Narcosis: Chapter 11

By Piper

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer and other story details.

~*~

"Commander, be still!"

Trip quit squirming for about three seconds as Ensign Cutler probed the back of his head. Then he winced and pulled away again, causing her to sigh.

"Sir, you have a serious cut back here. I need to close it."

Trip wasn't really looking forward to that, but he shrugged and said, "Sure, whatever." His attention had been drawn to the bed beside him and what Dr. Phlox currently had in his hands. "You don't need those," he said, displeasure in his tone. "He's not violent anymore."

Dr. Phlox looked up from the task of placing restraints on Malcolm's wrists. "I believed that last time, Commander. I don't like to use these either, but I cannot take the risk of him injuring anyone else or running off again. Surely you understand that."

Trip stared at him in frustration for a moment before giving in. "Yeah," he admitted reluctantly. That didn't make it any less painful to watch.

The curtain was drawn partially around Malcolm's bed, though not separating him from Trip. Outside the curtain stood an armed crewman, while another two were positioned just outside of sickbay. They were afraid of a repeat performance from earlier, though one look at Malcolm made the worry seem unnecessary.

Malcolm wasn't resisting. On the contrary, he was submitting contritely to everything. Trip and the Captain had had to support him on the way to sickbay, but he hadn't fought them at all. Now he was lying listlessly on the bed, allowing Phlox to strap limp limbs to the table.

He was still conscious, which placed him in better shape than Eric. But he had withdrawn from everything around him, speaking nothing more than the occasional whispered, "I'm sorry." Trip wondered if he was even aware of his surroundings and the people who were trying to help him.

With his attention on his friend, the engineer hadn't noticed Cutler coming back. When she reached for the wound again, he jumped and hissed in pain. "Sorry, sir," she offered. It would have meant more of she hadn't immediately launched into the process of closing the cut. He bit his lip against the pain, distracting himself by watching Phlox tighten the last restraint around Malcolm's left ankle.

As he finished with Malcolm, the doctor came towards Trip. "Now Commander, you have a concussion. You need to rest," he said pointedly. "I really must insist that you stay right here on this bed. Someone will be along to wake you every hour to check your awareness."

"I'm not going anywhere, Doc," Trip said wearily.

Phlox offered him a smile. "Good. Now, if Ensign Cutler is finished putting your head back together, the two of us will get back to work. I believe we are close to an antidote of sorts."

From behind Trip, Ensign Cutler responded with a "Yes, doctor," before helping Trip lie down. As the two medical personnel moved away, Trip rolled onto his side so that he could keep an eye on Malcolm. The tactical officer was silent and still, but awake as he stared up at the ceiling.

Trip decided to try some communication again now that they were alone. "Malcolm?" he called softly.

Malcolm didn't move his head or his gaze. He did whisper another "I'm sorry" that could have been in response.

"You don't have to be sorry," Trip whispered back, even though he wasn't sure he was being addressed.

Malcolm didn't reply, but Trip saw a tear trickle down his cheek.

"It's okay, Mal. It's okay," Trip offered softly in an attempt at comfort.

A few more tears escaped his eyes. But Malcolm never gave him any more of a response.

~*~

Captain Jonathan Archer sighed heavily and rubbed his temples against the encroaching headache. It had been a long day, and it wasn't over yet. Dr. Phlox was fairly certain he was close to curing this thing, but the Captain wouldn't be able to relax until his two infected crewmen were back on their feet again.

In the meantime, he and T'Pol had agreed that it was best to get out of the planet's immediate space. Even though there had been no sign that they had been detected, he preferred to keep a quiet profile. They had moved away, far enough to avoid detection should anyone actually look but close enough to return easily if necessary.

He sank into the Captain's chair and leaned his head back, closing his eyes briefly against the minimal bridge activity.

"Captain?"

He reluctantly forced his eyes back open to focus on the woman who'd come to stand in front of him. "Yes Hoshi?"

"I've translated the message on the tape recorder you found."

He came fully alert and noticed T'Pol and Travis tuning into the conversation as well. "Anything interesting?"

"Yes, sir. I was expecting pure research notes, but this is really more like a diary. It was almost as if she was composing a book. Which is great, because she talks about the situation on the planet and how she feels about what they were doing on the station. It answers a lot of questions."

"By all means, continue," he encouraged.

"From what I can gather, there are two races on their planet. Their race, the green-skinned ones, are the minority, and by that I mean that they are outnumbered something like 100 to 1. Still, they used to be in power, until the others organized a rebellion. She never states the reason and we're obviously getting a biased point of view, but I suspect the green-skinned aliens were sort of tyrannical and not exactly kind to the others."

