CHAPTER 11: We Bound It With a Golden Circle
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
NOTES: Heavy on the exposition this chapter, but I think some things need to be cleared up finally, don't you? LOL!
It felt a little bit like drowning, only much, much worse.
Despite Trip's iron grip, Malcolm struggled to free himself from T'Pol's death kiss. The steady suction of her mouth on his was inexorably smothering him; drawing the air from his lungs, the heat from his blood, and the life - slowly, slowly - from his body. He could feel himself starting to wilt. Already, his fingers were cramping as, second by second, they began to thin.
He was being mummified alive.
Then, suddenly, T'Pol's lips were wrenched away from his. Malcolm gasped for air, too shocked and thankful for his sudden benefaction to take notice of what had rescued him.
"Leave him alone!"
His head shot up. He knew that voice.
Two figures were wrestling on the floor amongst the corpses of the crew. One was quite obviously T'Pol, her slender legs kicking to free herself of her unknown assailant. The other was a smaller woman, dark haired, wearing a dirty Starfleet uniform and clawing for the Vulcan's eyes with very angry nails.
"Hoshi…!" Malcolm croaked.
She ignored him, too caught up in her battle with the Vulcan to risk answering him. "You can't have him!" she snarled, pinning T'Pol's arms to the floor and staring down into the other woman's eyes. "He's mine, do you hear me? Mine!" And she brought her fist crashing down on the Vulcan's cheek in a stunning blow, knocking the other woman unconscious.
It wasn't until Trip released his arms that Malcolm remembered the other man. "Hoshi…!" he gasped, stumbling backward as Trip moved away, heading for the two women on the floor. "Look out…!"
Hoshi looked up, her dark eyes flashing at the approaching engineer. "Do you want some of this too?" she asked, voice dripping with vitriol. "I have plenty to go around."
The Thing That Was Trip looked unfazed. "You are an imperfect husk," he said, his voice booming as T'Pol's had done. "We shall feed."
"I don't think so, buddy." Leaping to her feet, Hoshi pulled a phase pistol from a holster on her hip, aimed at the chief engineer, and fired. He dropped like a stone.
Hoshi stepped over him and grabbed Malcolm's wrist. "Come on," she said anxiously, dragging him towards the door. "They're only unconscious. They'll wake up soon."
"But… Trip…"
"It was set to stun," Hoshi replied, before he could even ask his question. "We figured out that killing … the bodies doesn't kill them." She sounded like she was going to be sick as she said it. "We're just trying to buy time now till we can figure out what DOES kill them. Hurry up, come on."
Malcolm let her pull him along. His body felt like a dead weight: lead feet filled his boots; lead hands hung at his wrists. His joints were made of balsa wood, ready to snap at any moment. Every inch of his body ached, as though he'd been put through a cider press. The ship passed by him in a blurry stream of motion. Had anyone asked him where he was, he wouldn't have known for the world.
It wasn't until he found himself being guided down onto a soft bed that he realized Hoshi had led him to the habitation deck. "Where…?" he asked wearily, but she rested a finger over his lips.
"Shhh, stay still," she murmured soothingly, moving her hand to the side to stroke his cheek. He forced his eyes to focus on her face. It was still smudged the way it had been in the message she'd left him. "You need to recover your strength. Let me get you some water."
She stood and hurried to the bathroom of the unfamiliar cabin. Malcolm weakly reached after her, unwilling to let her go; but his hand quickly fell back into his lap. It took too much energy to hold it up. "How… did you find me?" he asked, voice raspy.
"I've been watching you since you got back aboard."
That jolted him a little. "Why-"
"Why didn't I say anything to you?" She came back into the main cabin and knelt in front of him. "Here, drink this. Your throat must be dry as a bone." She held a plastic cup of water to his lips, and Malcolm drank gratefully. It felt like nectar as it ran down his throat.
"I had to be sure they hadn't gotten to you," she explained softly as he drank. "I would have gone running to you in the shuttlebay, but you blew out the camera before I could." She sounded affectionately amused as she said it. "From then on, I just couldn't be sure. I needed proof."
A piece of him twinged unhappily at the knowledge that something he had done had kept them separated for so long. He brushed her hand and the cup aside. "The others?" he asked, annoyed by the weakness of his voice.
