she could feel it.
"What the HECK?!" she exclaimed, sitting up a bit too fast. She felt dizzy, but she didn't remove her hand from her ear. She moved her other hand around her face. Left ear. Eyebrows. Oh man, oh man, oh man!
Then, finally, she held up her hand to look at it. It was a pale green color, with no pink human skin left. Her fingerprints were of an odd design, clearly marking her as inhuman.
"Please tell me I'm not what I think I am," she said to no one.
"Sorry, but it's real," a voice put in behind her.
She glanced behind her. Lia was sitting on the metal bunk, looking a little freaked out. For a moment, Allison felt sorry for her; after all, Lia WAS the youngest of the seven. But at least she was still human.
"I'm a..." Allison couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. Instead, she just brushed her hair away from her ears. Lia nodded fearfully.
"I don't know what they did to you, but it's the real deal," Lia said. "According to what they were saying when they brought you back in, you're a Vulcan, inside and out. Nothing human except your mind."
Allison swallowed hard. This would definitely take some getting used to. "Have you seen any of the others? The others that they took?"
"Yes...about ten minutes after they brought you back, they carried in May and that Denmark kid."
"His name is Kristian," Allison reminded her. Then she hesitated. "Are they...okay?"
"They're alive, if that's what you mean." But she knew that wasn't the answer Allison was looking for, so she continued. "Both are half-Vulcans now."
Allison nodded after a moment. "I should have expected it. They said they were going to use me as a 'base mutant.' Evidently, they needed to judge how much of whatever-it-is they need to change us genetically." Then she realized there was one missing. "What about Jessie?"
Lia shook her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen her since they took you guys out of here."
"I hope she's okay." Allison sighed and put her hand on her forehead. Her headache stubbornly refused to go away, and the news that she was now an alien didn't help much. How are we gonna get outta here? she wondered.
"Are you okay?" Lia's voice broke through her thoughts. "You don't look too good."
Allison sighed. "I don't FEEL too good, either. Maybe it's just me adjusting to this new Vulcan body. Although I'm not sure why I would have a headache..."
"Allison?" Steve called from the next cell.
"What, Steve?" she called back.
"Umm...you don't happen to know why Kristian has REAL pointed ears, do you?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. I have a pair myself. But I'm willing to bet mine are more obvious than his," she answered. "According to Lia, he's only half-Vulcan while I wound up going the whole way Vulcan."
There was silence for a moment. "That is SO whacked out."
"Tell me about it," she groaned. "I mean, I wouldn't believe it either except for the fact that I look almost exactly like Saavik."
"Like WHO?"
"Vulcan lady from Star Treks two and three, never mind though. Anyone have an idea how to get out of here?" Lia said.
"I can't see any way to get out," Kristian said, sounding a lot better than Allison felt. "Those force fields are completely impenetrable without any equipment. And I don't think they left a phaser lying around."
Allison thought hard for a moment, staring at the crackling energy shield. Lia watched her intently, wondering what the Vulcan was up to.
Allison stood up and moved over to the back wall, and began running her fingers along the seams in the metal plating. She traced it all the way to the wall that separated her cell from Steve and Kristian's cell, and knelt down. She probed a crack with one finger, somehow finding the room to slip all five digits into the hole.
With a horrible squeal of tearing metal, she violently ripped back the metal plating from between the two cells. She poked her head through, getting a glimpse of a normal-looking Steve looking shocked and a half-Vulcan Kristian looking equally surprised.
"Voila, instant door," Allison commented before tearing down the rest of the wall. That left a cell twice as long as the two had been before, and gave them some material to work with. She picked up a sharp piece of metal. "Kristian, do you think you could use this to help us escape, somehow?"
Kristian took the metal and flipped it upside-down, sideways, and then right-side up again. "I think I can use the minor cabling in these fragments of the bulkhead to produce some sort of ionic pulse. With luck, that should trigger the 'off switch' of the force field and we'll be able to escape."
"How long?" Allison asked as Kristian began to rip apart the larger pieces of metal to get at the cabling.
"It should take about three hours to rig it up," Kristian confirmed.
"Do it," Allison said. "Steve, Lia, and I will figure out an escape plan for when the force field goes down."
All three of them stared at her for a minute. "Who died and made YOU Captain?" Lia asked.
"Look, do you have any objections to my ideas?" Allison countered.
"No..."
"Then let's get started. Kristian, let us know if you hear anyone coming. With those new Vulcan ears..." Allison trailed off, but the Denmark teen knew exactly what she meant. "You know where I'll be."
"Aye, sir," Kristian commented, glancing up with a humorous look in his eyes. Then he went back to furiously attacking the bulkhead fragments.
"Either he's going to be a scientist or he's going to be an engineer," Allison commented as she joined the other two in the back of the cell. She considered her words carefully. "Or possibly both."
"So, down to business," Steve reminded her. "Once Kristian gets that force field down...how do we get off the ship and where do we go?"
Allison thought carefully, ignoring her rapidly-worsening headache. "We could use their transporter system to beam down on a M-Class planet. If they come close to one, that is. Or we could take control of their subspace communications and send out an SOS to any nearby Federation starship."
"How are you so sure we're in the time of the Federation?" Lia asked. "We could be 900 years in the future, and Starfleet might not even exist anymore."
"Simple logic," Allison stated. She sighed as she saw the stares they were giving her. "It doesn't matter how I know. What is important is that we need to find the comm controls and figure out how to work them. Does anyone have even the slightest clue where to look?"
"YOU'RE the devoted Trekkie here, not us," Steve said.
"I know," Allison said, rubbing her forehead. That headache was getting worse by the minute, and she was feeling strangely chilled. "Anyone know how to work the computer?"
The ship shook, and the sounds of returning fire thrummed through the deck plates. Everyone looked up, and Kristian stopped working. Then the intraship communications came on, and a surprisingly familiar voice came over the speakers.
"Alien vessel, this is Captain James Kirk of the Federation starship Enterprise. We order you to lower your shields and surrender your ship immediately."
Allison looked over at Lia. "Still convinced there's no Starfleet?"