"Do we have names for these races?" T'Pol questioned.

"She never uses them. She mostly talks in terms of 'us' and 'them,' or 'the others.' She does use slang for the others, but it doesn't translate into anything that should really be spoken aloud on a bridge," Hoshi responded. "Anyhow, this rebellion seems to have taken place some time ago. The green-skinned ones were forced underground and have been plotting a way to take power back since.

"The station was built and in operation before the rebellion. The other race is significantly less advanced, and they never even knew the station was there. Their communications aren't as strong and their space technology is almost backwards in comparison."

"Hence the tiny ship and the lack of response to our hails," Archer mused. "But if the green ones could communicate with their station, shouldn't they have contacted us sooner?"

"Apparently they can only communicate at certain times during the day when the planet is in the right position. The station orbits at a different rate or something. Their people are mainly concentrated in one place where the others can't intercept their transmissions, but it limits their ability to communicate with the station."

"So it would be very difficult for the aliens on the station to get back to the planet without detection. How long had the inhabitants been living on that station?" Travis asked.

"Apparently they could get a supply ship in and out every once in a while. But most of them had been there for generations," she responded. "There were children living there."

"But we didn't find any children, or many adults for that matter," T'Pol put in.

"No. I think there were a few more bodies that you and Commander Tucker didn't find, but most of them got out. But I'm getting ahead of the story. Originally that station was there for some kind of experiments that they didn't want to do on the planet. But after they received news of the rebellion, they began looking for some way to turn the tables on a huge number of people."

"So they created a biological agent," Jonathan supplied.

"Yes, sir. But it's taken years to refine it to do the damage they wanted it to do."

"Does she talk about it in detail?" the Captain asked hopefully. The more they knew about it, the better.

Hoshi looked at him apologetically. "No sir. I'm sorry; she didn't know that many details about the actual chemicals. She wasn't even a scientist; she was an engineer. But her husband was one of the scientists working with this agent directly, so she knew a little about it, but it's mostly stuff we've already figured out. She mentions that it was intended to be a gas that dissipated quickly. It's designed to make the enemy turn on each other and even themselves. It has stages that progress in a victim. And one thing we didn't know—it was designed to attack the female system or a younger male more quickly. Apparently most of the actual soldiers on the other side are female or fairly young men."

"So what happened on the station to make their great weapon destroy them?" Travis asked.

"Her entries are shorter and more emotional after this point. But she says that there was some sort of accident in the lab. Apparently the inhabitants who weren't working directly on this chemical didn't understand exactly what would happen, because they took off using most of the life pods. The scientists were left, and they were all infected. Well, except for her. She was left behind because she was outside the station doing repair work. By the time she got back in, most of the people had gone and she was trapped with a group of infected men and women. She tried calling for help. She got no answer."

"She got one. It just came too late," Archer said softly.

T'Pol spoke up, "Captain, we most likely couldn't have done anything even if we were here earlier."

"What kind of people would just abandon their friends when they were in trouble?" Travis asked.

"I think that's just the nature of their race," Hoshi answered.

Jonathan posed a different question, "Why would they create something they couldn't cure? What were they planning to do if they got exposed?"

Hoshi responded, "That's the part of the story that is so heart-wrenching. They had been developing a cure and testing it on the lab animals. But the ones who were infected didn't care to be cured, and she didn't know enough to synthesize it or even pick it out of a cabinet. She had to watch a few of them kill each other and at least one kill himself by swallowing a bunch of chemicals. She was going to try to convince her husband to tell her how to cure him." She paused for a moment before finishing, "That's her last entry. I think her husband killed her."

There was a moment of silence as they all considered it.

Finally the Captain said, "Let's just pray that Dr. Phlox can find a way to reverse what these people created."

~*~

"We've got it! Don't we?"

Dr. Phlox held his response until after he had watched his new concoction finish interacting with the one Cutler had obtained from the station. As the new one completely neutralized the other, he allowed himself a smile and answered the Ensign. "Yes, I believe we do."

They'd found traces of a foreign chemical in the blood of the lab animal that everyone had taken to calling "Mickey." That, combined with the knowledge of the chemical mixture that had caused this, had been enough for him to engineer an antidote. And it appeared to be working.

"Neither of them are doing well, Doctor. West's vital signs have been dropping. Are we ready to administer this?"

He hesitated. He had tested it adequately, but normally he would have tested it even more before injecting it into a human body. But he was working with a time crunch here.

He took a deep breath and said, "Let's try it."

~*~

To Be Continued