"Shhh, keep drinking." She tried to tilt the cup against his lips again, but he pushed her hand away, more forcefully this time.
"Hoshi, tell me," he said, forcing his voice to be stronger. "Where are the others?"
His wife sighed and sat back on her heels. "They're…in storage."
He frowned. "You mean, in the storage bays?"
"More or less."
"Why are they there?"
"Because they're being stored."
Malcolm stared at her. "Oh…" he murmured.
Hoshi looked up into his eyes. "We're going to get them out, Malcolm," she told him, her voice unusually firm. "But first, I need you healthy. Okay?"
He nodded, perfectly willing to let her do all the thinking for a moment while he recovered his wits. "Tell me what happened," he said quietly. "I feel as though I've been dropped into a play in medias res, and nobody's bothered to tell me the plot."
Sighing again, Hoshi nodded. "Okay," she murmured, and pulled herself up onto the bed to sit beside him. Guiding the cup to his lips again, she began to narrate.
"When we reached the bioplasma storm after dropping you off," she began, rubbing his back as she watched him drink, "T'Pol asked to take some samples for closer study. She brought them onboard in tightly sealed containers and kept them behind a modified EMS field, to ensure safety as she ran her tests."
"I take it things didn't go as planned."
"No. They didn't. Somehow, some of the plasma escaped. We don't know how. The best anyone's been able to figure is that somehow, the energy signature of the creatures matches the signature of the EMS field's harmonics, and they were able to just… slide through the cracks. But we don't know. All we DO know is that they got to T'Pol first."
"What about the She'Lac? Didn't they notice something was wrong?"
"How could they? We didn't. T'Pol was acting a little strangely, but we all thought it was because she was trying to impress the other Vulcans. I'm sure the Vulcans thought she had been tainted by spending too much time with humans. Either way, they came, they visited, they inspected, and they left." She looked down and swallowed. "And that's when they started invading."
Malcolm gazed at her profile. "What happened, Hoshi?" he murmured.
"It was awful," she whispered, voice trembling. Looking up quickly, she met his eyes with tears brimming on her lashes. "They took over in a matter of hours, Malcolm. Not days - HOURS. Before we knew it, a third of the crew was dead, and the rest were being captured left, right and center by another third." She shook her head. "It was like a nightmare, but no one was there to wake us up."
Malcolm wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly as she cried quietly against his chest. "Luv," he murmured, stroking her hair. "It's all right. Shhhh…"
"We tried… killing some of them," she said, voice choked with tears. A shudder ran through her body. "It was awful, Malcolm. The creatures… they'd leave, but the bodies would scream… It was like nails on a chalkboard. Just… screaming, louder and louder…" Her hands slid up to cover her ears, as if to block out the memory. "We stopped killing them when we figured out it didn't work."
"Where are the bodies?" he asked softly, not wanting to wound her further, but not eager to step into a room unawares and trip over the cadavers of his dead crewmates.
"There were… only a few," she said, hiccupping a little. "We put them… in their quarters."
"Why not Nichols and Marylebone?"
"Marylebone we had to run. More were coming - we could hear them. We had to leave him there." She looked up at his face, tears streaking her cheeks. "I put Nichols there to keep you away from Engineering." She swallowed, and cupped his cheek. "I didn't want you to see…."
He reached up and took her hand, squeezing it soothingly. "I had to see."
She nodded brokenly. "I know. But I was hoping… you wouldn't."
He kissed her forehead. "I was so afraid you were one of those bodies, luv," he murmured. "I was so afraid they'd taken you."
She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tightly. "I'd never let them do that to me, Malcolm," she whispered fiercely. "I love you too much to die like that."
He smiled against her hair. "Where's Emma?"
"She's with Travis. They're both safe, don't worry."
"I'm a father trapped on a ship that's been invaded by alien hostiles. I think I'll let myself worry a bit."
Hoshi laughed softly, a welcome sound in the otherwise grim atmosphere of the ship. "Just trust me, they're fine," she said, sitting back and gazing into his face.
Malcolm looked deep into her eyes. "I've missed you, Hoshi," he whispered after a moment. "So much."
She smiled, and a pair of tears spilled down her cheeks. "I've missed you, too," she whispered hoarsely in return.